I posted this in the tourney section as well, but I figured I would drop it in here as I have seen a lot of tourney posts in this section and I have really enjoyed the feedback.

Played in a $400 buy-in private tourney the other night. Started with 39 players and paid the top 5. We are down to 8 players. Here are the approx. chip counts (started with $5,000.)

SB 32k
BB 16k
UTG 14k
UTG+1 5k
MP1 24k
MP2 47k
Hero 36k
Button 21k

Of the players left in the tournament I am familiar with all but UTG+1. The table has been tight and straight forward. My table image is TAG, which I almost always am until it gets short handed.

Blinds are 300/600 with 100 ante

Hero's hole cards 8:club:6:club:

Folds to MP1 who limps, MP2 folds, Hero raises to 1500, Button calls, SB re-raises to 4500. BB folds, MP1 folds, Hero calls, Button calls.

I raised in hopes of stealing the button and taking the lead on the flop. When the small blind re-raised, who is a player I am very familiar with I am virtually certain he holds AA-QQ, maybe AKs. I call knowing that if I hit it will be a huge pay-out (best time to play suited connectors and low pairs are against big pairs.) If he has AK, I made a bad play. I wasn't crazy about or expecting the button call but so be it.

Flop A:club:K:spade:7:spade:
Pot=15,500

SB checks, Hero checks, Button checks.

What an odd play? At this point I am now certain he holds AA or KK. I am guessing the button holds some sort of mid-pair JJ-99.

Turn 5
Pot=15,500

SB bets 12k, Hero calls, Button folds.

Here is my thinking. First and of least relevance I knew the button was folding. I also figured with this bet and his reaction to the turn meant that he did not hold the ace of spades. I call planning to bluff at a spade or legitimately win the pot if a 4 or 9 comes off. That leaves me with 8 real outs and 8 bluffable outs, 16 total. This gives me 37% to win the hand if I am right. Well I am getting about 2.3-1 on my money. I also figure if I hit the 6 none spade cards to make my straight, I will nearly double up and eliminate him.

River 10

SB checks, Hero bets 16k (enough to put him all-in), SB folds.

SB folded the A:diamond:A:heart: face up and was furious with me "chasing." I lied and said I flopped top two and turned the nut flush draw so I had to call.

This is not a play I would pull off with any frequency, but I liked this spot for a couple reasons:
One, I have played thousands of hands with this player. He is weak/tight and very readable.
Two, it was getting close to the payoff structure, In the middle of the tournament, I don't think this would work since he had committed half of his chips and well, hey he did have a set of aces. I didn't think he would want to go broke when all I had to turn over was any spade.

I am interested to hear comments on this play.

It's a pretty awesome play.. and given all the guidelines it's next to perfect. The thing is we can't really critique it and say what you could/should have done/changed because you're the one that's played thousands of hands with him. And you had 6 bluffable outs, and 8 legit outs. Which gives you 14 outs, or 29% to hit on river. Assuming you're bluffable outs will win you the pot, and he will fold.

Getting 2.3-1 on you're money, you'll be needing about 30% for break-even odds, and you have little implieds, because if you hit any of your spaded outs you're expecting him to fold anyway. If you hit any of your 6 non-spaded straight outs, you would probably. So we could say you have 6 outs where you may have some implieds.

A TINY bit more than break even odds for more than a 3rd of your remaining chips?

If you fold to the 12k bet, you have about 31k left. - 100%
If you call and lose u have 19k left. - 70%
Call and bluff and he folds, you have 55k. - 17%
Call and hit one of 6 non-spaded outs u have 73k. - 13%

I don't know about you, but I fold here.
And that's even if you're 100% sure he will fold if spade comes, and that's only 17% of the time.

But otherwise.. good, sneaky play with great reads. And I think showing here is +EV with SB having only 15k chips left after he folds.

I like it.

Your hole cards are pretty much irrelevant when you make plays like these--which is always fun to me.

I don't think I make this play without a very, very, good read on the villain. If he has any idiot/donk/calling station tendencies, this play can and will bite you in the ass.

If he's TAG or weak/tight at all, then you're golden.

Good play, good read, nice hand.

Did I miss count? Going into the river, there are only 3 spades taken out of the deck. That leaves us with 10. Take two out so we don't double count the 9 or the 4. I suppose we should also not count the Ace! Oops. That still leaves us with 7 right?

Thanks for the replies.

Oops, that's right 7.. add 2 percent to a couple of those %'s up top in my other post. I took the river spade out of the 13 spades on accident.

I've taken some time on this one. And finally decided that I don't like it. Very high risk play here and in your perfect circumstances, I don't think your edge is large enough to really call off such a large part of your stack here. I have not looked in the tournament section, but I would imagine that a number of posters will bring up the fact that you MP and the SB are the real forces at the table. It seems overly risky to risk dropping to an average stack if you don't improve in order to catch a draw.


You said your read was that he did not have the Ace of spades. I'm curious as to what exactly. I'm sure some of it is gut, but in order to make a very specific read such as this, you need more than a gut instinct. He may have just been concerned that he may have let a flush hit already.


Heading out to lunch, i'll probably drop a few more comments in later.

i agree w/ scott. this is a great play, great read, nice hand, etc in a cash game. but in a tourney, it seems a bit risky to get tangled with another big stack at this point. i'd fold this preflop after the re-raise.

It is risky to get tangled with another big stack, but that big stack feels the same way. I'm sure he'd be more hard pressed to make this hand actually work against a mid stack nearing the desparation mode or a short stack who has little to lose. My thoughts, but these are the types of plays you make against other big stacks (when you have a great read).
Good play

I really need input as to how we make this read. we are putting him on a case hand. Every "great read" I've made, I always subconsciously factored in the odds and price of being wrong. I think when you factor in the chance of being wrong, this is an even money/ or below even money proposition with a lot of risk behind it. This isn't a cash game where we can reload. This 12k is a valuable resources in a tournament.

I'm not going to redo the math, but the OP said he was 37% to catch one of his outs or bluff outs...... I'm going to think you have 6 clean outs and 7 potentially dirty bluff outs.

roughly 13.5% for clean outs
if I think you're wrong only 15% of the time
Then you're getting roughly 13.5% on your bluffable outs.
10% wrong = 15% or so.

therefore your odds are really in the ballpark of 27- 28.5% to win this pot. A call is not in order here now.

anyone sees a problem with the math, fix it for me.

I'm giving the OP some credit for this statement:



Second, simply by the way the hand played out by the SB seemed odd up to the turn.
A weak tight player reraises preflop and catches a decent flop. He decides to slow play his aces hoping ( I assume) that there's no flush draw out there or that the OP bets so he can check raise. Unfortunately, it doesn't happen and the worse card for him hits completing a flush. I've seen a different breed of typical weak tight out there that actually go nuts when a scare card hits and overbets the pot wanting to scare off everyone, maybe the OP saw something like this in the SB.

What I'm saying is that he only needs to be wrong about the OP not having the A 1 out of 10 times to make this a losing proposition.

And what I'm saying is, given the way the SB played and the OP's read, he's pretty certain the SB doesn't have a flush or spade draw to the flush. Once that river hits, the SB could easily think the OP has been calling down the whole way with any spade; he certainly played it that way.

Disclaimer:
I don't know the SB or OP, I can only presume his reads and the description of the hand is accurate. :-)

He needs to be 100% certain that villain does not have AA of spades to make this profitable. not pretty certain.

The hand is an easy read to put him on AA KK here. However, A a will be concerned with this check check and spade on the turn as well. I see a ax playing this the turn the same way as a a .

bump