Late Tournament Situation - Right or Wrong

[Magician]

Pokerstars $30 NL HE tournament - I have about 9,000 chips. Blinds are 600/1200 with rolling ante of 75. My stack is about 1/2 the average. It's the final 18 players.

I'm dealt AJ offsuit. UTG to UTG + 3 all fold to me. I go all in (most stacks after me could cover me). One caller. He turns over AA and I bust out.

Is there anything I could/should have done different? With a couple of mega-stacks (44K and 32K) my thinking is you have to be all in so that they think twice about making a loose call. What you really want is to capture the blinds and at the same time even if called you are not in too bad shape (usually).

[sawil]

I think its a proper play on your part. Perhaps the only other thing you might have considered is raising and seeing flop or action behind you preflop. If you got heavy action post flop with multiple callers after checking, you could still release the hand if no help from flop ... Did trny pay same for 10th thru 18th? ... that would also enter into my considerations but souds like you had decent size stack to see more cards if flop didnt fit instead of going all-in
Just an opinion

[fnurt]

If there are 18 players left, and you need to move up to 9th in order to make any more money, you definitely need to be aggressively going after the blinds and probably getting lucky and doubling up at some point. I wouldn't try this with AJ from early position, but it sounds like you were in CO-1? So then I absolutely agree with your play. You just have to take the risk that someone after you might have a big hand, which unfortunately was the case here.

[Magician]

4 guys folded before I it reached me, so that means there were just 4 to act after me (including the blinds).

So that's CO - 2.

Thanks for the feedback - it makes me feel better to know I probably played it right and was unfortunate rather than to wonder.

[Magician]

You're right I was in CO-1, not CO-2. CO - 1 = Button -2

[ohkanada]

Seems fine to me.

Ken Poklitar

[homer001]

It sems to me that it was borderline between raising around 3600 and seeing a flop or going in. Considering AA most likely woul've put you in anyway, the result ,on-line at least, was unavoidable.