The situation was a $35 50k deep stack live tourney freeze out at the pub. We were down to about 16 players and top 4 got paid. Roughly 40 original runners. I was under the gun with 9bb and blinds were about to go up next hand. I jammed with ace 8 suited and there were 7 others left to act. I was called by aqo and she had a9. It ended up being a split pot. She insisted I was miles behind, I tried to say I only had 9bb and she repeated “doesn’t matter you were miles behind” I snapped and gave her a spraying. Obviously I was post flop but the question is was my preflop action “miles behind”?

I am very open minded to your opinions and am very happy to hear I am in the wrong here if I am.

Ace ragged is not a shove utg assuming everyone is short at the table. You only get call by big stack, she had reason to judge your shove and just unhappy it was ended up with a split pot

Sent from my ASUS_Z00VD using Tapatalk

Thanks for your opinion. I take it you aren’t a firm believer in Phill Gordon’s ace x rule.

Please ignore the horrible advice you have been given above

A8 suited with 9BB is a snap shove you shud be shoving A4suited plus here. Also don't engage with fun players who don't know what they are talking about. Most people in these live mtts have zero clue how to play good poker.

FWIW, I never play tournaments, it's maybe too loose but certainly not a big error.

Rather than poker strat, your meta thinking is much more concerning.

First, you can only be shamed by someone criticising your play if you allow yourself to be shamed. I can't think of a single criticism ever levelled at my play by an opponent that made me feel ashamed, why? Because most of them are awful at poker. That said, sometimes I made a questionable play and then thought about it afterwards and realised I could have made a better decision. So that actually helped my game, probably not what they wanted really.

Second, you let her have it. This is all wrong. Instead deflect, laugh it off, agree. It doesn't matter.

Give you an example, 3 ways OOP and OTT on a paired board, I check a straight flush draw, villain makes a tiny bet, other villain folds, I snap because while the board is paired, my draw is priced in. River double pairs the board, I x, villain xb and then flips out because his baby pockets are counterfeited and my A wins. Tells me I'll lose a lot of money playing like that, can't believe anyone calls turn with a gutshot etc. etc. It's highly obvious I had a straight flush draw and this guy is a reg that knows better.

Do I argue with him? Do I point out that only a moron calls a straight flush draw a 'gutshot'? Do I tell him that his tiny bet screwed him, if he'd potted it I would have folded on a paired board OOP? No. I just shrug, basically ignore him and answer direct questions with replies like 'sure' in a bland, bored tone.

It’s not a “snap shove.” Without antes it’s a fold. With antes it’s a marginal shove.

Without antes it could still be a fine shove at an overly tight table.

Google push/fold charts OP. You can use these to guide your decisions with a short stack when you’re not near the money.

Nobody ever deserves to be “shamed” at the poker table.

A8 is indeed miles behind A9 (it's dominated, obviously). No one deserves shaming for making a play though. People just get annoyed when they don't win if they were a big favourite when all the money went in.

A big factor here, which op told us about, but seems to gone maybe unnoticed?? is that hero is UTG and the blinds are about to rise. This could well be hero's last chance to jam first (which even UTG is still better than being forced to call in a few hands time to prevent being blinded out).

Without knowing the antes (and therefore hero's "M", if you are still a Harrington fan) it is impossible to say whether it is a profitable jam and as for ICM (long time since I did ICM) as I recall a known weakness of ICM is that it does not take into consideration the fact that the blinds are about to rise next hand, and therefore it is frankly irrelevant in this spot.

FWIW (I rarely play tourneys) in a live environment, I would be jamming this w/o a second thought. Online, i would do a bit of math...then I'd jam it

As for all the resultant spraff, wtfc cares about any of that ****.

first of all, 95%+ of players in 35$ live tournament will be completely clueless about poker, so when they give you advice, you can just assume that the opposite is correct

second, you misunderstood what the villian was saying. <Miles behind> was not an assesment of your play (that phrase is simply not used in that context), it was refering to your equity at showdown, which has very little relevance to quality of your play. If you shove KK in this spot and get called by AA you are also <miles behind>, but that of course doesnt mean that you shouldnt shove with KK.

and, finally, A8s is obviously a standard shove in this spot, folding would be a pretty big mistake. If there were no antes it would be closer, but still a shove.

Thank you all for your insight.

To be honest I was about 95% sure I was in the green but I still needed the confirmation. For the record she is a winning player online and I have a lot of respect for her game but we all make boo boo's every now and again that we can learn from thanks to things like forums and that's the ultimate beauty of it.

Although I tend to agree that A8 is tough to get through from UTG ... and who is going to call? Hopefully 66? Certainly 9bb is cause for concern, but what are you going to win as well?

I believe I read two different books where they discussed the idea of actually waiting until the blinds go up, especially if you will be 'in the blinds' in order to maximize your potential gain from a shove ... which at that point might just be ATC random. How many bb were you going to have in the next hand? At worst it will be 4.5bb in a turbo pub structure.

