Daily Hand Quiz

It really is an awkward spot having around 13 blinds. It’s at the point where any substantial preflop raise really commits you to the pot, but a preflop shove is still an often unreasonably large bet.
This can become especially problematic with a marginal hand like A9. We’re obviously raising or folding here – I think if we had 1.5 or 2 mil, even 2.5 mil, this would be an easy shove. But we’re in a real awkward spot with the stack size we have.
I don’t think we can make a standard raise, like 3x the BB, because A9 can’t take much heat and we wouldn’t want to have to fold to a reraise. So we need to beat the reraiser to the punch.
So despite the fact that we’re sitting on 13 blinds and have more than enough of a stack to sit around a few orbits and wait for a better spot, we realistically are in a fold-or-shove situation.
Here, I can’t bring myself to push it. For not even being desperately shortstacked, you’re going to feel real stupid if you shove here and get called by AK, or a high pp, or even a low one with a slight edge on you.
Bottom line, I’m not desperate enough here to risk my tournament on a marginal hand with 3 people yet to act (2 of which have me covered), and one more who’s shown strength already with an UTG+1 limp.
So in the example, the guy shoved and picked up the blinds because nobody behind him woke up with a hand. I’m sure you pick up the pot without contest 80-90% of the time, but you stand to lose so big when you do get called that the risk is not worthwhile at this point.

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I said raise but would probably fold to a reraise. I was wary of UTG+1 making a play with AK hoping for a raise, as J.F. above suggested as well.

I don’t mind fold, either – our M is 13, but we’re also in second place – we can take some shots against medium stacks or wait for good hands to tangle with the big stacks – no need at this point to knock heads with the chip leader with A9o if we don’t want to

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A limp from his position feels like K-J or 4-4.
Maybe I’m still tilting from last night, but I saw that A-9 late position and thought push, that wasn’t an option so I picked raise.

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Jeremy, I here what you’re saying about an awkward spot, but I think that would apply more if you had an $8M chip stack or slightly larger. As it is, there is $1M in the middle already, which is 1/4 of your stack.

I actually think that this is a great situation to jam. You are going to have some good fold equity against EP and there aren’t that many players behind you to wake up to huge hands, and even if they did catch a hand like AJ or AT, it’s going to be very difficult to make a call with the EP big stack in the hand and your shove.

If you do get called, you’re most likely dominated or racing, or a dog against a pair like JJ/TT, but you’ve got to play for the big bucks. You’ve got to find spots to chip up and they aren’t going to get much better than this.

Jam all day and twice on Sunday; oh wait; it is Sunday.

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Matt Tag, did you read the description (or Harrington)?

You’d raise to what? $1.3M and then fold to a re-raise?

You’re going to put over 1/4 of your chips in here and let someone make a play on you for your tournament life? I think that’s a bad play. You’re giving your opponent incredible pot odds to call (he’d have to call $1M more into a pot of $2.3M and he could easily stop and go and jam on almost any raggedy flop. Heck, even if an ace shows up on the flop and he jams, can you really call?

And, your M is nowhere near 13. You may have 13 BBs, but your M is slightly over 5. With antes that high, you really don’t have much time to sit back and wait. If the blinds go through you just once, you’re M will drop to around 4 and you’ll lose almost all of your fold equity when you do jam; especially against some of the monster stacks that might just be willing to gamble it up with you.

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Dang! Kick butt Ally
to reiterate – I’d ‘jam’ too

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Raise all-in. Fairly easy decision.

Your M is 5.5. Sure you have 13 BBs, but it’s important not to forget the antes. You can’t exactly wait for aces anymore.

Sure, the opponent may be slow playing a monster. But I think most of the time they aren’t. And I think most of the hands that call you you aren’t in too bad of shape… I wouldn’t expect to be dominated here very often at all. Other than that, you have to hope that the three remaining players don’t have a hand… of course, most of the time they won’t.

As far as going all-in versus a “standard” raise… with this stack size, I really don’t think you should play if you plan on folding… you are really on the very edge of your stack being scary… maximizing your fold equity is critical here.

Bottom line is that you’ll be able to take the $1M uncontested quite a few times, and even when you’re called, you’ll have a fighting chance (or better) much of the time.

Also agree with Ally’s allusion to Harrington… I’m pretty sure he’d advocate pushing here too.

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I voted wrong, I said fold. It was that kind of play that blinded me out of WSOP, but I feel the same hesitation to stick it out as Jeremy Fischer.
It is obviously fold or all in. If I had just one million less I would definately push. Here it feels awkward.
But as someone pointed out, the antes in there are significant. With the antes in consideration the push is probably better.

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