Card Player Pro -- An Ace-High Turbo

By Thomas “Tmoney0209” Miller

Game $60 nine-handed turbo sit-and-go on PokerStars
Blinds 25-50
My Opponent Unknown under-the-gun raiser
Stack Sizes 1,900 (his); 3,150 (mine)
My Cards A Q
My Position Big blind

It’s crucial to preserve chips in turbo sit-and-gos (SNGs), since the rapidly increasing blinds are waiting to devour your stack. However, it is also very important to acquire chips early on, and use them to punish your opponent’s weaknesses as the blinds get bigger. The situation that I’m going to discuss is one of these opportunities to “chip up” against a weak post-flop player. Given the fact that the return on investment in nine-handed medium- and high-stakes SNGs is small, we need to take every advantage we can to set ourselves up to win. Reading flops and displaying pot control with marginal holdings during the early stages of a turbo SNG will do just that.

Let’s get to the hand in this turbo SNG. We are seven-handed with the blinds at 25-50. An under-the-gun player with 1,900 in chips min-raises to 100, and it is folded around to me in the big blind with the A Q and 3,150 in chips. It is essential to keep the pot small here by just calling. We do not wish to play a big pot OOP (out of position) to an early-position raiser, for several reasons. First, three-betting here is not optimal, due to the fact that we will be OOP, the blinds are too shallow, and there will be many flops that we are not going to like. Second, and most important, I want to preserve my stack and use my mathematical edge by picking off weaker shoves when the blinds increase. My edge in this particular spot is not that strong, so there’s no need to risk almost 2,000 in chips just yet.

I call, and look at a flop of 7 6 3. I check to the aggressor, and he checks behind. This is a very wet board, and I expect a player to bet at this flop to protect and seek value with strong hands. When he checks behind, I immediately assume that his hand does not fit into this category, so we are able to discard a very large portion of his range. Overpairs (8-8+), big draws (spades + overcards), and two pair or better are all discounted in my mind.

The 6 peels off on the turn, and I assume that my hand is good. However, the only play here is to check, since betting will just get him to fold all worse hands and continue with better hands. I check, and he bets 150 into a 225 pot. Now, this turn is one of the worst cards in the deck for him to bet, because it does not change anything! He already told me that he does not have much by checking the flop, and now he’s betting? I don’t buy it. After all, any hand improved by this card almost certainly would have bet the flop.

I call, and we watch the 4 fall. I check, and he fires 300 into a pot of 525. The river completes a few draws, but it is highly unlikely that he had a draw, as he probably would have been more aggressive on earlier streets. This spot simply comes down to hand representation, and the story doesn’t add up. The hands that he is representing here (5-X and 6-X flush draws) comprise a very small portion of his preflop range, and rarely take this line. While he may have a hand like the A 10, he can just as easily make a bluff with all of the missed combinations of overcards and gutshots that are in his range. Overall, the hand that he’s telling me he has makes up a very small portion of his range — and given that I need to have the best hand here less than 33 percent of the time for it to be a profitable call, this is a fairly easy decision.

I elect to call, and watch him flip over the Q J — missed overcards. I scoop the pot.

While many players have solid preflop games, most still make post-flop mistakes. Sometimes you need to take a few risks post-flop with weak hands in order to pick up pots that weaker players are missing out on.

To watch Thomas Miller comment on and play this hand, point your browser to Card Player Pro, the complete online poker training site, at www.CardPlayer.com/link/Tmoney-1.