I played in a well-structured tournament at Foxwoods today; players started with 20,000 in chips, and the levels were 40 minutes long with a nice, gentle progression. I had a good first 3 hours or so; though I never had a hand better than 77, I had managed to slightly increase my stack, and after a few ups and downs, I had a little more than 21,000 in chips when the following hand happened:
The blinds were 100/200, with a 25 ante. I raised to 600 UTG with KK. a tight player folded, then a fairly solid and aggressive played reraised me (very quickly!) to 2,600. All folded back to me. I could have just flat called, but I decided to four-bet to 8,000. My opponent quickly moved all-in for about 20,000 total.
I thought for a minute, and then called -- and sure enough, he had the dreaded AA!
Could i have folded? On the final bet, probably not. Yes, he had acted in a way that suggested great strength, but I was getting around 2.5-1 to make a call there, and it certainly wasn't impossible for him to have QQ or even AK. On the other hand, his quick actions did match similarly quick actions on an earlier hand, when he raised on the flop with two pair. If I ever play with the same opponent again, this could be a reliable tell. Still, this early in a tournament, it would have been tough to allow one previous action to make me certain he could only have aces.
Of course, there are other places in which I could have improved my line too. Maybe, given the suspicious speed of my opponent's three-bet, I could have just flat called there. Or maybe I could have made a smaller four-bet (say, to 6500 or so), and felt less compelled to call by pot odds when my opponent moved all-in.
Sure, chances are that all the money was going in anyway -- after all it's AA vs. KK. But that doesn't mean you can't find places where you might have been able to improve your play even in hands where it wouldn't have ended up changing the ultimate outcome.
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