Bubble - AQ Limp vs. AK Raise
Yet again I blew another final poker table being aggressive. We were down to 6 players. 4 places paid. This was a live casino tournament with one rebuy and one add-on allowed, not online poker. Starting stack and all equivalent buy-ins were 4,000 chips. I got off to a really great start and neither rebought or added-on. When we got down to players, I was right in the middle with about 24K chips. The blinds were 800/1600 with no ante. The tournament was small, so I didn’t really care about getting 4th place. I was shooting for top 3. So, I looked down at Ah Qh under the gun. 6-handed, this is pretty much a no brainer. Make a standard raise and the blinds will fold around or someone will call and we’ll see a flop. I chose to try and play this a little craftily, and I limped. My plan was to actually fold to a raise. The table was pretty weak and I though there was a good chance that a limp might get me to see a flop, even if I was out of position. If I missed the flop, I would shut down. Instead, something else entirely happened. A player raised it up to 6500 and the player behind him flat called. The blinds folded to me. A bad player would call this bet. I say this is bad, because they are compounding mistakes. First they are electing to play out of position against 2 players. Second they are flat calling a bet of of their stack to see a flop, probably miss, and fold their hand. And third, they are not gaining any information about their opponents’ hands by calling. A better player might fold here. They got their information, two players wanted to play this pot, the table was nearing the bubble, get out of the way.
