Party $33 rebuy, near bubble hand

[Steve]

43 players remaining, top 40 pay. 40th place gets about $250, but 1st is $10000, so there's some incentive to try to make the money but obviously your really don't want to hurt your chances of making the final table too much by being a chicken.

So, here's the situation. BB was a good player -- he's tight but also is certainly capable of trying to steal this one from me knowing that I don't want to risk all my chips at this point. Given this situation, could someone who has more experience with these situations help me analyze his range and the math on what to do here? i.e. if you were in this situation, what would you think are the:

% chance he has a pair
% chance he has AK or AQ
% chance he has a weaker Ace
% chance he has absolutely nothing

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t1500 (9 handed) FTR converter on zerodivide.cx (http://www.zerodivide.cx/converter)

UTG (t17636)
UTG+1 (t14546)
MP1 (t14426)
MP2 (t52248)
Hero (t27841)
CO (t22098)
Button (t10920)
SB (t52040)
BB (t49377)

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with A/images/graemlins/heart.gif, J/images/graemlins/club.gif.
<font color="#666666">4 folds</font>, <font color="#CC3333">Hero raises to t4500</font>, <font color="#666666">3 folds</font>, BB is all-in.

Easy fold I think.

[TheTimeIsUp]

Folding would be the obvious choice. If the BB is a good/tricky player, he could really be pushing with any two here. This is a call I love to make, since he could be giving you a very easy double up.

[Steve]

Ok, here's some quick and dirty math, you all can tell me what assumptions you don't agree with:

75% of the time he will have a real hand. I'll say that will be AA-44, AKs-A7s, KQs, AKo-A9o. I am 45.5% against that range.

25% he will have any other hand in the deck (trying to steal it). I am 65.7% against that range.

So, going purely by chipEV:

chipEV(fold) = 23341
chipEV(call) = 28526

But: 1) Are those hand ranges accurate? 2) chipEV is not close to $EV since were on the bubble?

Standard fold, good point JJProdigy about this being a great place for an easy double up but I'm not willing to risk that he doesn't have AQ+ JJ+ just to see KQs and 60/40 it anyway.

[allenciox]

I disagree with these ranges. If you want to say 75% a real hand, that is ok, but a "real" hand would not include dominated Aces, like A7-AT (offsuit or suited). I would change that 75% range to AA-22 (some players might do this with any pair), AKs-AJs, AKo-AQo.

Potential re-steal situations have a lot to do with reads, image, and table dynamics. How often had you been raising? How often had the table been raising Villain's blind? Had you seen him defend it before? Had you ever folded to a re-raise? I usually don't assume re-steal the first time I get played back at, even if I've been aggressive. The "standard" play is to wait for a big hand and then re-raise the aggressive player, not to come over the top with air. AJ is more than good enough to make a stand if your raises haven't been getting respect, but if you are used to taking down the blinds, then I'd let this one go.

I just don't see the BB, who you say hasn't seemed to do anything really out of line making this play without a pocket pair or AQ, AK.

He understands you are tight. Now I know there are four folds in front of you and he 'may' think you are raising with a susceptible hand because you are first in, but still I'm folding this quite quickly.

You don't see two eights or two nines enough in this spot to make this +EV. I see this play with AK a lot.

[Steve]

[ QUOTE ]
I disagree with these ranges. If you want to say 75% a real hand, that is ok, but a "real" hand would not include dominated Aces, like A7-AT (offsuit or suited). I would change that 75% range to AA-22 (some players might do this with any pair), AKs-AJs, AKo-AQo.

[/ QUOTE ]

Interestly, reducing his range to AA-22, AKs-AJs, AKo-AQo still produces the following:

chipEV(fold) = 23341
chipEV(call) = 24971

Its closer, but still a call as far as chipEV goes. So the bigger question is how far does $EV deviate from chipEV here on the bubble? I'd argue that they are still pretty close because top 3 pay $10,000 $5000 $2500, while 40th place pays only about $200-$300.

[TheTimeIsUp]

Honestly, when I am a big stack and this is the bubble, I won't have a range to move in here. I will move in with any 2 if I think there is a very small range he calls with. I am trying to think from the other end of the spectrum.

[illegit]

Yeah, but even if we assume he is a good/tricky player who is capable of a resteal with air here, unless he's moving in literally every hand you can't give him a range of AA-72o. So you still can assign him a range, but add an increased probability of any 2. Like 80% of the time he has AA-77, AJs+, KQs, or whatever 20% of the time he has a random hand and go from there. Though this analysis is only productive if you have any kind of read. Against an unknown I assume this means a real hand of some sort 99% of the time.