Saturday, June 6, 2009

Isolating a Shover

When you are playing an MTT you can find yourself with a decent hand after somebody has shipped all of his chips into the pot.

Now, if you have enough information about the player to KNOW you are ahead of his range but your hand isn't necessarily a huge hand you can be in a quandry. Do you just flat call? Do you re-raise all in to isolate?

This exact situation came up for me in a private MTT.  A player shipped from UTG+1; I knew I was ahead of his range so I shipped to isolate only to have a player wake up behind me with AA.




  


I suppose that's always a risk you take whenever you aren't the last to act.

If I had had no history at this table or with this player I probably would have folded here but that wasn't the case.  I still had a decent amount of chips based so I wasn't in shove monkey mode just yet.

Do you play it any differently? Why?

3 comments:

  1. I would probably muck AQo there. Beside it being the hand of the devil and guaranteed to lose, here's the rest of my thinking:

    You are only ahead of his range of aces he'd play, you are statically on the losing side of the coin flip of all the pairs he'd also shove.

    With a stack larger then yours (and also large enough to swallow doubling you up and still have chips to play with) there is much risk in shoving a not quite premium hand there.

    Your stack size in relation to the shove also puts you at a significant short stack, should you lose this hand.

    Since this is a tournament, I'd fold and fight another day with a better hand.

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  2. Tough spot.

    I'd base my reaction on the blinds and how they've been playing. They have to be considered when jamming and it doesn't sound like you thought about them at all. Having one of them wake up with AA is a cooler, but you're also jamming with a drawing hand and not a lock. AQ against a pair is a dog, so you have to be willing to take the risk.

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  3. I'd be willing to race here with AQ. I think its just bad luck villain2 wakes up with bullets.

    To the other commenters saying we're flipping aganst pairs he shoves with, yeah that's true but his range is more than 22+ and Ax+, he's going to have kings in there, suited connectors possibly IMO

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