($20) Early AKs

[arcticfox]

This is deep stack poker stillthough, putting your tornament life at risk pushing into 2 hands that have shown huge strength pre flop just isn't worth it to me. Just because the first raiser had a bad beat last hand does not mean he is pushing with air. the cold call suggests a big hand too. I do not assume my opponents are donkeys pre flop in tournaments, I make money in MTTs outplaying them post flop more than pre flop. You call it survivalist, I call it common sense. I think you are a dog to MP2's range of hands that cold call here. I just don't see the point in pushing this early with AKs knowing you are getting called by a hand that has shown huge pre flop strength and will not be folding, and where you are either racing or dominated. Do you always assume that no reads on an opponent means he is an idiot?

[CatfishKing]

Either push or fold. calling 1/4 of your stack and folding 2/3 of the time on the flop is absolutly terrible.

[fnurt]

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What is the benefit of that push? What do you hope to gain?

If the push makes him make the correct play and fold, then you have lost a shot at his stack.

If the push makes him make the correct play and call, then you are almost surely way behind and more than likely doomed to get busted out.

In other words, all the push does is force the opponent to make the correct play. Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but isn't one of the objectives of poker to cause the opponent to make mistakes?

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This has to be one of the most specious arguments I have ever seen. You assume the opponent will play perfectly, and then you criticize the play because it doesn't allow the opponent to make a mistake!

What if he calls incorrectly with a hand like AQ?

What if he folds incorrectly with a hand like 55?

You can't tell me these things never happen as they happen all the time.

Or does he somehow, magically, put you on exactly AK and always play correctly?

Now, if you call, you let him see the flop for free, with his hand that rates to be inferior to yours. THAT sure doesn't give him a chance to make a mistake! And if he magically knows your cards, I wouldn't expect him to be making a lot of mistakes after the flop, either.

[Brad F.]

I can't believe that this thread has lasted as long as it has.

Many good arguments by fmurt, read those. It is an obvious +cEV situation if you push. See my argument.

Calling and then folding the flop is horrible here.

Pushing is the best option here. All those that are scared of two mosters here are weak tight in my opinion.

Brad

[Dave D]

This thread is a trainwreck. We're trying to help you, but you're not reading the responses. This first quote indicates you have A LOT of reading to do.

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Guess what-- you're PROBABLY BUSTING OUT OF THIS TOURNAMENT. You bust out of MOST of them. Probably somewhere in the range of 98-99% of them, which if you're on the lower end of that scale is probably fantastic.

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Are you kiddin' me?

Are you seriously equating tournament departure out of the money, and tournament departure in the money, as the same thing?



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Yes.

If I win 1 tourney buy in, I might as well have not placed. It's very literally basically the same thing for us. Thats how much value I (and good players here) place on getting just in the money.
Don't take what we're saying as advocating pushing 77 all the time or something, hoping to double up, like people do in rebuys. What we ARE saying is that you can't pass up possible +EV situations and expect to do well in a tourney. You have to take just about every possible +EV situation you can find, at any point in a tourney, to do well.

HERE IS THE KEY. Remember this grasshoppa. What the poster was saying, was that passing up these kinds of situations may make you place often, but not place high. ALL the significant money is at the top. The payout is basically exponential. So lots of just barely in the money places for $5 are USELESS AND A WASTE OF TIME. People on this forum are playing to win, not to place. ONE 4th place is better than literally 250+ just barely in the money finishes in this tournament. EVERY chip you win has value. What that means is that you basically CANNOT (especially in the 40k, with a 2200 person field) win/make the FT of a tourney without coming back from being behind at least once and/or winning when you were 30% to win but were going to tripple up (or something like that).

This is the idiotic mistake that stallers make during/after the bubble. Playing to win $10 is useless.

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This is the problem with the survivalist strategy: It treats busting out of the tournament as a mortal sin, unforgivable, and one that must be avoided at all costs.
Guess what: The prize isn't for surviving, it's for finishing first. You cannot "survive" your way to all of the chips.

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This is all well and good. The problem is that you consider anyone with less than all out kamikaze mentality to be a survivalist.

If that's what I am then that's what I am. I have no fear of pushing my stack in as regularly as needed. No one has clearly demonstrated the need in the OP's case, not relative to the first guy, who is already all in, but relative to the second guy, who can knock you out of the tournament.



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AKs is a group 1 hand. Treat it as such . This decision is only 1 step down in "hardness" from if you had AA/KK. As we've already said, the only hand you're afraid of the caller having is AA/KK, and even if he has KK you're still ~30% to win. This simply isn't likely, both statistically, and also based on his play. I think any reasonable player would have iso pushed here with AA/KK, but whatever. Then again, THIS IS THE 40K ON PARTY, I can't underscore this enough. Villian has a HUGE range, I would not be surprised to see a low PP here, or a worse ace. These people are idiots.

