The Reverse Squeeze Play

The Squeeze Play; for those of you who may not know, is a play the pros use to amass chips. This article shows you a way to turn the squeeze in your favor.

How the Squeeze Play works is this:

You’re either in the SB or BB or in late position like the button or the cut-off., an early position player makes a standard three to three and a half time the BB raise and another player calls that raise, it’s then folded to you. Here’s where you squeeze!

You Re-Raise. Now it’s a gutsy play but hey No Limit Texas Hold'em isn’t about the cards, and tournaments are all about getting as many poker chips as you can and you need everyone’s, so here’s a way to get them without having a hand.

Here’s how the thought process works. The player who flat called the early raisers’ bet most likely has a weak hand like A-J or A-Q or even AT suited. We know he’s weak because if he were strong he would most likely have re-raised himself to win the pot there or isolate. We’re not really worried about him, he’ll be SQUEEZED out.

So that leaves the original raiser. In order for him to call he has to think his hand can beat 2 players because he’s not sure what the player behind him (the guy who originally called his raise) is going to do. Therefore unless the 1^st raiser raised with Aces or Kings and maybe Queens, he’s going to have to fold, or better said he’s being SQUEEZED in the middle between a caller and a re-raiser so he must fold.

What if he does have A-A or K-K, well your squeeze didn’t work and unless you’re pot committed you release the hand with a comment like I guess my Queens are no good.

The Squeeze is a great play and it’s used by many pros to amass chips.

So how do I reverse it you ask?

Here’s a scenario from last years Main Event at the World Series of Poker that left me chip-less because I didn’t use the Reverse Squeeze.

I was on the Button and the blinds were 15/30 thousand, an under the gun player made it 100k to go, it was folded to me and I found A-A.

Now my thought pattern was this:

The guy in the BB was a pro and furthermore he was the aggressor at the table. My read was that he didn’t need to wake up with much of a hand to try the Squeeze play. The Under the Gun raiser was an amateur and would have folded to this play had the BB re-raised. However it was when I started to flat call I saw the SB reaching for his chips. I stopped and thought if I flat call here I might end up 4 handed with A-A and I wouldn’t be a favorite.

My mistake here was in not thinking that the SB trying the Squeeze play would have been just as good as the BB doing it. A-A going up against 3 other hands was not a scenario I wanted and instead of Reversing the Squeeze, I re-raised and the original raiser called with 5-5 and busted me.

As it turns out the best way to protect my hand and stay alive in the poker tournament was to allow the aggressor the opportunity to try the squeeze (he woke up with A-Q suited) giving me the chance to lose the original raiser (5-5) and then re-raising the pro with my A-A at which point he might have folded or I’d dominate over his squeeze play hand (A-Q).

That’s called Reversing the Squeeze.

As you can see from the above it takes a certain amount of guts. Guts, I seemed not to have at the time, but I learned and that has value.

You can bet that next time I’m in the same scenario; I’m going to flat call and allow the pro to try the Squeeze and when he does, I’ll Reverse it on him.