Why do people click it back rather than push in tournaments?
I was watching WSOP bracelet event videos, and someone would reraise for 1/3 of effective stacks and someone else would click it back. It doesn't make much sense to bluff at that point. If you have QQ, you probably would rather get a fold than a call, as an overcard or pp has outs and there are ICM issues for not gambling. You don't really want your click it back to be flat called. So why not shove at that point?
3 Replies
I agree this is a raise-fold situation. Too many in tournaments don’t understand stack size implications and/or are playing scared. There’s a lot of cautious players that land in the money, but will never win.
From our view, if villain clicks it back, we should strongly consider shoving the next street and make him go away.
I’m trying to learn & improve my tournament game, because it’s almost always a softer field than the cash games I play. But I find it harder to read my opponents in most cases. A busted read hurts me little playing cash, but in a tournament it sends me to the parking lot.
I understand what they are doing with clicking it back, so that it might be a bluff. That type of play went on even more about 15 years ago when they would bluff back at each other. However, once it gets to a certain percentage of the stack, it would seem better to just shove. I see people clicking it back to make it about half of stacks.
To my understanding, the theoretical reason to raise small is that in tournaments, increasing your chances of being called for a small amount is worth more than shoving and getting called less often, because not all chips are worth the same and the immediate value of accumulating chips is higher. But I don’t play tournaments so this is just an educated guess.
