This was $300 LAPC NL event. Blinds were 200/400/50. I had about 10k in chips.

UTG player with about 20k raises to 2600. Player has been very tight from EP, have noticed a few LP steals when given the opportunity. I put him on JJ+, AK.

I'm UTG +2, I have AKo. If I shove, I am certain it was going to be an insta-call. I didn't want to limp for almost 30% of my stack, and then fold if I missed on the flop. Friend said he would have called here and saw a flop, at least.

Anyways, I decided to just fold and pick a better spot. Thoughts?

I think min raise here or at least see the flop will be good.
sometime you call raise like this early position the some guy in late
maybe squeeze play and re-raise x5-x6 bet or some shortstack may go all-in.
If u make min raise here it maybe lead to HU and give u control the pot, u may c-bet here if board help u. If he reraise u to call all-in he may have QQ+, AQ,AK ... then it now your decision .. u only don't wanna to see KK and AA the rest is coin flip and sometimes you need all-in in this situation to win the tournament.

So you min raise and effectively put half your stack in. If you're gonna min raise you should just shove. You can't fold if he comes over the top of the min raise and your min raise gives you like 0 fold equity.

i'm set on jam or fold here. he is shoving or betting half my stack on the flop whatever comes, and i can only call an ace or a king, and i won't like calling the king. no way i'm getting him off this hand.

even a miraculous QJ10 likely gives him a boat draw, or chop or draw to chop.

When the action gets to you, there are about 3700 chips in it which would increase your stack by 37%. With AK, my first inclination here is to always shove.

Let's look at the range you put him on. Pokerstove says you are about 40% against that range. However, that range is pretty tight. As well, he may just fold JJ (or TT if he has that). If he is paying attention, he should know that your all-in is very strong and probably similar to his own range. Given his chip stack, he may not want to risk half of it.

It's pretty close for me but I think I shove here most of the time. At this point in the tourney, it's probably that last time you'll see AK. Your future "better situation" hand could be 99 or AJs and could be dominated or a coin flip anyways.

As for calling or min-raising or anything other than fold or shove, that's just a very bad idea. The two main strengths of AK are to be an all-in hand that if called is not usually in trouble and it is also a hand that likes to see all five board cards.

so if this were MP raise, and i was LP or blinds, this would be insta-shove. specific to this situation and this player, i was able to restrict his range to JJ+, AK with like 90% confidence. i was also very, very certain he was calling the shove.

i agree with pants on fire analysis, but i am telling you guys with soul-reader confidence i had 0 fold equity here.

If everything you assume is true then it's an easy fold but people are always doing things that you don't expect in this game...

agreed, i don't proclaim to be the best poker player or hand reader. it's entirely possible he was much weaker and / or would've folded to a shove, but i was pretty sure of this situation.

i was in the tank for about 30 seconds on this preflop decision, so after thinking for that long, the 10% of me that thought he might've folded was probably more like 1%.

also, didn't feel like this table was too difficult to play at, so that also factored into my decision. i agree on taking a big risk at certain points in a tournament to get a lot of chips for a deep run; this just didn't seem like one of those times.

by the way, rabbit hunted and found 10 7 2r on the flop, if anyone cares.

The fact that you cared enough to do this is probably holding up your development as a player.

I think what should really guide your response is whether by just calling you are putting yourself in a difficult situation or not. If you call, then what's the next step? What do you do on the flop? You're just hoping for an Ace or King. Anything else and you have to fold.

The fact that he's been playing tight from early doesn't mean that he always does so. He might just be playing a smaller pocket pair as a semi-bluff, hoping to catch a set. Or scare other players from their hand just because he's in early position and he's supposed to have a good hand. I wouldn't exclude a smaller pair 99, TT, or even AKs, AQs. In that case with so much money behind him he'd probably fold anything other than AA, KK.

The merit of going all-in is that he'd fold a lot of hands. By calling you're loosing out on that chance, because if he sees the flop there's no way he's folding, and neither are you...

michalis

you know, i agree that this isn't healthy. could you explain why you think this is holding up development?

and also semi-related, when i first got to this table (i think my first table broke around level 4), on my second or third hand, i shoved about 15bb in MP with AKo against the guy to my right. he was an older guy, who i profiled as pretty tight, but really didn't have any other info. i just "felt" that he would fold, he probably had around 20bb. he went in the tank for almost a minute before folding. we later talked and he said he mucked QQ.

i know i wasn't consciously thinking about this hand when the other AKo came up, it seemed like a totally different situation to me, but i wonder how often i let info like this affect my play.

