No Point Rule #2

I’ve written about the no-point rule before, showing how it can be successfully applied in situations where there is a high danger of losing a lot of chips even though the player may have the best hand.  Recently, I encountered a situation in which a player pushed her chips in when it would have been best to keep them out of the pot.  I will tell you about this situation so you can see how tragedy can occur when the no-point rule is not followed.

We were playing in a 9 player sit & go, and we were down to four players.  Two players had the majority of the chips, with Player A having around 4000 chips, and Player B having about 5000 chips.  I was in third with approximately 2000, and the fourth place player had close to 1500 chips.  The top 3 paid out, so my goal was to outlast the player in fourth place.  I ended up not having to outlast him because of a hand in which Player B needlessly pushed her chips into the pot.

Player A was sitting to my right, and pushed all 4000 of his chips into the pot.  This was not uncommon for him, as this was his favorite tactic of stealing the blinds.  I folded immediately, and the action was on Player B, sitting to my left.  She pushed all her chips into the pot and called.  Player A revealed A-10, and Player B showed KK.  The flop came A-8-6, giving Player A the lead with a pair of aces.  Player B never improved, and after the hand was down to 800 chips.  Player B did not last much longer, finishing in 4th place.

This is a prime example of when the no-point rule should be applied, but wasn’t.  There wasn’t any point in calling the all-in bet of Player A with any hand, not even AA.  There were two stacks that were significantly weaker, and at least one of them was going out soon, so there was no-point in trying to decide who would take first place at that time.  Player B could very likely have folded her way to a second place finish and good money, but because she got impatient and was dealt an excellent hand, she tried to win the entire game right there.

What Player B should have done was folded here, and used her stack to put pressure on the two smaller ones in the following hands.  This would have netted her a lot of chips, and widened her chip lead over Player A.  Player B had been an excellent player throughout most of the game, and I know she could have easily continued building her stack until entering heads-up play, but impatience killed her.