Tuesday, January 02, 2007

A Short Post for the Beginning of the Year.

I didn’t do much other than play some cash Razz games since Friday night. I’m going to give junk kicking card chasers a chance to humiliate me with their stellar play. I’m going to be two tabling .50/1 when I can and will try to log as many hours as I can while doing this. I will continue this until I play around 100 hours and will reevaluate where I’m at.

I’m going to stay away from MTTs during this time of exile for the most part. This will be hard because I love playing tourneys so to combat this I will play a Razz tourney once in a while. I will also throw a hold’em tourney on occasion but I will keep them at the lower buy-in level.

I did play a hold’em tourney last night and had this happen. I held QQ UTG and made a 3x raise to 480. I have an above average chip stack of 4500 chips. The next player pushes all-in for 4100. My thinking at this point is we have a race or I have him dominated as AA or KK would probably raise me back. Anyway, a middle position guy push for 3000. Now at this point I figure I’m behind. To make this move he has to have a hand like AA or KK. If he doesn’t then I’m way ahead. Anyway, if I fold I have 4000 chips. Very manageable. If I call and win, I will be at around 11,000. If I call and lose I will have about 2000. What is my decision.

I called and got knocked down to 2000 when the second guy gets pocket kings. The other guy had 99. Was this a bad decision. I think that getting those chips at that time would have put me in a position to win where I would have had a lot of work at the position I was sitting if I fold. I ended up missing the money by about 60 spots. I really would like to know what you would think of this move. I’m going to lose most of these but will be alive in each case. I also will have a top 20 stack about 15-20 percent of the time.

1 comment:

Alan aka RecessRampage said...

I just happened to be browsing and came across your post. Anyways, here's my 2 cents even though I don't claim in any way to be a poker expert. I would fold in this situation. You are very health with your stack and the blinds are apparently 80/160 (since you mentioned that your raise to 480 was 3x the blind) so I think it's too early to call two all-ins. Especially since your initial reaction was that the second guy who pushed for 3000 (which is also a very healthy stack AND he didn't have anything committed so he's either a total donk or he has at least JJ or better) was that he held KK or AA, I think this is where you should have followed your instinct and folded. It would be a totally different story if the blinds were higher but I think folding is the move. I don't think this is an issue of accumulation vs survival but more a matter of picking the right spots to commit your stack. Good luck at the tables!