Bad result good decision just off bubble with AQ?

[mojolang]

PokerStars Game #1645045012: Tournament #7652819, Hold'em No Limit - Level IV (50/100) - 2005/05/05 - 23:18:22 (ET)
Table '7652819 1' Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: Citizendick (3840 in chips)
Seat 3: Qattick (2775 in chips)
Seat 5: chasiu (2335 in chips)
Seat 8: mojo99 (2190 in chips)
Seat 9: duman (2360 in chips)
chasiu: posts small blind 50
mojo99: posts big blind 100
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to mojo99 [As Qh]
duman: folds
Citizendick: raises 200 to 300
Qattick: folds
chasiu: folds
mojo99: raises 1890 to 2190 and is all-in
Citizendick: calls 1890
mojo99 said, "gg guys"
*** FLOP *** [6c 5s 3h]
*** TURN *** [6c 5s 3h] [Qd]
*** RIVER *** [6c 5s 3h Qd] [7d]
chasiu said, "gg mojo"
duman said, "gg"
*** SHOW DOWN ***
mojo99: shows [As Qh] (a pair of Queens)
Citizendick: shows [Kh Kd] (a pair of Kings)
mojo99 said, "blech"
Citizendick said, "gg"
mojo99 said, "bad play"
Citizendick collected 4430 from pot

I talked to a few players about this hand. The button was a pretty solid not terribly out of line. That said, given his chip stack and position, I felt like AQ was the best hand, given his range.

So I have 3 options:

1) Call and see a flop and check and fold if I don't hit
2) Reraise to like 600 and call an AI
3) Same but fold to AI
4) All in, my play?

Most people I talked to said that AIPF was the +EV play, tho if I get called I could be in bad shape

My friend said
"Yes, and if you go all in and don't win, you lose 100% of the time. You had other options, you may of been low, but the blinds were still relatively low. Second of all you still would've still had like 1500 chips if you didn't hit and AQ is nowhere near a great hand"

That said, as far as I can tell, AI was the best play. Schneids agreed. What you say?

[DasLeben]

I might consider calling to see a flop here, but more often than not, I won't play AQo behind a raise with 22xBB. And no, I don't consider all-in preflop to be +EV considering the deepish stacks. I could be wrong though.

[mojolang]

you are going to fold to a raise from the cutoff who is the chip leader in a 5 handed game with approx equal stacks? I think that might be a little weak.

Peace,

Joe

[curtains]

Folding is very weak. You can either call or raise. If he raised on the button I'm raising, the hand is just too strong. It's still very strong facing a cutoff raise, but not quite as much.

I think calling and raising are both very reasonable, and I'd lean towards raising. However if I feel I have great control of the table, I might just call and try to be the first aggressor later if things don't work out on the flop.

[DasLeben]

Sorry, I agree that folding this is very weak 5-handed. I didn't notice how many people were in the game. My bad.

[pergesu]

Eww eww eww

First of all, decide whether you think this is a good play or not. In your chat, you said, "blech. bad play." Were you just disatisfied with the result? Or did you correctly believe that pushing in there was bad?

I think that pushing is the worst play you can make there. He's got 300 invested, a healthy stack, a decent lead, and you're making him call another 1800? He's only going to call with hands that OWN you. AA-QQ and AK. Might make the call with underpairs. But take a look at that - you're a huge dog to win any time he calls. The 500 in the pot isn't going to do a whole lot for your stack.

Some of you guys are saying that folding is weak...newsflash: with 22 BB and stacks even with the rest of the guys, IT'S OKAY TO BE WEAK. If this was level one, people would say, "Call and see the flop. Pushing is for donks." Well what makes this different? Nothing.

AQ is a fine looking hand, until a solid player who can bust you raises from UTG. Then it becomes marginal at best. So why would you want to push in with it?

Calling and seeing a flop is fine. It's probably better than folding, in fact. I don't like raising because any decent raise essentially pot commits you, so you should be pushing anyway. And as I said, pushing there is bad. So look at a flop here.

