Poor ‘hikog’ on Pokerstars the other day. This guy was unlucky to face the slowplay of the century by yours truly when playing a tournament. Imagine this: on the river there’s a pot of 75 chips in the middle and after the action I end up winning a 2 505 chips pot.  I’ll show you how this happened and another tounament phenomenon: getting a ‘shortie’ off a hand.

So first things first. I’m playing all kind of tournaments the past few days and for some reason I tend to be lucky with T9, so why not play it another time in early position and with the blinds still being low?

Oh yeah, I flop top two AGAIN with my new favorite hand. Problem is: my opponent doesn’t show much interest in this hand at the first sight. I check behind two times till he hits the straight and THEN: chips explosion! If I would have betted the flop and/or turn he would prolly have folded with the paired board but he obviously gave me no credit for a full house.

The second hand then: a typical thing in tournament poker is bullying the shortstacks. That’s exactly what my opponent tries to do in the next hand:

This is of course a reasonable play: he just wants to rob my blind and knows he’s not dead with J3 if I call. I know he’s doing this, so I call with my Ace and luckily for me the Ace comes on the river. So remember: being a short stack is certainly not always a disadvantage in tournament poker, it gives you a lot of opportunities to double up when other players try to bully you. Till next time!