Bubble play: Move All In Preflop with AA or fold for guaranteed money

I'm playing a multi table tourney with 20 players left and it pays top 18, I am around 10th and can easily make the money. I pick up AA on the button and open the pot with a raise, the small blind who has me covered, puts me all in. I make the call, he shows 44 and flops a set and I go broke. As play continues, there are a few remaining players saying I should have folded to make the money. 18th paid $55, it gradually moves to $80 for 9th, and then up to $750 for first. I win this pot and I am somewhere in the top 5 with 20 left.

So my question is: Do you fold AA in this spot for a guaranteed cash or do you risk all your chips for a legit shot at the final table and more?

Thanks.

call and fist pump! I'm going for first place, not 18th,

I'm calling. If your to scared to call a all-in with AA then quit playing poker. Yes there are some very rare spots to fold AA, I just don't see it here. You would be in a great spot here to win it all if you would have won it.

Good luck on the felts.

Play for 1st. This isn't a satellite where there are multiple 1sts so feel good you got a loose small pocket pair to shove into your Aces and let the 2 outter fade away.

i agree id defiantly defiantly try 1st and call..i know it ridicules how u have to fold AA nowadays to make cash!!!
i played a 300 man tourney..in top 5 85% of the time and i got kk 3 times and aa once and hands like aq,qk and ak came occasionally..all 3 kks i lost!!
1st was to 55 then i came back and then lost to 910!!!!!!!!
then came back was 2nd then moved down to 4th then a guy that 6th has 2k less then me (i had 18k he had 16k)
i get kk in early position,raise pot..he pushes..i have to call..he has aq!!!
and flop 98j and turn ace!!!!he won and moved to 1st with aa 10k chip lead on 2nd its just ridicules to how many suckouts u get..u play gud,tight, aggressive poker and stuff like that happends just before money!!!
next hand a10 i pushes and lost to j4!!!!!
this is jus unreal nowadays but u cant fold AA to make money..

General advice is, if just making the money is that important to you, you are playing over your bankroll. The money is at the final table & quite often only the top 3 to 5 spots.

The only way you fold aces there is if it is a tourney that pays a "ticket" or the same dollar amount to the top 18. Then you fold your aces if you are in 10th place. You made the right play dude...

Yeah you have to call u have the nuts pre flop you cant fold. VAriance sucks but u dont just want to make the money u want to put yourself in a position to win the tournament. If you bust you start another.

With AA you have to call.

With a lesser hand you have to consider stack size (are you second in tournament chips and the tournament leader has put you all in), the range of hands the larger stack would push with etc.

If the other people at the table were willing to fold AA just because it was bubble time, it would have been right to push all in with any two cards. Maybe this is how the larger stack go his chips.

Bolded above. ICM comes into play a lot but not here.

Snapcall / fistpump, sorry to hear about the beat.

There's maybe a fold to be found here in theory some of the time in a satellite situation where 18th gets the exact same prize as 1st. But here where there's jumps in the payouts and all we're talking about is a mincash... snapcall every time.

Instacall. ^ only fold aces if it is in a sattelite like that.
I always go for 1st... At the end of the money scale there is almost nothing compared to 1st-3rd.

I agree with AA there is no way you can fold at that position. I had to make a decision with AA when i was playing heads up $25/$50.

This is how the story went i've mentioned it many times in this forum because that is the biggest loss in my poker carreer. I was playing at the high stakes at full tilt poker and i've been breaking even against someone and next hand i was dealt AA and i raised the standard raise three times the big blind he re raises nine times the big blind. I thought to myself he either has AK or KK or maybe QQ so i re raised him all in. We turned our hands around and i was relieved that he was holding AK not suited so he only has three outs and needed two of the three outs to win. I was so happy because if i won this hand I was have around 2600 dollars pretty good when i only depossited 10 dollars at full tilt a week ago. The flop was K K 8 and my heart just dropped. The turn came and it gave me a ace high flush draw. The last card was just a rag card. He won all that money and he didnt even have the common courtesy to say sorry for the bad beat.

I was mad for the first 10 minutes and i realized that in reality i only lost 10 dollars of my own money. Knowing that my poker skills have been raised to a new level I believe that i can do this all over again.

