Hand of the Week: Tournament edition

Our buddy, the blog admin, said that I could start putting in a Hand of the Week guest blog. So, for clarification purposes, this isn't written by Abe. It might be good for the blog to put in a different playing style perspective. As you might know, I can play a little looser, and Abe is a nit...I mean he's a rock...I mean he's solid. ;)

Earlier this week, I played a satellite to get a WSOP main event seat online. The structure of this tournament was actually a lot better than the smaller S&Gs, and smaller buy-in tournaments. The tournament started with 1500 in chips and had levels of 30 min instead of 15 which gave you plenty of time to play, instead of forcing you to gamble. There were 300+ entries, and I was cruising fairly well. I started off kind of slow, because I was kind of card dead preflop. The biggest pair I had was 99. I had AK once or twice, won small pots. But I got my stack up to 7500 by flopping a set or two and picking off a few "can't call" spots on the flop.

Then with about 150 players left, I got moved to a table. w/ 7500 I was third in chips at the table, and both chip leaders were doing the "chip leader" tournament thing. You know, steal the weak blinds, and don't risk a bunch of chips playing a big pot. They were pretty much staying out of each other's way, and were fairly tight. The chip leader, who had 12000, had a weird thing about him though. Any time a short stack went all in, and the chip leader had any of his chippies in the pot, he would call with less than strong holdings, Ace-baby, small pocket pair coinflip, that sort of thing. He'd won both of them. Other than that, his play was fundamentally solid. Tangling with him wasn't really a big problem since I had position on him and the other chip leader was on the other side of the table. After a round or two this hand came up:

With the blinds at 100/200, I was in the cutoff with two kings. Everyone folded to a short stack in middle position who raised to 600. He might've had a real hand, or just stealing the blinds. I didn't really know. The chip leader flat called. It felt like AK or a hand with two unpaired big cards, because usually with a pair bigger than 88 he would re-raise the short stack there. I didn't put it past him to flat call there with a big pair though. And the short stack didn't have enough money for him to have some suited connector. Before that, I had planned on flat calling the short stack and getting the chips in on the flop if it came with no ace, and he continuation bet. But with the third player in, raising was obvious. I re-raised to 2500 total (the short stack had 2700). He moved in quickly. Then, the chip leader did something surprising, he moved in behind after thinking for a few seconds. I began to think that that would be a clever play for AK, because it would isolate the all-in player, and play for the extra dead money. But of course, he could've also had aces, kings, queens, maybe jacks? Plus, he had a predisposition to protecting his children. Usually in that spot, (call a bet, re-raise when someone raises the original bet) a tight player has aces. If I folded, I would've had about 5000 left to play with (about avg. chips) at a table where I had decent control. Or, I could play a three way all in pot against possible aces where the best shape I could be in against two hands is about 70%.

I call. the short stack has 99, the chip leader has AA. Wonderful. An ace and a nine flop. Just the spot I like being in on the turn, drawing dead. I heard Men the Master in my head saying, "You play pokah very well. Nice hand sah!" I've folded kings once before the flop (and was wrong), but I think this was probably the best spot I could think of to do it again. Maybe overzealous with KK? Anyone have thoughts?