MUST I call all-in river bet with A-high flush?

[Dave D]

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I'm pretty new to MTT's, but I'm confused about two pieces of advice. Here you advocate a tight early strategy similar to SNGs, but I've often heard people say that you need to push edges and take more risks to accumulate chips early. So should you be seeing a lot of cheap flops with drawing hands hoping to hit a monster or play tight?


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There's two schools of thought, generally, on early stage strategy, accumulators vs survivalists. You can tell by the name how each plays.

But, taking risks and pushing edges does not neccessarily mean taking A LOT of risk and pushing A LOT of edges OFTEN. When people say take risks, they're talking about pushing AKs into a PF raiser even though you might be racing with TT. The key is to try to get your money in when you think you're ahead often enough to win.

If you're playing to win first, there's no way you'll ever get thru a tourney w/o winning several coinflips or 60/40s, and sucking out when you thought you had an edge and took a risk, but actually weren't.

[Copernicus]

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I think you have to call.

Why is everyone worried about a boat? 6s5s is a straight flush and 22 is quads.

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Well played sir.


This is one reason I don't like playing A8s from EP, early in a tourney. Bad OP, bad.

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Thank you sir, may I have another? [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Seriously, though, I am interested in why you don't play A8s from EP early in a tourney. I thought I would be able to limp in, see if I got a flush draw (if not, probably get out), and then see if I could get the right odds to call (I think I did, with implied odds). My rationale is that most of the value in A8s is in a potential flush draw, and that it is probably +EV if you can get to the flop cheaply with it and then re-assess.

Also, you mentioned the distinction between early in the tourney v. later. I don't understand, could you explain? Thanks.

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You don't want to get put in tough decisions for all of your chips early in a tournament. It's not theoretically proper to raise you all in on the river with the blinds that small unless he had the nuts. When the blinds are small, you want to play extremely tight and only enter pots when you believe you have a distinct advantage. I have a lot of experience with losing a ton of chips in the early rounds, and now I just instantly fold anything except pocket pairs, AQ, AK and I'll even play KQ and AJ suited if I can get in cheap.

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I'm pretty new to MTT's, but I'm confused about two pieces of advice. Here you advocate a tight early strategy similar to SNGs, but I've often heard people say that you need to push edges and take more risks to accumulate chips early. So should you be seeing a lot of cheap flops with drawing hands hoping to hit a monster or play tight?

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Its largely a matter of style in MTTs. Either approach can be profitable in the long run, but when you are entering pots with drawing hands you better be an excellent post-flop player or your going to increase your variance significantly.

I also thinkg the looser approach may be better suited to live games where you can get better reads on an opponent.

[Masquerade]

He's got you beat here. Lay it down.

[Dave D]

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This is one reason I don't like playing A8s from EP, early in a tourney. Bad OP, bad.

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Thank you sir, may I have another? [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Seriously, though, I am interested in why you don't play A8s from EP early in a tourney. I thought I would be able to limp in, see if I got a flush draw (if not, probably get out), and then see if I could get the right odds to call (I think I did, with implied odds). My rationale is that most of the value in A8s is in a potential flush draw, and that it is probably +EV if you can get to the flop cheaply with it and then re-assess.

Also, you mentioned the distinction between early in the tourney v. later. I don't understand, could you explain? Thanks.

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You don't want to get put in tough decisions for all of your chips early in a tournament. It's not theoretically proper to raise you all in on the river with the blinds that small unless he had the nuts. When the blinds are small, you want to play extremely tight and only enter pots when you believe you have a distinct advantage. I have a lot of experience with losing a ton of chips in the early rounds, and now I just instantly fold anything except pocket pairs, AQ, AK and I'll even play KQ and AJ suited if I can get in cheap.

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Yeah I pretty much agree with this. I wouldn't play A8s from EP, because I'm early position. You don't want to call PF, just to have it raised behind you and now you have to fold. You don't want to call a small bet post flop (b/c you have odds to hit your flush) only to have someone push behind you. It's very very easy to get carried away playing suited aces.

Position is everything.

Later in a tourney sometimes you can start opening up more, like pushing from the button with A8s when it folds to you because you only have 8 big blinds.

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Yeah, I'm not sure if I'm totally clear, but when I say "well played sir" I'm talking about betgo's comment.

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I understood -- I was responsding to the "bad op, bad" part of your post. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[TheBlueMonster]

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very easy call. Possibility of a lower flush alone makes it a good call, plus 56 or a5 or just a random bluff

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yup, exactly.
I've only layed down an ace high flush once...turns out he had a straight flush so I was proud of myself.

[AtlBrvs4Life]

It's a freakin turbo. Call.

[bruce]

I would probably fold on the flop with a paired board and several active players behind me yet to act. I'm not afraid of monsters but why get involved in a small pot when
you may not being drawing live or some of your potential spade outs are really not outs. If my call closes the action then perhaps I might get involved, but with the action still open I play another hand.

Bruce

[benneh]

i don't ever fold this

[fnurt]

Villain has been calling all the way. This could be a trap, but it could very easily be a lower flush. I can't fold the nut flush on this board.