Squeeze One Out

In baseball, one of most exciting high risk, high reward plays is the suicide squeeze. If executed successfully, a run scores, often in an end-of-game, high pressure situation. If executed poorly, the runner is dead meat and any semblance of a rally is squashed. Similarly, the squeeze play in poker is high risk, high reward. If it works, you will get a nice boost to your stack. If it doesn’t, you will likely be in a lot of trouble.

Let’s start off by defining what exactly a squeeze play is. A squeeze play is when you put in a significant re-raise with at best a marginal holding after one player opens the action with a pre-flop raise and another player calls. While I do like my baseball comparison, it is actually called a squeeze play because the original raiser gets “squeezed” in between you and the caller. The idea is to get both players to fold. If you pull it off, you get shipped a healthy pot. If you get called, you are in trouble since you won’t be holding a very strong hand.

The squeeze play is not an easy move to make, as it not only takes some guts, but it also requires specific circumstances in order to have a chance to work. The toughest thing about it is that you need some dead-on reads. To start, you must be very confident that the original raiser has a marginal hand. Maybe he has been raising a lot, so he can’t possibly have a huge hand every time. Maybe he has been showing junk after being the aggressor pre-flop. Maybe you just have a hunch, but it had better be a really good hunch. If he does have mediocre hole cards, he not going to like the prospects of possibly facing off with one guy who has already shown a willingness to call his raise and another player who re-raised him.

When it comes to the caller, you must also feel confident that he would make the call with a marginal hand. He may be seeing tons of flops or he may be thinking the same thing you are thinking regarding the original raiser. If you are right and he does have a marginal hand, he will not want to try his luck against your re-raise, despite his willingness to try to outplay the original raiser.

The previous points hinge on the notion that your opponents are relatively skilled and, even if they don’t know it explicitly, understand the Gap Concept, which states that it takes a stronger hand to call a raise than to make a raise. Basically, you don’t want your opponents to be calling stations when you try to execute a squeeze play. You want them to have some sense in their heads.

You also need your opponents’ perception of you to be that of a tight player. If they see you as being very selective with your starting hands, they are going to give you credit for having a strong hand when you re-raise. If you are seen as a maniac, there is a good chance that your bluff will get called. In a similar vein, you probably won’t want to try to run the squeeze play more than once against the same group of opponents. The rest of the table will remember that you did the same thing before, even if they didn’t suspect it was a squeeze at the time, and won’t give you credit for a big hand.

Perhaps the most famous squeeze play of all time was executed to perfection by Dan Harrington (he plays at Full Tilt Poker) at the final table of the 2004 World Series of Poker Main Event. With blinds and antes at 40,000/80,000/10,000, Harrington was on the button with 2,320,000 chips, making him one of the short stacks at the table. Josh Arieh raised under the gun to 225,000 with K-9 offsuit. After Al Krux folded, eventual champ Greg Raymer (member of team Pokerstars) called with A-2 suited. Matt Dean folded and then, with only 6-2 offsuit, Harrington re-raised to 1,200,000. Everybody else, including the two men already in the pot, folded, allowing Harrington to increase his chip stack by more than a quarter.

The hand was perfectly set up for Harrington to run the squeeze. Arieh had not been shy with his chips at the final table, so even though he wasn’t necessarily bluffing, there was a strong likelihood that he was just being aggressive with a so-so hand. Raymer had a huge chip lead, had been known to get involved in lots of pots, and was observant enough to know that Arieh was not likely to have a monster hand, so he called with what he probably thought was the best hand, even though it was a weak Ace.

Harrington thought about all of this and also knew that he had a rock-tight image (his nickname, “Action Dan,” is, shall we say, ironic). He also knew that his opponents, including the ones yet to act, were all intelligent, skilled players, ones that would not call a huge re-raise from an extremely tight player unless they had something magical. In fact, David Williams folded A-Q, showing full understanding of the Gap Concept. The stars had aligned, Harrington recognized this, and executed an expert squeeze play.

One final note about the squeeze. It is most effective in a tournament, as it makes it riskier for someone to call a big re-raise. In a cash game, players can take more chances, knowing that they can reload if they lose. In either case, though, you must make sure all the factors are in place for the squeeze. Then, just close your eyes and pray.