Squeeze

The squeeze play is one of the best known tournament plays.  It was responsible for my bubble out loss in Vegas last week, yet it was still the right thing to do, just unfortunate to run into aces.  Whereas I ran my squeeze with a super strong hand, it can also be done with garbage.  The point is putting the original raiser and caller into an uncomfortable situation where the original raiser does not know what the caller will do.  Below is a chart of my play:


SB (me):  KK   2000         chip count 40,000
BB:   unknown  4000        chip count  20,000
UTG:  AA Raise     12000          chip count  80,000
Button: unknown Call     12000         chip count  120,000

When the action came around to me, I re-raised all-in.  Notice that the original raiser is in a particularly bad spot.  The pot size is around 70,000 and he must call almost 30,000 more which is 2/1 on his money.  But, he faces the button who can call for 30,000  giving him a 3/1 odds on his money.  And, most importantly, the button is aggressive and has the big stack.  Nasty spot for him.  The button on the other hand must call the same 30,000, only giving him the 2/1 on his money but he has shown absolutely no strength just calling the original raiser.

Bottom line is that I really like the squeeze play, but attention must be on stack sizes.  If you do not have enough chips to push them off it will not work.  If you are playing against a short stack, it also is a problem as he may be pot committed and will never fold in this situation.  The best situation is the one I was in with two stacks that could really get hurt.