Big pairs in dry pots

[manub]

Hello all,

I witnessed a situaiton that came up at WPT Paris last week and I would like to get a few additional opinions on the following hand.

It's still early in the tournament, on day one. You have close to your 15K starting chips. Blinds are 100-200. It's a very tough table with Rob Hollink and Phil Helmuth to your right.

An aggressive, tricky player with a 14K chip stack limps in from UTG+2. The short-stacked button, a local high stakes cash game player (loose and rather fishy in tournament play), goes all in for 800.

You are in the small blind for 100 and pick up KK. Your image is one of a respected, solid, math-driven professional player. Phil Helmuth is in the BB to your right with a 25K chip stack.

What do you do? Do you reraise or just call? Why? As a general rule, do you tend to reraise to isolate a shortstack who is all in or just call with a big pair?

(This hand has been discussed at length on clubpoker.net but we'd like to have additional opinions from the 2+2 experts).

Thanks!
manub

[ZootMurph]

I personally just call here. That small pot is nice, but I'd really like to work up a side pot with Hellmuth and the tricky player.

Early in a tournament, I'm looking to build up my stack. When I get a hand like KK, I want to try to get as much as I can out of it. Here, a reraise is going to push out everyone and you aren't going to get much for your trouble. That 800 bet might push out Hellmuth or the tricky one anyway. Better, one of the other two might be happy to try to get heads up with the short stack and kindly reraise for you. Then you have a big pot and can make a substantial raise. I think this is the perfect spot to possibly score a large pot.

[Foucault]

I think this is a perfect spot for a re-raise. Any time you have a big pair the trick is to get more money in the pot without announcing the strength of your hand. Here you have that opportunity, since your raise could easily be interpreted as an isolation play against the guy who's probably moving in with a fairly wide range. Tricky players love to interpret everyone else's play as tricky too, so he may even limp-raise you thinking you are just isolating! Regardless, I think you can min-re-raise to 1400 here, as this is still offering 2:1 odds to Phil and the limper and allows you to get about 10% of your stack in now, so you won't have to worry too much about the reverse implied odds you are giving.

Another consideration is that if you don't raise you'll be playing a dry sidepot after the flop, which may make it harder for you to get action from worse hands. Building a sidepot now means there will be something for worse hands to fight over after the flop.

[manub]

It's interesting that I got two responses that explore both sides of the argument... looks like there's no perfect play here. I would myself tend to think for a good while and then reraise. That might induce some of my opponents to try to take the pot away from me with a larger reraise, thinking I'm using hte isolation play.

In the actual hand the player (Michel Abecassis) just called. Helmuth folded, the tricky limper reraised all in ( a big mistake here imo) with AQs and was instantly called by Michel with KK - and the short stack had A2o. So I can see the good side of just calling too.

An ace fell on the turn though... [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]