Some Tournament Hands

It has been a while since I tracked a full session from a tournament, so I decided to do so at the $1,100 buyin tournament that my local casino ran last month. I pulled some interesting ones from the notes to take a look at in this column. Unless otherwise noted, the stacks are roughly the starting stack of 15,000 chips.

Hand 1:

A local tournament regular makes it 500 at 75-150-25 and I call with J 9 on the button. The flop is 5-4-3 rainbow and he checks. I bet 600, which he calls. The turn is another 5, he checks again, I bet 1,500, and he folds.

This isn’t the most interesting hand I played all day, but I think it illustrates a key point in tournaments. Tournaments are about winning chips, not making hands. It’s almost always preferable to win whatever is in the middle in a tournament. You get to add chips to your stack without any real risk and when you can’t rebuy, increasing your chance of surviving and advancing is always a good thing. In my opinion, my opponent turned his hand face up by checking the flop and that gave me a very clear path of how to play this hand with his likely holding of ace-high hands. I can bet the flop even though I don’t expect him to fold ace-high with the plan of betting and winning on most turn cards. I’d probably check the turn with any card ten and higher and bet everything else, expecting to get him to fold. Many tournament players that see the flop with J-9 suited in this situation would either give up or just fire one barrel. Since I can put my opponent on a pretty narrow range of hands, I can devise a plan that works well against that narrow range and having a plan is always a good thing in poker.

Hand 2:

The villain from the last hand makes it 500 from the cutoff. I call from the big blind with 10 9. The flop is K-J-4 rainbow and we both check. The turn is another king. I check, my opponent bets 600, I make it 1,650, and he calls. The river is another king and we both check. He shows 7-7 and wins the pot.

My plan on the flop was to call most reasonable sized bets with the intention of winning the pot on a future street. When he checked behind I thought his most likely holdings were a jack, A-Q, A-10, and middle pairs. The turn king is a bad card to lead to get those hands to fold, but I thought it would be a good one to check-raise. He’s very unlikely to have a king in his hand and the jack combinations won’t fold to one bet, but might to a check-raise and river bet. Same goes for middle pairs, though they’re more likely to fold to the original check-raise. The river card is an awful one to bluff, so my options are to either shut it down or bomb the river to get him to fold. I didn’t think he’d find a fold with a jack and that makes up a decent chunk of his holdings, and it wasn’t worth betting 4,000 or 5,000 to get him to fold smaller pairs with which I think he would call 2,000. I decided not to risk the big bet on the river, though I think it definitely would have worked against his particular holding on this hand.

Hand 3:

In the previous hand, the same villain from the above two hands opened for 700 from the cutoff at 100-200-25 and won the pot after I called big blind and check/folded the turn. This time, after a limper, he made it 450. I made it 1,450 from the small blind with 10-4 offsuit. The flop was Q-9-6 rainbow, I bet 1,300, and he called. The turn was the 2, putting up a flush draw. I bet 4,100 and he folded.

I found his immediate sizing change to be very suspicious and decided to take advantage of that. Usually when someone goes from large sizing to very small sizing, it means their hand isn’t as good as the previous one, but they still think it’s a hand they’re “supposed” to raise. I would have preferred to have some semblance of a good hand to three-bet, but sometimes you just don’t need one. I thought there was a pretty good chance I would just win the pot right there, but if I didn’t, I would still have plenty of opportunities to win it post-flop. I bet small on the flop because it was a pretty static board and I thought that I would win quite often right here or with a bigger bet on the turn. After he called, I put him on a range of 9x, some Qx hands, and middle pairs. I thought the turn was quite safe and he would fold all of his non-queen one pair hands that the small bet kept in on the flop to a big bet, so I bet roughly 70 percent of the pot on the turn and he folded.

One of the good things about today’s well-structured no-limit tournaments is you get to play with the same people for a decent amount of time at your starting table. Being able to play a large chunk of hands with the same opponents and deep stacks can really help you make adjustments throughout the day to take advantage of tendencies you spot in them. ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed nearly $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. Griffin is sponsored by HeroPoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG