The other day I crashed out of a tournament in 31st place after jeopardising my future with an all-in shove from the small blind with A9 after everybody else had folded round to me. The loose aggressive player in the big blind could have been a rock and he still would have called me with AK in the locker With the top 30 paid and plenty of opponents shorter stacked it was a bitter pill to swallow not least because I only had myself to blame. Had he folded and I’d picked up the blinds I would have given the moment very little thought thereafter. But with my elimination rightly sealed after four hours of play I forced myself to re-examine the moment and dissect how I should have played the situation.
In my defence, although I classify the move as a costly mistake, I don’t regard it as a horrific error that was made without any justification. The mitigating circumstances I would cite in my defence were as follows: I would only play A9 very hard pre-flop if first to act in a late seat or in the blinds. It was a positional play that assumed I was likely to have the best hand against an unknown big blind. This in itself is logical because A9 is a considerably better than average hand and it was reasonable to think I had a significant amount of fold equity. Furthermore, some of the hands I could legitimately expect to be called by, I would be a ‘coin flip’ to win (every pair from 8-8 downwards). In other words I would expect to double-up on some occasions even though I was most certainly not looking for a call.
It’s important to point out that I would never be angry with myself simply for playing A9 aggressively in this situation. It would be incredibly weak to fold this hand if first to act in the small blind and timid even to call. The correct play was a raise, not least because the blinds were high, valuable and important to pick up whenever possible. But what I didn’t need to do was move all-in and risky everything on such a marginal hand. So why hadn’t I simply put in a standard raise? Well, the loose aggressive nature of my opponent in the big blind and our previous confrontations led me to believe that he wouldn’t ever fold to a typical raise, suspecting everything to be a steal. He would be equally combative on the flop and liable to raise with any piece of it, or if he suspected weakness on my part. In the heat of the moment I thought I could avoid that irritating scenario by forcing his fold with my own all-out aggression. The problem was always going to be if he picked up a decent hand himself.
Of course now I appreciate, out of the heat of battle, that the irritating scenario I envisaged had I simply raised a standard amount would be far preferable to what did occur! When my exit hand began I had about 19,000 chips with the big blind worth 1000. Had I raised to 3000, been called, and then fired 5000 at the flop before folding I would have had 12,000 left and a chance to rebuild. My stack might have been diminished by about 40% with a failed small raise and c-bet but that’s better than by 100%. Furthermore this is viewing the play from a worst case perspective. Much of the time that you raise the pot pre-flop against a loose caller you will still pick up the pot with a strong flop bet. This way more chips will be accrued than by forcing the fold pre-flop anyway. It’s important not to be scared of action in delicate situations particularly if you can back your own judgement when the flop comes and there is more information available.
It’s also worth remembering that other players will feel the pressure when a tournament is in its bubble phase. I’ve said before that you can’t be afraid of making big plays just because you might go home empty-handed. Unfortunately, the big play I made was ill-advised and poorly timed. But had I standard raised then it’s also just possible that the big blind would have only flat-called me with AK. It’s amazing how often even loose aggressive players can suddenly tighten up when things get intense. Had this occurred then he would have struggled to call or re-raise a flop absent of a king or ace. Suddenly I could have been winning a significant pot with A9 against AK! Of course had the flop come ace high I would have most likely busted out anyway having both hit top pair. But at least I would have then left the table feeling merely unlucky, taking solace in the thought that I had played my hand correctly. At the end of the day that is all you can do. On this occasion I had failed in my duty to get the chips in at the right time and that’s what really hurt.
Simon Ballou writes for Oddschecker Poker