Check out http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...14&fpart=1 It's some good commentary on how you should approach the middle levels...and with your stack, you can coast into the blind stealing stages, no prob.

Don't risk your stack on a marginal hand when an opponent has showed aggression from a vulnerable position, and on top of that has the ability to bust you.

[curtains]

Very bad advice. Also if you are going to be so adamant about your position, please try to get the facts right. The raiser was first in from the CUTOFF in a 5 handed game, not from UTG.

[curtains]

[ QUOTE ]
Eww eww eww

First of all, decide whether you think this is a good play or not. In your chat, you said, "blech. bad play." Were you just disatisfied with the result? Or did you correctly believe that pushing in there was bad?

I think that pushing is the worst play you can make there. He's got 300 invested, a healthy stack, a decent lead, and you're making him call another 1800? He's only going to call with hands that OWN you. AA-QQ and AK. Might make the call with underpairs. But take a look at that - you're a huge dog to win any time he calls. The 500 in the pot isn't going to do a whole lot for your stack.

Some of you guys are saying that folding is weak...newsflash: with 22 BB and stacks even with the rest of the guys, IT'S OKAY TO BE WEAK. If this was level one, people would say, "Call and see the flop. Pushing is for donks." Well what makes this different? Nothing.

AQ is a fine looking hand, until a solid player who can bust you raises from UTG. Then it becomes marginal at best. So why would you want to push in with it?

Calling and seeing a flop is fine. It's probably better than folding, in fact. I don't like raising because any decent raise essentially pot commits you, so you should be pushing anyway. And as I said, pushing there is bad. So look at a flop here.

Check out http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...14&fpart=1 It's some good commentary on how you should approach the middle levels...and with your stack, you can coast into the blind stealing stages, no prob.

Don't risk your stack on a marginal hand when an opponent has showed aggression from a vulnerable position, and on top of that has the ability to bust you.

[/ QUOTE ]

Other reasons why this is bad advice:

You mention that you will be called only if you are dominated. This actually makes it a very easy raise, as the liklihood that your opponent has a dominating hand, is not very high, and sometimes youll win even then.

You can't just look at the range of hands they will call an allin with and decide they are all dominating you so you should fold. You have to look at how likely it is for them to actually have those hands, which is something you made no attempt whatsoever to do.


(I would just call here preflop a lot, but I'm pretty sure folding is worse than allin. If I'm wrong about this somehow, then it's not for the reasons stated above.

[curtains]

btw one last note....I am pretty solid, yet my raising range from the cutoff there is incredibly large, especially if my opponents have shown themselves to be tight.

[pergesu]

When he doesn't have a hand that beats you, you make 450 chips. What does that do to your chances of cashing or winning overall? Improves it, but not by a whole lot, considering you guys are all at similar stacks, comfortable compared to the BB.

What happens when he has a hand that your'e a huge dog to? You bust. It's true, some of the time you'll win, and someone here can use one of those nifty calculators to find out your chances of winning vs AA-QQ and AK. Most of the time you bust, making your chances of cashing obviously fall to zero.

I'm not going to get into the math (which I'm sure curtains can do a lot better than me anyway), because I've got three tourney's going right now. But basically, when you push and steal, you don't improve your chances of cashing very much. When you push and he calls, you're almost guaranteed that you don't cash.

It's the exact same principle as Harrington talks about somewhere in the book, about pushing with QQ early in a tourney. Most of the time people will fold, and you pick up a little bit in blinds. When you do get called though, you usually lose and bust out. And he was only talking about CEV there, not $EV. This is even MORE important in this position, because you're close to cashing.

I'm not failing to consider the range of hands that my opponent has. I'm considering the possible outcomes for each of the range of hands he has. And I think that because pushing here either marginally increases your chances of cashing, or drastically decreases it, pushing is a -EV play.

Hopefully eastbay or one of those other smart people can come in here and do all the cool math.