How best to survive this hand?

[tallstack]

I am on the BB with a hand, but not a lot of ammo. I am commited to seeing 5 cards here, but should I go all-in PF or lead with an all-in on the flop? Which would you do?

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t50 (6 handed)

Hero (t310)
UTG (t2265)
MP (t2580)
CO (t385)
Button (t1230)
SB (t1230)

Preflop: Hero is BB with A/images/graemlins/spade.gif, K/images/graemlins/diamond.gif.
<font color="CC3333">UTG raises to t100</font>, MP calls t100, CO folds, Button calls t100, SB folds, Hero ?

Thanks,

Dave s

[benjdm]

I would vote raise all in preflop. Maybe you get some people to fold, increasing your chances of winning. Maybe somebody reraises and forces others to fold, getting you fewer opponents and more dead money in the pot. Or if they all call you maximize your wins on the ones you do win. I don't think calling and leading out on the flop gives much extra.

[durron597]

Allin preflop. You have too many opponents for a stop and go, you just want to get as many chips in while ahead and hope to 4x up.

[tallstack]

Thanks for the replies. At the time I thought both options had their own merit. So far it is unanimous for the PF raise.

Raising all-in PF is my normal move here. However, if I raised pre-flop, I likely wouldn't scare out the UTG original raiser since he was one of the large stacks. The next to act would be the chip leader who already cold-called a raise before it got to me. If the UTG original raiser would re-raise then this would be a great scenario, with a likely HU showdown. I was worried that he would just call, since his original min raise wasn't trying to get many out in the first place. If he just called, then I thought I was back to square 1 with 3 callers.

My other thought was that I get to act first on the flop so my push then would be given more credit. I would likely get some players to drop here, but those who didn't drop would likely be the ones who hit the flop. I feel this option is trading the number of callers for the strength of callers. I'm not sure whether this is a good or bad choice.

In the end, I chose option B, figuring that as the tiny stack I was going to have to hit this hand to survive anyways, so I might as well get as many to drop as possible.

It worked and didn't work. It dropped UTG and UTG+1, but the button called with his flush draw and got there.

I am not sure whether I would choose this option again or not. Does anyone think that option B has any merit in this case?

Thanks,

Dave S

[patrick dicaprio]

i push here for sure, hope to get called by everyone and catch and A. if you lose oh well.

Pat

[adanthar]

If you push on an A-x-x/K-x-x/Q-J-T flop and get zero or one out of three potential callers, what is your EV?

If you push on a 9-7-2 flop and get one caller, what is your EV?

If you push preflop and get one or two (or even all three) callers with an expected range of hands of 66/Axs/KJo, what is your EV?

[tallstack]

There are so many possibilities here, but I will take a shot at the ones you mentioned and see what comes out.

Question 1) If I hit the flop and get no callers then I win 450 (net 350). If I hit the flop and get one caller, then I estimate I will win 75% of the time with a pot of 870 or about 650 (net 340).

Qestion 2) If I push when I miss the flop then get one caller I will likely hit an ace or king on the remaining two cards about 24% of the time. Some of those hits will still not win it, but sometimes I may have been called by overcards or other draws as well. I will guess that I win 870 chips 24% of the time here for about 210 (net -100)

I think it is most likely that I will get a caller (maybe more than 1) So in that case my EV should be 33% (the times I will get a flop I like) of 340 minus 67% of -100 or about +45. IF I CAN GET IT DOWN TO 1 CALLER. If I get more than 1 caller then I believe my EV would be lower.

Question 3) If I push PF and get three callers with 66/A8s/KJo then I am about 23% to win 1290 or about 300 (net -10)
cards win %win lose %lose tie %tie EV
As Kd 241091 22.20 823574 75.83 21343 1.97 0.231
6c 6d 364336 33.55 719170 66.22 2502 0.23 0.336
Ah 8h 236496 21.78 835147 76.90 14365 1.32 0.224
Ks Jc 222742 20.51 853786 78.62 9480 0.87 0.209

If I can drop the KJo then i should win 34% of 1080 or about 370 (net 60)

If I can get HU then with an underpair then I should win 45% of 870 or about 390 (net 80)

I am not sure that I can put percentages on the likely number of pre-flop callers, but my gut at the time told me that I would get at least 2. If either 2 or 3 callers is equally likely then I would have a net of about +25.

My uncertainty in the calcs here is much higher than the EV difference between the PF vs flop pushes, so I still don't know if choosing the flop push has merit or not. I my mind a lot comes down to where I thought I could best thin the field.

[durron597]

You are thinking about this too hard. You have 3xBB, and AK. You will need to get lucky to move up even three spots into the money; push preflop so maybe people who will hit the flop might consider folding, because the people that do certainly aren't going to fold on the folp.

Also, I just want to add; when you recalculated the EV with some hands folding on twodimes, did you make sure to put the other hands in the dead cards box?

[ZeeJustin]

All-in preflop.

[tallstack]

Ok, I know that I beat this to death. This hand was never THAT interesting, even to me.

Since everyone likes the all-in PF, then I have no reason to doubt that it is the right decision. It was my first decision when I saw my cards, too.

Also, I did not use the dead cards in the calcs (I neven would have thought to until now), but they lower my EV in all the cases, so I think it is a bit of a wash.

Dave S