Pokerstars Sunday Million
I played online last night in the Pokerstars Sunday Million tournament. First prize was $200,000 and I finished in 65th for around $2,500. Not the big score but I’ll certainly take it. Here is one key hand I played.
I have approximately 80,000 in chips which is good for 2nd most on my table. The guy sitting two seats in front of me is the chipleader on my table and has around 125,000. He’s been playing aggresively and opening a lot of pots with the initial raise. Another guy on the button has 30,000 which is just below average. The blinds for this hand are 800/1600 with a 200 ante I think.
The big stack brings it in for 3500 from early position, and I call from mid position with Q(heart)-J(heart). It folds to the button who raises it up to 10,000. In my opinion this is a pretty small raise, and he must know he is going to get called by the two biggest stacks on the table who are already significantly in the pot. This make me think he has a big hand like AA, KK, or maybe AK (but if he has AK it is a pretty bad play because if he missed the flop he is screwwwed. so with AK he should be making a larger raise and hoping for folds or to only play against one other player). Anyway the binds both fold, and as suspected the big stack calls and its a no brainer for me to make the call at this point even though I’m 98% sure I am beat right now.
The flop comes: 9(heart)-9(spade)-8(heart). The big stack checks and now I have a decision. I’m 100% sure the button will bet if I just check here, no matter what he has—and that includes AK. So I’m thinking i that if he somehow did make that preflop raise with AK I might be able to get him off the hand with a bet right here and just hope that the big stack doesn’t have a 9 in his hand. And even if the button has AA or KK like I originally suspected, I still have plenty of outs with any 10 or any heart. Actually I’m probably the favorite in all 3 of the hands that I think the button may have. So I lead out with 20k and the button automatically moves in the rest of his stack which is only 10k more. The other player folds and I make the easy call for how much is in the pot (90k already). Surpringly the button shows A-Q offsuit! Strange but that actually isn’t as good for me as A-K because it takes away my Queens as outs. In any case its still not a bad spot for me and I spike the Ace of hearts on the river to boost me up to the chiplead.