First, I don't 5 bet like this very often, the chances usually don't come up. To me, the timing has to be right against a player who is good enough to fold after 4 betting. I've felt that if the opportunity and situation is right and you have blockers to aa, that sometimes it's worth the risk. Here I find myself in a similar spot to the villain in Sam's last video who 5 bet shoved a9.

This tourney is a $50+5 on WPN. The villain in this hand is a good, solid player. We've been at the same table for a while, and I have 3 bet him 3 times. He has folded twice and check folded flop the 3rd time. We are now 6 off the money, and he has been opening a lot more with the bubble pressure.

I felt like his 4 bet sizing was super polarized, and given how active he had been lately and the situation he was less likely to have a premium hand. Even though I covered him, I'm sure he felt like he could apply pressure to me with the 4 bet.

I sized my 5 bet the way I did because I thought it would look stronger than shoving and he could fold out hands like 99-jj and aq. If he shoved over the top my plan was to fold and I would still have almost 50bb to work with. I thought it was important to use my stack to let him know not to get too far out of line with me left to act.

I like my reasoning, but am I missing something that makes that 5 bet spew? I'm questioning it now after the discussion following Sam's last video.

Here's the hand:

Game started at: 2015/2/10 19:26:7
Game ID: 368132926 300/600 BIG10 - $5,000 GTD , Table 1 (Hold'em)

Player HERO received card: [Ah]
Player HERO received card: [9h]

Player 1 folds
Player 2 folds
Player 3 folds
Player 4 raises (1200)
Player HERO raises (3000)
Player 6 folds
Player 7 1 folds
Player 8 folds
Player 9 folds
Player 4 raises (4245)
Player HERO raises (7335)
Player 4--- folds
Uncalled bet (4890) returned to HERO

Hand history reads odd to me, here's the total bet sizes:

He opened to 1200, I 3 bet to 3000, he 4 bet to 5445, I 5 bet to 10,335