Live Tournament Hand for Discussion
You have been moved a new table and maybe saw 5 or 6 hands that you did not play and they never went past the flop if they even saw the flop.
you are in the big blind and dealt A J suited, with blinds 600 - 1200 - 75ante and you have 10k in chips.
Folded to dealer who pushes all in for 5500, small blind then also pushes all in for about 13k.
I put the dealer on any 2 cards basically a face card and rag, and is trying to steal blinds and antes.
What do you do after small blind pushes and has you covered?
you are in the big blind and dealt A J suited, with blinds 600 - 1200 - 75ante and you have 10k in chips.
Folded to dealer who pushes all in for 5500, small blind then also pushes all in for about 13k.
I put the dealer on any 2 cards basically a face card and rag, and is trying to steal blinds and antes.
What do you do after small blind pushes and has you covered?
Comments
With stacks this shallow SB's likely to be shoving wide enough to make it a call. You need to make something happen when you're this short and you have decent equity against the SB's iso
Since button should be shoving wide and SB is isoing all of his calling hands he's just as likely to be the one drawing to 3 outs though (actually more likely as A2-A10 form a larger part of his range than AQ, AK and JJ+)
Are we drawing? Or are they? We are likely ahead in this spot much more than behind, no? There are some underlying circumstances here...like buy in.. This would/could determine the quality of play we are against. Has the original shover played any of the last five hands? did he fold his blinds? This gives us more of an indication..
But again..and maybe this is a leak of mine..well, actually, I know it is..lol..but I am calling with AJ here..because I always feel they are pushing any two in position when short...and I always feel sb is an idiot and calling with any ace...too much online? maybe..
Neither of these players played any hands while I was at the table. There was always raises before them where they just folded.
This does make a difference for me...500 says these guys aren't the "happen to be in the building, I will take a shot for 20 bucks " kind of players..They were there to play...
That being said, button just folded his two blinds to raises, he knows he is coming into position and will be in a spot to gain those back...his range is pretty wide here..gotta be 30% if not more. SB, who is also short, knows that the buttons range is big..and his calling range (same as his push range) has to be 25-30%..he shoves not expecting you to have anything.
You pick up a top 10%...how do you not call?
Wetts likely will come in here and tell us to fold because of ICM...lol As this is reminiscent of the last thread we had this type of discussion..and fair enough...I am still not good enough to fold here.
My thoughts are we are against 10Jish and Ax..if we get unlucky so be it...I feel their ranges are big...One day I will learn and actually win a decent tourney..lol
I think in the situation, sitting at the table...I lay it down. On paper, or reading it here, I have a hard time folding..(which should likely be opposite...)
Well, ok, I give it a 2nd thought when they flip their cards over and it turns out I had them dominated and/or the flop comes AAJ and all that... but as for in that situation, I still fold.
obv you haven't played against players that have no regard for money
Everyday on the internet... but, in a live situation, I think the play, for this kind of money, is typically better than the 50 or 100 dollar buy for example. Any of the big shots with no regard for money should have already had their plates scraped clean this far in...Again...these are only my thoughts, as I haven't played that large of a buy in live personally.
I don't play MTTs, but in live 5/5 and 5/10 cash games I have seen people easily plow through several 1k+ stacks with no regard and I know some of those players play the $500 MTTs around here
i also believe i can fly
note: i read some US articles that i didn't really understand, now is the time to sum it up for me. thx
or have i been inhaling to much poker talk and am putting random poker words together
There have been many times where I have come across this situation, A10-AJ and even AQ close to money bubble, final table etc....and here is the pattern I have seen with this set up between 3 players.
Player 1 - the button - will be trying to pick up blinds antes when it is folded to them, this is a live game weak player move for the most part because they figure they can shove ATC. Now if we give villian credit for understanding some value towards their hand and their position in relation to the tournament and where they are as a stack at the table (i mean remember you are not looking to win the tournament at your table but have a nice stack size) he will likely be pushing with AX or KX (which can be wide).
Player 2 - SB - has just been shoved on. Based on hesitation factors of live tournament play if they call right away it is a huge pair or AK, AQ. Those are automatics for most regular tournament players.
Now in this situation Steve is a very good tournament player so he would need to evaluate how fast the decision was made by the SB to see if he could pick up how strong of a hand SB had. I mean if SB hesitates for just a few seconds it could seem as though SB has a pair between 22-88...which in live games are normally agonizing calls when putting a lot of chips in the middle.
