A decent position?

[lamaros]

I played my second MTT today, $1 PokerStars NL. In my first tourny the other day I did pretty well, getting to the final table as chip leader (1102 entrants). But once on the final table I felt I threw away what should have been a high placing, probably even the win.

Well today I played ok again; this time I came into the final table as the second biggest stack. I took my lessons from the other defeat and played more solidly, taking it down to the last three.

As a bit of a background: The big stack had been almost manic recently, calling down with low rubbish, pushing pre-flop with low suited gappers, and making every hand at least 50k to play. He'd managed to get some wonderful flops and lay down a few bad beats, so he was well ahead.
The small stack was pretty much the opposite. He had played hardly any hands and was always folding to aggression, and he was slowly losing his stack.

A couple of hands previously I had doubled up off the big stack to about 450k, but had given a bit back to his aggression in the previous hand. I felt like my tight play, coupled with the beating I had handed him last time, might make him a bit more wary about making stupid calls against me in the future.

Anyway, the hand played out like this:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t12000 (3 handed) FTR converter on zerodivide.cx

SB (t200016)
Hero (t347310)
Button (t993174)

Preflop: Hero is BB with T, 4.
Button raises to t48000, 1 fold, Hero raises to t84000, Button calls t36000.

Flop: (t168600) 2, 9, 5 (2 players)
Hero bets t100000, Button calls t100000.

Turn: (t368600) 3 (2 players)
Hero bets t162710 (All-In), Button calls t162710.

River: (t694020) J (2 players, 1 all-in)

Final Pot: t694020

Results in white below:
Hero has Td 4h (high card, jack).
Button has Qc Jh (one pair, jacks).
Outcome: Button wins t694020.

My question is this:

Is this a decent play to make, given the background I've given, or should I just have been content to slowly blind out the small stack and wait for a solid hand to double up against the hyper LAgg?

At the time I felt like I needed to make a move, otherwise I would end up heads up being hugely shortstacked, but on reflection I think I probably could have played for second and still had a run at first heads up.

Thoughts?

[aislephive]

You definitely made a mistake here, trying to bluff a maniac with no draw / no pair. I assume the blinds were 12-6 K, which IMO means you have plenty of time to pick your spots. You had roughly 30 big blinds, you could've waited for a much better hand than T4o. As you can see from that hand he is a calling station who is willing to call with no draw or pair, so you need to trap him, which shouldn't be very hard if he's calling you down with Queen high. Wait till you get a hand, then drop the hammer. Any medium pair, any strong ace, etc. Then come over the top of him all in. The money you make from restealing will compensate for the blinds he stole earlier. If he calls you and you have the best of it then you can just hope your hand holds us. But T4o isn't a hand you want to be playing against a maniac. Gl to you in the future.

[drmcboy]

Don't bluff people who your read is "calling down with low rubbish" I know you typed some other stuff but...

[TLR]

You both played this hand very badly. All points made by aislephive are 100% correct.

I would like to point out another thing: Even if you decide to bluff (and you shouldn't at this hand), your bets were too weak.
Preflop you raised by 36K to 130K pot - that is basically an automatic call with any two cards.

The flop completly missed you. check/fold here. But if you decide to bluff betting 100K out of your remaining 260K is not a good move - you are pretty much pot commited, you are better of f pushing and getting some folding equity.

You were worried about getting to heads-up short stacked - two points here:
First of all you should worry about getting to heads up and betting the house on T4o is not the way to do it.
Second, even if you go to HU with you with 400K and he with 1100K it is not that big of a deal - sure you are behind, but one double up evens the playfield