Go for the Kill or make the money?

[tolbiny]

I am a fairly inexperienced tourney player, sitting in a 84 person tourney yesterday. T2000 for a 20 buy in, 20 rebuys, with a 45$ add on for 11. I sat and immediately rebought, and made it to the cut and added on putting in a total of 85$ for the tourney.

Prizes are
11th-10th $50
9-8th 100
7th 150
6th 250
5th 350
4th 500
3rd 700
2nd 900
1st 1700

We are down to 12 players left, i am in the small blind, and the chip leader at my table with T190,000, i believe i am the second chip leader in the tourney at this point, blinds are 3000-6000. I am in the small blind.

Utg folds utg+1 goes all in for T170000 folded to me. I look down and see QQ. This is the Third table i have been at with UTG+1, he hasnt made big raises with big pocket pairs, but i ahve seen him go all in with big connectors and espcially big suited connectors. I expect that he has either an A or K in his hand coupled with a Q or a J, probably suited. If i win this hand i will be dominating the table and will knock out a player, if i lose i become the small stack at the table. I dont know the stack sizes at the other table.
Call or fold?

[josie_wales]

Assuming your read is correct, you are asking if you should push when you have the following % chances of winning against the hands you put him on (assuming no mathcing suits)

AKs - 54%
AQs - 65%
AJs - 68%
KQs - 65%
KJs - 68%

You bascially are either a slight favorite, or about a 2-1 favorite.

Tough not to get your money in with the 3rd best starting hand in the game.

Also depends on what you goal is: Make the money, or Make the money

JW

[Rick Diesel]

The answer to your question depends on what you think is a successful tournament result. You have a stack that is big enough to almost guarantee you a top 6-7 finish if you take no risks the rest of the way. Personally, I would consider a tournament like this a success if I finished in the top 3 spots. Based solely on your description of the raiser, I would call if I felt that I had the same read as you, knowing that doubling up right here would put me almost assuredly in the top three, with a great chance to win the whole tournament. To do this though, I would have to have a strong read on the player that made the raise, because even if there is a 20% chance that he has AA or KK, I would think that it isn't worth it.

Rick Diesel

[tolbiny]

thanks for those numbers. In the end i called, and he turned over KJs and flopped a king to win it. He was the one player at the table that i couldn't effectively bully which was one of the reasons i called, i didnt want to pass up a chance at knocking out one of the few players who could put me to difficult positions.

The blinds went up to 5000 10000 the next hand and i had T2000 left. Everyone at the table looked ready to fold untill the 12th player went out, and i picked up KTo on the button and it was folded to me. I went all in trying to pick up the blinds and get another round through. (it didnt work cause the BB called with A7o and took it down unimproved) what would you have done there?

[cferejohn]

All-in. I don't think it is close. The situation where I am not willing to go all-in vs. a single other player w/QQ is so rare as to have not come up yet.

Also, it's hard to imagine he would play AA or KK this way, since he'd presumably welcome action with those hands. AK is possible, but you are a pretty reasonable favorite over AK (not all that close to the oft-stated "coin flip"). The hands I most often see played like this are medium pocket pairs (88-JJ) where the raiser figures he has the best hand but doesn't want to have to play a flop with overcards in it for the rest of his chips.

Looking at the payouts, I can't imagine that anything less than 5th place is going to be terribly exciting to you. Getting all-in here as a favorite - possibly a large favorite, gives you a great chance to take down the real money in the top 3-4 spots.

[cferejohn]

[ QUOTE ]
The blinds went up to 5000 10000 the next hand and i had T2000 left. Everyone at the table looked ready to fold untill the 12th player went out, and i picked up KTo on the button and it was folded to me. I went all in trying to pick up the blinds and get another round through. (it didnt work cause the BB called with A7o and took it down unimproved) what would you have done there?


[/ QUOTE ]

I assume your stack was 20K, not 2K. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

I would probably have pushed there. I think KT is a small favorite against 2 random hands, and I'm going to push small edges here to give myself a chance to double up and get to the final table, since getting to the money and netting -$35 doesn't really strike me as significantly better than losing my buyin alltogether.