My Twitter question about O8 tournament hand brought out many top poker players to weigh in
The scene: I was playing the $1100 O8 event at the Commerce LAPC yesterday, and we were fairly deep into the event. About 70% of the field was gone, and they pay top 12.5%.
I was below average in chips with about 57k total. I put 2k into the SB, as we were playing 2k/4k blinds and 4k/8k limit.
7-handed table.
Two average players (not tight, not loose) raised and 3-bet from UTG and UTG+1.
Folded to me, where I was in SB and had to put in 10k more to call. I only had 55k behind. I held AhQhQs4h.
I considered calling and seeing the flop. After all, I had a high pair, A4, and hearts. Lots of ways to possibly win. But I feared that the queens would be too weak to clal down without improving and the A4 low would be dominated. Worst yet, I'd have to put in nearly 20% of my stack in, out of position, to see that flop.
I folded.
Flop came Q23. Not only would I have won, I would have taken down a monster pot.
I ended up busting seven from the money in the tournament. That hand was bugging me... but was I being results oriented? I kept telling myself I did the right thing.
So I posed the question to Twitter:
The responses were mostly unanimous that I did the right thing.
And then Melissa Burr entered the conversation...
Melissa is a well-known winning high stakes mix game player, but she's not really into tournaments, so I think she tailored her advice too much to cash.
Andrew Barber questioned it:
Then Eric Crain got involved, stating that even he would have folded the AQQ4, despite his notoriously loose play:
UK poker star Benny Glaser agreed with the fold:
And when Mark Gregorich speaks about O8, you listen:
Finally, Matt Glantz offered this sage piece of advice:
Needless to say, that's a lot of discussion from a lot of big names, all about a poker hand before the money in a rather inconsequential Commerce tournament!
