Dropping KK preflop
I entered the final table with about 800,000 chips, after doubling my stack in the final table bubble of AK against JJ. Also remembering that the final table of the event was recorded - the first televised table of a 100% Brazilian tournament, another victory.
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Above my stack, only three players: Junior (850k), Leo Perrone (also in the 800k home) and Cinthia (in the lead, with 900k). The thrill of playing the televised table is also part of the items to be analyzed here.
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Let's play:
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The UTG player, with 75k chips (completely short stack), fires all-in with blinds at 20k and 40k. I, being UTG + 1, I come across KK. I made a raise of 165k, getting about 630k in chips. Leo Perrone, just to my left, folds. And Junior fires a 300k reraise. The table folds around until my turn to speak.
Here begins my analysis.
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1 - Until then, Junior had not played on the TV table, which makes his range of hands decrease greatly.
2 - He knows me as a pro. Applying a reraise over the all-in UTG, after my raise in UTG + 1, causes me to have to further narrow his range of hands.
3 - Some could be easily discarded, such as AK, AQs, AJs. Typical hands with which no mini-reraises happen: either the citizen trusts that he has cards that can make me drop his hand and comes with a heavy (or even all-in) raise, or he folds and lets the game go on. Mainly with AK, hand whose standard movement is all-in.
4 - In my head, there were few hands left: JJ, QQ, KK or AA.
5 - From what I had of his game information on Day 1, I knew it might not be an AA - but it was some of the previous hands, for sure.
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I decided to "fold" the hand. Let's go to the reasons that led to this:
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1 - I thought there were good chances of being AA. So I'd be playing all my chips for two outs. Calling his bet I discarded, since most of the time neither he nor I will hit a chip on the flop. After the flop, I would continue without much reference - and especially without position - to analyze my opponent's action.
2 - If by chance he opened an AK, and my analysis was wrong, I did not want to give the chance to lose a tournament that I played two days without showing the cards to my opponent because of three outs.
3 - The main reason: in fact I believed that my advantage over opponents, to play pre-flop and flop, was very great. With that, what mattered least were my cards, in this case my KK - my stack was the biggest weapon for me to make it to the end of the tournament as a winner. I had a very good reading of those opponents and I felt that almost all the players were somewhat pressured with the financial values involved at that time, which gave me even more advantage.