Defending your big blind vs the big stack, PokerStars Sunday Million

Game type: Poker Stars Sunday Million NL Hold’em Tournament
Your image: Fairly tight
Stage of tourney: Two tables remain
Avg stack: About 5 million
Misc notes: The big stack has been loose and lucky
Your hand: ??

This hand is based on actual game play from the PS Sunday Million on March 18th

The setup: You’ve made it to the final 14 players in the Poker Stars Sunday Million. The big stack on the button has more than three times the chips of the next largest stack. He has been raising any pot he can open.

The table folds around to the button, who makes it 500,000 to go. You would have about 4 million behind to raise with after calling his raise.

The current payout is about 5,800 and it stays flat until you break to the final table, where it increases to 8,200 for ninth.

What percentage of the time do you raise here regardless of your cards?

9 COMMENTS (Jump to comment form)

Sam

For some reason, I’ll still find it useful to look at my cards before playing… So, if I have 27o each time I got raised in the BB, my answer will be never.
However, I can loosen my range and come over the top with weak aces or hands that are not easilly dominated such as suited connectors or even on gap suited connectors

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Cristiano

It is a raise/fold situation and I believe it is more a matter of which hands would you raise as opposed to how often would you raise. I’d raise Any connector, any two 8-high cards, AX, suited KX, QX, JX, any pair.

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mark

I’ve never played a tournament for big money and things may be very different there, and you maybe could induce a fold. But in the small stakes tournaments I play in, in the situation described here a loose, lucky big chip leader will call anything you bet. It’s practically a guarantee. So I always ask myself one question in this type of situation: is this the hand I want to stake my tournament on? I would raise with a premium hand only and then it’s all-in because that’s where you’ll end up anyway.

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DHQ Addict

With you are in the BB when he is the button, if you do not stop it now (or soon), he will just keep attacking your blind. I would play back at him with any near average hand and try to stop the pilaging (sp?) while i can still get away from the hand if re-raised. (my stack will still be about 10x the BB after the raise.) His range is way wider than that to be raising here.

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drhoho

Christiano said: “This is a raise/ fold situation”
Silly argument. You are facing a small raise, that you can easily just call with a lot of hands. An agressive player is sometimes easier to catch stealing postflop, and if you dont hit you still hat odds to try.
You can just as well afford to call and checkraise him if you think you are strongest postflop, as you can afford a raise now.
If you make a raise that leaves you the option to give up the hand postflop, you are very likely to get called. And then you have a problem postflop, as a continuationbet will cost you the rest of your stack. I think the button should be aware of this, with would further induce a call from him.
I tend to agree with mark, but maybe that is because I too play sligthly lower buy-ins.

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Mary

You have to stop this now, because you are going to be two tables for a while, and he is always gonna be button to your BB. I think regardless of your cards you raise here to stop it, and win some money.

Although you could act twice here, calling and then betting the pot would get him to surrender his stone cold play on the BB. I would raise.

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Kevin

I agree with the staff, You do need to raise here at some point, even if your not getting good cards, given the leaders position on you, you must slow him down. However, with him getting lucky and playing loose its quite likely that he will call you with a very marginal hand. You want atleast a decent hand, preferably one that beats a random hand. But you really need to make a move on him at some point.

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I'd say calling is a better option, because the risk of getting called is too big. You can probably double up on the flop if you hit, and you can safely throw it away if you don't. I rather lose some blinds if the alternative is gambling on a 60/40 for my

martien_de_jong@hotmail.com

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