Folding AA pre-flop

AgentJack · #1 11-26-2004, 02:18 PM

A friend and I were talking about what to do if you are in a tournament and you have 2 people in front of you go all-in pre-flop and you hold AA and it would put you all-in also. I would of course call but he is saying that he would not take the risk.

Anyway I thought there was a thread about this on this message board but I have searched and I can not find it anywhere. Can anybody point me in the right direction?

Thanks.

Rudbaeck · #2 11-26-2004, 02:23 PM

If he folds preflop I want him at my table in the next tourney. There is a huge thread on this subject, and the summary is: It's wrong to fold AA.

Here you can find the thread you wanted. I searched on "fold aa", quotation marks included and it was the first hit after this thread.

AgentJack · #3 11-26-2004, 02:46 PM

Thanks

PokerMaster · #4 11-26-2004, 04:01 PM

come on dude!! aa pre flop, you cant do that, its what everyone else is waiting for a pair of AA in pre flop!!

kodonnell · #5 11-26-2004, 04:34 PM

If I am in a tournament, I am close to the money, have a better than average chip stack, and have 2 callers in front of me, I MAY CONSIDER folding pocket aces.

Runner Runner · #6 11-26-2004, 04:46 PM

[ QUOTE ]
If I am in a tournament, I am close to the money, have a better than average chip stack, and have 2 callers in front of me, I MAY CONSIDER folding pocket aces.

[/ QUOTE ]

I may consider it also, if my life depended on cashing in the tournament, or I had a huge last longer side bet going with another player who was a short stack. Barring these or other strange circumstances, I would call.

Play to win, not to cash.

felson · #7 11-26-2004, 04:47 PM

Play to win, not to cash.

Play to maximize EV, not to win or cash.

Wheezl · #8 11-26-2004, 05:18 PM

Its almost never correct, but situations can be contrived where you actually make more money by folding AA preflop in certain final table situations. This depends on the payout structure of the tournament and the stack sizes involved. I think Sklansky talks about a specific situation like this in his tournament book.

pudley4 · #9 11-26-2004, 10:41 PM

[ QUOTE ]
Its almost never correct, but situations can be contrived where you actually make more money by folding AA preflop in certain final table situations. This depends on the payout structure of the tournament and the stack sizes involved. I think Sklansky talks about a specific situation like this in his tournament book.

[/ QUOTE ]

There's basically two situations, and they are both based on the payout structure of the tournament.

1 - A satellite, where the top X finishers all get the same payout (an entry into another tournament, for example). If you have a chip stack that is large enough where you can just fold your way into the payout, there is zero reason to play any hand at all. You don't get any extra $$ for finishing first, so take no risks at all.

2 - If your chip stack is so small that even winning the current hand won't help you survive any further and there are opponents who will bust out (on this hand or on future hands) before you will, allowing you to move much further up in the payouts, it may be correct to fold. Sklansky's example was something like: 4 players left, your opponents each have T1,000,000, you have T50,000. All 3 opponents go all-in. You fold because you are almost guaranteed 2nd place after this hand, and even if you win you'll have about T200,000 vs T2,850,000 which isn't much better than having T50,000 vs T3,000,000; plus the normal difference in payouts between 2nd place and 4th place is significant.

TOmCowley · #10 11-26-2004, 10:50 PM

I had the second situation happen in a party SNG. Two huge stacks (>3000), a guy who clearly wasn't there (who was going to blind out two orbits before I did, and the table was aware enough to raise his BB every time), and me(400). Got AA UTG, mucked em, no questions asked. You really have to work to find a situation to make it right though.