Your M was a 9, and that might mean that AKo was the best hand you would get ultill you ran out of chips...

All in would be the best decision you could make. Fold might be a choice, if you wanted to wait, but every turn of the table, your M would go down one, and less chips you would win with an all in.

By rabbit hunting, you may subconsciously use those results to affect your future decisions when in fact those three cards you hunted have no bearing on any decision that you made in the hand. In short, you can't learn anything from hunting so the learning EV for hunting is zero and below.

If your pretty sure his range is AK,JJ+ and he isn't folding then it's a trivial fold. Simple as.

Excellent fold. Nothing wrong with folding AKo to a UTG raise like that with so many people left to act. You cant just call and allow others in and even others to put you all in both (say with smaller pairs like 1010 or even 99 from some deep stack bully that would otherwise likely had folded if you were all in). I may have to return on the flat call option to make sure i am right because there is always the potential you generate dead money activity by having hands you dominate like AQ or AJs, KQs and even smaller pairs from fat stacks participate (still not often for sure since 6.5bb raise is enormous for tournaments) but you clearly lose any fold chance by flat calling and this is massively significant. Plus you will not often enough realize the full strength of your AK as you often drop the flop when you hit nothing (you do not realize the full all in potential i mean ). You have to go all in or fold seems to me a valid claim here but i may revisit possibly with simulations.

The rest is obviously a legthy discussion because it deserves it to build future intuition.


Now going all in with no dead money at the table yet (i assume the early raiser will call anyway because if all fold he only needs to call 7400 to see 21100 pot or just 35%. A lot of hands have at least 35% vs an all in from your stack that could be a general say 5.3% hand. So he will call almost always. You gain little by all in here in terms of him folding unless the raise is done with semi crap as a bully move (but how likely is that given the prior style you mention and the position so early at the table). I say the guy has pair or AK or AQ,AJ (less often those 2 than pairs way less often). In fact lets put the guy on a 5% hand (88+,AJs+,KQs,AKo) at least only due to the position and the size of the raise. As AKo against a 5.3% hand if all others fold you have 46.3%. You are basically looking at a marginally negative move under the ideal situation that nobody else gets involved after you go all in (10k in ,9.75k out). Now what if someone else calls the all in ? Well clearly that person has seen a raise from EP that is decent size, an all in right away so he better have the goods like QQ-AA,AK maybe sometimes JJ if of a smaller stack. Nobody will ignore the action and get involved with less (unless these are donkeys but do they play such large events and last to this level often enough to matter here but a bit?) mostly due to the fact that the ep raiser can easily go all in himself too so whoever reacts to you is doing it for tournament life really (unless there are some huge stacks after both of you that are very loose) . So i say when you have another get involved after your all in (a rare event to be sure but still it will happen say 15% of the time as we will see) it will probably be with QQ-AA, AK as well. When this happens you are in deep trouble because you will be only at ~24,25% for a 31.1k pot or less as 3way. Obviously it will happen rarely say about 15% of the time (each player after you ,say 8 left , has QQ,KK,AA,AK - maybe even JJ ,given what you have already ,about 2-2.2% of the time so out of 8 left there is 15% one at least has such hand ).

So you go all in and the other EP raiser guy will call you almost always due to the 35% requirerment the vast majority of that 85% of the time that all others fold. Just to confirm this is happening almost always if the guy is on a no bs hand (why bluff the entire table from such position with a bs hand) ask yourself given that your all in is probably a 5.3% hand (again because you respond to a big raise and you have the rest of the table to react still so it has to be that you are on top 5.3% hand) what kind of hands have at least 35% equity against you ? The answer is that against 5.3% range the hands 99+,ATs+,KQs,AQo+ all have at least 35% and even 88 or AJo have 34+%. So ask yourself isnt that 100% of his range really? Doesnt now our initial assumption that the EP raiser is on a 5-6% hand himself make sense? Even if not 100%of his range its 90% the very least. So this guy is not folding more than 10% of the time here. Am i being tight thinking here? I dont this so , not at all. I think i am being very rational so all you can claim against my thinking is that maybe the players are not as rational (i will give you that , but it seems like an expensive event so why assume they are far from rational?). Go back one more time and ask yourself you are UTG and raise to 6.5 bb with what hand? Give me a break that someone so far seemingly careful and tight does it with less than 6% hand here. Why? Because its throwing money with 9 left to act if you are not strong enough. The blinds are decent, the stacks are geting small and such early position raise if often facing an all in so it better be decent hand. I cannot see the guy doing this with weaker AX than AJo or even KQo or very small pairs . Look at what is 10.3% hand 88+,A9s+,KTs+,QTs+,AJo+,KQo and what is 6.5% hand 88+,ATs+,KQs,AQo+ and ask yourself if the 4% difference makes sense to be such a big raise often enough to matter from that type of player. I say this guy is playing a very good hand from this spot and will not fold very often if at all. I will not give you any 30% or 40% fold chance here if all others step out. I will not even give you 20%. This guy folds almost nothing here with only 35% requirement. However its possible he folds if someone else gets involved with a big stack that 15% of the time we talked about above.


