All right, we had our big finale tournament last night. $500 prize pool with starting chip stacks determined by your finishes during the season. I started out with the chip lead!
I maintained my stack pretty well all night and was able to get aggressive and get some nice steals in when we were down to 5 and 4. Eventually I made it to heads up with a slight chip lead.
Details: Blinds 500-1000. He's got 11,400, I've got 13,000.
He's on the button and limps for another 500. I look down and see A9s and raise to 3,000. He re-raises all-in. If I call the all-in, it leaves me with just 1,600.
The bad guy is a pretty solid and fairly aggressive player. I forget my Harrington and instead of thinking about a range of hands, I'm pretty sure he's got a pocket pair, hopefully a small one. I call and he turns over TT, not the pair I wanted to see as I'm now a 70-30 dog. I flop a 9, but no farther help and I'm crippled. Next hand I'm all in with 73o against 63s. Sure enough, flop is 2 diamonds, turn is the 3rd, and I'm out against his flush.
Like I said, I think I made a mistake by not thinking about a range of hands and instead putting him on a hand, and in this case, guessing wrong. First, my odds. There's 14,400 in the pot with our calls and his all-in re-raise. Costs me 8,400 to call. That's about 1.7 to 1. Factor in also that if I win the hand, I win the tourney. If I'm right about the smaller PP, it's a great call. However, if I thought about it more, he could have possibly also had A-10,J,Q, or K, and I'm still a 70-30 dog. The only hands I'm a favorite against are A-x with x<9 or some random bluff/steal type hand. I wasn't getting nearly the price to call as a potential 70-30 dog.
Bottom line in retrospect, I don't think I was getting the correct price to call. If I lay it down, I still have 10,000 in chips and can regain the chip lead by winning just 1 or 2 hands.
Thought?