Read our responses, it's obvious from yours that you haven't.

[bdohaney]

I am definitely in the push camp. Despite the arguments against it, I think that it is certainly the best move. With only calling here, you are almost certainly either a.) going to push by the end of the hand, or b.) only going to see 3 cards, when another 2 might give you the edge you need. Now, for those of you who would only call, what are you going to do when the flop comes something like: Jc Qc 6s and your opponent pushes? Now you are facing a MUCH harder decision than whether or not to push into hands that (in a tourney like this) LIKELY (without a better read on either opponent) could probably vary from AKs-A8s, AKo-ATo, KQs, KQo, KJs, QJs, TJs, and any pocket pair down to 55. With that flop, you have to ask: Did he make trips? Is he close to making his flush? Did he pair up here? And, though you very well could be ahead, would probably have to fold if your opponent pushed here, on pure odds, if nothing else. Push early, see your 5 cards, know that unless he has AA or KK, you are NOT much behind, and that unless you are dominated by one of those two hands, you have the odds you need to push.

[nath]

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This is deep stack poker stillthough, putting your tornament life at risk pushing into 2 hands that have shown huge strength pre flop just isn't worth it to me.

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This is not huge strength. A very short stack moved in and someone called. No, in a $20 tournament I am not giving them credit for a better hand than AKs. This pot is mine.

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I think you are a dog to MP2's range of hands that cold call here.

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Really? What range do you put them on? I'd say 77+ and AJo+ is being generous. (I suspect it goes down to 55, and maybe AT and KQ as well.)

To quote everyone's boy Harrington, "Most bets mean what they appear to mean." A call indicates less strength than a reraise. At a $20 at the first level, no, I'm not giving him credit for being clever enough to trap with AA or KK.

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Just because the first raiser had a bad beat last hand does not mean he is pushing with air.

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No, but it increases the chances he is, giving us a better edge and a more favorable gamble.

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the cold call suggests a big hand too.

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I think you are a dog to MP2's range of hands that cold call here.

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A "cold call" means to call two raises. MP2 is not cold calling. It is not a phrase to use when you want to make a call sound strong.

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I do not assume my opponents are donkeys pre flop in tournaments, I make money in MTTs outplaying them post flop more than pre flop.

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If you started outplaying them preflop, you'd make more. And online, "donkey until proven otherwise" is not a bad starting strategy at a buyin this low.

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I just don't see the point in pushing this early with AKs knowing you are getting called by a hand that has shown huge pre flop strength and will not be folding, and where you are either racing or dominated.

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You. Don't. Know. This.
MP2 might fold. Maybe he is weak-tight and called with QQ, and thinks the raise must mean AA or KK-- or maybe AKs and he doesn't want to put his tournament life on a coinflip this early.
You also discount the possibility of a lower ace.

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Do you always assume that no reads on an opponent means he is an idiot?

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At a $20 buyin I always give it substantial consideration.

Anyway, enough talk about putting tournament lives on coinflips and such. It's a catchphrase used to deny the need to look for favorable spots to get your money in, even when you may not be 50% or better to win the hand.

[nath]

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Guess what-- you're PROBABLY BUSTING OUT OF THIS TOURNAMENT. You bust out of MOST of them. Probably somewhere in the range of 98-99% of them, which if you're on the lower end of that scale is probably fantastic.

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Are you kiddin' me?

Are you seriously equating tournament departure out of the money, and tournament departure in the money, as the same thing?

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My goal is to win. If I win a lesser prize it is a failure that I incidentally profited from.

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I'll certainly agree that a win rate of a couple percent is pretty respectable. But final table play and strategy should not be even remotely related to play and strategy an hour or two away from the money.

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I disagree with this, since I feel you constantly have to be accumulating chips to stay competitive and ahead of the blinds. You can wait a little while you're ahead, but a good spot is a good spot.

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It's a step by step process. In order to win, you first have to be at the FT. In order to be at the FT, you first have to get into the money. In order to get into the money, you have to get your stuff in consistently when you have the best of it, not just when you feel like taking random shots.

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I'm pretty strong in the camp that we DO have the best of it here and can't for the life of me see how people are finding hand ranges that makes this play terrible. So I don't consider this a random shot by any means.

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This is the problem with the survivalist strategy: It treats busting out of the tournament as a mortal sin, unforgivable, and one that must be avoided at all costs.
Guess what: The prize isn't for surviving, it's for finishing first. You cannot "survive" your way to all of the chips.

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This is all well and good. The problem is that you consider anyone with less than all out kamikaze mentality to be a survivalist.

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Perhaps you consider anyone with anything more than a survivalist mentality to be a kamikaze.

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If that's what I am then that's what I am. I have no fear of pushing my stack in as regularly as needed. No one has clearly demonstrated the need in the OP's case, not relative to the first guy, who is already all in, but relative to the second guy, who can knock you out of the tournament.

