I was playing in the early stages of an MTT the other day, I took some unorthodox lines against some other players I had tilted. The tilted players were tight older guys, that were visibly frustrated from my hyper aggressive style. The game soon degenerated into **** talking. The reason I decided to make the play in question because of what had been going on in the meta game. So I will give a quick summary of a few hands, then list the hand in question.

Early on I was active with a lot of raises and re-raises, in one hand I flopped the nuts and stacked an older tighter guy along with taking half of another guys stack.

Another was limped 9 ways, while I was in BB. The blinds were 150/300 so roughly $3000 in the middle Being a big stack $20,000, with average at 10,000 I decided to raise the size of the pot with air and attempt to steal. A short stack goes all in for an additional $2000 after limping with KJ. I call, and lose.

At this point the whole table is on edge and there is a lot of **** talking particularly with the tight older guys I was getting involved with.

The very next hand I quickly glance down at AA in the Small Blind. Frustrated Villain in the CO declares that if he open shoves, he bets I will call him without looking (he must not have seen me). I talk enough **** that I convince him to open shove AQ and I quickly make the call. (Similar to the situation where Tony G trolls Phil Hellmuth).


The hand in question:

Very next hand I have T6s (diamonds) on the button with roughly 24k. One of the frustrated older guys open limps from the CO. He has 25k, blinds are at 300/150. I isolate on the button by making it $800 to go.

There is roughly 2k in the pot. Flop comes T 5 4 with two hearts. He checks and I over jam 23k into a pot of 2k.

My thought process: Usually I would not make this donkey like move with top pair, but I think that villain is so fed up and frustrated he might call with worse. By open limping in the CO, I think his range is weighted toward large implied odds hands (AXs, suited connectors, small to medium pocket pairs). I think he would have played his monster differently preflop. By the donk over shove with top pair, I expect him to call pretty light (flush or Straight draws along with pairs smaller than top pair, maybe even a hero call with A high). If I win this pot I am the dominate chip leader in the tournament, and due to the structure probably would not need to play a hand until the final table.

If I believe villain calls with worse, then is this an acceptable play, or am I way out of line?

im gonna go with way out of line

Yes you are right, a (too) long story.

And just for the record, if he has something, he'll call you down and then you are out - with 80 BB, doesn't go any more stupid than that (you just have TPNK).

this is what happens when people try to apply every single thing they see from some highstakes training video and rail highstakes games.

Meta game and 145$ tourney really shouldn't be used in the same story.

you've bet an amount that caused another player to call with a weaker hand. that's hardly ground-breaking strat, but well done for having the lateral skills to identify an unusual and extreme situation where this may apply.

whether this is sufficient compensation for being thought a dick is debatable, but there are players that have made a living from such things.

Yeah, you are probably pushing it a little, but getting grumpy passive players upset by making legitimate plays is definitely part of the live small-to-medium mtts picture...
But you definitely pushed it. The AA is unclear if you pretended that you hadn't seen your cards while you were trying to convince villain to shove. Angle-shooting is definitely something that I don't enjoy, neither doing it nor being victim of it. The AQ guy was probably hoping you could find a call with reasonable Ax and stuff like that.

Anyways, in the T6 hand, if we expect to get some calls from worse, we can expect any hand that beats us to call as well. Given the huge overbet, let us put the initial pot aside and make a very simple equation: will villain call with more hands that we beat than hands that beat us. Because here that's basically the question.

What calling hands do we beat?
I guess you assume that villain could call with 66-99? I'm not sure about this, but let's...
Ace-high? Come on, an older grumpy player will never put almost his entire big stack at risk with nothing. This is no late night cash game.
Flush draws with only one overcard or flush draws with a gutshot draw (I don't think flush draws with no overcard will call here ever)

What callings hands beat us?
44-55
45
Any T in his range
Any two overcards + flush draws


If you count the possibilities, there are more possibilities in the second category than in the first. Add to that the fact that when you're a favorite, villain's win percentage is quite higher than yours when he is a favorite. And also the possibility that villain wants to trap you with a premium hand because he knows you're so aggressive and he's so mad at you that he wants to catch you...

So yes, you were probably out of line.

But I appreciate the fact that you're using an "out-of-the-box-thinking" line. I do think that in weak live games, it can be a very profitable strategy. But use with caution... :-p

Pissing off your locals and angling old nits is -EV

You can just quietly steal majority of small pots consecutively in these games with almost no risk and cruise your way aswell.

You kill your local games by irritating recs.

They come to enjoy the experience. Not to crush souls.
Show some respect.

While I agree that angle-shooting locals is not a good idea (on different levels), there is nothing you can do to not upset some grumpy players except banning any aggression in your game... Overbets are part of the game and nothing unethical, just not a good idea in this spot...

I never said anything about overbetting or w.e. I said pissing them off with angles and smack talking.

"Quietly steal pots" was a side tip of crushing these games.

completely agree with this