[Sam T.]

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Okay. Somewhat late in a large multitable tournament, say a $5. I have 12,500 in chips with the average at 11,000. There are 240 people left and they are paying 20% of the field or 340 people. Blinds are 300/600 but going up in 2 minutes (so in this case you can say they are 400/800 by the end of two hands). My M right now is 12500/600=20.8, which is a high amount. I have AKo right in the cutoff. Even though at your current rate you have an M of 20, with the blinds going to 400/800 and you putting in at least 1200 in the next four hands isn't this a case of a push?

If you raise to 1800 and then make a continuation bet of 2400 on a flop of Q 4 2 and get pushed all in you just cost yourself 4200 chips plus the minimum of 1200 within a few hands. That's 5400 chips out of the 12500.

Isn't it just smart to push or "overbet" your M of 20 because of varying factors like blinds moving up, your position on the table (close to the escalating blinds) and a hand that is the top drawing hand?

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I see your point, but you have to remember that just as "it's all one session", it is also all one tournament. If a certain betting pattern (raise and c-bet) is usually profitable one should not be discouraged by the cases in which it is not. The situation you describe is bad, but it is also relatively uncommon. Far more often you will:

a) raise and take down the hand right there
b) raise, miss the flop, but take down the pot with your c-bet
c) raise, hit the flop, and take town the pot with your c-bet
d) Raise, hit the flop, and stack some schmoe you have dominated.

In each of these cases you make chips, and taken together the chips you make by raising and c-betting far outnumber the chips you lose when someone check-raises you off the hand, or (more importantly) the chips you lose by blasting worse hands out of the pot pre-flop. You WANT AQ to call here.

The other problem is that if you start pushing AK in this situation, you lose your ability to play (steal with) other hands because the villains will figure out that you're pushing big hands. (Obiously you could start open pushing garbage but that's a different discussion.)