How Not To Play The Bubble In a SNG

I just committed possibly the worst mistake one could make in a single table SNG (or for that matter any) tournament.

Four players left, top three pay, we’re in the bubble. Blinds are 150/300, I’m in the SB with around 2.5K in chips, the BB to my left has only 450 in chips and will be forced all in by the SB if he doesn’t win this hand.

A player to my left, who has around 3K in chips makes it 1500 to go, I look down at:

:Tc::Ts:

A nice hand four handed. I think about the read I have on this player, he’s been aggressive the whole tournament and has 4X raised with pretty much any high cards. What I do not think about (until a millisecond too late) is that I do not have to play this hand, if I fold it I’m almost guaranteed to get in the money. So guess what? Before I can even think I re-raise (which puts me all-in), the short stack folds and my opponent turns over:

:Kh::Kd:

I don’t improve, head out in fourth and Mr 150 chips gets knocked out by the small blind the next hand in third place and takes home twice his buy-in.

Moral of the story is think about the war, not the battle. Modify tactics based on the strategy and all that. I KNOW THIS! The real question is:

How could I be so stupid?

NOTE: This is not a rhetorical question, I need to know! Surely someone out there knows?

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 27th, 2006 at 11:02 pm and is filed under Poker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.