muck AK because A\'s are dead? no way
 

A guy told me a story at the Commerce this weekend, and I'm wondering if there's any merit in this.

He was at the final table (9 players left) of a tournament with $155K. Blinds $4K/$8K. There were two limpers for $8K, and he put in a big raise of $55K with AK on the button. The big blind then went all in for $200K. The first limper agonized, then folded. The second limper folded as well.

The guy with AK thought he had a good read on the first limper as having an ace - something like AT or A9. Thus, at least one of the aces was gone. He was also pretty sure that the big blind had a pair of tens or higher. Based on this info, he mucked the AK faceup. The big blind showed KK, and both the limpers said they had medium aces.

My question to all you tournament experts is: when you are considering taking a coin flip, do you consider whether your cards might be dead, and thus you even less than 48% to win the coinflip? Can you ever get a reliable read of this?

By the way, I asked him "How do you know the limpers didn't have 77," and he said "they would have raised coming in with that."

Re: muck AK because A\'s are dead? no way
 

There was a similar hand on a recent WSOP broadcast where Matusow does take into account that a limper probably mucked an Ace and it changed the dynamics of the coinflip he knew he was about to get into so he made the call more comfortably (I think he had JJ and put his opponent on AK). I think with a strong read on the limpers, their mucked cards should be factored into the equation. With that in mind, it is probably best to not do this without a very strong read because you may well muck your hand when the limpers had a small pair or something like KQ or KJ, as you mention in your post.

Re: muck AK because A\'s are dead? no way
 

I love to do the same thing with low pocket pairs, let's say 22-77. If there is an opener and let's say 5-6 callers (this happens really really not often) I am thinking I got 2 live cards somewhere in the deck that haven't been dealt to 6 players, so that leaves another 2 (poker stars). It's likely they may have one of my cards but I like to think this atleast increase my chance of hitting a set so I usually go way out of my normal game and call with 30% of my stack since I know I have an increased chance of hitting my set since it's 2 cards in the remaining deck and I will get payed off with all of the people in the hand. I hope you know what I am saying but I don't do this everytime. Table dynamics etc all matters too. But you get my point. I do the same when folding AK as your pal did.

Re: muck AK because A\'s are dead? no way
 

when you play baby pairs, you're looking to hit one of your two outs (ie., you're already assuming both cards are live; extra limpers does not increase this.)