In The Blender

Over the July 4th weekend, I went up to MGM National Harbor casino with some friends.

On Sunday, I decided to play the $500 buyin tournament after three winning cash game sessions on Friday and Saturday.

After a slow start, I caught fire and made it to the final table (out of 93 total entries) with an above average stack. I’d like to say some skill was involved–which was definitely the case in the hand I’m about to describe–but have to admit I also had a run of great cards in great spots.

Early in the final table, the small blind / big blind / BB ante was 4,000 / 8,000 / 8,000. The villain in this hand had a little over 400,000 chips and I sat behind approx. 600,000. For effective stacks purposes, we were about 50 BBs deep, which is a lot for this late stage of a tournament.

On the button, I have 77. Everyone folds to me, and I raise to 20,000. This is very standard play. I’m never folding or flat calling with a pocket pair here. You get pocket pairs, on average, once every 17 hands. I should be ahead of the two remaining players. Simply winning the blinds and ante is also a fine result, as 77 isn’t easy to play when multiple higher cards come on most flops.

The small blind folds, and the big blind calls. He is, like me, a middle-aged white guy and hasn’t done anything remarkable in terms of his play. Not hyper-aggressive. Not a super nit. A thinking player, albeit mostly straightforward.

The flop is A42 rainbow. There are 52,000 chips in the pot.

He checks. I check.

The turn is the 7♥. Yahtzee! Might heart skips a bet.

I’m now 100% certain I’m going to win this pot. The only question is how much???

He bets 30,000.

While I’m pondering his bet, which represents that he has an Ace, I notice that the Ace on the flop is the A♥. It’s possible that the villain has a flush draw, but I think it is way more likely that he has an Ace. He is out-of-position, his sizing begs for a call, and I haven’t seen him bet aggressively with semi-bluffs. We are in the money already, but just barely so the payouts are still very modest. With a flush draw and only one card to come, I believe he would check here and hope that I check back again.

Now there’s 82,000 in the pot and he has approx. 350,000+ behind.

I’m going to raise, but how much? I really want my raise to look like I am the one who just picked up a flush draw. I believe I can sell that, given that I checked back the flop, and the villain would expect me to bet again with any Ace in my hand.

It’s an important factor that I have him covered. Even though I don’t have an aggro/table bully image, a big raise puts him in a tight spot if he has anything less than two pair.

So… I go all-in, a massive 4x pot overbet. Fortune favors the bold, amiright?

He goes into the blender, as one of my travel mates likes to say.

I can almost see his mind at work. Why did I bet so much? If I’m betting for value, surely I’d raise a more reasonable amount. What did the turn card change for me? Oh, look, now there are two hearts on the board. Could I have a hand like 6♥5♥ where that turn gave me both a flush and open-ended straight draw? Or K♥4♥ where the turn gave me flush draw to go along with a small pair?

He stays in the blender, whirling around while his brain turns to mush, until another player calls for the clock. When the tournament director tells him that he has 10 seconds left to decide, he states that he’s pretty sure he is a 60/40 favorite. In reality, if he has a Ace with a decent kicker that doesn’t block any of my outs, he would be a 66/34 favorite over 6♥5♥ and a 68/32 favorite over K♥4♥. With those extra outs, his thinking might go, I’d be more likely to risk such a large bet than if I only had a naked flush draw.

With two seconds left, he calls and pushes his stack forward and tables A♠6♠. He is drawing dead.

Just to stick the knife in a little deeper, another Ace falls on the river and I become the new chip leader.

How I love this game!

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