Erick Lindgren: A Big Hand Early in a Poker Tournament

In the late stages of a tournament, big pairs are generally pretty easy to play. When you have 20, 30 or 40 big blinds in your stack, and you find a pair of Queens or Kings, you usually just want to play aggressively, force a fold, or play a big all-in pot and hope things work out in the end.
But early on in a tournament, when the stacks can be very deep relative to the blinds, I don’t think it’s always a great idea to play big pairs quite as aggressively. A hand I played this year at the WSOP Main Event demonstrates the point pretty well.
At the start of the hand, the blinds were 100/200 and most of the stacks at the table were right around the starting amount of 20,000 chips. One player raised and another called from late position. I looked down and saw two Queens.
The instinct for many in this situation is to re-raise. But I didn’t like that option. What would happen if one of the other players in the hand re-popped me? I’d hate to fold the Queens, but I wasn’t ready to risk going broke with Queens so early in the tournament.
My re-raise could have also prompted one or both players to just call. In that case, I would have been playing out of position without having a great idea of what my opponents held. After the calls, the pot would be quite large. It could have cost me most or even all of my stack before I figured out whether I was ahead or behind.
I decided to play a smaller pot and put fewer of my chips at risk, so I just called.
The flop came Jack-high. I checked, the original raiser bet and it was folded to me. I called – again trying to keep the pot relatively small. The turn was a blank, and I checked. My opponent checked behind. This check made me pretty confident that I was ahead. When the river paired the board, I was happy to put out a value bet, hoping that I could get paid off by, perhaps, a medium pocket pair.
As it turned out, my opponent didn’t have enough to call me and I took down the pot right there.
All-in-all, I was happy with the way I played the hand. I put myself in a position to win a moderate sized pot without incurring any risk of going broke. Next time you see a big pair early in a tournament, consider trying to control the size of the pot rather than playing as aggressively as you can.
Erick Lindgren
Erick plays poker online at FullTiltPoker.com. Join him at a table somtime soon. The professionals that play at Full Tilt are (generally) excellent to play and chat to online.
I know the “feel” players will cringe at this statement, but every situation in poker can be broken down into mathematical terms.
I got the owner to agree to flip for our bill. Double or nothing. If we lose we pay double whatever the bill was (about $900 pre tip) and if we win it was on the house. Heads or tails 2 out of 3. We win – our entire meal was free. How sweet it is.
I used to sometimes refer to A-Q affectionately as “big chick” or “slick chick” as a joke, but you know, sometimes A-Q is just a bitch! [Evelyn was 3 times screwed with A-Q in the 08 Ladies NO Limit Hold’em World Championship].
Betting on myself to win a bracelet was a way to make it more important. This year, it became about attaining the bracelet, and not just the money, because money doesn’t motivate me as much as a tangible object. I see why Hellmuth talks about them all the time – it helps his motivation.
(On the WSOP 2008 Main Event Final Table Format deferral till November)



Most players eventually realize that it’s fun, fairly easy and potentially better use of their time when trying to build a bankroll, to play at multiple online poker tables at once. Early in my career, I played as many as eight games at once on a daily basis. Here are some tips for playing multiple games:
If your opponents always fold and never see your cards, that’s obviously not a bad thing, but it can prevent you from communicating to them that you’re mixing up your play. As long as you think that you’re the better player, it doesn’t hurt to show somebody your cards once in a while. Yes, it gives them information, but as long as you can play on that higher level and mix it up, then that’s fine. But if your opponents are better than you, and you’re more scared of them and you think that information will help them, then you shouldn’t show your cards.



You can play Erick or any of the in-house poker professionals online at Full Tilt Poker.
