Card Player Pro

Game: $200 Sunday Million no-limit hold’em tournament on PokerStars
Opponent: Unknown aggressive player
Blinds: 250-500 with a 25 ante
Stacks: 20,651 (mine); 12,000 (his)
My Cards: A 10
My Position: Small blind

One of the characteristics of online tournaments today is aggressive blinds stealing and restealing. Today’s best tournament players are masters of using raises and reraises preflop to take down pots uncontested. In this column, I’m going to look at how to combat aggressive stealers, and show you how some quick poker math can help you make a tough call.

This hand occurred in the PokerStars Sunday Million — a $200 buy-in tournament that normally attracts a large, aggressive field. With the blinds at 250-500, and a 25 ante, the action was folded around to me in the small blind with the A 10. Clearly, in a blind-versus-blind battle, A-10 is a strong hand, and my only decision was how much to raise. My opponent had a stack of 12,000 (which I covered), so I raised to 1,500. This is slightly bigger than my normal raise, but I made it because I’m out of position and don’t want to give him a good price to take a flop in position.

After a few moments, my opponent shoved all in for 11,975.

Under certain circumstances, this would be a clear fold. However, using a quick odds calculator known as PokerStove, I’m going to show you why I believe this is a call.

Had this been the first hand of the tournament, or had our positions been different, I think it would be a clear fold. However, given the aggressive nature of today’s online tournaments, we need to expand the range of hands with which we think he’s going to shove all in preflop.

Most solid tournament players are opening probably 40 percent or more of their hands when folded to in the small blind here. With 750 in blinds and 225 in antes already sitting in the pot, it’s a great spot for me to steal, since I need to get only one person to fold to take down the pot of 975. Using PokerStove, the range of hands that I’m going to be opening preflop from the small blind will look something like this: 2-2+, A-2+ suited, K-2+ suited, Q-4+ suited, J-7+ suited, 10-7+ suited, 9-7+ suited, 8-7 suited, A-3+ offsuit, K-7+ offsuit, Q-8+ offsuit, J-8+ offsuit, 10-9 offsuit.

Now, given how wide I’m opening, this means that he quite frequently has a profitable “resteal” with a shove all in.

Think of all the hands that I’ll have to fold if he shoves in here! The only hands with which he thinks I’m going to be calling his all-in shove are 6-6+ and A-J+ offsuit.

According to PokerStove, this represents only the top 7.7 percent of hands. If I’m opening 40 percent of all of my hands, but continuing with only 7.7 percent of them (in his eyes), this means that I’m going to be opening from my small blind and folding to a shove a very high percentage of the time.

This significantly widens his shoving range preflop — probably to the point where he’s shoving the top 20 percent to 25 percent of hands over my raise.

If he does indeed shove the top 23 percent of hands (which looks like this: 2-2+, A-2+ suited, K-8+ suited, Q-9+ suited, J-9+ suited, 10-9 suited, A-9+ offsuit, K-10+ offsuit, Q-10+ offsuit, J-10 offsuit), I then need to ask myself how well A-10 does against this range.

Fortunately, PokerStove can run the math for us, and in an all-in matchup, with my A-10 vs. his top 23 percent of hands, I’m actually a 51.6 percent favorite to win.

So, after making a few guesses about how wide I thought he’d resteal in this spot, I called. My opponent turned over the Q 9.

While you may be surprised to see Q-9 offsuit, I think you’ll be amazed at just how frequently your opponents are restealing in spots just like this.

Unfortunately, the board ran out 10 8 6 3 J, and my flopped top pair lost to a rivered straight.

However, as good players, we want to focus on the analysis, not the results.