AK suited all-in or fold?

[riches]

Playing in a freeroll tournament. Down to last 50 people not close to money yet. In middle to early position with about 50,000 in chips, above average stack. Ante 200, blinds 800-1600. Dealt AK suited raised pot, 13000. Folds to small blind who calls all in with 52,000. Folds back to me. Fold or call? I cannot see folding pre-flop. Should I have raised all-in at the start?

[SossMan]

If you are going to fold to an all in, don't raise 8x bb. With your chip stack, I would fold here nearly every time. I would need an extraordinary read to call this all in.

[Klak]

i think the fact that you mentioned this was a freeroll would make it a definate call. you will get reraised all in by some silly stuff on freerolls. though it is late in the tourney and the truely awful players are prolly gone. id still call unless i thought that the player was extremly tight.

[kuro]

Your preflop bet is too big. Come in with a standard raise 3x the bb or so and you'll have a better chance at seeing the flop or have an easier time getting away from the hand.
When you make large bets like that you look like you don't want to be called and so someone with say a 99-QQ that maybe would have just flat called or reraised you the pot ends up going all-in.

[wegs the wegs]

I agree with klak on this one, it's a freeroll. Freeroll = shootout. Unless you've seen this guy only play AA and KK the entire tournament it should be an immeadiate call. Ace anything is a legitmate pushing hand for most people in a freeroll. My guess is that you may be looking at a heads up with his pocket 10's or J's. Doubt he has AA or KK

[SossMan]

[ QUOTE ]
I agree with klak on this one, it's a freeroll. Freeroll = shootout. Unless you've seen this guy only play AA and KK the entire tournament it should be an immeadiate call. Ace anything is a legitmate pushing hand for most people in a freeroll. My guess is that you may be looking at a heads up with his pocket 10's or J's. Doubt he has AA or KK

[/ QUOTE ]

If you think they are making overbets with hands like 77-JJ, then why not wait until you have AA-TT to call them?

[nightlyraver]

I feel as if you really made this a more difficult hand than it actually should have been. Why the huge raise? You should have just raised to 6K-7K and that would have enabled the SB to simply call and not re-raise all-in, assuming he had a decent hand. With the huge open-raise, the SB may be going all-in w/ any pair or any ace with a decent kicker. With the raise that I suggested, he would only re-raise so much with a super strong hand, or a super strong bluff. 6K is only a small portion of your stack, you could have folded to the big re-raise. However, by raising so much you now need to call to protect your raise.

[Aloysius]

I'm not sure I understand the idea of "protecting a raise" therefore having to call in this spot.

I agree with most people in this thread that it was an overly large raise which makes it more difficult to get away from, but with about T37,000 left (23x blinds at this level)... that's a pretty playable stack in my mind.

I'd feel fine folding in this spot, unless the player has been really loose and aggressive and would push with a wide range of hands (in my mind, the typical player pushes with a big Ace but more likely with a pocket pair). I would rather not get all my money in for likely at best a race, at that stage in the tourney, when I could fold and have a playable stack.

-Al

[nightlyraver]

What I mean by protecting a raise is this:

Say you have $10,000 and the BB is at $200. You should raise to $800 with any hand worth raising with if you are first in. If someone now comes over the top and makes it $2,400 then you can easily get away from it unless you have a very strong hand or read. Your stack is now at $9,200 - plenty to continue with. Maybe the other guy had a better hand, maybe it was only 10% either way, or maybe he was just trying to steal. Now you only lose 8% of your stack when he tries to steal. However, had you opened for a raise for $2,000 with the same holding, you lose 20% on a steal. Why does that really matter? Well, if you know that you have to get away from the hand since your hand is not THAT strong that you can call a re-raise to $6,000 then you are making your oponent's steal more profitable and, more importantly, more detrimental to your stack. This means that you will have to call more often when your oponent comes over the top. As an extreme example, if you fold every time, you lose 20% of your stack all the times that you're re-raised and you put 60% of your stack in every time that you call. This is not ideal. However, you can see the logic in calling a re-raise with a less than perfect hand if the other guy is always coming over the top. In fact, you have to call MANY times to keep him from showing an automatic profit on you every time that he comes over the top. That is what is called "protecting your raise." Now you REALLY see why raising more than 5xBB when you are first-in will always be incorrect unless people are calling 7xBB raises with hands like ATs and other junk that bad players think is good. Even against those players, it would still be a mistake to raise so much in most situations, but for a different reason.

[Scooterdoo]

As many people pointed out, your raise was too big. For example, in a tournament if I see someone making a raise like you did I would often read it as meaning that "I do not want to get called (please don't call me) but I'm not willing to risk all my chips by pushing." For this reason, I sometimes will come over the top and push with any two cards because I'm very confident that the initial raiser will fold, thinking that I must have a monster. I'll do this most often if I've seen this player for a while and am confident in his ability to lay down a hand from time to time (some people will never lay down a good hand, and you certainly don't want to do this against them).