Jonathan Little Gets Into a Preflop Raising War with Jack Salter
Today I have another hand from the $5,000 buy-in six-handed no-limit hold'em event from last summer's World Series of Poker, one involving an interesting preflop situation that arose between myself and Jack Salter.
The blinds were 1,000/2,000 with a 300 ante, and things began with a player in the hijack seat opening for 4,200. Next to act in the cutoff was Salter, a very accomplished pro from London currently with more than $6.6 million in live tournament earnings. With about 180,000 to start, Salter three-bet to 9,200 and it folded to me in the small blind.
I had about 120,000 to begin the hand and I looked down to see I'd been dealt A♠K♦. In the video below I talk about my options, including how versus a couple of very tight players I could even think about not getting involved with ace-king offsuit in this situation.
That wasn't the case here, though, as the original raiser was a confident player and Salter will play a loose-aggressive style. I chose to four-bet to 29,000.
The big blind and original raiser folded, then Salter five-bet to 59,000. With about 90,000 behind, I had only two options left — fold or go all in. Would you play for all your money here or take the passive route of folding?
Take a look to see what I did, and listen afterwards to hear how I break down both my play and Salter's:
Jonathan Little is a professional poker player and author with over $6,500,000 in live tournament earnings. He writes a weekly educational blog and hosts a podcast at JonathanLittlePoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanLittle.