I don't usually play at the high stakes of full tilt but after watching an episode of Poker After Dark with the nets vs the vet I was so determined to make it to the big leagues like all those nets that said "of i only deposited 50 dollars", their story was similar to mines except i only depositted 10 dollars. This made me move up to $25/$50 blinds. I usualy play like $1/$2 or if i'm feeling lucky i go to $5/$10 blinds. This is just to show you to never rush poker and just keep playing the same way you are most successful with.

The situation is it's bubble time and you are ranked 5th. Now you are dealt with pocket Aces and you are the button. So what will be your move?
Being the button and the last to act raising is a good move to remove garbage cards that would try to make a BINGO along the way. However, there maybe player or players who will offer resistance to your "raise" and would go all-in such as the one that you had encountered.

Low pocket cards will always offer resistance at bubble time. If the SB had read you to be a decent player and you being at the button at that time making the raise he will put you to be holding any of these hole cards AK, AJ, AQ, or Ax suited. But, at the moment that you made a raise instead of pushing all-in I believe he was not afraid of your hand for he had put you having A and a painted card. That's why his pocket 4s is fair enough for him to make the all-in move hoping that you will not hit the board.

With that move that you had I believe there was nothing wrong. Only that the board favored your opponent which gave him a set.

To conclude with, never ever fold your AA specially during heads-upand at bubble time. I am sure you will again be in the same situation very soon.

Thanks pal...

Just a reminder, no matter if u started with $10 or $0, the winnings u have are your own money. So in reality when you lose, you're losing your own money.

There are a few situations when I would actually fold the bullets here. If I were on tilt and playing way over my bankroll management and was just trying to score some change, or if I were in a freeroll and just trying to get a bankroll started, or in the WSOP Main Event and wanted to say hey I cashed in the WSOP Main Event then I would fold the pocket rockets but other than that I make that call every freaking time. Does not look like any of these applied to you so you made the right deciscion. Shit happens just hopefully you will be on the other end next time.

I would defintely call. Gotta play for first and not just to make it ITM.

Are you serious? If you have a bankroll to manage and even know what "bankroll management" is, then why are you playing above your bankroll? If it's a freeroll, then you got in for free, you won't lose anything, and stand to make double or triple digits instead of just $2 or even less by calling or shoving with AA, so why would you fold?

Earlier today I was short stacked and close to the bubble. There were shorter stacks, but with less than 15 BB's left and antes, heck, who needs M ratio to figure out they're short stacked at that point? The blinds and antes weren't huge and I coulda just let myself get ante'd off. I got dealt QQ, it's nowhere near AA. I shoved pre-flop anyway, was up against A10 and 44, well A10 won. Not complaining though. It was my choice and it made sense. I hadn't sat there for hours and hours, to barely double up if that.

I sat for hours and hours in hopes of winning over $1.5k and never having to freeroll, short stack, or play way over my head(w/o a choice) ever again. Hell's belles, just making it to the final table would have boosted my br to triple digits.

You need momentum to make it to the final table. It comes in spurts, but you never build any momentum if you fold big pairs just to cash for crumbs. You can build it by shoving with big pairs anything decent and a bunch of semi-junk(even short stacked you can steal on occasion) when short stacked though.

Hmmm, how many ways can I cram "short stacked" into a sentence?

As for the WSOP Main Event. What if that table where you're dealt AA is a feature table? What if the whole world sees you fold AA to 72os because the person shoving has more guts and/or depends on people like you just wanting to cash? You'll coulda-shoulda-woulda'd yourself into an early grave you will. That or all the pointing and laughing will make you shrivel up to the size of a piece of gravel and fall through a crack in the floor.

So I thought about it, and there is a good time to fold AA. It's when there are maybe 4 or so nits ahead of you and they're all raising and reraising. Then you might consider the possibility that you're drawing dead. After all, the nits probably have big pairs or big suited connectors while the other players could just as easily be holding paint/rag or smaller suited connectors and the like.

Even then it's a judgement call. Still, that's about the only time I'd even think about it save for if I'm sitting pretty and can coast into a seat in a bigger tournamet, but then I probably wouldn't even see the AA cuz I'd be too busy fixing a snack in the kitchen, or watching tv.

