Could I have played this any worse?

[Gus Mango Fish]

@ the usual Cardiff tourny. Tuesday night £5 PL..

I had 1425 chips after the rebuy / top-up period from a starting stack of 500. So, not doing particularly well. Pretty shite hands all night. Managed to win one hand and split a pot on another hand before the rebuy period ended, but apart from that was getting rags all night.

First hand after the rebuy period finished I get AK off. Small blind is 100, Big Blind is 200. I raise the pot from UTG position and bet 700 chips. Next couple of players fold, then the next guy raises the pot again. Everyone folds round to me again.

I thought about it for ages (well ages for me, probably about 20 seconds!), whether to put all my chips in and call. In the end I decided not to for the following 2 reasons:

1. I put the guy on KK or AA (he'd been playing very tight all night to this point).

2. I really didn't want to finish in last place in the tournament!! It would also mean having to wait for up to 4 hours for my mate who drove us up to get knocked out.

So, I folded.

The very next hand I got J J, when it gets round to me I raise the pot (no other raises before me), I get re-raised so have to go all-in (very small number of chips left and over-committed). End up losing to Q Q and wish I'd gone all-in the previous hand.

In retrospect I asked myself what the hell I was doing.. If the game was NL I'd have gone all-in with AK, so why was I bothered about someone attempting to put me all in. The possibilty of them having a lesser hand than me should have been enough for me to put all my chips in, especially considering how committed to the pot I was at that point.

Turns out, the guy did have AA (he told the table after I'd left), though I still feel I made a terrible play given the situation.

Any views on this?

[2bad4u]

Actually if you read him for a pair, especally AA, then you made the correct move. Bear in mind that even with AK, 22 is ahead at this point. So in retrospect it was a good laydown. Ideally with AK you either want to be raising or folding and it's very rare that you will fold them!


JJ was a bit unlucky but kind of emphasises the "three card deck principle". Jacks tend to be at the higher end of the middle pairs and it's so easy to lose chips with them. Remember, worse hands fold so you don't get any chips off them anyway and the only other hands likely to call (e.g. AK, AQ, AA, KK, A-10+) have a good chance of beating you.

I would give tips on playing JJ but that's for another thread I think!

[FreeZey]

AK is a tough one. I picked it up (suited) last week when I was low stacked and raised all in, only to be called and beaten by AQs But hey that’s poker.

Incidentally are you there next week? If so I’ll keep an eye pealed for you, I’ll be the little guy screaming “Alex chips” every few minutes

Anyway you read the guy right and folded so it was the correct move. Maybe if it was a new table and you had nothing to go on but odds and position you could have called the re-raise and just said such is life.
What 2bad4u said reminded me of something I read (I think it was in The Theory of Poker) that you should consider the potential strength of your cards in relation to the number of opponents you need to beat, i.e against 5-6 players you really want something like a straight or flush. But in a heads-up situation a pair will usually hold up okay. AK has the potential for great strength but if the board doesn’t help you’re left with Ace high and top kicker.

[Native Hal]

First point: you made a great laydown with the AK as you were either 30% shot or worse according to your read, the problem was the size of your chip stack in relation to the blinds. Basically you were either winning that first hand or going out very soon.

On the second hand someone made a great play with QQ, you said there was no raise round to you, right? and you would have been in the big blind if i am reading it correct with what 500 more chips left after putting in your blind, so the only move with JJ is a pot sized raise, turns out some one was trapping with QQ, what are you going to do?

You just ran into two hands where you were had good holdings but were totally dominated.

[Oinkment]

Ok you read he might of had big pair but you had AK and were short stacked so you started to make a move and then got scared of a big pair.
You might have got lucky with a flush or straight and doubled up against AA/KK it does happen though not very often admittedly - In my opinion you had already committed yourself by putting half your chips in any case. You only had 20% of your hand and had bet 50% of your chips it would of been better to stick in the rest to see the next 5 cards as you were getting excellent pot odds for your AK.

As a result you were on tilt on the next hand and overbet the jacks and lost anyway!

