Some More Tournament Hands

Last issue, I discussed three hands I played against the same opponent in a $1,100 buy-in tournament at my home casino. This is mostly a locals’ casino with $50 nightly tournaments, a monthly $250 tournament, and a quarterly $300 tournament. This is, by a wide margin, the biggest tournament they run all year. It is, predictably, populated mostly by people who usually play $50 and $250 tournaments. Most are players who are thinking about their decisions and trying to put their best foot forward in the biggest tournament they are likely to play all year. This is something on which I can capitalize.

Hand 1

Blinds are 250-500 with a 75 ante and we are nine-handed. Under the gun (UTG) makes it 1,100 off a stack of 22,000. I call from the small blind with K J and the big blind calls as well. The flop is 7-6-5 with two clubs. It checks to the preflop raiser, who bets 2,300 into 3,975. I make it 6,000 and he calls. We see the 6 turn heads-up and I go all in for 15,600 effective, essentially a pot-sized bet, and he folds.

I don’t think there is anything particularly controversial about my call preflop. I have a hand that I like to see flops with, we’re deep enough to play post-flop and I’m happy to do so with how things have been going so far in the tournament. I haven’t received much resistance from most of the table besides when they have good hands. I’m not particularly concerned about the big blind three-betting since he had only done so two times so far from any position and both times with very good hands.

The flop is obviously a good one for me, but also one that I expect an UTG raiser to bet. He bets a little more than half pot and I think this is a spot that lots of people raise, but I’m not sure if most have thought about why they raise here. There are many situations where I’d just flat call with these stacks and a flush draw on the flop. I like raising here because I can more easily smash this board than my opponent can and even if I do get called on the flop, there are lots of turns that are very good for me to jam. My sizing is very intentional. By making it 6,000, I’ve structured the pot so that, if he calls, there will be a pot-sized bet left on the turn for me to jam, making it very difficult for him to call a very large chunk of the time since his hand will almost always be, at best, one pair.

The 6 was a good turn card for our range and the pot sized jam got the desired result.

Hand 2

Blinds 400-800 with a 100 ante and it folds to the cutoff at an eight-handed table. He makes it 2,000 and I defend the big blind with 7-4 suited. The flop is A-Q-3 rainbow. I check and so does he. The turn is the K, putting a flush draw out there. I bet 1,900 and he calls. The river is an offsuit 8. I check, he bets 4,000, I make it 10,100 and he calls with A-3 after tanking for quite a while.

I still had pretty good control of the table at this point and was defending my blinds liberally. This fits pretty well into my defending range verse a cutoff open. After he checked the flop back, I put him on a range of an ace with a bad kicker, A-Q, any one pair queen, 2-2, 4-4 through J-J, K-K, J-10, K-10, and other random missed hands like 9-8 and 10-9.

The turn is not great for my range, but if he has those non ace or king hands, I can get him to fold and I have very close to the absolute bottom of my range and no chance to improve. I also feel like I can represent a flush on the river if it comes in and he has a king or queen. I don’t think I need to bet too much to get him to fold the portions of his range that I want him to, so I bet 1,900. When he called, I put him on Ax, Kx, Qx, K-Q and maybe some weird flush draws.

The river is a major brick and I couldn’t represent much, so I decided to give up, expecting him to check behind and take his showdown with whatever he had. He bets less than half pot and I found that to be suspicious sizing. I thought he would bet more with his value hands, and to be honest, there aren’t that many real value hands in his range besides maybe K-Q and A-8. Since he’s extremely bluff heavy in his distribution in my estimation, I decided to go for a tricky check-raise even though it seems pretty obvious that I can’t have too many value hands myself besides maybe J-10 and A-8. You don’t always have to be balanced after all. He had a hand that I didn’t really think was in his range at this point and tanked before calling with A-3.

I don’t play very many tournaments anymore, but I do enjoy them from time to time. I almost always come out of tournaments with more interesting situations than I do in cash games lately, which is unusual because they play much shallower, which is necessarily less interesting. I’m looking forward to the LA Poker Classic, the biggest tournament series in LA every year. I expect to have some interesting hands from those tournaments. ♠

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