the all in bluff

i saw a hand a few weeks ago during a sit&go at pokerstars that got me thinking about the all in bluff. i'd like to tell you about the hand, and my thoughts on it, and see what you all think.

okay, it was early on, everyone still hovering around 1500, blinds i believe around 15/30. there are two main players in this hand, player A & player B. player A comes in first and raises the pot to about 120 or 150. everyone foldes to player B, who rather quickly reraises all in. the rest of the table folds to player A, who calls the all in bet. So when we see their cards, player A (who made the first raise) has pocket queens, and player B (who reraised all in) has 10-6 of clubs. needless to say, player A went on to win the hand, and i was left sitting there, pondering the achilles heel of the agressive player, the all in bluff.

now i know what you're thinking, player B decided to put player A to a decision. he did not know the stregnth of his opponent's hand, and decided to take a stab at it. this is a fundimental concept in poker that i think most of us understand. my problem with this logic, especially in this case, is that he left himself no outs. no one would call his all in bet unless they had him beat. so what should he have done then? fold? and risk player A not having a premium hand and stealing the blinds? call? with nothing? and inevitably losing? a total rookie play. no, if player B put player A on a bluff, or even a marginal hand, he was right to reraise. that will work. believe me, but in my opinion his best play would have been to raise it up to somewhere between 400 and 600. a reraise of this size would have made it equally difficult for player A to have called, had he been on a bluff, and with the pocked queens that player A actually had, he would have been very likely to have simply moved all in with them and taken his chances, allowing player B to fold, and live to fight another day. even a call by player A in this situation would allow player B to stab at the pot again post flop, which possibly could work if an ace or king shows up on the board.

okay, that's about it. i think i discussed that hand pretty thourally, but if anyone has any thoughts, i'd love to hear them. please forgive any spelling errors.

-n

You are thinking way too much into a play made by an idiot who it seems didnt care about the tournament, but you are totally right. Any non-idiot would have been much better off raising a few hundred.

Was he bluffing or was he just taking a pot shot? You say needless to say player A won, but we've all seen hands lose to inferior starting hands, often numerous times from the same player. Invariably if im holding QQ and call an all in, the opponent will flip over AA (happened in later stages of big tourney this weekend)

I think I have to agree with Cippler, If it's early in the tourney you just don't have too good a read on your opponents, meaning you can't be completely sure of what your opponents hands are. Going all in here with a hand like this seems to be what I call the one of the all in idiots/maniacs who sadly enough take out good players with some lucky draw more often than I like to remember.

okay, obviously the 10-6 could have won, but even in the crazy game of hold 'em, the over pair is going to hold up at least 2/3 of the time. and i don't know the difference between a bluff and a pot shot. i just wanted to find out how you guys feel about risking all of your chips on a bluff.

considering A was first to act and raised showed he had a strong starting hand. I hightly doubt his intent was to steal the blinds behind, but more to narrow the playing field. He raised enough to kick people out, but didnt commit too much so if he was reraised he might've had to fold or just called and played the flop. I think his play was good. I dont think player B's play was bad, but he had better options. I think a reraise like others mentioned wouldve been a good play if he wanted to test player A. then player B couldve played the board according to how A played since he was in position. if an A or K hit and player A checked, player B could bet and probably taken it...especially if he reraised and player A just called. IMO..i wouldve folded...lol.

my 2 cents.

Player A raised in early postion 4-5x the BB, which signals strength. At this stage of the tournament (blinds 15/30) there really is no advantage to stealing the blinds (only +45 chips) especially from such an early position. The guy who re-raised probably watched too much ESPN wsop coverage and thought he "sensed weakness in his opponent" and pushed over the top. He was dumb, but this move he made CAN work in later rounds (moreso in MTTs than SNGs).

nateofdeath said:

okay, obviously the 10-6 could have won, but even in the crazy game of hold 'em, the over pair is going to hold up at least 2/3 of the time. and i don't know the difference between a bluff and a pot shot. i just wanted to find out how you guys feel about risking all of your chips on a bluff.

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I may have just invented the term "pot shot".

I meant that in tournaments a number of players start off going all in with anything to try and build up early lead. You'll see after 2nd or 3rd hand, the leaders will have 7,000+ chips. They haven't done this by playing well, they've just chanced their arm and got lucky. I was just saying this is likely what happened here, as opposed to the bluff you'd imagined.

robwhufc said:

I may have just invented the term "pot shot".

I meant that in tournaments a number of players start off going all in with anything to try and build up early lead. You'll see after 2nd or 3rd hand, the leaders will have 7,000+ chips. They haven't done this by playing well, they've just chanced their arm and got lucky. I was just saying this is likely what happened here, as opposed to the bluff you'd imagined.

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ah, i see what you're saying, and i see the purpose of the 'quote' button i guess i can't say exactly what his motivation was, but no matter how you look at it it definatly was bad timing

What player B was definently retarted unless he or she wanted to quit the tournament becuase of boredom. Player B I guess should have done what every other player should have done and folded unless he was hoping to get a flush draw on the flop. Otherwise he or she probably should just called and seen the flop he or she would have lost alot of chips but it was still pretty early on in the tournamnet so he or she could have got lucky and win a bigger hand laster on.

Yeah, you're overanalyzing this one. It just ended up being a dumbass going all in early on. Similar to those who go all in on the first hand, without even a chance to win with their 9-2 offsuit, or something similar.

okay, i definatly was over anazyling. i just like to write and that's what i happened to be thinking about that day.

This kind of thing happens pretty often in the first couple of levels of large open freerolls. People pick a hand and shove all their chips in. They figure if they can do this successfully a few times, they end up with a nice stack early. On the majority of occasions, when they bust out quickly, the justification is that they haven't wasted much time, and there are lots of other tournaments they can move on to.