Now this is a move you’ll see a lot when playing tournaments. It’s no coincedence it’s used a lot, because this move has a certain strength (if your stack is still large enough). It’s power is twofold: it can force your opponent to fold his (better) hand right there ánd if you get called you can beat your opponent by making your draw.

This play is perfectly demonstrated by the great Eli Elezra during an episode of Poker After Dark (S02E45). Watch it yourself (first hand):

So Eli flops the nut flushdraw and basically has only two moves left after Allan Cunningham’s continuation bet and Ivey’s raise: going all-in or fold. Now he choses the first option because there was an extra factor involved here: the fact that Phil Ivey was playing fairly aggressive during this tournament. Eli observed this correctly and in that way (with Ivey not even having toppair for example) it would be easier for Ivey to lay down his hand.

How nice it was to cash in the first tourney, how disappointing my second one was. I finished in 55th place without a lot of exciting moments…

My ‘carddead period’ was located right in the beginning of the tournament this time. I saw a lot of crazy moves though during this period, probably caused by the low buy-in. When I díd wake up with a decent hand, it was because of the same reason I didn’t build up a big stack. I got AQ offsuit two times and raised a decent amount (3-4 times the BB), but got a lot of callers anyway. I didn’t flop anything and it’s hard to take the pot with a continuation bet in those spots with all the multiway action. So I guess the lesson learned is that you’ll have to play VERY tight aggressive during those first levels (I’ll post some other tips now and then here).

I ended up with 700 chips during the third blind level (20/40) when I got pocket Jacks:

So I got eliminated in a coinflip situation, better next time I guess!