Amazing what difference an attitude and 1 hand holding up can make in a Tourney. It's the monthly league and I need a top 10 finish (30 runners).
I have about $8200 of my original $10k and have not won a hand yet. I am also in a different mindset: Don't play uber conservative like you usually do. Why? Because I was sick of finishing out of the money.
I get KK in early position and I limp, knowing full well what that means. I do this for 2 reasons here:
1. I want to get value out of KK here. I cant afford to win 300 chips with this hand.
2. The player on the button is a LAG who will call big raises and put in raises with position.
I take the risk and if no one raises and I get 3-5 callers, I just have to muck the KK and lose $200 in chips.
The player to my left, who is playing SUICIDAL AGGRO (he has Weird Al tickets for tonight) raises. Ok, good.
The player across from me moves all-in for $7000.
The Button makes what I can only consider an INSANE CALL. CALL, mind you (he has about $8200 also, so he leaves $1200 behind?!)
Comes back around to me. Now in a 3 table MTT with two all-ins in front of me, there are many situations (especially in level 2) that this is an EASY FOLD.
Instead I move all-in also. The player on my left, who decides he cant pass up 3-1 or bust, calls.
Can you guess the hands? Probably not because the play her is SO BAD by two players...
I limp with KK. Player to left Raises, so he has a hand. In this case AQ. ok so far.
Player across moves all-in with QQ. I get this, SORTA. He has just $7k sure, but he has way over 20 BB here and if he does shut the hand down, he picks up like $800 in chips. He must be thinking that he wants the rest of the table to fold and the limper (me to fold) and get heads up with the AGGRO loose players with QQ. I get that, but if the Raise is to $700 or so, you make it $7k, there are lots of bad scenarios for you... But at least I UNDERSTAND the decision.
Button calls $7k (of his $8200) with 77. WTF? In what poker world is this a wining play? RAISE, All-IN, 77!!! He little fold equity vs. the first raiser who has made it as obvious as possible that these are the situations he WANTS. Seems likely your "call" will be more attractive and now you have 77 vs. a BIGGER HAND plus a third hand of ATC which he can SAFELY assume 1 of which is > 7 !!!
Despite all this stupidity and usually an easy fold, I call. Why is this a fold usually? Because KK against 3 hands is going to be a favorite, but at 50% at best (in this case 49%). And its LEVEL 2.
Why did I call. Because I set up this situation. I limped for action and that was my plan for the hand. I was not going to sit around and wait for a perfect situation this tournament, only getting my money in ahead, hoping they all hold up. I was fed up. I walked into the room knowing I would make this call today and sure enough it came up.
The board plays out bricks and suddenly I have over $30k and go on to finish 3rd. I COULD have won. I made zero mistakes and had just gotten the chip lead when I ran top-top into a flopped straight. The river call of $25k (1/2 my stack) was ill advised and it eventually forced me to take a race against 33, which I lost.
