Totally new to poker

In tournament play is this an option to sit out a day?

Sure

....but......

you still pay blinds and antes as if you were there.

That’s a fair point. I just wouldn’t call it a once in a lifetime opportunity if it’s totally up to you to do it again.
You can sit out as long as you want to until you blind out.

So if someone raises and puts two other opponents all in so three already acted before me, and I have AA, I should fold? I can't imagine folding...

Yes, tournament chips are 'in play' even without a player sitting in front of them, unlike cash chips where a player can 'catch up' by paying blinds when they sit back down. A main difference to show this ... 'Your stack' will still get cards in a tournament whereas in a cash game your stack will not get cards unless you are sitting there or yelling at the Dealer from across the room.


Gotta watch your English around here ... Nobody 'puts' anyone all-in, but they are free to go all-in with a shorter (or equal) stack for sure on their own.

Should you fold? No, if going strictly by math AA will have over 50% chance of winning no matter what the other three players are holding. But there may be other considerations that may affect your decision. Mainly in tournaments there are spots where it makes more sense for you to hang onto your chips than put them out there at risk. These 'ICM' spots mainly deal with laddering up the payout scale or even just being close to the money bubble.

Poker math is supposed to make our decisions more clear, but you still have to clear your own emotional hurdles when considering your options. GL

That's obviously not true, unless you count as split pot as "winning". Two players can hold AA in the same hand and it's not possible for both of them to have over 50% equity.

But even if none of the other players has AA, there are scenarios where AA has less than 50% equity against 3 other players. For example against JTs/65s/22 or KK/TT/65s

See ...

PS ... Not losing is winning ...
PSS ... AA will ALWAYS have the most equity against any number of hands, but that doesn't mean it will be a favorite to win the hand overall.

This is not true. Against as few as 4 other hands AA may not be an equity favorite.

[FONT=courier new][SIZE=12]
*******Equity*****Win*****Tie
UTG****21.79%**21.76%***0.04%*{ 9h8h }
UTG+1**21.86%**21.82%***0.04%*{ 6d5d }
UTG+2**17.80%**17.77%***0.04%*{ KsKc }
SB*****19.27%***1.84%**17.43%*{ AA }
BB*****19.27%***1.84%**17.43%*{ AA }
[/SIZE][/FONT]

The AA are actually second to last. Add QQ and AA are tied for last in equity.

It's possible to do this even without giving two players AA.

Also, the question about calling off AA 9ways at the start of the ME has nothing to do with marginal utility. We have not locked up any amount of money yet. This is completely different than the case of the Loose Cannon where the game was pot limit pre-flop and the money he stood to lose was worth much more than the money he stood to win. At the start of the WSOP calling off AA actually gives you the greatest chance of winning any money at all.

My example was being at the Final Table, where one pay jump can literally change almost anyone's life. And most players will certainly never make it to the final table.

That said, I can scale down my example and it still holds. Let's try this scenario:*

I play a tournament at the local casino once a month. Buy-in is $50. My biggest cash in the last year was $500. This time I've had a great run of cards and I'm looking at pocket aces. I check the payouts, then I think about my brother.

My brother, a single father who had some serious drug problems, has been clean for six months and just got his kid back. His job doesn't pay much and he's looking for a better one, but he is about to lose his home. Once he got clean, other relatives did what they could to help.

If I sit on my hands until one of the short stacks is knocked out, I've locked in a $3,000 cash, which is enough to catch up on her missed payments. While I'm thinking, there is a shove from early position and a call from UTG+2.

I'm folding.

-----------

*This scenario is built from my experiences and those of my family. I had a job working with drug addicts for 12 years. My brother never had a drug problem, but he did become a single father when his wife left to "visit friends" and never came back, leaving him with three little boys. My brother and his sons moved in with my mother and father for a few months.

One of my sisters has mental health issues and can not handle money. A family member manages it for her. Home prices are very low in this market. 3K goes a long way in a market where you can buy a decent two-bedroom home for 30K.

Why would you be gambling when $3k should be readily available from your bankroll? Unreg pre.

