Correct play in a SNG hand?

Jay

Blinds are 20/40.

I pick up JJ in mid position. There's a raise to 80 from UTG and one caller, I re-raise to 200 to thin out the field and see how good my hand is. UTG and earlier caller stay in. The flop is 863 rainbow. It's checked to me. I push all-in for 600. UTG calls with AK. An A falls on the river, I had a feeling that was going to happen.

I just said "nice catch" and left.

I just want to know:
Would you have called in his position?
Was I correct in pushing it all-in?

esool

Jay wrote:

Blinds are 20/40.
I just want to know:
Would you have called in his position?
Was I correct in pushing it all-in?

AK should have folded imo.
Perhaps a smaller bet would have been ok but AK would have called it anyway, and if he didn't raise, you would have ended up all in before the hand was done anyway..So in hind sight I think all in was the right play.

Unknown

Hey Jay,

I think you played it fine. Nobody good will call an all-in bet of 600 at the 20/40 level with ace high. If he'd moved in on you, it's a different story, but the way this went down leads me to believe that you were playing against a fish. UNLESS you'd given him good reason earlier in the SNG to think that you'd move in with less than AK on that type of flop. If that's the case, good for you.... you made the guy make a bad call.

Regards,
all_aces

ScottyZ

I really dislike the AK merely calling your 200 re-raise pre-flop in combination with continuing on in the pot when he's missed the flop. This is something I've mentioned a lot in low-limit, but the idea works well here too: if you're going to play it like a drawing hand pre-flop, play it like you missed hitting what was a drawing hand on the flop.

I think at this early stage of the tournament, the AK is a raise (all-in) or fold hand after you make it 200. I'd generally prefer moving in with it, since at these early stages I might expect some action from trash like AJ and KQ. Plus, I'm not usually to averse to good coin toss chances (meaning it's probably a coin toss, but there's an additional chance that I'm huge) in a SNG, since there's not so much play in these tourneys that you can wait around for truly big edges.

The other important thing is that if the AK simply moves in pre-flop, there is the additional way to win of your opponent(s) folding. Dave Scharf summed this up nicely: "AK is a bluffing hand."

My feeling is that calling a re-raise cold (if the stacks are deeper than the re-raise amount) with AK sucks in most situations.

I think you played the JJ fine here. The exact amount to raise is a little tricky. You don't really want to get over-committed to the pot, but you don't want to raise so little that it's meaningless. 200 seems about right I think, plus it has the nice psychological effect of being a somewhat large round number. Even though it's not truly that big of a raise, it seems to have the illusion of being so.

ScottyZ