Hand Analysis
Pocket 7s at the final table
Sunday, May 25th, 2008 | Hand Analysis | No Comments
Recently I was playing in a small buy-in 60 person tournament. As we reached the final table, I went on an extremely good run of cards. I knocked out a few players and had a decent chip stack. The tournament was going to pay out 6 spots and it didn’t take long for us to bust the 7th place finisher and make it in to the money. My good run of cards continued and by the time we were down to 5 players, I had roughly 60% of the chips in play. 3 short stacks and one medium stacked player, seated directly to my right, remained between me and first place. Then the following hand came up.
The player to my right is in first position. He raises roughly 4 times the big blind. This represents approximately 40% of his chips. I look at my cards to find two 7s. What to do?
Here are the thoughts that run through my mind.
- Short handed at the final table, this guy could be raising with a hand as weak as Q/10 in this situation where stealing blinds is an absolute must.
- I likely have the best starting hand, but do I want to move all-in and have to fade 5 cards in a coin flip situation?
- If I re-raise preflop, does the original raiser have enough chips to fold a weak hand or will he be forced to call and hope to get lucky?
When I added it all up, I decided to just call the bet and see the flop. By doing so, I get:
- lay down my hand to an all-in bet on the flop if an Ace/King/Queen come up.
- take the rest of his chips if I flop a set.
- push all-in on a flop of all low cards.
Hand outcome:
I was right about the strength of his hand. He had K/J offsuit. The flop came 9/9/5. He immediately pushed all-in and I took only a couple seconds to call. A jack showed up on the turn and he doubled up.
Even though there is a certain amount of gambling in poker, I saw no need to push all-in pre-flop simply because I thought I had the best hand. By waiting for the flop, I was able to get the rest of his chips in to the pot as a 3:1 favorite to win the hand.