If you hadnt of thought you might have to wait 4 hours to go home i think you would of risked it. Forget about whats happenning around you when you play and just try and play each hand as it comes.
BTW - Also I bet that player did tell the table he had AA - I know I would too - Did he show them? - If not he never - players pretty much always show AA they cant resist it - I bet he had TT or 99...

[7-2offsuit]

You opened UTG with as good as 50% of your stack with AKos and were re-raised by a tight player - being generous I would think the very worst hand your opponent is likely to have from the range of hands you can put him on is A-Qs, but it's much more likely he has A-Ks or a PP.

If you assume (perhaps more realistically) that the only non-paired hand he will re-raise with is A-Ks you probably made the right fold holding A-Kos out of position, but I'm inclined to agree with the previous poster (in that he never showed) that your opponent probably didn't have the Aces, although I'd suggest possibly a higher PP range (99-QQ). Did you show your laydown?

Also on the subject of how you played the hand, I don't think I raise 3.5xBB and then make a fold here, however inspired it may be - you only had 7xBB. If I ever get to a position when I'm so shortstacked that a standard raise is getting close to half my chips in play I'm usually shovelling it all in there pre-flop and letting my opponent make the decision. Maybe that's why I never make any money

Just my 2c

[Gus Mango Fish]

This is going back 4 months or so now that I played that hand, but I still remember it well, as it was a mistake I feel I've learnt from.

At the time I did indeed show my hand to the rest of the table when I folded.

If the same situation occured again I'd call my opponents re-raise. I was already too pot-committed to fold my cards. The possibility of him being on any other pair than AA or KK or even completely bluffing me, coupled with the fact I'd committed 50% of my chips to the pot, meant that I should have called.

In the end he never showed his supposed AA, so agreeing with Oinkment, I doubt he ever had it in the first place.

Oh well we all learn from our mistakes - I think that was one of my first games in a brick and mortar casino too

[SlaineMcRoth]

I do agree that you shouldn't have mucked that A,K being shortstacked and all but, why make such a heavy bet with A,K? Been watching too many reruns of Late Night Poker?

What is it with people overvalue'ing A,K? Don't get me wrong it's not a bad hand but it's by no stretch of the imagination a great hand. At best it's (usually) top pair and maybe top two pair. How often have you gotten the straight with A,K? Or even better a full house? Not often right?

A,K is so overvalued and I believe T.V is the culprit since they show the cut version of the program where someone does win with the hand.

But lets be honest here, A,K is a drawing hand and only an 'okey' one at that. You only have one change at a straight. It gets it's 'okey' status' purely because you have slightly better odds against say 8,9 in getting your cards pair purely because you can win it on a hi card if it doesn't. But 8,9 has more changes of hitting that straight and really even changes of making a pair.

Any person with a pair already in their hand (like someone said in one of the first replies here) like 2,2 is a huge favorite in the hand. They're not drawing and can make trips or a fully. Which will be obviously much harder for the non paired hand. Now in a situation where you're up against K,K you're pretty much drawing dead. You only have two more outs then the K,K has against you. (he has one K that he doesn't even have to hit if you don't, and you have three aces, one of which you need to hit).

Anyway, as a very wise man once said to me about a pair of Jacks, "think of them as a very shit pair of tens" Trust me, think of them that way and you stand to win a lot with them and loose very little.

[Oinkment]

I would slightly disagree with the last comment.

AK is a strong hand if low in chips and a marginal hand when you have plenty of chips.

If short-stacked hands like AK are worth gambling with - I would say going all in pre-flop isnt a bad strategy as you will get lower pairs to fold and hopefully either steal the blinds and ante's without risk - or if you get callers you have a nice "coin-flip" hand to double or even treble up! I would rather go out of a tourney with AK than fold it waiting for something better.

However if you have a comfortable amount of chips AK really goes down in value and limping in from any position is really a good strategy. Its easier to fold to a big raise then and if late you get a nice cheap flop for your AK and nobody will be easily able to put you on that hand if the flop is favourable.

If chip leader or very comfortable in chips - Prehaps re-raise any pre-flop raise with AK and certainly call a small all-in from a short stack - But I wouldn't risk more than 10% of my chips with it if I could help it.