How to play this AK?

[tvdad]

Online multi-table NL hold'em tourney. Top 50 places get paid. There are 56 players left. Blinds are T300/600 with a T50 ante. I have about T8000. I've got A[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] K[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] on the button. It's folded around to me. SB is a small stack who appears to be trying to hold on to make the money, so he'll probably fold here unless he's got something good. BB has about T7000. He's been a rock, playing very few hands to this point, and I figure he'll fold to a raise unless he's got something. So I raise the minimum, making it T1200. SB folds. BB makes it T2400. Okay, he must have something. I call. Pot is T5550. Flop comes Q[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]J[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]J[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]. BB pushes T4600 all-in. Can I make the call here? And feel free to criticize my play of the hand up to this point.

I'll post the results later.

T

[Superfluous Man]

You made at least two mistakes here, in my mind. First, the minraise. Your opponent would have to be incredibly rockish not to play back at you here at least some of the time when you minraise. If you're going to raise, don't give him better than 3.5:1 on his call. If they both fold to your push, then great, you've increased your stack by more than T1k.

Second is not pushing when he plays back at you. You've dumped nearly half your stack into the pot by the time the flop comes down, and boy is it a bad flop for you. You have to push preflop and force him to make a decision. If he has AA or KK, or you lose a coinflip to something like QQ, oh well, that's poker. But sometimes he'll call with AQ or AJ, especially if you have a loose image.

Now that you're at the flop, you're pretty much screwed. There's no hand he could have that you beat right now. AQ or KQ? You're drawing to 7 outs. AJ? 4 outs. Any pocket pair (even excluding the dreaded AA-KK)? 10 outs (perhaps a little more if it's really low and the board counterfeits him). You're getting odds if you're certain he has TT-22, but not by a lot. I throw up a bit in my mouth, slap myself for not pushing preflop, and fold.

[StogeyMike]

I would fold here. If the BB is as much of a rock as you are depicting here, he is already way ahead of you. Maybe he's pushing with TT or lower, but I put him more on QQ, AQ, AJ or KJ.

I think making the minimum raise was not optimal. I almost always raise the standard amount with AKo and am not too sad when my opponents fold. Your reads were correct here, and against a rock that calls my raise then bets all in I'd just be done with it.

[tvdad]

Thanks for the feedback. Before I post the results, it's time to fess up. I reversed the players in this hand. I was actually the rock in the BB, and my opponent was on the button with AK. I posted it the other way around so I could try to find out what the guy was thinking by playing his hand that way. Here's how it really went down:

Online multi-table NL hold'em tourney. Top 50 places get paid. There are 56 players left. I have about T7000, and the blinds are T300/600 with a T50 ante. I've got A[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]J[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] in the BB. It's folded around to the button who has about T8000. He makes the minimum raise to T1200. SB folds. I reraise to T2400. Button calls. Pot is T5550. Flop comes Q[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]J[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]J[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]. I push T4600 all-in. He thinks about it until his clock almost runs out, calls, and flips over A[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]K[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]. He hit a Ten on the turn to make his straight and knock me out in 56th place. I just said "nh" and prepared to leave, and he replied, "I had to call with those pot odds."

Now if I had asked the question that way in the first place, everyone would have said I played it right (well, I suppose I could have pushed preflop) and I just got unlucky. But I wanted to know how the other guy could play his AK the way he did. It just makes no sense. You're almost two hours into a tournament, six spots off the money, and you call off almost all your chips on a draw? The only thing he could beat was a bluff, and I wasn't lying when I said I was playing like a rock. He had to know I wasn't bluffing off my entire stack. So why did he call? And I agree that he made two earlier mistakes: The initial minimum raise, and not pushing all-in back at me after my preflop reraise. But of course if he had played it correctly, I would have folded and moved on to the next hand. So good for him, I guess.

T

[ThrillFactor]

1) Not too rockish if you're playing AJ
2) If you believe he's on a steal pf, you've got to push back pf, not the funky little re-raise for 1/3 your stack. Unless your plan was to push any flop.
3) Given the way you played it, CHECK THE FLOP! Give him a chance to fire at it. Don't try to push him out. If he hits his 4-outer more power to him.

[tvdad]

Yeah, I realized later that I should have pushed preflop rather than make that weak raise. Of course it wouldn't have helped in this case because I doubt he'd toss his AK at that point, but it would have given me a chance whereas the weak raise was sure to be called unless he was on a straight steal.

As for not being too rockish, well, I felt it was the perfect time to fire back. When the button open raises, it's usually a steal, especialy if he knows I've been playing very tight. AJs in the BB isn't a bad hand for a rock to fire back with. If the guy has anything but a monster, he probably folds. But again, I realize I should have pushed to make that more of a possibility.

T