Quote:
Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
You're correct. Trap hands like AAxx and KKxx, which tend to be crap in O8 cash games (and tournaments when not short stacked), are actually good when you are short and just are going to have the board run out.
The problem with them when you're betting on every street is that you can rarely be confident that those hands are good, and when you get action, you're often beat (or at least going to chop).
The longest I took to make a decision that tournament was when I had 23k left with 10k of that sitting in the big blind, and about 40 players left. I believe my hand was QcQsJh4h. "Uncle Johnny" Esposito (who went on to take third) was in the small blind and it folded around to him. After giving me a walk the last time this happened, this time he says "I gotta try to get rid of you" and raises. I really didn't want to put my tournament life on the line with that hand...my thinking was if everyone folded around there were likely many small cards left in the deck, he probably had at least two himself so he's going to make some sort of low and I'll have to hope the queens hold up just to get the high half. But at the same time I didn't want to move on to the next hand with just 13k, 5 of it going to the small blind.
So I called, he caught middle pair on the flop, and I had to fade a bunch of outs to survive. He ended up making an emergency low and my queens took the high. A lot of the players said that they were surprised I hesitated to call with the queens and such a short stack.
Watching the final table, Ben Yu folded something like 10JKA six or seven handed under the gun when he was very short stacked. I was surprised to see that, although at that point there was another short stack and like a $10k pay jump, so maybe that was part of his thinking there.
