Related to our post yesterday, you can see an example of a resteal attempt gone wrong @ the final table of the 2007 WSOP. This hand featured a battle in the blinds with SB – Jerry Yang and BB-Lee Watkinson:
Yang raised to 1.5mil with A/9o. He had been the most active player at the table by far, and had a dominating chip lead. Watkinson with A/7o decided he wasn’t going to get run over by the chip leader and thought this was a good spot to steal so he reraised allin for about 8.5mil more.
Under the discussion of restealing from yesterday a good point was made about attempting resteals against very large/very small stacks as they have a higher likelihood of calling because ‘they can/need to gamble’. While Watkinson had enough chips (approx 6x reraise) to justify a Yang fold, Yang was the chip leader, and up to that point had shown very little tendancy to fold once he initiated a hand. While Watkinson could have had the best hand in this spot, he was also holding a very marginal A, in which a large range of hands is beating him.
Clearly, he did not want a call there (hence, it was a resteal attempt), but it was also a semi-bluff type situation in that if he was called there was a chance he’d have a good shot at doubling up. It was an interesting hand and it certainly could have gone either way. Most players probably would have laid down the A/9 but Yang was not most players. In hindsight he could have looked for a better spot/player to double through but it was a good hand nonetheless. GG Lee.
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