So what can happen here when you consider all important possibilities?

You can have only the original raiser call you (90% if not 100% of the time that no other gets involved its you and him only with a 5% hand at least) . That will happen about 85%*90%=77% of the time say (if there are more small stacks they can get involved so this will change things but its not going to make things really better for us because small stacks have a big sense of elimination and will not respond to an all in with anything other than pair ,AK unless the stack is so tiny that wont matter anyway and will make the ep raiser call us even more often almost never folding now) . You can have someone else go all in with the quality hands i claimed say JJ-AA,AK (15% of the time) that has a decent enough stack to make the original EP raiser rethink the participation with hands that are not top pairs ,AK. Clearly if i raise with AQs or AJs ,KQs ,or 88,99 even 1010 and i then get 1 all in and then another 10k or more bet and i have 17.5k left i say forget this its not worth it and do so with 50% of my range easily getting involved only with top pairs and AK (and thats why you dont make such raises with borderline hands that often so early to avoid exactly this bad development). So i will give you that . But this doesnt make things a lot better for us really. Because we are not ahead in that case , we just get some dead money thats all. So lets say that 70% out of the 15% of the time some third player with JJ-AA,AK gets involved after our all in the original , ie ~10% of the time the original raiser folds . The other 5% of the time he has himself hands like TT+,AK and gets involved vs 2 all ins. And then lets say that the rest 8% of the time all fold and we get away with the 2600+1100

Ok lets put all together now when we go all in for 10k.

1) 77% of the time all others fold and we get to face a 5.3% original raiser all in . We have 46.3% equity on 21.1k pot and end at 9770.

2) 10% of the time someone else gets involved and calls our all in with a JJ-AA,AK type hand . The original EP raiser gets out because he happens to have a non big pair or AK type hand and doesnt want to risk now 50% or more of his stack with such hands. We then have a 23600 pot on avg with equity (AKo vs JJ-AA,AK) of 39.8%. So we exit with 9400.

3) 5% of the time both the original raiser and a third guy are all in with us. We face AKo vs 2 (JJ-AA,AK) type opponents . Pot is 31000 and we have 20% so exit with 6200.

4) 8% of the time all fold and we pick 2600+1100. We end at 13700.


Net result of all in then;

0.77*9770+0.1*9400+0.05*6200+0.08*13700=9870<10k

All in is not a terrible move but its not better than folding here. In fact even if that move was marginally positive its a fold for me for reasons i have expressed many times before due to the skill adjusted tournament equity function nonlinearity that allows us to reject marginally positive chipswise results that would be ok for cash games.

Obviously other things can happen above but it wont be dramatically changing the picture (many callers, small stacks etc).

It all starts from the realization that when the UTG player makes such a big raise its not a borderline 8,9,10% hand , hell no, not with 9 others left to act. Its easily 6.5% or better. I can even claim that the 8% fold all option is highly generous. And when we go all in we plus the ep raiser have defined things to the table very clearly ; only JJ-AA,AK need apply past this point. We have eliminated dead money of inferior hands and have asked only for top hands or the original raiser. And we never lead in equity against any serious opponent that gets involved.

Play with the numbers above and i promise you , you will not get a seriously plus EV result even if you relax a lot i did here. For me its not enough to go from 10k to 10.2k or even 10.5k by risking my tournament life when i still have 10000/400=25 bb left. NOWAY! AKo is a great hand for a lot later (position) in the table and without such an EP strong raise from a tight careful player. Always look at the situation you find yourself at when you have stellar hands. Because in the end its not the hands you have that uniquely determine what to do, its the situation in totality. I can have T8o or even 72o and go all in if it makes sense and it will be a better decision than AKo is here. Its about the situation you find yourself at always.

