[2022 update: For the record, everything in this blog post I was wrong about, and I find reasons to do all of these "trends" now. Yikes...]
I understand some of the logic behind it, but it doesn't all add up IMO. I think you give your opponents way too good of pot odds to try to outflop ya. You have to be a master post-flop player in order to get away w/ it profitably, and I just don't see that many great post-flop players who are the ones using it.
Another trend that just kills me every time I see it is the alllllllmost all in preflop raise. Someone will have 15bb and ship like 14.5bb in. The only explanation I can see for that is to leave themselves some chat equity. But no one ever chats after doing it! I'm just dying for the day I see someone do that and get disconnected. That would just make my day!
Another trend that came and feels like it's almost gone now is the squeeze play. Someone raises, another player calls, and the "squeezer" 3bets, making a very difficult decision for the first 2 players. The original raiser is now "squeezed" between the cold-caller and the 3-bettor, and the cold-caller may not be that strong to only cold-call in the first place and has to worry about the 3-bettor. Of course now everyone is cold-calling w/ monster hands so the squeeze play is finally starting to die off.
I very rarely use the squeeze play unless I have a pretty good hand. But today in the Warm-Up the stars kinda aligned perfectly and an opportunity presented itself for the squeeze play that I felt was pretty optimal.
I'm in the big blind w/ 18bb and JTo. The hijack, w/ 53bb, raised it 2.4x. The button, w/ 65bb calls, the SB, w/ 50bb, thinks for a bit and calls. I ship it in pretty quickly. The first 2 players snap fold and the SB calls fairly quickly.
Now I almost never squeeze without a pretty big hand but I felt this was a decent spot to squeeze for a few reasons:
*Everyone had about 50bb+, which means they have to have a really good hand to continue with it against the other 2 big stacked players in the pot, besides me.
*We were near the money and most players w/ my size stack just fold, fold, fold. So my hand looked really strong.
*I didn't look like I had a lot of fold equity in that spot against 3 players, which made my hand look even stronger.
*The original raiser could've been playing the bubble and raising w/ many marginal hands.
I was a lil concerned when the SB called so quickly, but it turned out I was in a pretty good spot. He had 88, which made me almost an exact coinflip. Unfortunately the stars didn't align for me quite as well as they did for him and he won the flip and went on to win the tournament for $120,195. But had I won it, I would've gone from 18bb to 43bb, which would've allowed me to play "my game" again.
Peace sign,
-fingaz
(Original share price: $40; Final share price: $23.88)
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