Hey Guys,

I'd like to have your opinions about this.

Could at some point of a tournament be right to fold aces preflop? AA39ss,, AA4Tss for example.

And another question: how should high only Aces be played preflop?

In any sort of shove spot, late in tournament or short etc., I can't see folding AA with any sort of moderate low like AA39ss. Even against the best O8 hand AA23ds, according to propokertools the AA39ss has 39.60% equity give or take based on how the suits align. Considering the dead money in the pot already, there is almost no spot short of assuming the absolute nuts that we could fold and even then it is questionable. Deeper in early stages if some nutcase is just shoving 100bb you could probably just fold to reduce variance if you don't know his shoving range. Using propokertools again, if we were to take a look from a balanced gto perspective, the AA39ss hand is in the top two percent of all O8 hands. Compare that to AK or QQ in holdem. AK is somewhere around 3.5-4.75 percentile and QQ is top 2 percent. You would rarely have to be in a very deep and aggressive situation to see tight enough preflop ranges to justify folding a hand in the top two percent of hands. Also, if you get to the point where ranges are that tight and you are that deep with AA39ss I would guess you overplayed it and made a mistake, similar to trying to get in a 200bb with JJ in Holdem. That's just my noob opinion. I am really trying to learn O8 well and thought I would float out my ideas as vanilla as they may be. If I made so ridiculous claims or am just way off base please feel free to comment, troll, and bash me below. Thanks.

[converted_hand][hand_history]Poker Stars, $20.95 Buy-in (1,000/2,000 blinds, 500 ante) No Limit Omaha H/L Tournament, 3 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite. View Hand #37932215

Hero (SB): 54,878 (27.4 bb)
BB: 33,824 (16.9 bb)
BTN: 43,298 (21.6 bb)

Preflop: Hero is SB with A A T 8
BTN raises to 42,798 and is all-in, [color="red"] Hero ??

MTT:
1st prize 400 $
2nd prize 260 $
3rd prize 160 $

What's the right play in this spot?

A few Infos about the other players at the table: Button is a crazy maniac, a bad regular, shoves preflop with thrash hand very often. The other player TAG.

I guess you are serious. But I mean its not even close to anything but gii.

TBH I doubt you are +ev in $22 ht's if you are unsure of spots like this.

Can't think of any player against whom it's a fold. Don't fold aces pre is correct like +90% of the time.

unless your aces are trips with no lo card you can't fold.

I called this obviously, was only an example.
But on the other hand, against this guy I could have considered folding; I dominate him on multiple streets, I reduce my edge by flipping with him preflop.
And my A8 for low is very weak.


Another question Guys:
What do you do in the same scenario if the aces are high only?
For example AAT9ss or AAKQss?

You are probably way overestimating your "post-flop edge". You are only 20bb deep so there is not much there i.e. alleged post-flop edge is more waiting for a setup or a massive spew by villain than anything else.

My guess is it's correct to call off any AAxx, AAAL 20bb deep with antes. I can be convinced otherwise if someone shows me da math.

Id like to see the maths also, I'd be interested, especially about high only Aces.

you re right we re too short to play someone out postflop.

with regard to the AsAhTh8d
Hero must consider how often bb is calling after hero folds or folding after hero calls.

if we accept ICM for providing the $ value of the tournamnet stacks,
Hero's $ev is better calling then folding, if bb is folding 100%. and that is pretty much regardless of btn's range.
However, Hero's $ev is always even better when bb calls after hero has folded, then it is when hero calls and bb folds. But bb must call atleast ~20% of the time for it to be better for hero to fold.

hero's $ev is $292.21 when he folds and bb folds.

when bb folds after hero calls it seems as if hero's $ev is ~$294.5 vs. a tight range(15%6h) up to 298.35 vs a wider range(55%6h)

when hero folds and bb calls it seems as if hero's $ev is $304+ given a number of range variables

ofc, bb will sometimes overcall and i didn't workout any $ev numbers for comparison.


with regard to the AsAhTh9d

if bb is folding when Hero calls, btn does have ranges where it is better for hero to fold then to call.

First of all we have 3% hand here. I don't now NLO8 Nash calc, but let's see Holdem.
http://www.holdemresources.net/nashi...=2000&ante=500

Even if BU shove correct 19% (and crazy maniac push first definitely wider) we must call with 5,6% range. (BB over call only 0,5% ~ AA23ds - it's very rear with our blockers - AAss).

NLO8 % should be slightly different, but not so great different to fold 3% hand here to maniac shove). And how do you plan to realize you probable postflop advantage against pushing maniac?

Also despite in Holdem 6% hand will have 63% equity against 20% range,
and in O8 our hand have only 57% against 20%, but we will be scooped only with 25% probability, not with 36% as in Holdem, where ties are not so often.

Snapcall that spot. Generally, gii but you can run some sng chip equity sims. AAHH is much weaker hand so depends more.

AA+ one low card is almost always +EV shove, even with 100+bb. Since NLO8 tournaments always have players shoving weaker hands than AA villains will also call hands other than AA, thus even if there were some theoretical scenario where villains call very specific ultra-tight ranges that would make some AA+ low card shoves slightly losing reality is better. Worst case scenario for AA hands is calling shove when in ICM problems, especially multiway. The thing about ICM is that reality generally supports more aggressive play than ICM, since winning big stack allow continuous +EV poker spots while staying small stack means continuously folding +cEV spots. Thus skipping any ICM spot, which is +$EV is even bigger sacrifice than it seems. Also most hilo players are shoving most hands 20bb deep and it is hard to leak much in general at that depth other than folding too much preflop so "Looking for better spots" argument doesn't hold water with the AA8Tss hand for example. Best possible exploitable spot would be if villains were very tight preflop, would call almost all hands against tiny bet instead of reraising and would fold almost all flops postflop; then the exploit would be opening and cbetting 100% and avoiding preflop allins. This scenario or play is rarely in effect when a player is looking to fold top 3% hand - it is way more likely they think they will "out-tight" opponents - get money in with better hand in a postflop situation. That is rarely high-profit strategy 20bb deep.