Playing Out of Position, Cont....

Here are a couple of hands from a tournament where I used a player's actions in an earlier hand to make a pretty light call-down in a later hand. As a side note, every time I play a tournament I'm amazed by how bad the play is. Definitely worse than low stakes cash games. But I digress. Here's the first hand, in the very early stages of the tourney:



Seat 1: UTG+1 (1,455)
Seat 5: CO (1,335)
Seat 9: bruechips (UTG) (1,500)


*** HOLE CARDS ***

Dealt to bruechips [7h 7d]
bruechips raises to 90
UTG+1 calls 90
CO calls 90


*** FLOP ***
[4d Kd 4s]


bruechips bets 210 (Fairly standard up until this point, although I could make an argument for check/folding in a three-way pot early in a donkament. They're never folding a king or a better pocket pair, and they will probably just check down and give you a free showdown rather than turn AT into a bluff. On the other hand, they will often hold hands like QTo that you'd rather just get to fold now on the flop. Given that I'm only trying to fold out total air, I could probably have bet a little bit less too.)
UTG+1 calls 210
CO folds


*** TURN ***
[4d Kd 4s] [Jc]


bruechips checks (No point in trying to get him off of 99 or something like that. Another bet almost commits me to the pot, and there's just no point in going nuts early in a donkament.)
UTG+1 checks

*** RIVER ***
[4d Kd 4s Jc] [2h]
bruechips checks
UTG+1 checks

*** SHOW DOWN ***
bruechips shows [7h 7d] two pair, Sevens and Fours
UTG+1 shows [Kh Th] two pair, Kings and Fours

OK, so note that this guy checked behind top pair on the turn AND river. Granted the turn takes away his kicker, but I'm not going to have a worse king pretty much ever after raising UTG, so that shouldn't be a consideration. If he was ahead on the flop, it was because I had a QQ-55, not because I had K9. Anyway, the point is, this guy played his top pair passively in position when I showed weakness. Which leads me to the next hand, a few hands later:


Seat 1: Button (1,770)
Seat 9: bruechips (CO) (1,150)

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to bruechips [Qd Jd]
UTG calls 40
bruechips raises to 160
Button calls 160
UTG folds

*** FLOP ***
[Ac Js 7h]
bruechips bets 280
Button calls 280

*** TURN *** [Ac Js 7h] [5d]
bruechips checks
Button bets 980 (Up until this point the hand is pretty standard. Now he puts me all-in on the turn after I checked the turn. We saw on the last hand that this is not how he plays top pair with a marginal kicker. It's possible that he's mixing up his game, hoping that I noticed his play in the last hand and is now going for some thin value with A9 or something. But I generally don't give random tourney donks credit for that kind of leveling. Instead I'll pretty much assume that the only Ax he could have is A5. AQ+ raises preflop, AJ and A7 raise the flop, and AT and lower don't bet the turn, as we have seen. There are, however, all sorts of other hands he might peel the flop with which now might feel like they need to bluff to win. Any broadway cards make an inside straight draw or a pair. He could even have a seven. The only hand I'm really worried about is KJ, and maybe AA if he had slowplayed it preflop. My hand does well against a range of KJ, AA, and a bunch of 7- and 4-outters.)
bruechips calls 710, and is all in
Button shows [Ks Qs] (Now for the hard part, fading the river...)

*** RIVER *** [Ac Js 7h 5d] [5s] (Whew....)
Bruechips wins the pot (2,400) with two pair, Jacks and Fives

-BRUECHIPS