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Hero Fold Late in Satellite
50 of us left in a Main Event Satellite. 30 winning seats. blinds 1k/2k/2k. We are in the BB with 35,500. An 80-yr-old big mouth maniac with about 75k in MP open limps, a thing he had been doing alot. He was VPIP about 40. His habit is to use overbets. The SB, who I cover by a small amount, routinely limps every SB and limped here. I look down at JdTd. Not wanting to play speculatively OOP with 18bb, and no blockers, I checked my option. I did not want to jam this hand into two players either.
Flop comes QcJsTh. SB ck. Since this was a limped pot, and since it was so connected and I had a strong but vulnerable hand, I opted to go big and led out for 5k. Old maniac snap calls. SB fold. I did not like that snap call of this big bet. V could have QJ, QT, or any 98. He could also have a high Q or J. I didn’t put him on a set or AK because he would have raised pre. I decided to go into realization mode, planning to check-call any reasonable bet.
The turn was a 5 brick. I checked, V checked back.
The river was 2 brick. Now I thought I might be ahead. I bet 5k, and V snap-jammed. I took a look at V for a few breaths to see how he was breathing, and it was fairly hard. Then I went into the tank. I remembered two old saws, heuristics if you will.
1. They don’t bluff enough on rivers. Even though this guy was playing like a bully, I doubted he would risk half his stack on a big bluff, with his solid position in this satellite.
2. Never go broke in a limped pot. He had quite a few combos beating me that he could’ve limped in with. His check back on the turn could be designed to induce action on the river. With this effective stack size it’s conceivable he could be taking a street off, under-repping his hand and inducing action on the river. My big lead on the flop told him I had something. Yet he snap-jammed anyway.
If I fold here I’ll still have about 13bb, enough to use the resteal short-stack weapon.
I took another look at V and his breathing had slowed down from when I last checked it.
Given the two rules above plus the fact that his breathing had slowed and that I wouldn’t be badly crippled, I reluctantly folded.
Was this a good hero fold?
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