Defending On The Bubble

You're three away from the money in an online tournament and have 25,000 in chips with the blinds at 500/1,000. You are in the big blind and have A-10. It is folded to the small blind who has 55,000 in chips. He raises it a whopping 8 times the big blind. What do you do? For most players, it is a no brainer. They fold, survive to move on to the next hand, and fume a little about that small blind bullying them. The simple truth of the matter is there is a ton of poker articles about attacking the bubble. Almost everyone has read it and the good players apply it to their game. What isn't discussed often is how to defend against these bubble attackers. Learning how to properly defend on the bubble can turn a minimum cash into a big one. The above example happened in a tournament played on PokerStars last night. Many players wouldn't have thought twice about it. However, I got to thinking about it... why would he raise so big? Obviously, he was trying to give the impression that he wasn't going to fold if I moved all in. This made me think his hand was much weaker than it normally might have been. I moved all in and after about three seconds of thought, my opponent folded and I added an easy 8K to my stack. I ended up making it all the way to the final table and one of the reasons was because I was able to not have any fear in this situation. That is the thing about the bubble that makes attacking it so profitable. Fear. People are afraid of busting out and not getting anything back. It's frustrating to play for hours and not get anything back. Players might not even mean to tighten up... they do so involuntarily. The savvy players pay attention to the ones that are looking around (or timing down if you are online) and folding the majority of their hands and raise them liberally. It's tough to play back at someone when you don't have a lot of chips and if you lose you'll not only be out of the tournament, you won't receive a cent for your hard work. However, try and look at it another way. What would you rather do? Cash and make a small profit or take a chance at being eliminated and making a much larger profit? If you let the bubble attackers run you over, unless you get run over by the deck you're going to end up barely making any money. A mathematical perspective might help as well. Let's say that you take the conservative route on the bubble and make the money 10 times out of 10 averaging making three times your buy in. You're +20 buy-ins. Take the aggressive route though and perhaps you only make the money 3 or 4 times out of 10. One of those times you make the final table though and get 25 times your buy in (and this is for a bottom final table finish). Add in the other two to three cashes and you're likely well ahead of the +20 buy-ins you would make using the conservative approach. The most successful tournament poker players are the ones who don't care about doubling their initial investment. They instead are looking at the end of tournament money where life changing money can be won. This doesn't mean you recklessly play back at people. Pay attention to the players that are abusing the bubble and understand the situation of the hand you are involved in. If you only have 10 big blinds and someone has opened for four big blinds, you need a lot more than a weak ace or a small pair to play the hand. Yes, you want to make the big money but that doesn't mean you recklessly avoid the sure money you can get by playing smart. Pick the right situations and the bubble will no longer be a struggle.