Stars 200$ NL hand, Playing the semi-short stack. . .

[Acesover8s]

Pokerstars 200$ NL tourney. 54 players get paid, but no real money until final 2 tables. There are 52 players left, Blinds are 3k and 1.5k with a 100$ ante. Average stack is about 30k, I have 18k in UTG +2, with A7 offsuit.

What's the play?

[sam h]

Fold. You're in early position and you don't have enough chips to make a big stack lay down some of the better aces.
You also have enough chips to pay the blinds and still be able to steal them in the next orbit.

[Guy McSucker]

Fold it. You have time to wait for a similar hand in late position and grab the blinds and antes.

Congrats on making the money! If you won a seat in a satellite it's a decent return. I qualified for it today myself but had to sell the ticket for annoying reasons.

Guy.

[Acesover8s]

I stupidly pushed all in remembering something about having less than 10x the BB, blah, blah, blah. Got called by AQ and J9, came in 3rd for the hand, and out of the tourney.

Sub-thought: Assuming you decide you need to go in soon (veryr short stack), but you do have a big enough stack that you are not NECESSARILY going to be called if you push in, do you think its a better strategy to raise with a "two live cards" type hand (i.e. JT, Q9), rather than a possibly dominated hand like Ax?

[fnurt]

If you have your choice of what hand to go all-in with, I would choose AA.

If you don't have your choice of hands, which unfortunately is the case most of the time, I would go all-in with whatever reasonable hand you get. /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

In all seriousness, I see your point, but I'd still rather have Ax. Sometimes the caller will have a smaller ace, sometimes he will have something like KJ (in which case your JT doesn't look so good any more!). If you know you need to go all in this round, folding Ax looking for a JT-type hand would be silly IMO. The reverse might be equally silly.

[Greg (FossilMan)]

Who's in the blinds? How likely are they to call? With what will they call? With what hands will anybody else call?

If they're going to fold often enough, raise. If not, if they're going to call with hands like AT or 55, then fold, as there is a good chance at least one of these hands is out there behind you.

Later, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

[Pauliman]

hi guy,

i was just curious how u go about "selling your ticket"

thanks in advance

pauli

[bigfishead]

Full table muck. No question about it. Bad position, full table, mostly get called by hands better then yours, etc.

[John W]

[Guy McSucker]

Both you and the person who wants to buy it have to mail pokerstars support, who very kindly transfer the money between your accounts, and of course the seat in the other direction.

It's a very good service I think.

Guy.

[ohkanada]

If the blinds are about to jump up I likely go all-in. Otherwise I plan to make a move next round.

Ken Poklitar

[ohkanada]

"I stupidly pushed all in remembering something about having less than 10x the BB, blah, blah, blah."

I think the problem was that you are now in the money (players will now player looser) and with only 6xBB you are going to have a tough time to get better hands to fold. But as you saw you will get some worse hands to call. Someone with KQ or KJ would call. Unfortunately for you AQ is also going to call.

Ken Poklitar