pot odds
Took second in a home tournament tonight (always with the rebuy tournaments that I don’t rebuy into: with a ton of extra entries, somehow I manage to keep my cool). There was a hand that I’m pretty proud of:
We’re at 500/1000 blinds, and I’m big blind. Button pushes all-in for 1050, and small blind reraises all-in for 500 more. These are the smallest stacks at the table, and I’m well ahead of them (although first place has me well covered, he’s folded). I don’t need to play the hand, unless I think I have something that plays well in a three-way pot. And then I look down at… 7d 4d.
Gorgeous. Live cards. Getting 8-1 on my 500, I am jumping to get money in.
Small blind shows me AKo and says "I have a bad feeling about this."
Button confirms his worst suspicions: AA. One of them is the diamond, so I need three of those and not four. And the board comes made to order: two diamonds on the flop, one on the turn, none on the river, and I’m set. (Oddly enough, since the small blind started the hand with more money, his third-place AK got him paid, the AA went out in fourth.)
How could I be so confident? Sure, AA had me a little nervous when I saw it (I’d be 32% against AKo and AQs, and I was only 21% against AKo and AA), but I’m having a hard time concocting a situation in Poker Stove where I don’t have the odds to call all-in. I knew it was right, I did it, and it paid.