Hand No. 9

Some hands will result in all-in confrontations no matter how they play out. However there are some interesting nuances to the following hand.

This hand occurred in the same tournament as Hand No. 8. Blinds are 200/400. Its still early in the tournament, but the Dealer and Player C have big stacks of approximately 30,000 chips. Player A calls for 400. Player C raises to 1,200, and Players D, E, & F all call for 1,200. The Dealer re-raises to 3,600. The SB calls for his final 2,700, but this does not cap the action. Player A folds, and Player C re-raises all in for about 30,000 chips. Players D, E, & F all fold. The Dealer calls for the remainder of his chips, also around 30,000 chips, but he is covered by Player C. The Dealer shows pocket Aces, the SB shows pocket 7s, and Player C shows pocket Kings. The pot is over 60,000.

The flop is K 10 8, with two spades. The turn is a 7 and the river is a 4. There are no flushes possible. Player C wins the pot with a set of Kings. The Dealer and SB are forced to rebuy or be knocked out of the tournament. This game allows one rebuy until the end of the 3rd round of play.

My thoughts on this hand:

Player C was immediately on my left in this tournament. Player C revealed after this hand that he "felt like" the Dealer would show pocket Aces after the initial re-raise. So should have Player C have trusted his instincts and laid down his pocket Kings? I have read a number of times about players who laid down pocket Kings when they just knew their opponent had to have pocket Aces. It depends on the circumstances, but I don't know if I could ever fold pocket Kings before the flop.

Player C did have other options when facing the re-raise from the Dealer. Player C could have just called and re-evaluated his hand after the flop. Its immaterial though, as all the chips would have gotten into the pot after the flop. Player C also could have re-raised before the flop - say to 10,000. But at this point he would have committed a 1/3 of his stack to a hand that would have been very difficult to get away from. Interestingly, if Player C had elected to let the hand go, the SB would have survived his all-in when he made a set of 7s on the turn.

As for the Dealer, I've expressed my opinion about playing pocket Aces before, so I won't belabor the point. The Dealer was facing 4 opponents who had already committed 1,200 to the pot. The Dealer needed to make a bigger re-raise to narrow the field a bit. Of course, in this instance luck wasn't on his side anyway. Player C wasn't going to fold to any bet.

The rebuy option probably influenced the play of this hand. Both Player C and the SB had the safety net of the rebuy. In the case of the SB, he was facing a raise, 3 callers, and a big re-raise. It was unlikely his pocket 7s were good at this point. But for his final 2,700 he had a shot at winning a pot approaching 10,000. And if he didn't get lucky, he could just rebuy to get another starting stack of 16,000. I'll probably dedicate a future entry to the rebuy concept. Rebuys and add-ons not only increase the prize pool, but they affect your strategy as the tournament progresses.

Sometimes I think the name of this blog should be "Aces Are No Good." We never remember when they hold up, only when they get crushed. Feel free to share your bad beat stories in the comments section, and thanks for reading.