Friday, June 15, 2007

There oughta be a name

Every so often you sit down to a SNG and you find a player at the table who goes all-in every hand. If you play funny-money tourneys, there's at least one at every table. We ought to be able to come up with a name for these players. Crazy Ivan or something like that (not that there's anything particularly Russian about this move). I just sat down to a P* 6-handed SNG and sure enough, the player two seats to my right goes all-in on hand 1, hand 2, skips hand 3, then goes all-in on hand 4 and gets called by the player to my right, who has pocket deuces. The kamakaze guy had something random like J4o and didn't improve. So he was down to his last couple hundred, and I'm on the button with 9Td. He, of course, goes all-in and I call, as does someone between us. The flop comes 9-high with one diamond. The other guy bets $200, and I call. The turn is another diamond. He bets $200 again and I call, still with top pair. The river is another diamond, completing my flush. He bets $200 again, I go all-in and he calls with A9o, so thank the poker Gods for the flush. That gave me the chip lead, and I never looked back.

There was another pivotal hand later on 4 handed. I had ATs in the big blind. The short stack is UTG and goes all-in for about $500 (blinds are $15/$30). Both of the other players call, so I push all-in (I have everybody covered) both to try and isolate the short stack and hopefully pick up a lot of dead money. Well, it worked - the other two players folded and the short stack had A8c and did not improve. That pot was over $5k just by itself.

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