9-person FT (Orleans $75 OE) - split 9's with an Ace: 9A/9 - Ante 2k limits 10k/20k - stack size approx. 45k

Bringin 3 to my left (3x), folded all the way to me, only 8 A 3 showing ahead of me, I complete it to 10k, 8 folds, A makes it 20k (chipleader), 3 folds. My read: possibly split aces, but clearly not that likely considering I'm holding one, more likely chipleader bullying, so I raised back to 30k, villain puts me all in:

66/A v. 9A/9

Runout safe, in fact I make Aces up for the HU scoop.

Seemed like a short-stack no brainer (had 2 big bets, folded to in late pos.) -

agree or disagree?

Need to know stacks, payouts, etc. In general not a great spot to get it in, and ICM is only likely to make it worse.

Top 9 ITM - my stack 45k was prob 6th or 7th, Villain's stack was #1 at about 150k - I was guaranteed 9th or possibly 8th (can't remember exactly) at the time of the hand - eventually finished 3rd in a chip chop of 5 for more than even-chop $$

Not that this is necessarily directly related to the decision under discussion, but big stack spewed pretty hard, VPIP in the 70% range, couldn't adjust to new seat at FT, finished 7th or 8th. Was heard uttering phrases like "hate this seat" or "not my dealer" - basically seemed like someone who had run hot before table change..... this factored into my read of probably being ahead in the hand, their raise of my completion had that 'table captain' air about it, so I factored that in with the likelihood of their actually having an A or higher pair underneath......but it certainly could have been a higher pair, no doubt.

good job, you played your read and it worked out. You played to win. Your hand does better heads up and the chip leader accomplished that for you. Kind of a tough decision with the cards up yet to act, but it worked out, you put the pressure on. Nice job

I think its a fold but seems close, the cards behind us are terrible for us, and our door card is not going to scare anyone

There is so much in antes that it can never be terrible but I'd wait for a better spot

Ummmm standard hand is standard?

Unless some crazy icm considerations.

Ran some more sims on this but my computer crashed, its important to know whether a99 is rainbow (i assumed it was) and the dead cards folded ahead of us, I'm assuming no dead 9 or aces

Dead low cards improve our equity slightly, high cards hurt them

Hero has 27%-28% equity vs exposed cards so we are pushing a fairly small edge, especially vs the other ace

Icm considerations are very real, I'm starting to think that just calling might be best here, if 2 bets come back we can fold.. if 1 bet comes back we can pot control and fold 4th sometimes

As played, hero was only a narrow favorite over a66

Calling looks pretty weak and has the danger of turning our hand face up so maybe limping a range along the lines of:

ProPokerTools Stud Hi/Lo Simulation

600,000 trials (Randomized)

Hand	Pot equity	Scoops	Wins Hi	Ties Hi	Wins Lo	Ties Lo
a99, a39,987, 986, a[2-4]9, 999, aa9, kk9, qq9, jj9, tt9	26.09%	76,751	193,310	256	51,384	354
a	27.64%	79,911	150,165	150	119,429	648
8	23.13%	64,622	132,970	231	93,287	464
3	23.14%	65,262	123,181	111	110,318	560

is optimal

again, dead cards remain very important and may slightly alter the exact composition of hands we want to limp in this spot

would like to hear other poster's thoughts, as i am playing more stud games lately and have lots to learn

IMO the problem with only a call is exactly as you outlined, 4 hands in the pot, at which point the value of the 99 pair decreases significantly. I'd be curious what the HU sim numbers are against the A66, I'd guess about 70/30 assuming rainbow?

My initial complete was intended to isolate a low-only hand, go HU against a weaker high hand (as happened), or simply to pick up the 21k dead ante & bringin money. In this case ICM probably worked in my favor as the only one who wanted to f*** with variance was the big stack, as the 3 & 8 were more than happy to get out of the way and watch the fireworks.

My raise was big enough at that level of the tournament to indicate all in committment. I'm sorry I can't recall every stack size, but the villain was the only bigger stack of the 4 hands. From a late-tournament perspective, I'm pretty happy with the attempt to isolate or get folds; the tough decision was deciding how to respond when the villain is repping a better hand than my split 9's.

** looked up A9A v 66A HU on the cardplayer calc and it's about 60/40 for the high HU, 42/37 to scoop. 66A retains 23% low equity

btw I'm working on a game-practice module for stud variants- super beta version available here:

http://openfaceodds.com/sandbox_stud_deal.html

It currently deals 8 hands face up, and then you can set up two hands to go HU and then deal 4th-7th, also face up. Basic odds chart is also on the page.

It was designed on a wide screen computer, it is NOT optimized for mobile so it may not be great on a phone.

This represents the limits of my programming skills, I'd like it to eventually be more of a situational odds simulator but I'll need some javascript and perhaps other programming help for that.

Enjoy/give feedback plz

as described villain is raising ~100% of the time here with an A showing, complete/fold is essentially a chip dump.

I can't imagine not opening this here.

yea im just literally not folding here. idk how some are saying fold. push and pray