When playing poker nearly every day during the WSOP for five weeks straight, it can oftentimes become very easy to autopilot your decisions. After all, we’ve all played countless hands of poker and have often encountered the same situations numerous times. However, once in a while, you can still run into unique situations that you have never seen before that can leave you scratching your head. Last week, I was faced with one of these situations.

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I had busted the WSOP event of the day already and was not in the mood to play another long MTT, so I decided to play some sit and gos. For those who do not know, the WSOP offers 10-person sit and go tournaments ranging in buy-in from $125 to $1,060 and, once in a while, they even get some $5,000 sit and gos going. These tournaments are always winner-take-all; however, they are usually chopped two- or three-handed, so they tend to play fairly similarly to normal online sit and gos.

Quite commonly during these tournaments, players will have last-longer bets. In these, a few players put some money in and the last of these players remaining wins that money. Almost always during a sit and go, you will get a table last-longer with anywhere from three or four all the way up to all 10 people involved. These last-longers help make the prize pools bigger and everyone usually enjoys them.

A second type of last-longer that is common is a heads-up last-longer. This is simply you versus your opponent; whoever outlasts the other person wins the money. Again, these are very fun and also a very easy way to offset the cost of entering the sit and gos if you are smart enough to outlast your opponent.

So, I sit down at a $525 sit and go. The table is friendly and we get nine people involved in a $300 last-longer, so the prize pool is already looking quite large, when someone asks if anyone wants to do a heads-up last-longer. I oblige and we settle on $500. I recognize this player and know he likes to gamble a lot, so I already like my odds for this bet.

We’re only four hands into the tournament and my heads-up last-longer opponent is already down to 1,100 from the 2,000-chip starting stack while I have yet to play a hand. I’m first to act, look down at Ac-As, and raise to 75 (blinds are still 25/25). I get one caller in middle position and the big blind calls as well.

The flop comes A-9-3 rainbow, the big blind and I both check, and the player in middle position bets 150. The big blind quickly calls, as do I. The turn is a 6, the big blind again checks, and I bet 375. The player in middle position folds and the big blind again calls rather quickly. The river is a 2, completing the board as A-9-3-6-2 rainbow. The big blind instantly grabs some chips and throws out 600. Now, at this point, there’s only one hand that beats us: 5-4.

If this were a regular tournament, I would pretty quickly move all-in, expecting my opponent to still have some combos of sets, two pair, or other random hands. However, there are other factors to think about in this situation like the heads-up last-longer.

Even though I’ve played a few sit and gos this year, I’m still fairly new to dealing with the heads-up last-longers and how they affect your play. It’s pretty obvious that when you have a heads-up bet, you should play tighter than usual because you don’t want to lose. However, how risk-avoidant do I need to be?

If I only call this river bet, I’m left with 700 chips. I’m short, but it’s definitely a manageable amount at only 25/25 blinds. Also, I already know my opponent in the last-longer likes to gamble a lot, so he very easily could, and most likely will, bust before I lose my 700 chips. So, are the extra 700 chips I gain when I shove and get called by worse worth more than the $500 last-longer that I’m probably still a favorite to win with only 700 chips left?

I thought about my decision for longer than usual and elected to play it safe and only call. The big blind turned his hand over and, sure enough, he just had one pair and my top set was miles ahead. I folded the next few hands and, three hands later, my opponent in the heads-up last-longer busted when he open-jammed a flop for three times the pot with only A-high and got called by two pair.

I’ve thought about my A-A hand numerous times and asked several friends what they thought as well. I’ve gotten some pretty varied responses, so I’m still not quite sure what is 100% correct. Either way, it was refreshing and quite interesting to be faced with a situation so new like this and I look forward to playing some other different styles of poker with situations I have not experienced before.

Gags30is a long-time PocketFives member and PocketFives Traininginstructor. He is also available for private coaching and is a lead instructor at PremierPokerCoaching.com.

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