Lesson reinforced - push big pp's pre-flop!
Last night I sat down for a quick SNG (gotta' stop doing that, sleep deprivation makes me cranky and slower than usual). It wasn't so quick 'cause for some reason the donkey to passable player ratio was reversed from the norm. I got down to 3 handed, was in second chip position, and got dealt cowboys. Maniac chip-leader raised 4xBB - and I just called.
Flop comes QQJ, so I just make a feeler min bet - and he just calls. Smooth calling me with rockets? Have a Q? With this guy it could have been anything, hyper-aggressive and not all that smart, but lucky.
Turn comes 7, I min bet again, and this time he comes over the top of me. I've watched him try to bluff (sometimes successfully) the smarter players off hands with this before. I'm also pretty sure he would have come back over the top after the flop if he had the Q (agressive), so I call all-in. He shows AT, I'm ahead, since even the gutshot straight out he has would give me the boat - but the river brings an A and I go to bed. Especially knowing what I did about this player (was capable of laying down hands preflop if pushed), I should definitely have reraised pre-flop. It's something I'm not good at doing that I need to work on. I might be a little leery of being too aggressive. I also am still showing the vestiges of a earlier bad habit of slow-playing big pocket-pairs. Bad Sparky! No steak.