Continuing on from our earlier post of the late game from this €50 SECOOP 4 Max Turbo event on Pokerstars, we now take a look at our play on the final table, where we go in as a big underdog having just around 10 Big Blinds and being pretty even for last in chips out of the 5 remaining players.
We had some ICM to consider as we weren’t quite in last place, so pay jumps at this point were big money…
Let’s take a look at some of the key hands and our decision making process during the game on this big final table where we are looking to bag ourselves €7,800.00!!
Big Lay Down
Sometimes to do well in a Poker Tournament we are going to make a laydown we might not normally make. This is one of those spots… We are sat in the Small Blind and get dealt KQs on our short stack of 13.5BBs, in the Big Blind sits our friend with just 13BBs.
Not being the shortest stack in this spot makes our decision pretty difficult, we would love to call off with this hand if we were the shortest stack but there is a pay jump of over €600 for just beating our friend in the Big Blind to 4th place, which is a huge consideration for us.
In-game we opted for a tight fold, the Button hadn’t been open raising all in at all so we put them on a stronger range than most, however we could have gone either way with this one, KQs is a fine call even when we consider the ICM implications using ICMizer, which you can get one calculation a day for free just by signing up!
We could have even called off with hands like KTs and KJs and have it be +EV, however you can take exception to these Nash charts from time to time when you are in-game, if you think someone is playing much tighter and will show up with dominating hands like AQ, AK, QQ, KK, AA enough of the time then making a fold is fine occasionally in these close spots.
The same can be said for migrating our range the other way, of course, if the Villian was very active we wouldn’t hesitate to call all-in with this hand and many other hands as we could guarantee them having a weaker range.
Moving All-in against a Limper
We had seen some limps from the player to our right on a few occasions, we can pretty much assume that this means they are a solid player that’s aware of the ICM pressures on them in this spot being the middling stack, they don’t want to raise and have to fold to aggression but with limping they can opt to call raises/fold or move all-in and have the last move.
We pick up AJs with 8.5BBs and unlike earlier where we had 13.5BBs and no fold equity when we mucked the KQs, we cannot go folding this hand.
We move all-in over the UTG limp and get snap-called by… AKs! Ouch, time to get there with our 29% equity…
Lucky us, we make the nut flush on the river after flopping two clubs! Getting 19BBs back in our stack and looking to make a run for the big money up for grabs.
Making a Stand with a Re-Steal
There are going to be dynamics which we will have to pick up on during final tables, one big one is the chip leader opening with a massive range and looking to apply payout pressure, this was one of those times when the raisers range was wide enough where we were confident enough to move all-in with our A7o, a normally pretty poor hand but with fold equity on our side it’s good enough to push and win the pot pre-flop.
The chip leader snap folds, which confirms our suspicion of them raising way too wide and not even being able to consider a call.
Hero call against the bully
As the short stack busts in fourth, we now have a new objective with our stack, sneak into second place, as the chip leader is quite out of reach at the moment, however, if we get heads up we can have a run at the win once we have locked up the extra €2,000 for jumping from 3rd to 2nd place.
We shouldn’t always think like this in tournaments, there are going to be times when we should look to gather chips and take on the table, however, this game hasn’t been one of those for us just yet, so we are battling our way through the short stack spots.
We have now blinded down a little into 3rd place, so we will need to pick up some chips, we pick up 89o in the Small Blind, we could choose this to move all-in with our short stack, however we can mix in some limps too, as we would look to limp and trap the aggressive chip leader in the Big Blind with our strongest hands too.
We get a decent flop for our hand with bottom pair and a decent draw to the flush… but there is little point in us betting at this point in the hand, we will only be getting action from better hands and we can benefit from a worse spade draw catching up and making a lower flush.
The turn is a little different, I felt like this was a great card to bet for protection with our two pair and deny some equity versus some random overcards and possibly build a pot versus a weaker flush draw that may call a bet here too, we don’t need a large sizing for this, I take a stab betting just one big blind on the turn…
There was little point in betting the river, we are only getting called by a chop or if we are crushed, so this is a perfect spot to let all the missed hands bluff. The 5 of diamonds is the biggest blank in the deck, so we were either way ahead at this point or way behind, but it’s hard to consider that our opponent has any Ace’s in their range as they would definitely have put us all in pre-flop with the stack depths the way they are.
So that leaves only really a King in our opponent’s hand to worry about, or a monster like a flopped flush, so we check and they blast an overbet into the pot, applying maximum pressure.
However in my eyes this just makes the call even easier, as they would never do this with a hand like K7o with two pair Ace’s and King’s, this is a polarised bet meaning they either have a huge hand or nothing.
As we said they never have an Ace here, so that pretty much leaves only flopped flushes as the combinations of monster hands and even then, they didn’t bet the flop, they didn’t raise the turn but now they are overbetting the pot?
The best way to figure out a bluff is when a hand doesn’t make much sense and this is a prime example of sniffing out a bluff based on exactly this.
We make what seems a big call for some players, but this was one of the easiest calls we made all day given the information we had on this player… They table the 9 high bluff and we scoop a nice size pot and move firmly into second place.
Heads Up
This hero call from the last hand allowed us to cruise into 2nd place and take on the chip leader heads up, with a big chip disadvantage we aren’t going to win this many times with our stack being around 3,000,000 and our opponent sitting on 10,000,000 they will win this match 10 out of 13 times on average if there is no skill advantage between us.
We pick up 78o the first hand of the heads up and we will look to play small ball poker with our near 20BB stack and limp our button…
Our aggressive opponent then goes for the steal making it 3x the size of the Big Blind, however, there is no payout pressure on us anymore and we have not limped the button to fold so we call and take a flop in position…
We flop huge here! Flopping bottom two pair, we could be completely dead, however we want our opponent to continue to bluff on the turn, so as they lead out on the flop we don’t want to shut them out of the pot with a raise just yet, there aren’t many bad cards for our hand, so we opt to just smooth call and keep ranges wide and take a turn card.
The turn comes the Ten of hearts, putting a flush draw and a couple of straights and draws out there, this is a wet enough card that when our opponent bets this we need to protect our hand, so we move all-in with our two pair…
And we get the absolute cooler treatment, with our nemesis running like god and making the second nut straight on the turn after flopping an open-ended straight draw.
We get our money in as a 9/1 dog and don’t improve on the river and end up taking second place for a respectable €4831.00… A good result with the stack we came into the final table with and a massive return on a €50 investment.
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