Tourney AKs UTG on the bubble (1 Viewer)

bentax1978

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We're down to 82 players (733 to start) and the cash line is at 80th place. All 9 tables are playing hand for hand at this point until we get down to 80 players (which was painful because they started hand for hand at 85 players, which was way too early, but that's a different topic).

Blinds are at 4/8k with a 1k ante. I have 95k (~12BB) in chips left and look down to see AKs UTG. Most people at the table have me covered, though there is one shorter stack to my immediate left (50k) and several players with just slightly more chips.

Shove, raise, call, or fold?
 
I'm not really a fan of limping here. A raise puts you in a weird spot if you get 3bet.

Folding isn't terrible since the goal of every tourney is to at least cash. You also probably have enough chips to just fold to the money.

Shoving is probably preferable since you block AA and KK. You are doing this from UTG so you will get more credit and your stack size is probably big enough to put a decent dent in anyone's stack if they call with a less than premium hand.
 
Im playing to win, not to min cash. If this were a satellite, and there was no benefit to having more chips, and our only goal is to make it past the bubble, i'd fold everything including aces here. However, this is not a satellite. I think I would lean towards a shove here. Shoving in a tournament with anties and 12 big blinds is fairly standard. Someone is going to have to have a very premium hand to call you. Nobody wants to gamble away a good percentage of their chips when they are so close to the bubble.you might even get AK to fold, and I'd only worry about QQ calling, as you have AA and KK blockers. Still a flip at worse.

I also think a shove is most likely to net you the anties and blinds. But still a profitable play in the long run.
 
Shove or fold - anything else is just silly. Open-folding AK is not really an option you should consider in any other scenario, but here it's pretty much a coinflip.

To decide which, I'd need a lot more info on table dynamics, tourney structure, payouts, and relative stack sizes. How much is doubling up to ~25bb really going to help your positioning in the tournament, vs. the risk of bubbling? Are people busting quickly, or is it slow going? Do you have splashy big stacks at your table who are likely to call down light? Can you abuse the bubble a bit and chip up further if you have 25bb? When/how big are the pay jumps from a min-cash? Etc. etc.
 
If you fold here, you might as well just leave the table entirely and go play slots for an hour.

How important is it to you to finish in the money? Obviously, that's the goal, but are you still trying for top money, or are you just hoping to slide into the money and finish with a small win?

I'd go with a small raise ($20k), that should be enough to steal the blinds and still leaves you room to maneuver if your opponents do something more interesting than folding.
 
Trevor, I disagree with a raise, unless it's an all in. Ben did a better job than I am describing why.

What happens if you get shoved on by someone in late position? I think generally that shoving with a hand is better than calling with a hand after someone else shoves.

I think A shove from EP is a stronger play, and likely to hold. I'm happy to take the antes and blinds. And if I get called, I don't want to be against 4 players.

I also agree with Ben that given certain table dynamics I could find a fold in the spot. I think it all depends, but I would lean towards a shove over a fold

Shove > Fold > Flat > Raise.
 
Trevor, I disagree with a raise, unless it's an all in. Ben did a better job than I am describing why.

What happens if you get shoved on by someone in late position? I think generally that shoving with a hand is better than calling with a hand after someone else shoves.

I think A shove from EP is a stronger play, and likely to hold. I'm happy to take the antes and blinds. And if I get called, I don't want to be against 4 players.

I also agree with Ben that given certain table dynamics I could find a fold in the spot. I think it all depends, but I would lean towards a shove over a fold

Shove > Fold > Flat > Raise.

What range of hands would you say will 3-bet an utg raise and will also fold to a 12bb shove from that same utg player?
 
In this spot I've the WRONG thing too many times.

And that was raising (not shoving).
Raise to 20K, someone brave with K10s raises to 40k. When you shove to 60k it's just 20k more to him he's committed and he hits 2 pair or a straight.

He would've folded to a shove.

Again I've raised there and been caught by lower hands reraising and then being committed too many times (and losing to the lower hand) that now it's 100% shove.

But that's just my experience.
 
What range of hands would you say will 3-bet an utg raise and will also fold to a 12bb shove from that same utg player?

I think the problem is that you certainly allow marginal hands to stay in the pot, but a nightmare scenario is where you have two or three people flat your raise, then get somebody shoving in late position, now you Are priced in along with half of the table to calling. Now you are playing AK aipf against 4-5 other people.

I think shoving is a lower variance line to take. I think good poker tournament strategy is about avoiding variance, especially when you are short stacked. Folding is certainly the lowest Variance route to take, who likes folding. Lol.
 
To decide which, I'd need a lot more info on table dynamics, tourney structure, payouts, and relative stack sizes. How much is doubling up to ~25bb really going to help your positioning in the tournament, vs. the risk of bubbling? Are people busting quickly, or is it slow going? Do you have splashy big stacks at your table who are likely to call down light? Can you abuse the bubble a bit and chip up further if you have 25bb? When/how big are the pay jumps from a min-cash? Etc. etc.

If I fold, or even lose a min raise, I will still cash (almost guaranteed) the way things were playing out. Obviously if I bust out on this hand, I will almost certainly not cash

Doubling up would certainly help quite a bit if I wanted to have a realistic chance to get back to make a run, but the payouts didn't really go up much until very late in the tournament. There was somewhat little difference going out in 80th vs 50th ($163), see below.



