By Tony Dunst
I recently arrived home from WPT Montreal, where I was fortunate to make a three-way chop in the CAD $5,000 High Roller that preceded the main event. I had a relatively quiet Day 1 in the event, and was lucky to survive after a three-way all-in where I was about 5 percent to survive the hand. That pot gave me enough chips to make a run, and late on Day 2, we approached the money.
It was during that stage of the tournament that I played a hand we’ll take a closer look at.
I believe we were four or five players off the money, and everyone in the hand was well above average. I was a little over 300,000 in chips at 1,500-3,000 blinds; the hijack and UTG player both covered me, and the big blind was sitting on 200,000. Both the UTG player and big blind were recreational players, while the hijack was a regular who recently made a WPT final table. He was playing aggressive but not psychotic, and I wasn’t sure how conscious he was of the bubble because we’d never played together before.
The UTG opened the action to 7,000 and the hijack called. I called with 
on the cutoff, and the big blind called.
The flop came 
and after the big blind checked, the UTG player bet 10,000. The hijack then raised to 32,000 and I had my first decision.
If we weren’t on the bubble, I’d simply three-bet the flop and be content to get the money in. However, I think the hijack’s raising range is mostly made up of big combo draws, pocket nines, four combos of queen-nine suited, and the occasional ace-queen. I think he’d fold every worse hand than mine if I three-bet the flop (except maybe queen-nine) and based on the way he was playing, likely jam with big combo draws like 
and 
.
Again, if we weren’t on the bubble, getting the money in against that range would be fine. But because we were on the bubble, the prospect of getting 100 blinds in with a ~50 percent chance of elimination wasn’t an option, despite having flopped a monster hand.
I decided to call, with the intention of going all-in on safe turn cards. To my surprise, the big-blind also called, then the UTG player called as well! The hijack was giggling as everyone called, and seemed happy to get the action. I kept my poker face on, but having never seen that kind of action on the bubble before, I nearly broke into laughter too.
The turn brought the 
, completing jack-ten. Both the big-blind and UTG checked, and the hijack bet 120,000. While it pained me to do so, I decided to fold because the hijack could already have me, and either the big blind or UTG could have jack-ten too. It’s frustrating to know that the hijack could still have a number of club combos that I was ahead of, but with two players behind there was too much risk someone having the straight. So I tossed my cards in the muck, and was annoyed to see the big blind and UTG player do the same.
The saying goes that if you make a big fold, you should never tell anyone about it. I guess I broke that rule here, so I’m hoping the hijack never sees this article.
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