I'm not so sure this computes when you are going to be BB in the next hand since you can't pick up those 'extra' BB chips if you get them to fold since you are the BB, but the SB will be 'more' chips than you would've picked up in the previous hand.

Pretty weak point here so far, but I don't think that 'blinds going up' is a reason to panic when you are in the red zone .. it is what it is. They were going up anyway and maybe the ante with them.

As far as being scolded for playing the hand ... Just agree that you made a bad play and got lucky.

We had a cash player who called off over 150bb with AhKh on 6hJxTx into 2 other players and spiked an off suit Queen. One of the players in the hand was getting all over them so I stared to explain all the ways this player could've won in an effort to keep them playing that way.

Typically it's the 'suck out' factor that causes a player to lash out ... WE WANT those calls, we just don't like variance. GL

with respect it was established that it was a correct play and correct cannot be labelled bad (aside from a few rare icm situations). As noted above just because it's behind after the fact doesn't make it bad i.e kings running into aces.

This was essentially the same concept that she failed to grasp. Hand vs range not hand vs actual whole cards.

Apologies if you meant just agree with her for the sake of keeping the edge and not sharing knowledge. i might have misconstrued your statement.

Totally agree. With 9BB left you have to start making moves.
Also agree that there are many weak players in low level buy in mtts.

This ... ... I have been scolded many a time for 'teaching' at the table by regs. I see this as two-fold ...

1) If you don't give them a little bit of 'something' then they may not come back 'to work on' it.

2) I want to improve my game and therefore the competition needs to 'step up' and help me get better by being better themselves. (Yes, This is wide open for comment as well.) ((And yes, this implies that I am worthy of a poker status that may be disputed when I'm not in the room!!))

If you run into someone who is spouting off, then I just let them go on believing whatever they had to say is 'correct' so the table can move on. GL

Just curious - I've never heard that before. Does it mean you spit on her?

yell in their face so much you spray the person with specks of spit hahah. It was a culmination of a few other similar incidents that set me off.

with full ring table, A8 suited is not a shove, AT is debatable. Unless you're in MP, or HJ. Then it will be different

Sent from my ASUS_Z00VD using Tapatalk

It's 8 handed and antes are the deciding factor if a hand like A8s is a shove or not. Without antes, it's a close fold unless the table plays tighter than optimal, A9s+ is a shove. With antes, every suited ace is a shove unless antes are 10% (or less) of a BB.

As Fatboy said, the dynamics of the situation clinch this.

Let's say you're sitting with $9,000 with blinds of $500/$1,000 and you fold. On the next hand, you'll be sitting with $8,000 with blinds of $1,000/$2,000. Now you're last to act and if there's action in front of you (which there 100% should be 9 handed), you can't play again with a random hand. Then you'll be sitting on $7,500 in the same situation in the SB. You'll be sitting there crippled with <4BB hoping no one shoves in front of you before you can.

And this doesn't count antes, which would make this even more obvious.

Not shoving with a hand as good as A8s is ridiculous.

On to the rest of the hand. It depends on what you call "miles ahead". Yes she had you dominated, but not all domination is the same. For example, A3s vs. A5 is basically a coin flip. The suitedness has a slight bit to do with it, but the main factor is how low the cards are. The chance of counterfeiting cards is so high when you have low cards that domination starts heading in the direction of zero. You would be worse off if she had AK. A9 is kind of in the middle, but you're not in great shape. Does not even qualify as a bad beat IMO since you're better than 1/3 equity-wise.

As to your response, as you mature in these situations you'll learn to just smile it away. She's a child, let her act childish for awhile and get it out of her system. If shes wishes to go away and educate herself about the math of the situation, fine. If not, even better.

So, basically you don't deserve a shaming for your play, but for your response.

I'm not sure what this means by the way. She had AQo or A9?

Anyway, the other factor here is whether or not she should be calling you with A9o. Your shove is a no-brainer, her call isn't so clear. Depends on many factors which weren't supplied.

I wouldn't agree that OP was also "miles behind". KK/AA is as behind as you can get in Holdem. OP has about double that equity, so they can't both be "miles behind".

?

KK has 18% equity against AA, A8 has 8% against AA. Pair vs. overpair is far away from "as behind as you can get in Holdem". Also not sure how you come up with "double that equity", A8s has only 31% against AQo. Against A9, A8s is at 34% so "miles behind" would in the eye of the beholder. Some think 2:1 is a big deal, others don't.

This to me sums it up perfectly has to be all in what better spot is coming round?

9 BB and the blinds going up next hand. So assuming the blonds go up by 50% and no antes. On the next hand, you will have 5 BB after posting.

Not only is A8 a shove, so is pretty much A2C.

I suppose you can fold a bottom 3rd hand and hope for something better in the BB.

LOL at waiting for that mythic "better spot" with an M < 4 on the next hand.

I would prefer it if the Redheads went up by 50% ... especially the type that can tan, with freckles. GL