Bubble scenario

[Andy B]

$50+5 single-table NLHE tournament on Stars. Three of us have T3000-T4000, and the fourth player has something like T1700. Short stack is in the small blind. He is a poor player who goes all-in more often than seems reasonable. The same can be said for the big blind. The UTG player is playing well from what I've seen. The blinds are T75 & T150, and he makes it T450 to go. I have AQo on the button and muck. Comments?

[SNOWBALL138]

IMHO 4-handed AQo is good enough to cold-call or re-raise, especially when you have position. UTG could easily have an underpair or a bad ace. If he has the latter, expect to get well paid. If he has you beat, you can get away from your hand on the flop w/o much expense. Because you have position, you can win the most on your hand, and also lose the least.

So, I wouldn't fold.

I would probably just call though. You have position, and so you can use that to your advantage instead of relying on your possible preflop equity.

[Andy B]

My thinking was that with the other two guys just asking to give their chips away, I didn't want to get in a big confrontation with the good player, especially when he could cripple or bust me, and especially when I have what I consider to be a trouble hand, four-handed or not. I was not particularly concerned with making the money--although I don't have a whole lot in my Stars account. If it had been either of the other players, I would probably have come over the top of them.

[Scuba Chuck]

Hey Andy, you play in any local home games? Was looking for a group in Minneapolis area...

[BradleyT]

Stick to stud/8 [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

J/K.

I think you can wait for a better spot here. Blinds on stars go up so slow you still have 20 minutes worth of hands before you start getting hurt bad*.

That is if you're doing an appropriate amount of blind stealing yourself.

[Andy B]

Most of the success I've had on-line has been relatively recent, and it basically began when I figured out that Stars' stud/8 games aren't very good money-makers. The high-only stud games are much better, and I have been cashing in an obnoxiously high percentage of these tournaments.

[adanthar]

I love your posts in the stud forum as a lurker - glad you're stopping by here.

This is at least a call, though. He's raising so much more than the range you are scared of that if you hit top pair it's almost certainly good. I'd go one step further and reraise to 1500 or so, but you should call in any case.