ITH Poker Forum

[bpgui]

From this thread and the 2006 WSOP $1500 NL tournament: http://www.internettexasholdem.com/phpb ... 42197.html

Table is 5 handed, UTG has 6500 after the antes. Matthew's in the BB.

UTG pushes all-in. CO calls, Button calls, SB calls. Matthew has to call 2500.

He looks down at his cards, and announces a raise, and makes it 17k more.

CO and Button fold, (UTG is all in), and SB goes into the tank. Thinks for a long time... then finally folds.

UTG shows 22, Matthew shows 53o.

Flop brings a 5. Matthew is now up to 77k in chips, and has final tabled his first WSOP event.

Matthew wrote this article for Cardplayer talking about his 53offsuit bubble hand:
http://www.internettexasholdem.com/texa ... -the-wsop/

From this thread and the 2006 ITH convention main event: http://www.internettexasholdem.com/phpb ... 42509.html

For those who weren't there, the last hand of the main event came down to my 53o losing to Sandsstorm's JT. Sandsstorm ended up sucking out on me, but in retrospective, I could have played the hand differently.

Now understand, I don't quite have all of the details due to the wine and Heinekens I had during the event, but I think I have a pretty good idea about how things ended. There were about 175,000 chips in play and Sandsstorm had a very slight chip lead over me when the hand occured. So I estimate that he had about 90,000 in chips while I had 85,000. The blinds were 5-10 with 500 ante. Sandsstorm raised on the button to 30K. I looked down at my monster and felt the only move was to go all-in. I really thought he would fold without a good hand but he called pretty quickly.

If you look at the pot odds, Sandsstorm needed to risk roughly 55K to win 115K so he was getting 2 to 1 pot odds. This is a borderline decision. He was risking his entire tournament if he called. About the only hand he could really beat is 53o, and possibly some suited connector if he thought I would move with those hands. So he was most likely a dog - but he was getting 2 to 1 pot odds so I think it was a borderline decision.

But could I have played it differently. If I thought he might call, this was a perfect situation for a stop-n-go. I could just call and then move in on the flop if I liked it. In turns out, he would have been very hard pressed to call a bet on the flop (he sucked out on the river hitting a runner runner straight). I had flopped a 5 and looked good with all low cards on the board.

But at the time, I thought I had folding equity. It turns out, he was going to call with almost anything in that spot. But in retrospective, I sure wish I had done the stop-n-go.

In either case, I thought Sandsstorm played a great tournament. He really mixed it up well at the end trying to take advantage of my aggression. Congrats!

Matthew