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Because you probably have the best hand, and MP2 may fold, giving you effectively better than 2:1 odds to play your AKs heads up against a short stack, or because MP2 may call, and you may be all in while dominating. In the worst case, you may be nearly 50% chance to make the best hand with extra odds. In the worst worst case, you're screwed. But the possible presence of the worst worst case does not mean we should treat it as most likely and try to avoid it. It means we accept that danger because there are so many favorable reasons to take this shot.

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My experience with survivalist strategy is that you tend to finish in the top 1/3 pretty frequently. Of course, it doesn't pay until the top 10%, and by the time you finally have to make a move-- well before then-- your desperate all-in will be called and you'll be up against it or just get sucked out on.

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You make it sound as if every "survivalist" as you call them, crawls his way up from the basement and is lucky to walk away with whatever table scraps are left by the "surviving" kamikazes and truly lucky players. Nothing could be further from the truth.

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And you make it sound as if every "kamikaze" as you call them plays without regard to skill and makes crazy all-in bets for no reason, and every once in a great while gets lucky enough to end up at the final table will all the skilled players who survived their way there.
(We can play this game all day, you see. We won't learn anything, but sometimes it's fun to pick a side and defend it.)

I'm trying to capture the experiences I have had in tournaments and the mindset I bring to them now. It has brought me the most and most consistent success. Feel free to play your own way.

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This thread is a trainwreck. We're trying to help you, but you're not reading the responses. This first quote indicates you have A LOT of reading to do.

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Guess what-- you're PROBABLY BUSTING OUT OF THIS TOURNAMENT. You bust out of MOST of them. Probably somewhere in the range of 98-99% of them, which if you're on the lower end of that scale is probably fantastic.

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Are you kiddin' me?

Are you seriously equating tournament departure out of the money, and tournament departure in the money, as the same thing?



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Yes.

If I win 1 tourney buy in, I might as well have not placed. It's very literally basically the same thing for us.

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I couldn't disagree more. It is precisely these minor victories that keep one's tournament bankroll flush with cash until one is lucky enough to knock one off.

I would agree with a viewpoint that one can never be a long term winning MTT player without winning tournaments. But to simply ignore the non-win cashes as statistically insignificant is just plain crazy. That is what you are doing with your statement, making non-win cashes statistically insignificant.

It is not unlike playing a profitable video poker machine. One obviously can't win in the long term with cashing the occasional jackpot with a royal. But all the little non-royal wins along the way are what keeps the bankroll in the black.

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What the poster was saying, was that passing up these kinds of situations may make you place often, but not place high. ALL the significant money is at the top. The payout is basically exponential.

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More BS. Yes all the big money is at the top. You're just stating the obvious. But you have no shot at the big money unless you can first make it into the small money.

Also, you're making the same flaw in logic that Nath is, which is that late tournament play is the same as early tournament play. It simply is not. There are different plays and different levels of aggression that come into play at different times in the tournament.

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EVERY chip you win has value. What that means is that you basically CANNOT (especially in the 40k, with a 2200 person field) win/make the FT of a tourney without coming back from being behind at least once and/or winning when you were 30% to win but were going to tripple up (or something like that).

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Let's start with your first statement "Every chip has value." You only touched the tip of the iceberg. It is a commonly accepted concept that chip value is inversely proportional to stack size.

In the OP's original scenario, the OP was understacked for the situation. Hence, relative to MP the OP's chips had more value, and therefore require a little different strategy. Isn't this patently obvious?

With respect to the subsequent statements, you're just doing more stating of the obvious. MTT's very rarely have a wire to wire winner. So yes, obviously, one is going to do a lot of come from behind playing most of the time in a tournament. What is the point you were trying to make?

But on the whole, you seem to have this same mentality of push, push, push every time you think that you just might possibly have the best of it. I too have no problem with pushing my whole stack in, at almost any point in time at the tournament. Sometimes it is to bluff. Sometimes it is to semi-bluff. Sometimes it is for a pure value bet.

But back to the OP's original scenario, you believe that it is right to push, a point on which I and others disagree. What is your rationale for pushing? To bluff? To semi-bluff? Or to value bet?

My opinion is that any logic that says you push here as a value bet is severely flawed. Further, I don't think the bluff or semi-bluff push is valid because it seems highly unlikely that MP would be pushed off the pot.

For one to push in the OP scenario as a value bet, the pusher would have to be some huge kind of favorite to make it sensible. I'm sorry, but with a UTG all in (stated as not likely to be a tilt), and an MP cold call, there is no way the AKs is a huge leader here. Hence the pre-flop all-in is pure folly, a pure gamble, a shot in the dark, AN UNTHINKING UNCALCULATED PLAY!

[AlcateL]

ridiculous, easy push