You might have read Marty Smyth’s recent blog from the 888.com UK Poker Open. I also played this event in the Boylepoker.com colours and while I didn’t win the $250k first prize on offer, I did manage to make the semi-final and scrape back a few dollars!

This event will be shown on Sky Sports in a few months time, so I won’t spoil the action too much, but I did come up against one very unorthodox play that is worth writing about.

We were three-handed in the heat, with the winner going straight through to the semi final and the runner up going into a “Turbo Semi” where he would face six other runners-up for the last seat in the semi. So while there was a small incentive to finish second, it didn’t really affect my play and shouldn’t have affected anyone else’s in my opinion.

Surinder Sunar was the short stack on the button, with 80K in chips and blinds of 5K-10K, and he open-raised the pot to 30K.

I looked down at AQ in the small blind and (fairly obviously) raised all-in. I had the big blind well covered and felt that he would need to find an absolute monster to come into the pot. I didn’t see any reason to complicate matters by flat-calling and seeing a flop out of position when I’m going to fail to pair up 2/3 of the time.

When the big blind quickly passed, I assumed that Surinder would just as quickly call and we could turn our hands over. To my surprise though, he went into the tank and eventually folded, despite only having to call 50K to win 120K more. I found out later that he was holding KT.

Now, Surinder is a very experienced player who has won a hell of a lot of money over the years. Let me put it this way. If you’re Surinder Sunar, with 20 years experience and $3.5 million+ in tournament winnings, then maybe you can pass this, although if you’re a database freak, it’s worth pointing out that Roland de Wolfe ($4 million in tournament winnings) said in the commentary box that he “had to call”. If you don’t have these credentials, you can’t. Trying to play poker when you have eight big blinds in front of you is a big mistake that a lot of inexperienced players make.

When a player makes a single pre-flop raise (or reraise) I can’t magically read his soul and decide whether he has a pair or two big cards, nor can the TV superstars and most importantly nor can you. In Surinder’s position, you should just move your chips in (all of them as the first raise) and hope for the best.

In the event, you/Surinder would have played a 170K pot as an underdog. Instead, Surinder actually played the next hand as an underdog with no chance of his opponent folding, in a 100K pot. Don’t try to be clever with a small stack - you’ll often end up tricking yourself!

Andy Ward