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In tournaments, you should always be looking for ways to pick up
chips. You can’t just sit
around waiting for Aces or
Kings and hope to double up
when you do. One of the best
and most popular ways for
adding chips to your stack is
by implementing what’s known
as the squeeze play.
A typical squeeze play works like this: an active and aggressive
player raises in late
position, and he’s called by
another player on the button.
You’re in the blinds and you
have to decide what to do.
There’s no real indication yet that anyone has a particularly
strong hand. The aggressive
player could be raising with a
wide range of hands, and the
call from the button could
mean a lot of things. He may
have a medium strength hand,
or he may be pretty weak and
just looking to play post-flop
with favorable position.
At
this point, a big re-raise
from the blinds effectively squeezes the
original raiser who is between
you and the player on the
button. Your aggressive
re-raise gives you a great
chance of taking down the pot
right there.
It used to be that good players used the squeeze play
occasionally. It was just one of the many tools they used from time to time.
But recently, the squeeze play
has become extremely popular.
Sometimes it seems that pretty
much any time there’s a
raise and a call, there’s a
player in the blinds looking
to squeeze.
I prefer to be a little more selective when initiating a squeeze.
I like to have a hand that can
hit a flop if I run into a
decent hand and get called. In
my experience, suited
connectors are good hands to
squeeze with.
I think the squeeze is most effective when you have a tight table
image. When you’ve been
playing actively and
aggressively the other players
at the table are less likely
to give you credit for a big
hand and will call you down.
You can try the squeeze in ring games, but it’s really most
effective in tournaments. When
players have to fear for their
tournament lives, they’re
far more likely to fold in
marginal situations.
If you haven’t been using the squeeze play, you should try working it
into your tournament game.
Start out by squeezing
selectively and wait for
opportunities where the
players, cards and your table
image give you the best chance
of winning the pot.
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