AA Situation

[brassnuts]

Early/middle stages of a MTT with a large field. You have roughly 20xBB left and are well below avg stack. Folded to you in MP3 with AA. The CO and button are tight players and rarely limp into a pot. Largish stack in the blinds is a bit loose and has about four times your stack.

I was discussing this situation with a friend, and we were wondering about what line some better NL MTT players would take. How much of your dwindling stack do you toss in there?

[The4thFilm]

If you have 20x the BB you are not shortstacked, disregard the average stack.

[brassnuts]

I have very minimal tourney experience. I've heard a short stack is around 10xBB... I said 20xBB in this post. In the hypothetical situation though, I imagined that you weren't quite shortstacked. How about 12-15xBB?

[BobboFitos]

I was discussing this situation with a friend, and we were wondering about what line some better NL MTT players would take. How much of your dwindling stack do you toss in there?

I'd raise the same as I would if it were a complete steal or KK or AA. Depending on whether there were antes or not, 3x BBish is fairly standard.

Of course, here is where I really hope someone puts me on a steal, so I can just push the rest in /images/graemlins/smile.gif

But if you get lemons, you're not going to be able to make orange juice. (I dont know how this applies to poker or this example)

[nsj]

I raise exactly what I've been raising all along, with the hope that, as someone else said, it's presumed to be a steal and you get the chance to push.

But then I'm not necessarily one of these.
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some better NL MTT players

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[gergery]

Your objective with AA is to get as many of your opponents to put as many of their chips as possible in preflop. Whatever accompllishs that best in your game is the correct play.

For most games with good players, you need to make your standard raise here, and with 20xbb that should be 3-4xbb. This helps disguise your hand (as you should be raising this much with enough hands that your opponents aren't sure what you have) while getting more chips in the pot.

-greg