pretty simple shove if this guy is opening 75 and J8 in EP and tanking with AK to ships. Also LOL at people posting things like "do you really think he's opening AT or worse?" The guy is in the HJ (remember 6handed) and described as clueless and aggro. He's openfolding AT there?

I have problems with the op's initial post because we do not even have the positions of the players and their respective stack sizes. If small stack it to our right then that means that op holding AJ off is not only facing the CL who raised UTG but also has to get through both the SB and the BB large stacks as well. There is not a single person in the shoving camp that even considers this, OP will run into a larger hand at least 15% of the time. Add this into your math in this particular situation and your positive equity becomes negative. Add in the ICM calculation (which I am to lazy to do) and I am absolutely positive that there will be better spots to push your 20 BB stack.

In all of the final tables I played in (combined limit hold em, stud hi lo split, and no limit hold em I have over 20 appearances) I have been in where the buy in was more than $500 the levels lasted at least 1 hour and some were 90 minutes. There is no mention of when the present level ends. That could sway me into a push if the next level is coming up soon. But if this level had just started then I am definitely not pushing AJ off given the position I am in as well as all of the other considerations I mentioned previously.

I can't tell you how often I have seen someone push in situations just like this and ended up running into another opponent holding JJ,QQ,KK,AA,AK, and AQ. Add in the cl donk's probability of actually having a hand this time and I will be folding that AJ every single time.

I do empathize here and actually have a somewhat similar situation where I went out in 4th in a $1k nl tourney when I open raised x3bbs on the Button holding AJ offsuit. I had about 25 bbs left at the time. SB folded but the CL in the BB raised all in. I beat him into the pot because I had a huge tell on him and just knew I had him beat. I was exactly correct on the read. He held A_2 off. Guess who rivered a 2 on a dry board? Yup! Out in 4th for $25 K. I took 2nd in same tourney the year prior. This was back in 2002 and 2003. I never got a chance to go back again.

This situation did not sway me into my opinion to fold here one bit. It is the situation at hand here with the specifics given that make a fold the best option overall. I am not saying AJ is a clear fold here either. I would not criticize anyone who shoved here except that you cannot get to the top three where most of the money is at after you have already gone out in 6th! Yes, you want to get chips in order to have a chance at 1st place. I just think you had plenty of time left and would find a better situation to get your chips in the middle.

Scott

This topic makes me realise why I make deep runs in big fields

weeways I would love to see the math that shows either SB or BB have AJ beat 15% of the time.

Ok so OP jammed AJ and got slowrolled by better, what's there to see here honestly?

Lol @ folding

Common guys it seemed like the forum was starting to get away from sarcastic 1 sentence posts.

Yeh, that he tanks AK doesn't mean he is calling JJ+/AK. Maybe a slowroll, but probably an inexperienced player taking time to make a decision for a lot of money. Doesn't mean he doesn't tank call 88 or AJs too.

Bettter than the 50 line posts by donks who would consider folding AJ here.

You know for somebody who always says sth about missing the forum's constructive days, u do have a knack for being new school sometimes. Well played if leveling too.

I can level and be totally serious at the same time.

Sometimes a 1-line sarcastic response is constructive.

Weeways, you've got a lot of subjective reasoning based on a handfull of unique personal experience that you're using to justify folding here. Being a relative noob, I'm wondering like others how you determine AJ is beat 15% by players behind...seems high, but I can't prove it with math. I also seriously question your premise that there's "plenty of time left" to get our stack in the middle, though recognize "plenty" is relative I guess. I think we're a couple short-orbits from our FE nosediving and this spot looks enticing as Hell...

JJ+,AQ+ is 4% of hands. They almost always cold call. With blockers, the fact that both occasionally have big hands, and AQ sometimes folds particularly live, you get cold called about 6% of the time.

I said I might be way off on that % in an earlier post and I did mean to include UTG in that estimate. Well I am way off on that number, lol! It has been a long time since I was an active member in poker forums and definitely need to review poker probability before I shoot numbers off. I was using the wizard of odds probability charts and then guestimating with the information known in the hand scenario.

How significant do the probabilities change once new information is known. I mean, in a 6 handed game AJ has about a 13% chance of being dominated and if you held JJ the chance of running into AA KK or QQ is ~6% which would be same as AJ running into top 4 pair combos (18 total combinations-3,6,6,3). Shouldn't there be more weight given to the 3 opponents still remaining in the hand?

Irregardless, I still believe you have to weigh in the possibilities of the two players remaining to act before you shoot off equity equations like this. I see this all of the time where we have 2 hands or a hand facing an opponent who is 25/15/10 and we give hand ranges! What we rarely see is someone who post a thread and find that he was clearly ahead of villain and so his e.v. was definitely positive but he then ran into villain 2 who held Aces.

That was the main point I was trying to make!

Scott

Even though we're relying primarily on fold equity of course, you still want to have better equity when called. It's possible K3o could be a shove sometimes too, if the assumptions are right and he folds a ridic % of the time, but ultimately AJo just has much better equity than K3o against a range of AJ, 99+.

The other reasons to shove AJ and not K3o are because of blockers, and also to randomize for game theory purposes... if those things don't mean anything to you, then spend some more time playing poker and in the forum, because my guess is your theory game needs a lot of work (no offense) and not only wouldn't it be possible to explain all those in a post, but most people here worth listening to probably wouldn't be bothered trying.

To Weeways: lol I can't get through most of your posts without laughing... you're convinced you're right because of your massive sample size of 20 final tables, remembering that sometimes people have KK, and sometimes you ran into A2 and he spiked a 2? if your posts are a massive level, it's one thing I guess, but save yourself the keystrokes man and spend more time doing actual math or playing online or something.

So Bet GO
I am a Donk because I said fold. I went based on all of the variables that were given and then extrapolated based on my own experiences and the other variables involved in final table play and came to a conclusion that I believe was correct! I never said it was a clear fold but I still lean towards folding! How perception can be so skewed as it was here!

How can you be such an idiot! Just because my opinion is different than yours, it does not make me a donk! That was just plain stupid and arrogant on your part!


Well thank you very much! Last time I ever watch your back! If you don't like what I have to say then don't read it! Think those were the exact words I used when I backed your sorry A$$! Big mistake on my part. Guess I am through posting here! A big waste of time!

Apparently it still is the same here where opinions are like a$$holes! Everyone has one! The forums were meant to be for learning. It was not meant to be used to put people down. How ignorant I was for coming back!

And yes 20 final tables in live tournament play with buy ins between $500 and $1,500. A lot of smaller fields back then. I guess I played in maybe 80 live tournaments in that buy in range. Most of my time was spent in my main profession, so excuse me!

I was not an big fan of online poker although I used to play 30-60 lhe 5 tables back in the day before USIGEA. I took the vast majority of my money out after the feds froze my 5 figure account back in 2--6 for six months. Guess I was wrong. Nothing was going to happen to online poker. Just happy I belonged to PS, unlike alot of online poker players.

I just started to play in online tournaments and playing small stakes, mostly $10 to 30 buy ins and played all of 300 tourneys online and 300 sit n goes. I am not putting any major money into a online poker site and deposited all of $100 to start with.

To Fslex....How many live final tables have you been on? I am talking live, not online!

Sorry for even talking about aj vs a-2. The whole reasoning for that story had to do with the fact that I was a Doctor and empathy is important to me. All I was trying to do was empathize guys! I won't do that again either!