Chip Leading the Hot $22 Final Table

New Online PokerPoker Strategy

In this post we review some cool hands from us gathering a huge stack playing the Hot $22 on Pokerstars, we give you the play by play on the moves that give us the chip lead on the final table.

Keeping pots under control

We most likely have the best starting hand against our opponent here, but there is little need to play a huge pot against another big stack.

So rather than 3-betting which we would likely just have to fold to a jam from our opponent we opt to flat call.

This can allow us to get action from some of the shorter stacks behind too, that might move all-in with holdings that we are in really good shape against.


We end up getting the pot heads up as no one else comes along in this hand and we see a board of eight high to which our opponent checks to us.

This is a perfect time to take a stab at the pot and deny some equity from their hands that just have overcards, hands like KJ etc still have a decent amount of equity that will have a hard time continuing even against a tiny bet on this board.

We bet around half pot and our opponent makes the instant fold and we win the pot with AQ without any risk at all.
c-betting flop with ace high

Smooth Calling Raises from the Big Blind

This is going to be a good part of our overall strategy, but as well as calling with pretty much any two cards with a big stack we can also look to flat call with our big hands too.

Some of the advantages of doing this are that we can get away cheaply from boards that are not favourable for our holding, we keep the pot small when we are behind and we avoid playing a huge flip if we 3-Bet and get jammed on.

So we have less variance, a disguised hand and more post-flop manoeuvrability with a deeper pot to stack ratio left to work with.

Flopping Top Set and Check Calling

We flop a monster! So what now… Well, check-calling here has a tonne of benefits, we keep ranges wide so it will allow our opponent to keep bluffing, we allow them to hit overcards that may connect with their hand too.

If we raise here we can only really get action from flush draws and we drive out all the other hands that we have in trouble.
flopping top set
I wouldn’t mind a check-call line here again, as this Ace doesn’t really change much but I felt like during the game that any bluffs would likely shut down if we call on this card and we can deny some equity for the times our opponent does have hands like flush draws or any random gutshots if they have a five or three in their hand too.

I was hoping to get calls from hands like AQ and AK on this card but maybe even these hands can get away sometimes to this action.

I think we have to jam here sometimes but I would like to see a slow play of another street here too sometimes, I think we can mix strategies here and move between both moves.
check-raising turn card ace

Picking Good 3-Bet Bluff/Value hands

This is a strange concept because we don’t really know where we are with a hand like AJo here, we could be behind of hands like AQ and even some AK hands, however, we have the chip lead and our hand makes a perfect hand to apply some pressure with in position.

We would likely fold to a Jam from the Big Blinds stack and if the original opener jammed too we can easily muck, however, we can build a pot for value against all the hands that we beat that may just flat call and take a flop too.

3betting in position
We see a terrible flop for our hand, but it’s very hard for our opponent to continue on this board too, we would have to imagine hands like TT+ would have pushed all-in pre-flop and if they did flat call we can just take one stab here and easily give up against more action from them.

Betting 28,000 here or around 28% of the pot is a perfect sizing, we would do this with our huge hands in this spot to induce a call or raise all-in and we can do this with our hands like this one that will want to bet and fold to more action.

Our opponent is in a horrible spot where they have to move all-in with shorter stacks left on the table without knowing where they are, even if they have a hand like 77 or 99 here, seeing one of the best flops they could hope for with these types of holdings do they really want to risk their tournament life against this action?

We can easily have JJ+ in this spot that is never folding and sometimes we will have some Ace high hands like we do here.

So we put them in the grinder and they end up making the fold, it’s important to use a large chip stack to apply pressure like this and really put our opponents to the ultimate test any time they are in a pot with us.
ajo on flop play
In part two of this post, we show you some more aggressive moves we make as the tournament gets short-handed as we play down into 3 handed play.

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