I lasted about 6 hours in the most recent Stars Sunday Million, mostly with a big stack, though I didn’t even end up making the money. But here was a key hand that came up a few hours in. Pay attention to the CO’s stack:
Poker Stars, $200 + $15 NL Hold’em Tournament, 400/800 Blinds, 8 Players
LeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter
UTG: 26,571
UTG+1: 20,250
Hero (MP1): 40,700
MP2: 22,350
CO: 4,750
BTN: 10,331
SB: 33,131
BB: 25,399
Pre-Flop: (800) T
K dealt to Hero (MP1)
3 folds, Hero raises to 2,150, MP2 folds, CO calls 2,150, BTN folds, SB calls 1,750
Flop: (6,850) T
K
5 (3 Players)
SB checks, Hero checks, CO checks
Turn: (6,850) A (3 Players)
SB checks, Hero raises to 18,500, 2 folds
Results: 6,850 Pot
Hero mucked T K and WON 17,938 (+15,738 NET)
Ordinarily I would never slowplay top two pair on a fairly coordinated board in a multiway pot, but here the CO has called off half of his stack pre-flop. I didn’t know anything about this guy specifically, but he ought to have a monster pre-flop, and even terrible players are going to shove a wide range when it’s checked to them and the pot is three times their remaining stack. The SB was quite loose and aggressive, so I thought he would often check-raise over the CO’s shove, since he could easily have flopped a strong hand and anyway would not expect me to be slowplaying in this spot.
Unfortunately, I did not get the result I wanted. Not only did CO not shove, but a really bad card came on the turn. This does create some risk of a better two pair, but it’s also makes two pair hands way more likely for me, such that I’m not likely to get action from worse. Still, I can’t afford to let my opponent draw for cheap, so I’ve got to make a pot-committing raise and see what happens. This was still a nice pot, but if I’d managed to stack the SB here, as I may well have if things had played out differently, it could have been huge.