Finally getting around to reading Super System and it says that you can play a hand in 2 different ways and have both ways be correct. I still haven't gotten to the section that says "Fold AA pre-flop on the bubble". If and when I find it I'll let ya know what page it's on.

Call Call Call,very unluck but a win would have set you up for 1st place.very unuck.

Lazmansa

Without quesion have to call the aces. But to be honest i could see folding if you want to make the money and its been a while since your last cash. I know i have folded qs before being close to ITM maybe even ks aces i don't think though.

I always say call but then again i play to win not to place so i say u made the right call the other guy got lucky. Which leads me to the next question, how the hell does that guy call with only a pair of fours? Chip leader? high blinds? what was ur chip stack?

Yes, i think u shouldn't have gone allin {though u can raise}even with AA, at that level of play.

Always remember, THOUGH AA IS A TOP HAND, ITS JUST A PAIR !!!

Also read my post "LIMPING IN WITH AA". It has many good replies by few pros, which will come handy to you...

Call .... Play for first.....AA best preflop hand .....
Pray more to the Poker God and make sacrifice's often!
Variance sucks!

LOL at those idiots who told you that you should've folded AA pre-flop after seeing a heavily inferior, dominated hand flopping a set. Better believe it or not, I will call in your situation. Tournaments only favor 1st place. Based on reads, I can fold QQ but never AA during pre-flop. Only time to fold AA is if it's a satellite where top places and itm get paid the same and you're guaranteed to have one of those spots even by folding every hands.

I don't know about others, but I've followed Daniel Negreanu and even he has said that if you gut tells you to fold "do it" and your still in the game. So regardless of bubble or not, listen openly to what you feel. I have folded AA many times because they just are not the bomb to all play. And, I've actually lost more times with AA against 22 in preflop raises. It is just as easy for another 2 to come up as it is an A.

Cal Cal Call. You made the right move. He just lucked out. Play to win. He
was trying to muscle you out of the pot. I bet when he first saw those aces he was not happy. The poker gods once again gave the win to the under dog. But in the long run you'll beat them.

As others have said you have to play for First Place, not just the money.

If you are playing for the money only, stick to the cash games.
If you are a tourney player, then nothing more than first place (a consolation of making the final table and some money is always nice) will satisfy a real poker player.

Be aware though, even the best players only win a small % of the time.

I couldn't find a single post where someone said that in the situation as presented you should fold with AA.

I just think it's interesting that someone's LOLing at people who have neither read nor posted in the thread.

As for it being just as easy for a third 2 to come up as an A. You're correct, it's just as easy. But can AA be counterfieted by 22 as easily as 222 can be counterfieted by AA? Nope. See, the AA is still live for a straight if 3, 4, or 5 also landed on the flop + it can still hit one or both of the remaining A's and on top of that if any one of the other cards on the board gets trips or even the most miraculous quads on the board, then AA completely demolishes 222.

Plus with the chips all-in pre-flop it's not even sucking out though 222 might whine and bitch that it is.

Left out that for the bizarre quads on the board to happen the 2's would have had to flop a boat, but they'd have the bottom end of the boat even if all the chips weren't in the pot already. Bottom ends of boats have a funny way of sinking right to the bottom of the tournament's leaderboard.

You can't reasonably think you're going to make money in the long hall if you attempt to only make 18th. yeah, making money is good, but you can make 18th 3 times and not make what first place gets once.

the ONLY time you fold AA is in a sat. where 1-18th all get the exact same thing. never any time else. ever.

the difference here is a 2 HAS to come up in order for you to lose. a A doesn't for him. You aren't losing more than you win AA v 22 heads up. period. If you're folding AA preflop you're -ev BIG time.

Agreed. I was thinking about post-flop b4 because Rebel was talking about the 2 hitting, but you're totally right.

I'm calling. Anything less is not in the cards so to speak. It might be just me. You may have to wait to get in the money position and it may be too late.

So you're going to fold vs. one opponent preflop while holding AA cuz your gut tells you they've got a smaller pkt.pr. that's going to hit a set?? Sorry but I think I'll take the math 100% of the time.

You can't fold AA here... that's just crazy. If you could've seen his holecards prior to making the call.... would you call? Of course you would.. no matter what he's got (esp. if pkt. pr.!!).