Second-Last Hand – You Are BR2 And First To Act – Three Left In Contention

In a tournament I played recently I was first to act on the second-last hand, meaning I would be last to act on the final hand. One advanced from this table. There were three of us still in serious contention, though there were two more players remaining between BR1 and BR3 who still had some chips.

Bet limits 100 – 10,000. BJ’s pay 3:2. No surrender. Bets in increments of 25 but the lowest chip is 25 (BJ’s pay 1:1 on an extra 25 chip.)

=>Me: Bankroll 29,250, bet ?
BR1: Bankroll 33,500
BR3: Bankroll 26,900

BR1 and BR3 had both been playing a reasonably skilled game. BR1 sitting directly to my left had been roughly correlating my bets the last three or so hands. BR3 had just won a maximum bet the previous hand in order to get back into it. He had been managing his bankroll pretty effectively throughout the round.

I thought, and thought, and thought…

What would you bet, and why?

 

I considered all these things. I figured BR1 would correlate my bet no matter what. So in all likelihood I would be BR2 on the last hand. I figured BR3 might bet contrarian to BR1's and my bet if I bet too big or small. Assuming BR1 would correlate me, my goal for the last hand was to be BR2 acting last and down by less than half a max bet. What I wanted to avoid was being behind either player by more than half a max bet on the last hand. Another thing I thought about was that it's been my experience that it's best if you attack BR1. I wanted to bet more than BR1's lead over me.

I finally decided to bet 5000. This made it impossible for BR3 to make a contrarian bet that could get me more than half a max bet behind him, if we got the same result. If he bet the max and lost, I would be more than half a max bet ahead of him on the last hand. It was possible for BR1 to respond with a bet that could get him more than half a bet over me if we had the same result, but there was no bet I could make that could prevent that. It also occurred to me that this was the best way to push BR3 into risking his tournament life with a max bet on this second-last hand. He had to beat both BR1 and me. If I could attack BR1's lead while at the same time holding him to making some kind of medium bet, this would be the best way to force BR3 to take that risk.

Finally, I started thinking in generalities. There were so many different possibilities of opponents' responses multiplied by actual results of each that it was too much for a monkey to think about at the tournament table. I didn't want to get bogged down in minutiae. I remember consciously stopping myself from pondering this any more because I was wasting time and risking making a stupid mistake by trying to be too smart. I was in the position I wanted to be in on the last hand, and it just seemed like half a max bet had the best chance of not having my position change. And if it did change, a change to my benefit was equally as likely as a change to my detriment.

 

=>Me: Bankroll 29,250, bet 5000 cards BJ, action stand
BR1: Bankroll 33,500, bet 3700 cards stiff, action hit and bust (or 17, I don't remember for sure)
BR3: Bankroll 26,900, bet 10,000 cards hard 13, action double 10,000 and total 20
Dealer upcard 10, hole card 8

I was now BR2 but down by slightly more than a max bet.

Everybody bet the max on the last hand. I didn't get a pair to split. I had to play for a win-loss swing. But the new BR1 hit a stiff for a total of 21 and I was done before I had a chance to play my hand. Stick a fork in me.

Anyone want to comment on the thought process that led to my bet of 5000?