1. $37,559
2. $23,749
3. $15,451
4. $11,366
5. $8,479
6. $6,373
7. $4,902
8. $3,777
9. $3,014
10-12. $2,360
13-15. $1,852
16-18. $1,453
19-27. $1,180
28-36. $980
37-45. $835
46-54. $744
55-63. $672
64-72. $617
73-80. $581
 
What was the BUY IN? Guessing $300 ish? Holding out for Minimum cashing is somewhat defeatist in my opinion. You spend several hundred dollars to enter a tournament, play for many hours, only to get your money back? Cashing it is good for sure, but I'm going for the big W.

I get it, I've been in tournaments that have been a brutal grind, where I am running like crap. There have been times when I know the money bubble is coming and I just want my money back and to be done with the experience. However, that is a rare occasion. In most instances I am going for the win or bigger final table money

Put the pressure on. Shove! :).
 
but a nightmare scenario is where you have two or three people flat your raise, then get somebody shoving in late position, now you Are priced in along with half of the table to calling. Now you are playing AK aipf against 4-5 other people.
In this highly unlikely scenario what do these 2-3 guys who called the UTG raise have that they will continue with after a late position shove plus another call in front of them At this point? Small pairs are folding, most mid pairs are folding, almost every unpaired pockets are folding... your nightmare looks like a pretty good situation to me as the theoretical "priced in" four and five way all in hands just don't happen on the bubble in these tournaments.

There is no such thing as "priced in" in tournament play just because you called a small raise when the final decision is for most or all of your stack. Cash can be all about the math but in tournaments survival >>> math
 
OK, really top-heavy structure - but also of note is that min-cashing is the biggest pay jump until you get to 9th place. How likely are you to make it that far even with 25bb???

Still, I think it's a shove UNLESS your table is unusually loose - you really don't want to get called by anything. Most of the time you won't under normal circumstances, but if one (or more) players has 100bb and is going to call you with JTo just because he can (and corollary, you're not likely to be able to find good stealing situations going forward) then I'd try to fold to the money at this point (barring being dealt QQ+.)
 
I can see arguments for almost all of the above suggestions.

My immediate reaction when I saw my hand was shove. However, for some reason I didn't shove. Not sure why as I wasn't that I was desperate to make the money; I entered the tournament with the goal of making a deep run to the final table. If I wanted to just double or triple my money I would have played 2/5 for those 11 hours instead and had a much easier time doing it.

Anyway, I decided to open for a 24k raise from UTG. It folds all the away around to the BB, who thinks for 10 seconds and then calls the additional 16k. It's worth noting that although he was getting almost 3:1 to make the call, he and I had almost identical stacks to start the hand, so he was risking almost 20% of his stack to defend his BB.

Flop comes out 863 rainbow. BB checks.

It's at this point I realize that I should have folded or shoved preflop. Too late to go back and change it, so now what?
 
I can see arguments for almost all of the above suggestions.

My immediate reaction when I saw my hand was shove. However, for some reason I didn't shove. Not sure why as I wasn't that I was desperate to make the money; I entered the tournament with the goal of making a deep run to the final table. If I wanted to just double or triple my money I would have played 2/5 for those 11 hours instead and had a much easier time doing it.

Anyway, I decided to open for a 24k raise from UTG. It folds all the away around to the BB, who thinks for 10 seconds and then calls the additional 16k. It's worth noting that although he was getting almost 3:1 to make the call, he and I had almost identical stacks to start the hand, so he was risking almost 20% of his stack to defend his BB.

Flop comes out 863 rainbow. BB checks.

It's at this point I realize that I should have folded or shoved preflop. Too late to go back and change it, so now what?

Easy shove.
 
As stated above by several members. I think a shove is better than a fold. I'm not playing to simply try and cash for a couple of hundred bucks.
 
Flop

If you check back, and the turn is a brick, would u call a shove from the bb? Prob not.

With stack sizes, wouldn't the BB shove it he got any piece of the flop (barring a monster)? Table read might be important here.

I think I'm on the fence. My gut says shippit now, because he's shown weakness. If you check, you're praying for an A or K on the turn.
 
What do you think the BB has? I'm guessing a small pocket pair 2's-5'd excluding the 3's. Small chance he has 9's-J's as he probably would have shoved after the flop instead of checking. So I think a shove is the appropriate action if he does have the smaller pairs he should let go.
 
What do you think the BB has? I'm guessing a small pocket pair 2's-5'd excluding the 3's. Small chance he has 9's-J's as he probably would have shoved after the flop instead of checking. So I think a shove is the appropriate action if he does have the smaller pairs he should let go.

To be honest, it's a bit difficult to range him here. If he had a decent pocket pair, I would have thought he'd either shove preflop or certainly on the flop itself. The exception being if he actually hit a set, then I'd certainly check to the raiser out of position in that spot. Maybe he has two big cards like AQ, KQ, QJ and was just hoping to hit one of them getting 3:1 on his money and then hoping I don't have him dominated. But that's a lot of hoping to throw 20% of your stack in the middle. Suited connectors? Not a great spots heads up short stacked to being playing those kind of hands heads up. Truth is, I really had no idea how to properly range him in this spot.
 
Checking the set is a valid point. But really I think if he had 88 he would have shoved pre. So then it's 66 and 33.
Certainly is one of those hands where one mistake can be compounded by another. Really not sure if check or shove is the appropriate action but think shoving is the better of the two.
 
Already frustrated with the way I played the hand at this point, I decide to check behind and not potentially compound the mistake I feel I've already made by not shoving preflop.

Turns if a 7, making the board 8637.

BB leads out for 24k.

I assume we're all in agreement that it's now a clear fold?
 
Not a clear fold. You showed weakness and he's trying to take advantage of that. It's actually a tough spot. Probably a fold but I'd at least think about jamming with 72K and putting him to the test.

How much does he have you covered by?
 

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