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Beat The Bully

Have You Got What It Takes To Beat The SCB Bully?

Game 02

The Set Up

Game:	No Limit Texas Hold Em £50 Freezeout Tournament
Blinds:	150 / 300
Your Seating Position:	On the Big Blind
Your chip stack:	2800
Your hole cards:

The Action

Its a 30 seat freezeout tournament. There are twelve players left and the game is broken down into two tables of six.

The big stack is being the bully at the table and every time it is your big blind, he raises it up. The cards you are dealt just aren't good enough to call with.

Your chip stack is down to an ugly 2,800 with 150/300 blinds. It's come round to your big blind again and no suprise you get raised once again.

You look down to see Td Kc. Your chip stack can not afford to just call, so what do you do?

The Choice

Two opions now remain. What do you do? Play the movie of your choice to see the outcome and review the decision below.

Fold
Re-Raise all in

The SCB Bully says:

King-Ten off suit is no where near a premium hand, however what you need to remember here is that you are playing at a six-handed table. When there are fewer players at the table the value of your hands increase.

For the last two big blinds in a row, the bully has been allowed to steal your blinds and so you are emulating a passive table image. It is possible that the bully sees you as an easy target who is willing to give up thier big blind.

You should use the early stages of the tournament to strongly defend your blinds while they are cheap to show that you won't be pushed around at later stages of the tournament.

Although on the face of it, this looks like a marginal decision, KTu is just as strong as 66, 55 and ATu. In this situation the correct move is to push. Shame about the outcome, but thats poker!

Game 01

The Set Up

Game:	No Limit Texas Hold Em.
Blinds:	$100 / $200
Your Seating Position:	Under the gun
Your chip stack:	$6000
Your hole cards:

The Action

You are down to the final 10 of a 30 seater tournament. Top 5 places get paid.

You are first to act under the gun in this hand, you look down and see pocket tens and decide to crank it up to make it a total of $1000 to play.

Everyone folds round to the button. The button thinks a little then re-raises you a further $2000 making it a total of $3000 to go.

The SB and BB fold it round to you. A call here is simply not an option, you are either all in or all out.

The Choice

Two opions now remain. What do you do? Play the movie of your choice to see the outcome and review the decision below.

Fold
Raise all in

The SCB Bully says:

The correct thing to do here is to re-raise all in. The odds of being dealt any pocket pair is 16:1 and the fact that you have 10s puts you in a commanding position. The bully is right here to put a question to you and your stack - but that is all he is doing. Even if he does have a decent hand like AKu you are still 57% to win. By firing back a re-raise to the bully you are now asking him a question of how good his cards are. Even though all in is not an informational raise, if you do get called chances are you are in with a shout of doubling up and if you are going to make the final five now is the time to get some chips.