Coin flip middle of a tourney, do you take it?

[McMelchior]

[ QUOTE ]
There's absolutely no way that you can have enough info on your opponent 2 hrs into an MTT to have this sort of read.

The fact that you were right this time has nothing to do that you made a flawed assumption.


[/ QUOTE ]I have no idea why you write this, but it's bad.

If OP considers it unlikely the OR has AA thru QQ, then that's his read, and since he has been observant and played the OR for a while it should not be challenged.

What you in effect are saying is that we can't make and trust reads online. This is plain and simply wrong.

Most players are highly predictable, even the insanely LAGgy ones. This is a basic assumption for playing online.

To Dogger: Following your read - which I, have I not made myself clear, believe is pivotal - you're a small favorite:
Hand 1: 51.9621 % 42.88% 09.08% { AcKd }
Hand 2: 48.0379 % 38.96% 09.08% { JJ-77, AQs+, AQo+ }

As such you should play - and the fact that the cost of sitting one orbit approaching 10% of your stack (and probably soon to increase) certainly should remove any residual doubt.

Flat calling for 12% of your stack and a couple of players behind you to act is not something I'm fond of. Especially since I read your selfproclamed "very very thigh"ness to mean that you only have little confidence in your post-flop playing abilities. Playing AK after missing the flop is not for beginners.

I believe it's a clear push.

Don't let others discourage you from trusting your reads.

Best,

McMelchior (Johan)

[ThrillFactor]

Oh come on now.

Even if he's seen his opponent pick up 1 each AA,KK, and QQ in the first two hours and open-raise 3-4x each time, he can't discount that he may have one of those 3 hands this time and is mixing it up trying to get action.

I'm not seeing monsters here, and No, I'm not implying that you can't develop reads online. In fact, I understand completely when he says that he believed that it was unlikely that villians had AA-QQ. BUT YOU CAN'T DISCOUNT THEM COMPLETELY. They have to be considered, even if at a discounted probability.

In this particular hand it doesn't make a difference. Hero's a slight favorite without them in the range, a slight dog with them. It's an easy push either way with the dead money.

But to say that you can totally eliminate them as possibilities based on 2 hours of observation is foolish.

I agree with both of you. You can get read online but it is hard to be 100% sure Vilain doesn't have AA-QQ. However, how do you know he is not doing that with 66 or AJs, or KQs??? Nobody knows so you base your decision on what range you actually think he has. Of course, when you are called you won't see the times he had 55 or QJs, you will ojnly see the time you were wrong and he had AA. I think that he could have AA-QQ but I also think that if you strongly believe he doesn't have that, you can base your decision on this.

I wasn't playing but personnaly, I wouldn't discount the fact the AA-QQ could min-raise UTG or in EP.

For the hand: I push almost everytime. You are tight, so you must push the good hands you have. I think he did a bad play, calling with 99 (at best 45-55) but you can't control that.

[ThrillFactor]

Of course you are correct - there are many more hands that can be in the OR's range. But when figuring his range, I tend to err on the side of worse-case scenario. We're in a dead heat with my given range, making it a pretty easy push. If I gave villian too much credit, then that makes it even better for me.

The tragic mistake would be to not give the OR enough credit.

In my reasonably limited experience of online MTTs, the mini-raise utg with AA seems to be pretty common. The vast majority of people with AA utg seem to either flat call or mini-raise and then pray for the re-raise so I wouldn't discount it but most people seem to flat call or mini-raise low pps too.
However, if the table has been together a while and you are observant and feel that villain is too, then I think you can discount it based on that. He's only going to slow play AA utg or in ep if he's pretty damn sure he's getting re-raised. His nightmare in that scenario is that it gets called round and he's first to act in a family pot so if you feel that he feels that someone at the table is likely to reraise an utg mini-raise then you can't discount it. If, on the other hand, any ep raises are being folded round and you are pretty sure villain is aware of this, then i think you can more or less discount AA.

Here is my short opinion.

Pushing > Stop and Go > Calling > Folding

If you haven't been playing a hand for 45 minutes and pass on AK, then what are you waiting ON? AA, KK, QQ? I push here quite often, with an agressive table, I would maybe call, then push a raise.

BTW, does Dogger = Bernard Lee?

Is Stop n Go a joke? You will push 4200 into a 1200 pot? You are not even foirst to act after the flop??? You do have FE before the flop??? Please learn or take the time to understand the case before saying anything.

[winky51]

I feel this is the right play, reraising 2k. I prefer to reraise OOP and call in position usually.

If the player is not a 2+2er or on that skill level the 1st thing that goes through his mind is "He's got AK, I call because I'm ahead" or "He's got a small pair, I call because I'm 50/50"

They don't think about stack sizes, odds, the possibiliy they are out of the tournament. The annoyance of being reraised all in gives them an excuse to call with lessor hands and pairs. See it all the time.

Now if you reraise a good amount.. then it looks suspicious. First thing they think of is AA or KK or even QQ. Now when the board comes A K or Q they fold.

I try not to push all in at tournaments. I would rather reraise to make them think then bet the flop.

If you think about it lets say you push your AK 4 times and each thime they have AQ. Well to win 4 times in a row is 30%

Lets mix it up. dominated 1/2 of the time, coin flip 1/2 the time. 14% of the time you are going to win all 4.

I would rather win a smaller pot 4x 100% of the time then push 4x on 75% win rate.

Now if your field is mostly better players that understand pot odds, and hands then yes I can see it.

Most of my field (90%) are average to poor players. Very few with pot odds concepts or risk analysis.

With 90% bad players you will have few that bust and few that have monster stacks. The good players either go up or down slow in stacks. Their ratio is equal to the monster stacks of the loose bad players (because of the 10:1 ratio). Since most of the players are loose they will call your push more. 100 player tournament with 90 bad and 10 good your probably looking at 12 with stacks bigger than yours, 13 with stacks that are close to yours. 20 with stacks that can cripple you. Not sure if this makes sense or not. But as I play live tournaments I push less and less and seem to go farther and farther. I protect my stack.

[McMelchior]

[ QUOTE ]
They have to be considered, even if at a discounted probability.
[..]
But to say that you can totally eliminate them as possibilities based on 2 hours of observation is foolish.

[/ QUOTE ]Sir, I respectfully disagree with your approach.
We are talking about reads. We are not talking about absolute knowledge. This is a very basic and important distinction.

Reads are an approximation to facts. A read can by nature never be made with 100% certainty. But: Reads are our one and only basis for adding information about our opponents holdings to our determination of what is the best play at any given time.

Saying that the OP can't discount certain of OR's possible holdings is correct, but it's also meaningless and therefore shouldn't be done. If we can't discount AA, KK or QQ, then we can't discount 72o, K3 or JTs (the latter being much more likely). Actually, we can't discount the min-raise as a plain and simple mis-click!

In a tournament situation the only practical MO must be to estimate likely holdings based on our observations and discount all other holdings, knowing that "of course he could have XY". Here the assumption must be that holdings our read discounts as unlikely stronger holdings are balanced out by the unlikely weaker holdings.

Any other approach is destructive to our game, by making the evalutation unwieldy and impossible within the time frame allowed.

And, much worse, claiming that the OR must include hands that based on his read are unlikely is detrimental to the development of good reading skills - and should not happen here.

Best,

McMelchior (Johan)

Fireball, was asking for advice because obvioulsy i am not the most experienced player in the world. No need to be an arse hole