UTG Bubble Question

[Rickfish]

Pot Limit Holdem, 10 players left on two tables of five, 173,000 chips in play. The last 9 are in the money. You are lowest chips with 7,000 but there are two other stacks that are not very much bigger than yours, say about 8-10,000. Blinds are now 800-1600. You pick up A8s UTG. How do you play?

[jujujaja34]

Rick,

Fold and I don't think it's close. Your blinds can survive a couple more orbits, you're on the bubble, and its likely you can put yourself in a much better spot to survive into the money. If your primary concern is getting into the money at this point folding is the best option.

jujujaja34

[RiverMel]

Fold, no question.

[Al_Capone_Junior]

Really, this is a toughie. Five handed, A8s is pretty decent, tho not necessarily an automatic. The trouble is that you're on the bubble, and you're UTG, two factors which lead me to say fold. Since you're pretty sure to last a few more rounds, I'd tend to lean towards folding and hoping to NOT be the bubble boy.

al

[Wake up CALL]

I believe your ultimate intentions determine what you do with this hand. Folding is not bad if you have a loose image at this table and making the money is very important to you. However if you are either seen as a tight player or are more interested in moving up in the money I would raise all-in here. Five handed this may very well be the best hand even if you are called. Even if not you certainly give yourself an opportunity to more than double up here and reconsider your options later in the tourney.

[redsimon]

Rick

I'd fold too. You are not yet crippled by blinds and there will be at least one more better hand to come along. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Tell us though what happened? (Allin and called by Q4o and 4 on river?)

[Greg (FossilMan)]

How much action is going on in this event? If there is lots of action, then you would fold. Two reasons. First, you're much more likely to get called, and when you do get called, you probably won't be much of a favorite, if you're a favorite at all. Second, if they're all playing a lot of hands still, it is that much more likely that you can quickly limp into the money, before you lose too many chips to the blinds.

However, if everybody is playing pretty tight waiting to get into the money, then this is a pretty clear max raise situation to me. You'll win the blinds uncontested most of the time, and if you do get action, a double-up will make you almost an average stack, and you can go for the big money.

Later, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

[Rickfish]

I don't think it matters what actually happened because it would be wrong to take too much notice of the result of one hand. But I'll tell you anyway.

Firstly, to answer a couple of questions, the table was playing how you would expect, i.e. tight aggressive, virtually no limping, a raise normally would win the blinds. I had a tight image but had just increased my raising to take account of the size of the blinds and short-handed table. I had raised the previous hand and won the blinds.

I didn't want to crawl into the final with a very small stack that didn't have much chance of getting into the proper money, i.e first three places. My view is that A8s figures to be the best hand with only 5 players. Even if every hand that I am worried about calls I reckon there is still only about a 40% chance of someone having it and I'm including all the small pairs. The only really bad hands out are pairs of 8s upwards and Ace with 9 kicker or better which is more like 33%. If I'd had a decent amount of chips I would not have taken the risk but as the lowest chips and the size of the blinds I though I had to raise. Some people have a rule about number of big blinds that you allow yourself to get below. I had 4 big blinds which I am sure is below a lot of people's limit.

So, not that it matters, but I found that someone went all in with AQ and someone went all in with QQ. Very difficult for me to win. If I had folded the AQ would have been knocked out and I'd have been in the final. As it was two of us got knocked out and they got the money for 9th as they had more chips. Although I would not have said no to the money for 9th my main concern was to stay in the race for a podium finish.

In Cloutier & McEvoy's book one of them says something like "this is the action period where you can win a lot of chips but don't ask me how many times I've gone out in tenth place!".

[Deadbuddha]

i would definitely fold, the bigger money would probably call you just to get you out and then might pull out the win on you.