After reading Adam Junglen’s Monte Carlo trip report, I decided to set a little trap of my own with Ace-Jack. It was fairly early in a $50 freezeout on Poker Stars. The table chipleader had open limped from MP1, and then the action folded to me on the CO with AJs and 2300 chips. I figured I was ahead of MP1, and I contemplated a raise, but quickly realized that would put me in kind of an awkward spot. There were only 375 chips in the pot, so I didn’t want to shove my entire 2300 stack to pick them up.
Raising to like 750 and then shoving any flop would be an option, but since I wasn’t first to act after the flop, I risked having the limper shove into me first and putting me to a tough decision. Such a raise would also price me in to call a shove from either of the blinds, both of whom would probably only be shoving hands that beat me.
As it happened, the SB was a friend of mine from 2+2 whom I knew to be a smart player. His stack was short enough that I felt he might shove a pretty wide range of hands if I just limped behind, figuring he could either take down the pot or at least get it heads up with a little dead money. Unlike the scenario where I raised first, I felt I would be well ahead of the range of hands he would shove with. This also gave me the option of getting out of the way with only 150 chips invested if the action exploded behind me.
If no one raised behind me, then I’d take a flop in position with AJs, which would also be fine by me. Here’s how it went down:
PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em Tourney, Big Blind is t150 (9 handed) Hand History converter Courtesy of PokerZion.com
SB (t1265)
BB (t5558)
UTG (t3287)
UTG+1 (t3181)
MP1 (t4265)
MP2 (t8225)
MP3 (t1975)
Hero (t2300)
Button (t3225)
Preflop: Hero is CO with Ah, Jh.
3 folds, MP2 calls t150, 1 fold, Hero calls t150, 1 fold, SB raises to t1265, BB calls t1115, MP2 folds, Hero raises to t2300, BB calls t1035.
Flop: (t6015) 7s, 5s, 7d (3 players)
Turn: (t6015) Qh (3 players)
River: (t6015) Th (3 players)
Final Pot: t6015
The BB’s cold call worried me, but after checking my notes on him, I saw that he had made some pretty questionable calls in the past with Ace-rage type hands, so I decided to push my chips in anyway. The BB had 66, but my friend in the SB was lucky enough to have a pair of Aces. He tripled up and went on to become one of the chipleaders in the tournament, while I was eliminated. He also felt I got what I had coming to me for trying to trap him! As it happened, I was drawing nearly dead when the money went in, but I’m pretty sure SB would have shoved a much wider range than just monster hands, so I don’t really regret the play.