There are several reasons why someone would bet all of their chips with a terrible hand like queen five before the flop. He could be on one of the blinds and have so few chips that folding that hand will require him to win several hands in a row before he’ll be able to afford to see a flop without going all in. The move could be Online Casino Malaysia by a belief that a higher power will turn a bad hand into a good one or by a desire to have less money. It could be an attempt to bully everyone else into folding their hands, thus stealing the blinds. None of those reasons applied to me last night, yet I moved all in with that hand anyway and I would do it again in the same situation.
The situation responsible for such apparent madness was a free promotional tournament called Bounty Hunter at Poker Pages. I was at somewhat of a disadvantage since players could buy chips but I had nothing in my account that I could use to buy chips, so my starting stack was smaller than the starting stack of many of my opponents. I managed to stay close to the 3000 chip level that I started with until I found myself with pocket queens. With the blinds rising, I decided that I probably wouldn’t get another chance like that so I put all my chips in the pot. I had the best hand before the flop and after the river, so I tripled up. That was the highlight of that tournament regarding my chip stack, but not the highlight of the entire tournament for me.
After not doing much of anything for a while, I got moved to another table. I ran into a little bit of bad luck there, with one hand where I got a set of nines but the nine on the board gave someone else a straight and another hand where I got a straight but lost to a bigger one. Luckily, I didn’t bet much either time so I still had plenty of chips when I got a hand that I normally would be reluctant to call with from the small blind – queen five off suit.
Normally, I would have folded without hesitation. But it was not a normal situation. The reason that particular tournament is called Bounty Hunter is that there are ten bots in addition to the regular players. Each of those bots has a number attached to its name, and the number corresponds to the amount of bonus points awarded to the player who wins the bot’s last hand. The bot had to lose eventually because all it did was check and fold so it shouldn’t have won any hands. When the bot worth 400 points was at my table and all in I had to go for it no matter what my cards were. 400 is a lot of points.
Alas, it was not to be. Someone who isn’t me ended up with four tens, but at least that person had less chips than me before the hand started so I got some of my chips back. I didn’t have much left, but still a little more than the 300 point bot when it was all in. I had the queen and ten of clubs, which at least was a decent hand. I was all in along with several others, but a ten on the river gave me the hand and a three hundred point bounty.
I didn’t make the top 40 of the actual tournament, but the 300 points made it completely worth it. Each point is worth a penny, and if you start with nothing like me that is plenty. I just need to be smart and not squander my winnings again along with time that might be better spent doing something unrelated to poker or at least updating this blog.
Readers, if you’re out there, would you have acted differently that I did? If so, or if not, I’d like to know why.
