I think this was a straightforward hand, but just looking for any other opinions from the tournament perspective. It's only the tournament aspects that make it interesting.

Benny Glaser: Face card (brings in)
Phil Hellmuth: folds
Paul Sokoloff: folds
Gerard Rechnitzer (Villain): 8 (completes)
Brad Ruben: folds
Hero: (75) 6

All the folded cards were above an 8.

Ante is 1,500, bring-in is 2,000, limits are 6,000-12,000.

I have 31,000 chips left. 17 players left. There's a money bump for making it to 16 (about $700). Paul is also short-stacked. Not sure about other tables, but I think that Paul and I are the two smallest stacks.


As it played out...

Hero 2-bets, Bring-in folds, Villain 3-bets, Hero 4-bets, Villain calls.

4th street:
Villain: 8 A
Hero: (75) 6 K

Villain bets 6,000. I have 7,000 chips left and go all-in.



Anybody advocate slow playing on 3rd street? I can't see it myself. I'm not trying to fold my way into 16th place; I still have final table dreams here. For me, it's 73,000 or bust here.

(For what it's worth, the Ace paired Villain, and we were a virtual coin flip on 4th -- a flip I lost when he made his 8 low.)

All standard except maybe jamming the final 1k right away

Are you asking if you can call 3rd with the plan to fold a brick 4th? Like what happened here?

Only thing that can come from that is you open yourself up to making bad folds later on. As you could see folding 4th would be disaster if you had just flagged 3rd. Take your edge, and get the chips in on 3rd

No, more along the lines of calling 3rd to preserve a minimally playable stack that can fold 5th after a double brick.

Say that it gets to 5th street with something like this:

Villain: (XX) 8A6
Hero: (75) 6K6

As played, I was pot committed on 3rd street. If I'd just called 3rd and 4th, I could get away from the hand on 5th with 19,000 chips, rather than taking a 22% shot at 73,000 chips:

ProPokerTools Razz Simulation

600,000 trials (Randomized)

dead cards: TJQK

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
**8A6	78.15%	468,650	447
756K6	21.85%	130,903	447

Another possible reason to play it slow on 3rd is that I might want Villain to keep bluffing at me with paint cards in the hole, and that raising might scare him off. I'm not seriously suggesting that's a strong reason though -- if I raised this pot on 3rd and took it down immediately, I'd consider that a big win. Chipping up from 31,000 to 48,000 would always be welcome.

Hmm you were obv there but do you think completing into a SS 6up means he has ATC under?

Also not raising 3rd also opens up door for the bring in to come in. I suppose there is merit to folding 5th on super terrible runouts but it still opens you up to make mistakes facing an unknown range. Gotta double up sooner or later and this is a great spot. GG!

It was standard at WSOP to complete if it was folded to you and you were the second-to-last low door card to act.

The antes in the WSOP structure are mostly pretty big (1/4 to 1/6 of a small bet), which stimulates a lot of action on 3rd street, and to a smaller degree on later streets. It plays very differently than small ante games. It's very rare that the hand folds around to the last low door card, enough so that you're actually surprised when it happens.

In this case, the antes were at the high end of the ratio, at 1/4 of a small bet. There was 11,000 in the pot between antes and the bring-in when it was folded to Villain. He can take a stab at winning the pot right there for 6,000.

So yes, in this hand, he is completing into me with any two cards under, and he's correct to do so.

You did fine, it would be worse to let him off the hook when he bricks or has a banana imo. The payjumps are quite small and you gotta give yourself a chance to win the event. Well played