I recently participated in a deep stack 11-player single table sit and go poker tournament. Some friends and I got together and created a satellite for a nearby casino’s main event tournament. The Main event is a $1,000 buy-in, which none of us could afford to buy in to. The winner of the satellite would go to the tournament, and second place would get their money back.

We started with 10,000 in chips and the blinds started at 25/50. That is a starting stack of 200 times the big blind.

I played reasonably tight in these early stages and was able to take down some nice multi-way limped pots. I had personally played with about half of the table in previous tournaments, so I had some idea of what my opponents were capable of. So, I accrued maybe an extra 1500 chips by playing like this, but then I got into a hand where history played a role in my decision making against an opponent. This opponent made a preflop raise, of about 3 times the BB. He is likely to do this with a variety of hands, and from past history, tends to do this a lot more as the tournament ticks on, probably as a result of boredom. In this instance I called with QJ off suit, and so did another later position opponent. The flop was Ace high and unconnected for straights or flushes. We both checked. The turn came a queen which gave the board two spades. The initial raiser led out for a bet of about the pot and I called; the other player folded. The river came out a small spade and the initial raiser checked. I bet just under the size of the pot and he raised me 2x that bet.

I didn’t put him on an ace, because of his hesitance to bet on the flop and because of my prior knowledge of his opening hands. I didn’t like the fact that there were 3 spades, but it did come runner, runner spades. I called and he had Ks10s for the nut flush. He missed the flop completely, I missed my opportunity to bet him off the hand, and when he picked up his flush draw on the turn, he started betting again. Once he made his hand, he slowed down to play it coy and check-raise me.

So, I was right the whole time, but my mistake was in not trying to take the pot away from him. Instead I tried to play cautiously, which ended up costing me money. I lost about 2400 poker chips in that hand, bringing me down to about 9k in chips, not changing my bottom line very much; still plenty to work with at this stage of the sit and go. I also think it wasn’t all that bad of a display to the table, showing that I might call down large poker bets.