I want to explain my thinking in the hand. Please tell me is you see any flaws.
Pre-flop I see a person that makes position raises make what looks like another one, then villan reraises him on the button. I don't feel I can just call here since that will give odds to both the BB and original raiser to call and I sure don't want to go up against 3 players. I also want some action preferably by one player. If I make a raise here I will most likely push out both the BB and original raiser but I want to make it small enough to get a call from the reraiser. Best case scenerio is that villan reraises or shoves my raise. So both others fold and villan calls. This is a decent result for me I feel since I want to make some money with my aces if I can.
When the flop comes I don't really like it since alot of villans holdings could have hit here. There are also straight draws available and I don't want to give him a free card. I feel a check here is more dangerous than a shove considering there is nothing villan can bet that I fold to anyway.
So, I shove and villan instant calls.
I don't see any flaws at all. The whole PF thought process looks fine to me, you want to get some value for AA and in the same time protect your hand trying to get it HU. You accomplished both.
After the flop, I
might have done differently, can't really say for sure, but only because the player was profiled as LAG, so I wanted all his chips in the pot and try to make his ass pay, although it carries the big risk of getting outdrawn. You went all-in and still accomplished that, so there really isn't any difference. If you check, he'll fire for sure and you raise all-in, and results will be the same. I understand your whole point of trying not to give a free card, it makes alot of sense being that you're facing a LAG, you can't exclude he has a T or 9, like he did.
I don't know if this guy is a smart player or not, it doesn't seem so. He must of somehow put you on AK or your shove looked suspicious to him, I guess. More likely he's just a donk as you say, and I'm giving him too much credit with the AK theory. Your comments about quality of players in the higher buy-ins are very true as I'm coming to realize. Although I haven't played the $100 level, I've tried up to $33 MTT's and have noticed the level is actually just as poor as the low stakes. You'll find some better players, but certainly a small minority. When some members here who abitually play those levels said this, I decided to give it a shot myself and found this to be very true. I haven't been able to score a big cash on these tournies yet, but definitely not because I'm getting outplayed.
This is probably not the right place but I'll post this because I know you'll read it and I'd like your opinion, and this J9 hand you ran into kind of brings it up. I've noticed lately a lot of players defending their blinds much more aggressively calling raises with marginal hands. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, at times it creates trouble and gets you knocked out or makes you lose chips. I'll tell you a real one that happened to me in the FTP $26k garanteed ($24 +$2 buy-in). I raise from MP with KK, BB calls. Flop comes Q74 rainbow, he bets into me, I reraise putting him all-in (I have him covered), he calls, turns over Q6s and catches runner runner for a straight. What can you do? I guess he called the PF raise from a bigger stack because he was sooooted. This hand crippled me and I ended up busting in 47th place (~$80, 1st place almost 6k) a little more than 2 orbits later because of it.
Here is a sure fact, if you tighten up too much with your starting hand, you become excessively card dependant, and even that doesn't work if you miss the flop. You may have the best starting hand but you'll hit the flop only 1 in 3 times. Say you raise with AQ in LP and the SB calls your raise, flop comes T84, and he bets into you. What do you do? I almost always give up and fold, and maybe its a mistake, but I've seen too many marginal hands win in these situations, last night a player with AK lost and got knocked out vs J8o on a 8 high flop ($11 tourney). Its amazing the amount of calls with marginal hands I've seen lately, and many times by players who don't have a stack big enough to make these calls.
Is it me, or have you noticed a tendency lately of players aggressively defending their blinds even with marginal hands? If so, how do you manage to fight back?
