Sitting with a paltry number of chips when a big stack bully is running over the play can be an intimidating and frustrating experience. With a chip stack at least three times bigger than anybody else, and twelve times more than many at the table, the bully is in an enviable position. He has power. The power that comes from knowing that anybody who tangles with him will be jeopardising their future in the tournament. The bully will always have less equity invested at any one time, allowing him the freedom, and providing the confidence, to raise every hand with scant regard to hand selection. At the bubble phase of a big multi-table tournament this can cause nervous opponents to freeze and throw away cards that could easily ‘double them up’. The fear factor will quite possibly help them squeeze into the lowly money places but it will also deny them a rare shot at one of the big prizes.
A $55 rebuy tournament I was in last night demonstrated why people get scared of the big stacks, how unfair the game can be, but also how a small stack can be revived single-handedly by the aggressive tactics of a chip leader.
The first significant incident I will describe may make you question (yet again) why we all bother with poker in the first place. Sometimes you do everything right for the cruellest of outcomes. The third largest stack at the table, with the unenviable position of sitting to the immediate right of ’the chippie’ opened the pot with a standard raise; his first raise in some while. The chip leader next door immediately called and everybody else folded with great haste. One would not have to be an acute observer of the game to assess that quiet, solid Player A, under no pressure to take chances, probably had the better start cards than bullying aggressive Player B. This assumption proved correct as Q(s)-Q(d) took on K(h)-9(h) Fireworks were therefore assured when the flop delivered Q(h)-10(d)-3(h). Player A bet out firmly on the flop, no doubt realising that despite holding ‘the nuts’ of top set, he was still vulnerable to drawing hands. Player B, no stranger to raising with nothing to apply pressure, now had a flush and gutshot draw to make that very move with. His raise was inevitably, and correctly, followed by a re-raise all-in and a call that signalled a dramatic showdown and a massive pot. The joy Player A felt on the flop would have diminished sharply when revealed how many outs Player B still had, indeed still a 32% chance of victory. The A(h) on the turn was a killer blow that handed the chip leader a flush that would not be conquered by a full house on the river. In an instance Player A was out of the tournament in 53rd position (50 places paid) with a great hand and a sob story to boot.
The next eye-catching moment involving the big stack had a rather different outcome, though only just. This time the bully raised with 4-8o and got immediately shoved by a shortish, but not desperate stack with AQ. The big stack correctly called the all-in re-raise with his trash hand as he was getting odds of better than 2:1. It’s always worth remembering that even 2-7o has a 32% chance of toppling AK in a showdown. I’m not convinced that Mr AQ had calculated these odds and the likelihood of a showdown with only 51 competitors remaining. Maybe he was just brave enough to risk being the last person out before ‘the money’ but I’m not so sure. I suspect from the speed of the move that he thought some fold equity remained and that he might win the pot uncontested. From my point of view I would rather make that play, in his position, with a high pocket pair only. AQ was very likely to be ahead but at the same time very vulnerable. Had the big stack turned over 6-7s for example then AQ becomes a mere 59% favourite to win. As it was Mr AQ would have been delighted to see 4-8o for the split second before the flop revealed 4-4-10. I was anticipating a tirade of colourful language before the miracle ‘runner-runner’ of King and Jack on the turn and river made a straight for AQ and saved the day.
For my own part I hung around in the tournament as a short stack simply by picking my moments against the wild, loose aggressor. Mediocre holdings such as A8 and Q10, the best I was seeing, had decent showdown value against a man playing any two cards. Then having crawled into the money positions my chance to compete for the big prizes was cruelly extinguished when a desperate late seat lunge of Q-6 toppled my awaiting A-K on the button. As always, going out on a bad beat is cruel, but in reality the alternatives are no better. Us poker players just don’t like losing!
Simon Ballou writes for Oddschecker Poker