Now the debate can go on regarding flat calling. Notice how in the above calculation some 8% of the time all fold(ok whatever you can call it 10%, 5% 15% depending on your model which of course will change the other scenaria ev as well but i doubt it will affect the total as much as to change the picture). That 8% of free 2600+1100=3700 is enormous actually and the only reason the EV is not so negative. We only get that as an all in though. We cant get rid of them by flat calling and whoever goes all in after us is also not going to discourage the first raiser as much given the dead money and our rather passive approach. Now that would be ok if our hand was dominating a lot of the 6.5bb raising hands utg has in his range but it doesnt. Also we invite many hands that are slightly ahead of us (the pairs ) to get involved as all ins (someone with 1010 or 99 is not going all in if someone else did first but might do so if they feel you are both not on top pair-still risky but happens ) and in general we dont exactly keep out anyone that benefits us to be out. The raise is already big enough to discourage hands we dominate to also call like AJ or AQ (if it uses more than 30% of their stack i mean) . Also we may get bluffed a lot at flop since the majority of the time we have nothing going. And when we do have the Ace or King at flop our big bet is always a threat to the others and we may not get action anyway. If we flat call also its hard to fold to an all in by anyone after us. As we saw its also possible that we face all ins by smaller pairs like 1010-JJ now a bit more often. Again 15%-20% of the time we face an all in here ( a bit more than if we had gone all in on our own first)
If we see a flop heads up with the original raiser we act last . The problem here is that very often we get nothing at flop and if the guy c-bets we have to gamble with nothing so forget it. The guy unless totally bluffing if we go all in now with just overcards will call us and be ahead almost always. If the guy doesnt bet and we dont hit anything and we bet we can still be behind if called (to preflop pairs or even a pair he checks to us to entrap us which of course will happen less often but its bad when it does) . I cannot offer fully analytical convincing arguments on flat call (without some serious effort or simulations) but you have to agree with me the fact we rarely realize the full strength of AK vs pairs (since we see only 3 cards usually and are out when we miss failing to get turn and river which significantly contributes to the equity vs preflop pairs plus the fact that our K or A at flop scares others when we bet big preventing them to put all their stack in past this point ) . The problem is that we have limited depth in stack and we cannot play AK as well as it ought to be played in a cash game without risking our tournament life. As a result without the all in or a reraise (not applicable here) we fail to exercise the edge AK has . That magical small fraction of the time that we pick up all the dead money due to all in is a huge component we miss. If the raise were not as early and as steep it would be different.

Conclusion; Skip the hand and be happy you did that .You have plenty of stack to find a better spot . No panic time at 25bb. I outlive 80% of the guys at the table when at this point and i am not doing that by flipping coins or worse. Even if you drop to 20bb 20 hands later you know that there is 50% chance to pick up a top hand TT-AA,AK again or to find yourself in another good situation. Its extremelly hard to imagine getting AKo or TT,JJ with such a tight spot again. It just wont happen this way as often. You will usually be the first to act very strong or the raise before will be a casual 3bb with possible flat callers too behind it , a much much better situation in EV and dead money. Plus the people will be calling you with worse due to desperation by then.

Also looking at the cards that would have been dealt of course cannot influence the confidence of the decision after you have made it in the sense that you need to see them thousands of times and replay the hand to obtain an idea based on the equivalent of a simulation. Isolated flops are irrelevant to the methods you decide what to do preflop. However i am not going to argue against seeing them. I mean why not? Satisfy your curiosity. Imagine how you would have played the hand if that flop came (and missed) and that way visualize better the situation and inspire yourself to think further about it. As long as you realize its one random flop and it carries no statistical weight i see no problem with it.

thanks maximum for the reply. you really put heavier critical thinking and statistical analysis behind my decision, and this actually really helps me fill the gaps in the my thinking.

for the overcalls behind me (or raises or all ins), with the table composition, UTG's image, and my image, i was fairly confident that no one was coming in without QQ+. i essentially dismissed this as: "i'm either all in or fold, and if i'm all in and someone has QQ+, so be it". i was not just calling. the fact that's i'm putting UTG on JJ+, AK, and i myself have AK, also reduces the probability of someone having the range to actually call, so this was really a non-factor in my decision.

i have had a few people tell me, "how do you know he wasn't on a move?". maximum said it best: why think players at this buy in, this deep in a tourney, and with UTG's specific table history, would be anything but a rational player? sure, this might be the _exact_ reason why he would make a move, but i have to weigh that possibility so low that if he's making a move, well god bless his heart and i'm moving on to the next hand.

maximum also makes a great point on hands vs situations. later on at this table, i missed a steal opportunity from the HJ with J5o. it folded to the blinds who played a small pot. i also missed two resteals from the BB with marginal hands, but i was prety sure my cards were live and i had >50% fold equity. i was kicking myself for these decisions more than the AKo hand.