Trap Gone Bad

When playing multitable tournaments, one can only play conservative for so long before the size of the blinds kills them. So what happens to a conservative player if he is getting no cards as the blinds are rising? Normally he is forced to gamble with hands that are lesser then he normally likes to play. For me, I look to set traps.

I am a conservative player by todays standards. However, if I get a starting hand I like I try to play it aggressively. I will raise almost regardless of position and like continuation bets. So today while playing in the blogger poker tour, I am playing my standard game when I notice that the guy a couple seats to my left is looking to play lots of pots and is trying to steal them when he sees weakness. I hadn't been doing much in the tournament. So far I was just missing flops and watching over cards hit when I have low pocket pairs. I decide to set this guy up for a trap. Every now and then I would raise to get it heads up between me and him, do a weak continuation bet on the flop and then fold when he sees the weakness. Basically give a little bit of my chips away every now and then to set him up for a big payday later. This probably happened 4 times.

Pocket aces! All my work pays off. I do my standard preflop raise and the guy calls. The flop is jack high. I bet slightly more then I usually would because I want him to reraise more. He reraises me almost all in. Perfect. I go the rest of the way in and he calls w/ top pair. J-10. Got him. I'm back in business. Turn hits. It's a miss. Poker.com shows that he has only about a 10% chance of winning now. But the poker gods still hate me and a 3rd jack hits on the river. The guy starts talking shit. I just shake my head and close the screen.

So what's the moral of this story if I went broke? I got a guy to put me all in when he was a significant underdog. I didn't need a lot of good cards to do it. Just one good hand. So if you are a conservative player, you can use continuation bets and some set up play when you miss the flop to set up an aggressive player for a big payday later on. You don't have to play aggressive in early stages of tournaments to get large stacks of chips. Just look for a Gus Hansen wannabe and let him give you his.