Played a bunch of on-line last night, and learned a few lessons the hard way.
#1 At a cheap thousand-plus player tourney, I was 90 minutes into the tourney and found myself at a table where one player was going all-in at least every third hand, either pre-flop or at the flop. I had watched this for 15 hands or so, waiting for something, and I catch 66 UTG. Rather than raise, I limp, hoping to trap the allinner into putting me into a coin flip.
There are four or five limpers before we get to allinner on the button, who does in fact go all-in. I put my stack on the line, expecting a coin flip or better, but instead I find pocket Aces.
Lesson: If this player lasted 90 minutes, probably not as nutty as they make themselves appear, but was making all-in plays based on position, and getting a feel for who was tight enough to fold at the table. When the allinner threw his chips against four limpers with the blinds yet to act, I might have had a clue that this player actually had something.
Result: Aces hold, for a change. I was #470, with players getting their money back starting at #460.
#2: At a 45 player tourney, I was at one of the two final tables, and I had just seen a player raise to all-in from the SB with J8os, and make a few other all-ins that nobody called. I was fairly new to that table at this point.
Same player makes a 3BB raise UTG into a table of 7, and I do a big blind defense of all-in, even though I could have simply surrendered my blind, as my holdings were pretty weak.
Player calls with AQs, and not only does he have higher cards, he's suited the same as me, so I no longer even have a flush draw.
Lesson: It's certainly safer to take a UTG raise seriously after the first few levels of an on-line tourney, no matter what sort of cards you've seen the player in question try to steal with in late position.
D'oh!
After failing to place in these two, I play a turbo sit'n'go to at least make a tiny profit for the evening. Making the final four was pretty easy, but it took me a while to get past one tight/tricky player, and two rocks. I laid down quite a few middle and bottom pairs when the rocks asserted they had better.
