This is an interesting hand from a supersat on FTP for the 1.5M GTD that I think is pretty standard (From our perspective! No hard decisions!), and it demonstrates why it’s important to think about the sizing of your bets and playing each pot individually, on it’s own merits.

Some history:

There are three players left on the final table. Two players are about even with 80k, one is a short stack with about 6k. Theres only one seat to win, but second pays a little and third doesn’t.

Prior to this hand, we had re-raised our villain pre with ATC three times in a row, and he folded every time. Obviously he’s super exploitable, so we’re going to keep raising him with ATC until he catches on and starts playing back at us. Hopefully by the time he does, we’ll have enough chips to take down the seat!

We’re in the SB with 80k in chips and Ts 4h, villain is on the D with 74k in chips.  Short stack is in the BB with about 6k. Blinds are 800/1600.

Villain opens for 3x the BB and we re-raise him (again!) to 7.5x the BB. The short stack folds, and, surprise surprise, villain calls.

The flop comes down: 4c 4d Qh!

We check, hoping to represent a whiffed AK, and villain obligingly shoves his whole stack in. Since we’re only losing to a better 4 (which is definitely NOT in our opponents PFR range!) or QQ, we accept the donation and call, expecting to see AQ or KQ, or perhaps AA or KK, anything but QQ!

Villain flips over Qc Tc and fails to improve by the river. Two hands later, and we’re winging our way to the next satellite…

Villain shoved nearly 40BB to win a pot of 15.5BB. If he had made a sensible raise of half or two thirds of the pot, he could have easily gotten away from his hand when we shove. Instead, the short stack cashed and we took down an easy heads up battle.

Moral of the story: think before you shove!