How to play AA here?

[Six_of_One]

Last night at the Bike, $100+20 NL tournament. Started with 481 players; at this point there are about 25 tables left. Blinds are 25-50, and I have about 3000 in chips.

UTG+1, I get AA. I raise to 150. The next two players to my left both call, which is unusual since there has been a lot of folding at this table. Folds to the button, who makes it 800. I have him slightly covered. Both blinds fold, and it's back to me.

I thought about just calling his raise, but I didn't really want the other players coming along. I ended up raising all-in, and everyone folded.

Did I play it right? What would others have done?

Thanks.

[unfrgvn]

I'll give you my newbie opinion, all in is the correct play. The last thing you want to do is just call and let him see the flop. If he was trying to steal with any two cards, it would be my luck that he would flop two pair. If he has a small or medium pair, I don't want to give him a shot at trips. I think if he has KK or QQ, he probably calls. There is already 1300 in the pot, I want to win it right there or make them pay the max if they want to try to outdraw me.

[SossMan]

Well, you have three options.

Fold:
With about 1300 in the pot already, I can't imagine that a fold would be correct here. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

Call:
The other limpers make it hard to trap here. You gotta think that if you call, you're probably going to get one limper coming along. Not horrible, but dangerous.

Raise: I think this is probably the best play. The question is how much. My first instinct is always to raise 3x his bet. (T2400 in this case)
Since this puts him all in, I think this is your choice.
Raising the minimum may be one way to trap another caller in, but I would rather just as soon be headsup w/ the preflop nuts or take down the 1300 right now.

[BamaGambler]

All-in is fine. Hope he has KK, QQ, or AKs and comes along for the ride.

[Eric P]

All-in is the obvious move, but it's pretty tricky to raise the minimum, and almost force him to call unless he has nothing. He will probably end up calling with the AQs he just re-raised you with, thne you go all in on the flop regardless of what comes, this makes you an extra 1200 chips (not sure how much he had) probably out 80% of the time, cripples you 20% of the time. so far out of the money it would be nice to have 5500 instead of 4300, but all-in is fine cause he will call with KK

[Stoneii]

My all-in reraise hits the felt same time as his raise. I'll take 1300 with AA tyvm. What was it Mr Brunson said, AA wins you v little or loses you a whole lot. 1100 profit with 3000 chips is a very nice pay-off.

Better that than be on here talking about 3 callers to your slow play and MP wins with 2 pair T's & J's since button could very well have 1 of your Aces [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[JARID]

All in, everytime without a second thought. Those two knucklehead callers could be a disaster for you. Maybe if it is a ring game you could get clever and just flat call, but in a tourney you can't risk it. How did you end up doing overall? You playing on Saturday?
~J~

[slogger]

People have told me that not getting enough out of my AA is one of my tourney weaknesses, but I think there's more than enough money in there to make a reraise right now - the question is whether pushing in is the move.

It's not terrible because the button appears to like his hand (assuming he's been watching the same table that you described), perhaps enough to make the big mistake of calling your all-in. But I'd probably reraise him smaller - somewhere b/w 800 and 1400 more.

But like I said, it's hard to criticize an all-in move here.

[Six_of_One]

I ended up finishing 30th overall, just in the money. I was fairly near the top in chips with about 8 tables left thanks to another AA with which I doubled up (that hand went like a dream), but pretty much stalled from that point, which won't cut it, as you know, with the blinds increasing as fast as they do.

I won't be playing Saturday. $120 rebuy events are higher than I typically play, since I figure I need at least $320 to make a go of it, and I'm not at the point where I feel comfortable spending that much on a single tournament.