AA/KK - Early Stages of STT

[OzExorcist]

What if you play a 6 player satellite SnG, where 1st and 2nd win a ticket to the Sunday Million. (these are very common on PS)
Everyone starts with 500, blinds 25-50 with 10 ante.
You are BB, and everyone goes all-in in front of you.

Now if you fold you have over 90% chance to win the grand price.

*shrugs*

Sure, go ahead and fold in that obscure and manufactured situation. I've assumed we're talking about regular STTs.

nope, nope nope, with a weak field like was mentioned in a low lim sng there is no way im going all in with aa early with half/+ the table going all in. never, ever. it doesnt make sense to me. theres just too much poker to be played to risk on 1 hand on just a pair.

on a flip side because i dont like to be yea or nay on issues but look at it from different angles -u can make a point that 3-4 times out of 10 isnt bad for ur roi in sngs, so i can see what ozexorcist is coming from when they disagree with me.

but don’t get mad when ur precious pair gets cracked with trash. lololololol
But either way i really dont think about it as being right or wrong. its more like what suits ur personality, expectations and desires. i will simply agree or disagree with some1 and state why. i believe it is more important to be involved and thinking about the hands and poker strategy, than simply yea or nay on an issue.

Someone smarter than me can do the math on this one but I'm pretty sure you'll find you've got a massive positive expectation, both in chip and $EV terms, if you're getting in preflop with AA against four opponents or whatever nonsense situation you've come up with.

Let's say it is four opponents and you're only 40% to win outright. That means there's 5*1500 = 7500 in the pot or thereabouts, of which you've contributed about 1500. 60% of the time you lose 1500, get knocked out, lose your 11.1% $ equity in the tournament and start another game. 40% of the time you scoop 7500 in chips and get yourself what, something around 50% $ equity in the tournament?

Your chip EV alone is (0.6*-1500)+(0.4*7500) = +2100. Like I said, someone smarter than me will have to do the $EV / equity calculation but I'm pretty certain it'll be attractive. Plus who cares if we get knocked out - we have bankrolls and bankroll management as padding for the times when we get it in with the best hand and lose. This is one of those rare situations when we know we have the best hand when the money goes in.

You're obviously welcome to your opinion and you can play your aces whatever way you like. I think the arguments for getting the money in are pretty compelling though, I think folding aces in a spot like this would be a massive money-gobbling leak in your game and I suspect a lot of others will agree.

I'm certain you're confusing me with someone else on the Stud8 issue BTW, probably c9 or skoldpadda. I know sod all about Stud8 and wouldn't bother giving actual advice on it. I think I might've tried to clarify when someone had obviously misconstrued what one of those two had said.

 

[only_bridge]

*shrugs*

Sure, go ahead and fold in that obscure and manufactured situation. I've assumed we're talking about regular STTs.

Sure, same thing applys for regular STT's.

 

[OzExorcist]

Sure, same thing applys for regular STT's.

Um, you've lost me. You're suggesting there are spots early in regular STTs where if we fold aces preflop we'll be 90% to win or at least cash?

 

[clover]

I play them like any other strong hand. I try to keep with consistent raises, so my opponents can never make sense of what I'm playing with. A lot of times, I see people make the mistake of raising to an absurd amount, that completely gives their hand away. They then flip over their cards, and blatantly say they weren't sure how to play them. This has the complete opposite effect of what your main goal should be which is to acquire as many chips as possible, throughout the tournament.

I think 3-4x is an appropriate raise. If you feel you're beat, just lay them down. But it's better to take that risk, than to throw them in the muck pile after only stealing a very small amount from the blinds.

Good luck with however you decide to play them! I know you'll make the right decision when the time calls for one.

 

[only_bridge]

Um, you've lost me. You're suggesting there are spots early in regular STTs where if we fold aces preflop we'll be 90% to win or at least cash?

Abslolutely, if everyone else pushes all-in, then we have a great spot of ending heads up if we fold.

 

[Kountess]

Abslolutely, if everyone else pushes all-in, then we have a great spot of ending heads up if we fold.

Yess I've done this technique plenty of times!!

 

[swingro]

Um, you've lost me. You're suggesting there are spots early in regular STTs where if we fold aces preflop we'll be 90% to win or at least cash?

If you are not heads-up with some other guy you will see that kings or Aces are not such a good hand. Your winning chances preflop when you are not heads up decrease dramatically.

If there are more than 2 ppl going all in in front of you you should fold aces or kings without even thinking

 

[ph_il]

OMG. Is there really this much bad advice on playing AA/KK preflop during the early stages of an STT?

