This is sort of a brag post that I probably would not be posting if I had not been mildly berated at the table for doing it. That being said if brags don’t appeal to you then this post may be tl;dr.
So, earlier today I entered the Asian Million tournament for 15K. We ended up with 93 runners in the tournament in total. Not sure how many we had when this happened as late reg was still open. Sometime during level 1 of play (10/20 with a 2500 starting stack) I received a call that was taking me away from the tournament for a personal reason. Not an emergency but something I had to take care of. Now if this happens I would normally just blind off. Some players will shove all in pre with ATC (any two cards) to get off their chips. This makes no sense to me and can give someone lucky enough to have a premium at that exact right moment an unfair advantage over not only the rest of the table but the field in general and does not have the all in players interest at heart as they are leaving.
On to the thing. I shove all in pre flop from UTG or UTG1 with 9s7h off of 2150 roughly into a pot of 30 with blinds at 10/20. I did get one caller from an 1800 stack who held AcQc. I spiked a 9 OTT (on the turn) and AQs went unimproved to the river giving me almost a full double up and busting my opponent. I did not announce to the table that I would be shoving ATC, but that was my intention. After the hand was over I was basically called stupid without provocation by a player who I have only known to be a nice person and has been on Replay for 5+ years, though we don’t have a ton history because I haven’t generally played many tournaments and this player plays them almost if not exclusively. I was not asked what my reasoning was and I don’t think this player cared to know.
Now my reasoning. As I stated earlier I would normally just blind out in this situation. The thing that made my decision to go the other way is that I knew I would have the issue taking me away from the game taken care of in a matter of 45 minutes to an hour. This tournament has a very slow structure with levels of 10 minutes pre and starting at 10/20, 15/30, 20/40, 30/60, 50/100 and 100/200 I believe (without going to check exactly.) I felt like if I doubled up there was a good chance that I could get back with some play left. I did get back with approximately 5 bb’s left in the first level after break. 200/400 and I had 2040 or something close to that. Now, while my position (31 out of 34 remaining) was not strong, this tournament paid out 15 spots, I did still have some equity in the tournament that would have been relinquished had I just blinded out my sub starting stack and I needed that double up to retain it.
Results, and I’m not results oriented. This post is mainly about understanding someone’s reasoning for what they’re doing before going after them in a negative way and in some part equity retention and making +EV decisions no matter how big or small the edge is and it’s importance in being a winning player. I was able to get through a couple of steals and then got a double up and was up to 20 bb’s before long and was able to parlay that into a 2:1 chip lead HU (heads up) for the tournament title. I ended up 2nd vs a very capable and good opponent and a slightly bad run of cards HU. I took a prize of 389,363 chips or 374,363 profit after my buy-in of 15K is deducted.
I love to talk strategy as I find it the absolute best form of study and path to getting better.
If you actually read all of this and are now here on this sentence, thank you very much for your time and please leave a comment so I know who took the time. GLATT (good luck at the tables.)