Charity Poker Tournament

This weekend I played in a charity poker event hosted by the Millville Rescue Squad. The buy-in was $20 and the prize pool was split 75/25 (charity got the 25%). The field was rather weak and was filled with people who thought they were great players; however, the sharks gobble them up rather quickly. When drawing for seats I was unfortunate enough to get selected for the only short handed table in the tournament which consisted of four people. I really wish that they would have taken my table and crammed us into other full tables. It would have been better to have an extra person sitting at the tables then to have such a short handed table. Although this bothered me, I wasn’t bitchy about it because I knew I was the best player at Seated at my table.

In Seat 1 was a young kid who felt the way to play poker is to make large raises and re-raises with nothing. I figured him out really quick and ended up taking most of his chips after an hour’s play. I was in Seat 2; Seat 3 consisted of a first timer whose luck just seemed unstoppable. So many times he put all his money in with the worst and came out on top. It was his night, that’s just how the cards fell for him. In the last Seat, Seat 4, we had a friend of Seat 1 and he partly featured Seat 1’s aggressive play style. He was aggressive pre-flop but very tight post-flop. When I got into hands with him I would keep the pot small pre-flop then nail him on the flop (or turn) and rake the money.

My only problem I faced was the luck that consumed Seat 3. I tried to stay out of his way unless I got the goods. I was forced to fold JJ and AK post-flop after decent re-raises pre-flop when I completely missed the board and Seat 3 went nuts with the betting. This cost me a good amount of chips both times which I ended up making back from Seat 1 and 4. Not to sound like Phil Hellmuth, but if my good hands would have held up with the luck-box, Seat 3, I would have eliminated everyone at my table with no problem. Just before the table broke I ended up crippling both Seat 1 & 4 which gave me a good chance to catch the tournament chip lead.

My new table consisted of so many familiar faces. In Seat 1 was the luck-box beginner (he moved to the same table); Seat 2 was another kid who over-valued the all-in bet and was part of the aggressive clique from my previous table; Seat 3 was my girl who was deep stacked and apparently running extremely well; I was in Seat 4; my long time friend, Sana, was in Seat 5; and one of the hosts of the event was in Seat 6. I knew everyone but the person in Seat 2, which I later made friends with after the game.

When I sat down at my new table I stole a line from Rounders stating, “If we wanted to take each other’s rolls we could have stayed home.” As everyone laughed at my entrance I quickly tallied up chip stacks for each player. Seat 1 of course had a tremendous chip stack and was the tournament leader, followed by my girl and I. Seat 2 has some chips, but like his friends – his aggression would end up killing him. My friend Sana was average stacked for the tournament, but he knows how to get chips. Finally, Seat 6 was short stack and didn’t understand that you can’t limp in with 4 BB left to see a flop – it was only a matter of time for him.

Overall the tournament went well. Momentum was definitely my way. I picked up a lot of chips and accumulated the second largest stack in the tournament. With such a stack I knew I could win the whole thing, and a few hours later it was 9 players left and only one person with a larger stack, the luck-box. That’s when the following hand occurred:

Blinds t150 / t300
Hero Chip Stack: t9300
Average Chip
Stack: ~t5000
Dealt to Hero: AKos
Hero in the Big Blind

Everyone folded to the luck-box who was in the Cutoff. He raises to t1,200. The Button folds, and my girl who was in the Small Blind calls. There is t2,700 in the pot, t900 for me to call.

What we know: The original raiser has been showing some aggression with weak hands. He has showed down hands as bad as Q2 suited. He’s a gambling player and the only one that can eliminate me. My girl, who just called the raise, would have re-raised with a monster holding and would have folded small pocket pairs. She has a hand like KQ suited, AQ/AJ, or maybe JJ-TT. She’s just calling here because of the raiser’s aggression, hoping to hit the board and take his chips. I have high confidence she’d re-pop him with AK, & AA-QQ so I figure to have the best hand here.

Before I go into details on this hand, I would like to know what you’d do in this situation. Would you call, re-raise, shove, fold? I will post the results of this key hand by the end of the week. I am hoping for some commentary on this one so please use that “comments” link!

Cheers!