It’s the final table of the 2004 WSOP Main Event, the action is seven-handed and the blinds are 40,000/80,000 with a 10,000 ante. The aggressive Josh Arieh decides to open to 225,000 from under the gun with Kh-9s. Arieh has around 3.9 million chips and is called in the hijack by the eventual champion Greg ‘Fossilman’ Raymer who is sat with 7.9 million chips and Ac-2c. The cutoff folds and ‘Action’ Dan Harrington looks down at a raggedy 6h-2d and as a relative short stack with 2.3 million chips it initially appears to be an obvious fold, particularly for a player that is thought of as being fairly tight (cue the ironic poker name) and the fact that the two biggest chip stacks are already involved in the hand. Despite this Harrington senses that this is a good spot to pick up some chips and executes one of the most daring squeeze plays you’ll ever likely to see as he raises half of his stack, some 1.2 million into the pot.
Why commit half your stack with rags?
Harrington knows that Arieh’s aggressive playing style means that he is more likely opening light than with a truly premium hand and he also knows that Raymer is going to be calling with a very wide range of hands accordingly. He also knows that if either player in the blinds moves all-in over the top that they’ll have Kings or Aces, which is highly unlikely, as they’ll be forced to muck almost any other hand with the two chip leaders still to act behind them and Harrington already committed to the hand. As it happens David Williams finds Ah-Qc in the big blind and doesn’t think long before tossing his hand into the muck.
The action folds back to Raymer and Arieh who are well aware that not only have they got very marginal hands but that they’ll be committing themselves to playing for all of Harrington’s 2.3 million stack. If either of them did have a big pair and moved all-in Harrington would have had to pass but had left himself with 13 big blinds, just enough to start playing push or fold poker. Both players fold and Harrington scoops the pot increasing his chip stack by 640,000, some 25% of what he was sat with at the beginning of the hand.