Donkeyfied AA hand

[sng-sam]

Pokerstars 3+.30 2000ish people started down to final 150

Blinds 400/800 50 ante
Hero 15000
Villan 18000

Hero is UTG+1 with AA
Villan is Button

Hero Raises to 1200
BB calls

Flop KJ4 rainbow

Villan bets 1100ish
Hero reraises all in
Villan calls and shows KJ for 2 pair

Hero is out

Your Opinions are appreciated

Straight Flushes,

SAM

[TheBlueMonster]

[ QUOTE ]
Blinds 400/800 50 ante

Hero Raises to 1200

[/ QUOTE ]
can you do that with these blinds?

I think some of the numbers in your post are wrong. Blinds maybe?

[sng-sam]

sorry blinds are correct

I made a 3bb raise
he made a 1/3 pot bet and I reraised all in

Sorry

[ QUOTE ]
sorry blinds are correct

I made a 3bb raise
he made a 1/3 pot bet and I reraised all in

Sorry

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you played fine.

People will flop two-pair when you have an over-pair. It happens. Personally I prefer getting sucked out on real early though.

If it's any comfort to you - the exact same thing happened to me at a FFP sat to the Scandinacian open yesterday - only it was the third hand of the tournament - and I had kings against J9.

You played fine. I don't see how you could justify not pushing here - given there was no re-raise pf. You would have to be Uri Geller to put him on two-pair.

[Dan Mezick]

Villian has 10.5 orbits in his stack.
You have 8 orbits in your stack.

Here you can move-in, or limp and hope for a fool to raise you, and re-raise all-in pre-flop.
The little raise you made is your absolute WORST worst play.

The limp risks no raise preflop. You really do not have enough chips for this play.

The move in put him on a decision preflop with no alternatives while you hold the best hand with a weak stack fully deployed pre-flop.

So you move in. Automatic.

You invite this KJ ("off" for sure) jerk into the pot, why? What's the OBJECTIVE of your 1200 raise? What's your plan?? Apparently, you want to let idiots in cheap. This you accomplish with ease.

With your weak stack, you are not supposed to let anyone see the flop cheap in this spot !! If you had more maybe you could try limping and hope for a re-raise. If the flop is smooth and there is betting, you decide street by street from there. You can still get away with some chips if no one re-raises pre-flop (preventing your planned reraise all-in) and the flop is bad for your AA. Read this paragraph again.

You have a small stack and need to move in. Any play for all his chips preflop likely pushes him off the pot with that KJ button cheese. If he calls great - he makes a HUGE mistake.

This was very poorly played. You trapped yourself. You literally handed this KJ idiot all your chips, voluntarily.

[Matador225]

[ QUOTE ]
You invite this KJ ("off" for sure) jerk into the pot, why? What's the OBJECTIVE of your 1200 raise? What's your plan?? Apparently, you want to let idiots in cheap. This you accomplish with ease.

With your weak stack, you are not supposed to let anyone see the flop cheap in this spot !! If you had more maybe you could try limping and hope for a re-raise. If the flop is smooth and there is betting, you decide street by street from there. You can still get away with some chips if no one re-raises pre-flop (preventing your planned reraise all-in) and the flop is bad for your AA. Read this paragraph again.

[/ QUOTE ]

I definitely disagree with you Dan, unless of course you are joking and I failed to detect your sarcasm. He played it absolutely fine. If you know villain is going to call a 3 X raise (but no more than that) that screams monster with KJ than thats what you make it. You don't need to fear protecting your hand when you have the best possible hand preflop, you should be worried about getting the most value out of it. In this case I think our hero did. I don't think villain is going to call a push and if the flop comes king or jack high he probably commits all his chips. The OP played it fine.

I agree with Matador on this one. I have my own way of playing Aces and it tends to work. One, if I have a big stack I am raising to the point that only strong hands can call, no more bad beats for Rich, though it still happens on occasion. Two, if short stacked, I slow roll and hope others might limp and of course push to any raise, this way I get as many chips into the pot and then double or triple up. This strategy worked perfectly on Full Tilt after suffering a bad beat suckout that took me from CL to almost out of the tourney. Just my opinion but this seems to work for me, so far.

[ QUOTE ]
I have my own way of playing Aces and it tends to work. One, if I have a big stack I am raising to the point that only strong hands can call, no more bad beats for Rich, though it still happens on occasion. Two, if short stacked, I slow roll and hope others might limp and of course push to any raise, this way I get as many chips into the pot and then double or triple up. This strategy worked perfectly on Full Tilt after suffering a bad beat suckout that took me from CL to almost out of the tourney. Just my opinion but this seems to work for me, so far.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a trend that a lot of novice players get into and it is completely and totally the wrong way to look at this situation. When you have aces preflop you should not be looking to push people out of the pot as much as you seem to think you should. You want the smaller pairs, weaker aces and donkeys with sooooted cards along for the ride. The odds are in your favor here, especially against all the hands I just listed. Your opponent will outflop you on rare occasions, but the statistics prove that AA will hold up against a random hand 85% of the time and that does NOT change when you give the villain a tighter range like 88-KK,AKs/o,AQs/o. Why you would want to push out people with weaker starting hands is beyond me. Sure you hear lots of bad beat stories regarding pocket aces, but how many of those stories involve someone who misplayed the hand and ended up hanging himself? I think a lot of cases of Aces being beat fall into this category. On the opposite end of the spectrum, however, a properly played AA has a great chance of allowing a player to double up his chips. You don't want to miss this opportunity by playing the hand so hard that nobody wants to get in the pot with you.

Granted, going to a flop with 7 players holding AA isn't the best scenario but you still have the most equity in the pot in this situation. You're not the underdog in the hand unless the flop helps one of your opponents. I actually think the biggest problem in a scenario like this is your last 2 aces are likely to be dead cards in someone elses hand and your chances to improve are that much worse - leaving a smaller pocket pair with a chance of making a set and beating my big pair which is something the Aces can't do if the two remaining ones are held in other players' hands.

Things like this do happen but it does not mean that you want to push out hands that you could win more chips from. The idea here is to win other peoples chips and if you're purposely wasting pocket aces to steal blinds or win a tiny, meaningless pot then you are not likely to make it very far in a tournament. Play to take your opponent's chips - don't make it easy for him to keep them in his stack. Make it so that a player holding a medium pocket pair will play with you (and lose) - invite the AK,AQ,KQ,KJ type hands to call and come along for the ride (granted, hands like AK are usually coming along regardless).

As far as your strategy on Fill Tilt one night - that's results oriented thinking and goes against everything you said you're looking to do with a big stack. Why change your strategy when you are short stacked and have a greater chance of being knocked out of the tournament? Isn't this a time where you want to see a flop against a few opponents rather than the whole table of limpers? Why is this play good with the small stack but when you have a lot of chips to play with you are looking to minimize your action? It just seems to me that changing your strategy here puts you in the exact situation that you are trying to avoid when you have a big stack and you are raising people out of the pot.

If you're going to play scared that your aces are always going to suffer a bad beat perhaps you should take up Candyland or Tiddlywinks instead.