Look, with AA/KK preflop the only reason you're betting is for VALUE. You're raising preflop because you want others to call. Especially with hands worse than yours so you can get paid off for your monsters. The idea of wanting to raise so players will fold bad hands is just dumb. Sure, we want to thin the field a bit so our hand has more potential to win, but we get paid off by these hands more often than not. Unless their is a strong tell-tale sign that we're 100% beat, you should be betting out on every street to extract the maximum number of chips you can.

If you're scared about someone hitting a set, which will happen about 1:11 times, then gosh..just fold. Heck, just fold every single pair you get because the odds of someone hitting a flush is the same. Heck, you might might as well just fold every hand. Or bet yet, just sit out because you will lose postflop at one point or another, no matter what hand you hold. The difference is, bigger hands have more potential to more and more often. SO, 10:11 times, you're taking it down and 1 time, someone is hitting a set. It's the nature of the game. If you're scared to get in with the best hand PF almost 99.9% of the time...just stop playing.

The idea of shoving all in with AA or KK during the early stages is...DUMB. Seriously, it might work a few times but majority of the time, you pick up the blinds. Nice...shove a 1.5K stack to pick up 45 chips...woot. You keep playing like that and passing up those opportunities to build a stack. Heck, even if you raise 3x BB, get one caller, and they fold on the flop...you're still extracting more than you would if you open shoved most of the time.

OP, it's like this: you have a big hand preflop, raise it up and get value for it. If you don't get any callers, then you don't. Nothing to be concerned about because if they have nothing worth calling a raise with when you're holding AA, they're probably not calling anything there no matter what your hand is. However, there will be many times when you do get callers and action when you have big hands. So, the only you can do is try to get as much out of it as you can when they do bite.

 

[NoWuckingFurries]

If there are more than 2 ppl going all in in front of you you should fold aces or kings without even thinking

No chance of me following that advice. If that makes me a bad player, then so be it.

 

[ben_rhyno]

No chance of me following that advice. If that makes me a bad player, then so be it.

Possibly the worst advice ive seen given on CC lol

 

[Rldetheflop]

I'm not even sure I want to get into how bad an idea this is for a second time. I'll just make the suggestion that your thinking is almost certainly based on selective recall. The one time you got called by AT doing this is clouding out all the times where you did better by raising a normal amount.

A play like this will become less and less effective (if we can call it effective to begin with) as we go up in stakes too.

I think you are missing the point here though. first off this is only an option in the first few hands of the tourney and at low buy-ins. You can get called pretty wide here as in a low buy in tourney there are certainly a few players who are willing to gamble with 66+ A10+ because they have not invested much time. Most of the time we are just picking up the blinds which is pretty much what happens no matter the bet size(yes sometimes we pick up a few extra blinds at 10/20 which is nothing). Plus you get the added bonus of looking like a total donk which can help with some plays later on.

Now of course this is also situational. If there are a few regs at the table I am not doing it but if the whole table is full of ppl I have never seen before its a go. Obviously I dont think anyone is suggesting jam your whole stack every time you see AA/KK(personally I only do this with AA).

I think saying this is absolutely a horrendous play is a bit close-minded.


oh I forgot to mention that we only want to do this opening in EP. The more ppl behind us to act the better.

 

[gamblorised]

Uuummmm, you know it's a bad idea to chuck in your 2 cents worth into an online discussion and then not check the thread for the next week. Otherwise you too could log on to find that you'd not read the original thread starter question correctly and your idiotic post had sat there all week for all to see! Lol!

I totally missed that this was about a single table SNG!
Lol, what a donk!

 

[OzExorcist]

If you are not heads-up with some other guy you will see that kings or Aces are not such a good hand. Your winning chances preflop when you are not heads up decrease dramatically.

If there are more than 2 ppl going all in in front of you you should fold aces or kings without even thinking

Gotta disagree, in the strongest possible terms.

Yes, our overall chances of winning go down the more players there are in the hand. But not by anywhere near enough to make us consider folding in any realistic situation.

How many players, for example, need to be in the hand with what kind of range before our chances of winning go below 50%? Against four other players with random hands AA is still 55.8% to win. Against four other players with a more plausible range (22+ / AT+ / two broadway) it's 51.9%.

Against four other players we're still better than a coinflip to end up with more than half the chips in play. And against less opponents we're a lot better than a coinflip.

Folding in these spots is just burning money IMO.

