Interesting hand from the Bellagio 2k tournament

[sirio11]

My first tourney at the Bellagio was pretty uneventful. I finished 40th (they paid 27, 261 entrants). We started with 4k chips, and I never had more than 11k, this hand ocurred when I had a 11k stack.

Blinds 200-400 with 75 ante. Less than 100 players left at this point.

Player UTG is desperate and go all in with his last 2500.

I have AJ in UTG+1, and I'm pretty sure his range is so large that I have him beat, so, I decided to make the call.

Now, player in LP does not cooperate with my clever plan and go all in for about 5800, and then player in the SB decides this is a good pot to go all in, he has about 3 or 4k.

Back to me, I have to call about 3.3k into the 15 or 16k pot.

After some calculations, I decided to make the call.

Hands:

UTG: K2d
LP: QQ
SB: 87c

So, I had a chance with my A, the flop came 863 all spades, I have the As and nobody has a spade; so suddenly I'm the favorite; but the QQ managed to dodge all the bullets and won the hand.

There were 2 important points in the hand:

What do you think about the first call? You still have 8 people to act !!

What about the 2nd call? The guy who went all in had to have QQ+ , no way he has AK, if he has AK he would've just called.

[ QUOTE ]
My first tourney at the Bellagio was pretty uneventful. I finished 40th (they paid 27, 261 entrants). We started with 4k chips, and I never had more than 11k, this hand ocurred when I had a 11k stack.

Blinds 200-400 with 75 ante. Less than 100 players left at this point.

Player UTG is desperate and go all in with his last 2500.

I have AJ in UTG+1, and I'm pretty sure his range is so large that I have him beat, so, I decided to make the call.

Now, player in LP does not cooperate with my clever plan and go all in for about 5800, and then player in the SB decides this is a good pot to go all in, he has about 3 or 4k.

Back to me, I have to call about 3.3k into the 15 or 16k pot.

After some calculations, I decided to make the call.

Hands:

UTG: K2d
LP: QQ
SB: 87c

So, I had a chance with my A, the flop came 863 all spades, I have the As and nobody has a spade; so suddenly I'm the favorite; but the QQ managed to dodge all the bullets and won the hand.

There were 2 important points in the hand:

What do you think about the first call? You still have 8 people to act !!

What about the 2nd call? The guy who went all in had to have QQ+ , no way he has AK, if he has AK he would've just called.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, the first call was the only questionable one, IMO. With a ton of ppl still left to act, you could get yourself in some trouble - which you sort of did. It depends on the chip stacks of the players behind you, I think.

However, with all of that money in the pot, you're getting around 4.5-1 on your money so it's a must-call. With the hands that were in, you were only a 4-1 dog (20%) so you made the right call after all the pushes if you can't put anyone on AA. But you your original call got you in a bit of a mess.

Just my 2 cents.

[Exitonly]

i like the first call, i'm not worried about the people behind me, if UTG had folded i'd probably have raised anyway. as for the LP guy, i dont see why you say he won't do that with AK.. unless you knew something really specific about hi, i'd sya he'd do that with AK, maybe even AQ. anyways, without doing any pokerstove, i'd imagine you have more equity than you'd need w/ the 5:1 odds.

[Melchiades]

I don't like the first call from UTG+1. The second call seems ok.

[Superfluous Man]

Taling about the 2nd call first, becaus that is how I roll: Even if you're up against AK and AQ (instead of QQ and 87s) you're still only a 4:1 dog getting 4.5:1. However, if AA is lurking out there, you plummet to something like a 12:1 dog. Is AA a likely enough holding to push this into being a -EV call? I kind of doubt it, but it decreases your edge. Also, winning this pot will give you a massive stack, so I like gambling here.

I'm not a fan of the first call, I would almost certainly just fold it. I remember reading somewhere that AJ isn't +EV from early position because of the likelihood that one of the 8 or 9 hands behind it will be a large favorite against it (not sure if this is true at all). So, simply jamming, while it could get something like AQ to fold, is a bad move IMO. To me, it seems calling almost forces you into making a razor-thin +EV call later on this street. Or, worse, if one of the LP players simply calls (I assume there are some stacks that are similar in size or bigger than yours yet to act) it forces you to play a huge pot OOP with AJ. Ugh.

[aaronbeen]

I think you should have gone all in to isolate the short stack. He has a very low M and you described him as desperate so it seems safe to assume that he has a wide range of hands and playing with your aj has positive expectation.

If you call and someone else plays you are probably going to be priced in and it is unlikely that you will fold. I hesitate to say that you are totally committed and if there is any flaw in my logic it is here. I get the sense that live play is much less aggressive than online but on pokerstars or something I wouldn't be able to put a reraiser on aces or whatever and fold getting good odds. (How good your odds are likely to be depends on the rest of the stacks at the table. If they all cover then you aren't going to be priced in as well.) Still, calling 1/4th of your stack and then folding seems really distasteful.

Given that you are somewhat committed by calling, your hand is obviously not strong enough that you want to encourage people to play with you. Move your chips in and scare off aq, jj, maybe even ak or qq from a weak/tight.

[ononimo]

call #1: don't like it. if i was going to play at all (which depends on the aggressiveness and chip stacks of those behind me, which you didn't provide), i'd re-raise all in. by simply calling and providing excellent odds for callers behind you, you're depending on those behind you to implicitly collude and not bet you off your hand if you miss the flop. your call represents a significant % of your stack and i don't feel comfortable relying on others to "play nice" and let me see the river for free -- which is precisely what i'm looking to do by just calling with AJ.

call #2: you're basically priced in at this point but now i'd DEFINITELY re-raise all-in (if possible) -- since i'm in this deep, i certainly don't want to be bet off my hand.

And without reads, i don't know how you could possibly put that player with QQ on a range as narrow as QQ+ -- at a minimum, he could easily have AK (suited or not) or JJ; I wouldn't be shocked to see 99-TT/AQs here either. Like you, he probably saw the first all-in as a desperate play by a weakish hand and knowing that you probably read it the same way and just called instead of re-raising to isolate, he may have assumed your hand wasn't all that strong either and that 1) he has you both beat and 2) you just might fold to his re-raise. with such a read, you can't expect him to fold hands like 99+/AK, AQ and he can't just call since the call would be nearly 1/2 his stack.

[locutus2002]

I think you should push immediately.

If you think your range is good against UTG, then you don't want anyone else coming in.

There are no circumstances where you will fold to a reraise so get the maximum amount of FE.

On the margin you are only going to fold out (maybe) AQ,TT,AK and hands like that.

I wouldn't even consider folding with your read and an undistinguised stack.

[ansky451]

[ QUOTE ]
The guy who went all in had to have QQ+ , no way he has AK, if he has AK he would've just called

[/ QUOTE ]

I'd like to hear why you think this.

[bruce]

Personally being next to act I would not play AJ, suited or offsuit. There are too many players left to act and I would
be feaful of the scenrio you had to face. If I were the button and he
was the cutoff I would play the hand. I'm not exactly certain, but I think if I were to play the AJ in your spot I'd reraise
myself.

The guy with QQ appears to have played the hand fine, unless
I'm missing something. He knows UTG is probably weak and
he probably assumes you're not tremendously strong either by your simple call and lack of reraising.
He has the third best start handing so if I were him I'd gladly push.

Bruce