The Re-Squeeze

I was playing a 6 man Pot Limit Hold-em tournament on stars the other day when this hand came up. There is a few cool tidbits in this hand that i can talkin about. Lets set up the situation. It's the 4th level of the tournament and we need to start accumulating chips. My table image is Semi-Tight Aggressive showing down some hands that are good and others that i had re raised in spots with suited connectors and cracked some people hands when they flat called. The blinds are at 50/100. Here are the chip stacks.

Seat 1: JSharpton (4615 in chips)
Seat 2: Tristsomfaen (1810 in chips)
Seat 4: XT@TX (2205 in chips)
Seat 5: trixter23 (6720 in chips)
Seat 6: J . Be Good (2235 in chips)
trixter23: posts small blind 50
J . Be Good: posts big blind 100

JSharpton: raises 100 to 200

I'm in the small blind and UTG mini raises to 200. Unlike in some of my previous posts' this mini raise is a little bit different. Im not reading strength from this guy because he plays an extremely laggy style. I could put him on a very wide range of hands. It's folded around to me and i pick up

Dealt to trixter23 [Ac Ah]

Now i have some deciding to do. Lets eliminate the over the top push from consideration because hes not commited to the pot and he has a deep stack, so he can get away from the hand very easily. Also he may be raising on air. Now lets look at the big blind. What do we know about this player? Coincidentally we've been in this spot before. UTG has mini raised, ive flat called and the big blind has raised it up the size of the pot or gone all in. We both folded and he showed rags. I do this play also, but you better be sure i have a hand the next time i do it. My job is to get someones chips in the middle, hopefully pre flop, and if its not a scary board, on the flop. I really want to play my aces against 1 person and not 2. So i elect to flat call in the small blind hoping that the BB will try another squeeze play. If the board comes and i get resistance i may have to fold. Don't overplay your aces in a multi-way pot, remember its just a pair.

JSharpton: raises 100 to 200
Tristsomfaen: folds
XT@TX: folds
trixter23: calls 150
J . Be Good: raises 600 to 800

Excellent. Now we're pretty sure we're gettin J. Be Good's chips in the middle considering he has 1/3 his stack in the pot. If im in that situation i either go broke or win the pot. Lets see what sharpton does. If he raises, i could win a huge pot. If he folds, thats fine also. If he calls then what? He could flop a flush draw, or a set or whatever else he could be raising with.

JSharpton: calls 600

So he flat calls. A flat call shows strength to me. If he had a weaker holding he probably would have re raised to isolate him and the big blind. So we go ahead and re raise the pot.

trixter23: raises 2400 to 3200

Now im tellin sharpton that if he wants to see a flop hes playing for all his chips. I created a 2nd squeeze play in the small blind. We got pretty much what we wanted, maybe even a little bit more.

J . Be Good: calls 1435 and is all-in
JSharpton: folds

J. Be Good gets his chips in but unfortunately sharpton folds. I'm not sure what he could have had there. He saw be good shove 1/3 his chips in to.

*** FLOP *** [Qd Kh 4s]
*** TURN *** [Qd Kh 4s] [As]
*** RIVER *** [Qd Kh 4s As] [5s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
trixter23: shows [Ac Ah] (three of a kind, Aces)
J . Be Good: shows [8h 8s] (a pair of Eights)
J . Be Good is sitting out
trixter23 collected 5270 from pot

By paying attention and watching how my opponents play, I took down a very nice pot. They put you here...