It’s Time to Make a Big Move

Atlantic City is only a few hours away from Washington, DC, by car, and several times a year I take my wife and two kids there for the weekend. After the daytime fun activities (the beach, Boardwalk, boating) are over, I usually play poker at night. Recently, I have been playing in Harrah’s well-attended 8:15 p.m. $125 buy-in no-limit hold’em tournament and $80 buy-in no-limit hold’em midnight tournament.

One Saturday, the midnight tournament started with eight tables. I really like Harrah’s deep-stack formats, in which you start with 10,000 or 15,000 in chips and therefore have lots of time to work them. Even after several hours of picking up no big hands at all, I managed to survive until there were two tables remaining. I was able to harvest only about 20,000 in chips, and clearly was hurting, because the average chip count was about 40,000 and the blinds were at 1,000-2,000.

But, there was a very unusual and opportunistic situation going on at my table. The player in seat No. 2 was clearly “the fish” at the table; he was a very aggressive novice who had been playing almost every hand. He had been so incredibly lucky that he continued to be one of the chip leaders — much to the chagrin of several grumbling players whose A-K hands had been shot down by his Q-2 hands.

I was in the big blind (2,000), and only the fish and the small blind, a very tight player, called. Looking down at the A 10, I knew that I had the fish beat, because he had been raising whenever he had a pocket pair or an ace. And, most likely, the tight player on my right would fold to a large raise. It was time to make my big move.

I raised all in, hoping that at least the tight player would fold. The fish actually considered folding, but apparently had fallen in love with his 10-7 offsuit and reluctantly called. The small blind also thought a bit, but then folded. Fortunately for me, no sevens hit the table and my ace high won the pot. The small blind whispered, “Nice bet,” and told me that he had folded the winning hand.

That double-up carried me through the next dry half-hour, until I finally got a few cards and managed to make it to the final table. I eventually finished third.

The moral of the story is that when you find yourself short-stacked and dwindling, it is usually better to look for a high-percentage gamble rather than wait and pray for the big pocket pair that seldom comes when you need it. Note that if you “patiently wait” too long and your stack falls below a critical minimum level, the other players will be much more likely to call your bets and raises (which greatly reduces your chances of winning with a marginal hand). So, it is clearly better to make your big move while your stack is still big enough to command some respect. The small blind in this hand probably would have called if I had held only half as many chips.

Formerly a career lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, Mike Cappelletti has written numerous books on poker and bridge, and is considered to be one of the leading authorities on Omaha. Mike has also represented the U.S. in international bridge competition, and he and his wife were featured in a four-page Couples Section in People magazine. His books include Cappelletti on Omaha, Poker at the Millennium (with Mike Caro), and Omaha High Low Poker.