I think you are missing the point here though. first off this is only an option in the first few hands of the tourney and at low buy-ins. You can get called pretty wide here as in a low buy in tourney there are certainly a few players who are willing to gamble with 66+ A10+ because they have not invested much time. Most of the time we are just picking up the blinds which is pretty much what happens no matter the bet size(yes sometimes we pick up a few extra blinds at 10/20 which is nothing). Plus you get the added bonus of looking like a total donk which can help with some plays later on.

I don't think I'm missing the point, FWIW. Here's my take on it:

If you open shove AA PF sure, occasionally you'll get paid by droolers with smaller pairs and medium-big aces. But that's all.

If you raise a normal amount, you still get paid by the same droolers, as well as more reasonable players who might call you with a similar range and then pay you more on later streets when they hit a piece of the board but still trail us.

Droolers might call us wide preflop, but we don't just play against droolers. Against the whole range of opponents we're likely to encounter
(and yes, I have low stakes in mind here) I honestly believe we make more in the long run by raising a normal amount so that a wider range of players can give us action.

 

[Rldetheflop]

Gotta disagree, in the strongest possible terms.

Yes, our overall chances of winning go down the more players there are in the hand. But not by anywhere near enough to make us consider folding in any realistic situation.

How many players, for example, need to be in the hand with what kind of range before our chances of winning go below 50%? Against four other players with random hands AA is still 55.8% to win. Against four other players with a more plausible range (22+ / AT+ / two broadway) it's 51.9%.

Against four other players we're still better than a coinflip to end up with more than half the chips in play. And against less opponents we're a lot better than a coinflip.

Folding in these spots is just burning money IMO.





I don't think I'm missing the point, FWIW. Here's my take on it:

If you open shove AA PF sure, occasionally you'll get paid by droolers with smaller pairs and medium-big aces. But that's all.

If you raise a normal amount, you still get paid by the same droolers, as well as more reasonable players who might call you with a similar range and then pay you more on later streets when they hit a piece of the board but still trail us.

Droolers might call us wide preflop, but we don't just play against droolers. Against the whole range of opponents we're likely to encounter
(and yes, I have low stakes in mind here) I honestly believe we make more in the long run by raising a normal amount so that a wider range of players can give us action.

Well I will start off by saying that this scenario happens so infrequently that its probably not even worth debating over it since it will affect our bottom line so very little.

I will have to disagree that we will get paid more in the long run from the drooler's by standard raising here. Cause they love their A 10 pf but not so much when the flop misses them which we know it will the majority of the time.

See I dont think you give enough credit to the fact that ppl will call in the first few hands with less than optimal cards because they figure they have invested no time so take the chance and move on to the next tourney if they lose.

 

[FereZ]

Raise it big, like 5bb's or pf shove.. And yea, that sucks when people try set mining and they hit and you have to pay them off..
Some people are just too loose and call with all pairs, altough your raise is 5bb.

 

[Poker Orifice]

Abslolutely, if everyone else pushes all-in, then we have a great spot of ending heads up if we fold.

This thread is freak'n ridiculous.
When is everyone shoving at the start of a STT/SNG?
To suggest folding AA preflop ever in an STT/SNG is ludicrous.

 

[Poker Orifice]

If you are not heads-up with some other guy you will see that kings or Aces are not such a good hand. Your winning chances preflop when you are not heads up decrease dramatically.

If there are more than 2 ppl going all in in front of you you should fold aces or kings without even thinking

Surely you're joking here?????

I believe I am now seeing what "C9" was talking about with some of the threads on the site. There's like a couple of players here who know what they're talking about, trying to tell others who are clueless but who don't want to learn how to play.

LET THESE FISH fold AA in early levels of STT/SNG. Keep donating to the other players by folding AA/KK.

 

[only_bridge]

This thread is freak'n ridiculous.
When is everyone shoving at the start of a STT/SNG?
To suggest folding AA preflop ever in an STT/SNG is ludicrous.

Ya, it doesnt happen that often, I admit.

 

[TheKAAHK]

Surely you're joking here?????

I believe I am now seeing what "C9" was talking about with some of the threads on the site. There's like a couple of players here who know what they're talking about, trying to tell others who are clueless but who don't want to learn how to play.

LET THESE FISH fold AA in early levels of STT/SNG. Keep donating to the other players by folding AA/KK.

^ I whole heartedly second this ^

Never fold AA/KK pf early in a STT. Also never jam with AA/KK pf early in a STT. Play them like the hands they are, premium pocket pair. Remember a pair is just a pair and should be played as such. Just because "omg its the biggest pair there is!!!" dosn't mean you should get all uppity with it for no good reason. All other aspects of the game still apply, even to your beloved AA.

In short, don't be stupid.