Although it is great to discuss your "M" value, many players over value their hand based on this and don't realize poker can be deduced pyschologically as well where you can easily see where you are behind or where you are ahead because most live players are not good hand readers nor can they put their opponents on hands because they haven't experienced certain situations enough.
I mean granted the math here says you call and you can get lucky but if you have been playing for 8+ hours you are not looking to blow your tournament on a marginal holding with 2 people shoving ahead of you. Especially when you can find a much better spot.
I know myself personally I have had to lay down AK in situations knowing very well another player had AA because there was a re-raise and he min-raised the re-raise (i know very situational etc..blah blah) but mathematically it was correct for me to shove, but based on my read of the situation I laid it down and they flipped AQ vs AA. In this case I took into consideration where we were in the tournament, chips stacks, what the players looked like, the way their chips were stacked, how they were sitting etc....all psychological tells that are small but in a live game can mean life or death at the table.
Even players with no disregard for money still have some sense of not going out on a stupid hand or making a stupid play even though it may have been the correct one at the time...its just human nature...
You spelled "psychologically" wrong.:p
Then again I can totaly understand why you folded..slightly better than marginal hand with tons of chips in play.
It is only mathematically correct to push (or call off) with AK vs. AA if you're getting sufficient pot odds to balance the ~ 1% chance of winning (e.g. running Kings, broadway straight, a flush to either the K or A, as long as the K isn't dominated by an A of the same suit, etc).
I think any serious poker player would agree that you put your opponent on a range FIRST, and then do some math. If you do math based on your opponent having ATC - since they were dealt a random hand - and ignore all other variables, then you're doing it wrong. If you can put your opponent on AA, then the math is pretty simple. Once you take into account your opponent's playing style (which can be defined mathematically; that's what poker software does), factor in the stage of the tournament (near the bubble, effective stacks, betting patterns, ICM, any visual reads you can pick up, etc.), and then you calculate whether or not you are getting sufficient odds to make a play correctly.
I recently laid down AK pre-flop in a tournament vs. the LAGest player I know. And it was early (in fact, nobody had busted out yet). Why? He raised UTG (which he does 100% of the time - means nothing), I 3-bet behind him (the first hand I'd played, outside of the blinds; around an hour into the tourney), insta-called behind me by a LP(pre-)/LAG(post-flop) player, folded around to the original raiser... and he min-4-bet.
I'd never seen him 4-bet before. He always called my 3-bets to see if he could out-flop me, but I'd never seen him re-raise. And I know that he knows that I'm the tightest player at the table, and he knows that I know that he's the loosest player at the table. Ordinarily, he would expect me to assume that my starting hand is vastly superior to his. So what could he possibly have that he thinks is better than a hand I would 3-bet with, to the point that he would reopen betting, presumably hoping I'd shove into him? I've seen him bluff literally 100s of times, and this wasn't consistent with any of his bluffs.
I thought for a moment, worked out his range to be QQ+ (and much more likely KK or AA), and folded my AK. The player behind me thought for even longer, then folded. I showed my AK ('cause I like to brag about my folds, right or wrong). The LP/LAG said he folded 66. The LAG original raiser couldn't take his eyes off my AK for what seemed like forever; then showed his AA.
I folded AK 'cause the math told me to.
Since I really had no reads on the 2 players when it folded to the button and he pushed I was correct that it was any 2 cards since he showed J 5 suited.
And the small blind almost immediately with no hesitation pushed his stack in I put him on pocket 10's and up or A K, A Q.
I went into the tank for a bit and ended up folding and the small blind tabled pocket 9's.
A jack hit on the river and the dealer won the hand. A round of hands later I pick up Pocket Kings in the BB and the same dealer pushed all in again and this time he has me covered and I call. KK<AQ
Looking forward to reading this thread!
I read it, good stuff! You also said 'no disregard' instead of 'no regard'
I feel this thread has been ignoring the bigger picture.
You fold because the SB's range is much riskier than picking off one of the nits blinds that have been folding and not seeing flops for the last orbit.
You're discussing whether to take AJo v. two hands, one of which is probably, on its own pretty close to break even with the ~ 1.5:1 you're getting... when you can shove 7/8ss or w/e with a metric fuckload of FE later. (Presuming that you've reached that point in the tourney where everyone is quite short based on the three stack sizes you mentioned..maybe think about calling if everyone else at the table has say..30k+)
Another nice bonus is that they're going to see someone get eliminated or crippled this hand..if they're std donks they'll tighten up for a hand or two after that..it'll usually fold to you and you can shove the next hand against an even tighter than usual range from the BB