Calling a 5-way all in pre flop
As anyone who has played the rebuys at Pokerstars (and I assume it's similar elsewhere), you can have a table that varies from very tight to essentially insane.
Tight tables are actually frustrating since not a lot of new chips are added, so I am going to focus more on the insane table.
Anyone who has played these rebuys has seen it before. Every hand are multiple all ins pre flop and rebuys being done over and over.
I saw an interesting hand though that made me think. It was at a crazy table and a small chip person (had 1100 chips ) raised from 30 to 210. Next person goes all in, two fold then 2 more go all in. I folded my 2 9 off suit and it got to the big blind ( A player I recognized as a solid tournament player)who took a while before making the call with 10 J suited, and of course then small chip person called as well.
The other hands in order of being bet were K5 suited (different suit then J 10) then AQ off then 44 (which I thought was the weakest call of the bunch) then AA.
The aces held up, but what was most interesting was after the hand a person not involved in the hand tore into the BB who called with the J 10 suited and the reply he got was (I made that call with J 10 but I am not sure I would with JJ) which I thought was kind of interesting. When I looked at the odds of the hand indeed he did have a slightly better chance with the J 10 (about 20%) then with a JJ (18%), though it was not a huge difference.
I guess here is my basic question. In a rebuy during the rebuy period, is it always worth taking the 1 in 5 shot to essentially increase your chips by 4-5x? My gut feeling is its not a bad bet if you are at about the starting level of chips, but I am not sure I would risk it if I had already doubled my initial chip count +.
Also, what hands (besides AA) would be worthy of this type of gamble? Would an Ax suited (that will be dominated, but has flush and maybe straight draw/two pair potential) be worth it?
Tight tables are actually frustrating since not a lot of new chips are added, so I am going to focus more on the insane table.
Anyone who has played these rebuys has seen it before. Every hand are multiple all ins pre flop and rebuys being done over and over.
I saw an interesting hand though that made me think. It was at a crazy table and a small chip person (had 1100 chips ) raised from 30 to 210. Next person goes all in, two fold then 2 more go all in. I folded my 2 9 off suit and it got to the big blind ( A player I recognized as a solid tournament player)who took a while before making the call with 10 J suited, and of course then small chip person called as well.
The other hands in order of being bet were K5 suited (different suit then J 10) then AQ off then 44 (which I thought was the weakest call of the bunch) then AA.
The aces held up, but what was most interesting was after the hand a person not involved in the hand tore into the BB who called with the J 10 suited and the reply he got was (I made that call with J 10 but I am not sure I would with JJ) which I thought was kind of interesting. When I looked at the odds of the hand indeed he did have a slightly better chance with the J 10 (about 20%) then with a JJ (18%), though it was not a huge difference.
I guess here is my basic question. In a rebuy during the rebuy period, is it always worth taking the 1 in 5 shot to essentially increase your chips by 4-5x? My gut feeling is its not a bad bet if you are at about the starting level of chips, but I am not sure I would risk it if I had already doubled my initial chip count +.
Also, what hands (besides AA) would be worthy of this type of gamble? Would an Ax suited (that will be dominated, but has flush and maybe straight draw/two pair potential) be worth it?
Comments
There's no reason to put any of the opponents on spectacular hands, but you need a spectacular hand yourself to fend off so many opponents.
ScottyZ
this is assuming i intend to rebuy i guess, otherwise i wouldnt call without AA or KK
"A friend of mine later asked me if it was true. Did I actually rebuy 30 times? "Of course not! What kind of an idiot rebuys 30 times? I was in for the standard … $27,000."
Seriously, I went a little nutty, even for me. I was making double rebuys hand after hand. I was just so unlucky! I was all in with 10-3 and some guy with 9-9 beat me. Then, I picked up K-5 and lost to Q-Q. It got worse; I got all in with 7-3 offsuit and lost to A-J. (Begin my Hellmuth impression: "I mean, A-J; I lost to A-J. How unlucky am I? Don't these people know who I am?")
Of course, I'm kidding. My goal during the rebuy period was to build a big stack by getting lucky. Well, I'm embarrassed to say that despite all of the rebuys, I was broke by the end of the rebuy period and had to make the maximum add-on just to stay in the tournament. "Yikes, that was kind of stupid. Oh, well, it's time to get serious now!"
The one benefit of all of my craziness was that there was now tons of chips at my table. If I played well now, I believed I'd have a good shot at earning a big stack the old-fashioned way, by actually trying to play well! "
I think this is a good principle to think about. If you beleive you are a better player then most of the other players @ your table, even if you LOSE several all ins early on, you will have a good opportunity, after the rebuy period is over, to win back those chips at your table.
I think it would have been great if ESPN had that on TV. Can you imagine how great it would have been watching him in that.