This goes for any of those "hypothetical situations" where people conceive folding hands or not showing up. If you're forced into playing abysmally due to circumstances, UNREG PRE. When you've entered the tournament, none of these should matter in any way. It's just about getting the highest EV.

"but if I'm in the ME and 7th place pays so much more than 8th...." Then you've demonstrated employing abysmal bankroll management and you should have sold off more.

In the real world of non-poker pros, most small tourney buy-ins are part of an entertainment fund which is usually pay-as-you-go as opposed to coming from an actual poker bankroll. I'm sure he didn't register with the sole purpose of gambling to try to bink a payday as a last out to save the family house from being foreclosed on like it's some bad movie ending or something. But now that he's in that spot, those are the things going through his mind, which is exactly the point of him sharing the hypothetical story.

Look, I totally get what you're saying, and I'll grant that you're not wrong, but I feel like saying "Way to miss the point" anyway. I know the beginner forum is a good place to lay some smack-down on some bad mental habits, and most people that come here need to hear the harsh truth sooner than later about a great deal of subjects, but touting bad BRM in this spot really feels like you're trying too hard.

If you make the final table of the ME and one pay jump means so much to you that you would fold aces which potentially gives up over one hundred thousand dollars in equity in one play, you can just sell 90% of you at a markdown and lock up the "win".

Or buy insurance from somebody. Should be very easy to find somebody who is willing to do that if you're willing to split the edge AA has.

I don't think it's too different for the small local tournament, just sell at least 50% of yourself at the start of the final table. If you're willing to give a markdown that's worth half of what you're willing to lose in equity by folding AA, there should be lots of takers.

I agree. But if 3k is life changing money to you because you might need it for a family emergency, I would argue that you shouldn't have an "entertainment fund" in the first place. Or in other words: If you're folding AA preflop at the final table of a poker tournament to lock up another mortgage payment, you probably shouldn't have set foot into the poker room.

I like playing AA all the time. But I know what you mean. With AA and the pot is growing due to raises or more people in the pot, you should always just take it down as soon as possible. The more people in the pot the less equity you have no matter what you hold. You should always want to win the big pots right away.

No, if the point they are trying to make is that "sometimes you can fold aces because this and that and bla bla bla nonsense" in a hypothetical situation then it's just wrong. Stop making up hypotheticals that never happen, or shouldn't happen.

I'm sorry, what is the line of events then? He registered before he considered that the $50 could be better spent? He realized during the tournament that there are actually payouts that go up to $3k? What was the information revealed during this one donkament that changed everything?

These hypotheticals always come down to "I set my house on fire, should I camp in my kitchen and make sure it doesn't burn down or go outside and get help with the risk the whole thing burns down?". Yes, there are considerations in that spot and yes one is better than the other. The thing is that it's plain stupid to bring up the situation in the first place and I am getting really tired of people who bring them up just so they can show that you can sometimes do this and that and it is correct. My point is that it needs to stop.

I'm saying that people that shouldn't be buying scratch off tickets still buy scratch off tickets. Against their expectations, at some point they may get lucky and hit a big score. If that happens, the next step is to figure out what best to do with that money, not to sit there and philosophize what a bad decision it was to buy the ticket.


I AGREE that it is a better financial decision to NOT buy the lottery ticket. Once it's done, it's done though. If you don't want to do the mental exercise involved beyond a decision that you would never make or agree with, then don't.

I've long said that lots of responses to threads in this forum are well skewed to keeping people out of jail rather than help them deal with being in jail.

"What do I do when ... ?" ... Fold pre ... GL

In my example the player wasn't going there to make a mortgage payment. The most he had ever won in one tournament was $500, which means that all the other times he didn't win a mortgage payment or maybe didn't cash at all.

But we've all seen times when someone just gets on a heater and makes more money in a tournament than they ever will again (Darvin Moon.) Many years ago on PokerStars I played a $3.30 MTT, finished 7th of 4700 and won $384. I had been playing about a year, part-time, and as I look back on it I had no idea what I was doing.

Sometimes you just get hit hard by variance, positive or negative, and you wind up in a position where you have to make decisions that you never expected.

AA all in makes good EV against any number of players.