Daily Hand Quiz

Fold.

Yeah probably not the time to play a weak ace.

I reckon you could buy position from the dealer with a raise here but you’re so vulnerable to a re-raise from the B and if the BB decides to use his stack and pressure your CO raise with a 3-bet you’d have to fold A8.

So if my read is that the BB would three-bet me I would fold this.

And personally if I was the BB with that stack i’d three bet the tight CO each and every time.

In conclusion – fold unless my opponents are passive and won’t 3 bet me.

I didn’t really consider shoving to steal. I suppose it would have a reasonable chance of succes. I think some more patience is a better plan though.

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Raise/fold.

We’re in the cutoff with an ace with a 9% increase to our stack waiting to be picked up. Raise to 20k – still leaves us with an M of over 9 to fold to a 3bet.
Without a read this has to be the optimal strategy. If opponents have been seen to 3bet light then a fold is fine. Shoving with an M of over 10 to pick up one more M is not my kind of risk-reward.

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It is not possible to play this hand profitably with no reads on the blinds.It is impossible to answer, this late and deep in the tourney.

The question makes no sense to me.

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My image is tight, any player could put me on a good hand. Raise to 16K, call a threebet up to 40K and reevaluate the turn. Fold to any threebet from the river.
I might get raised light here most of the time and will have position, so it is a good spot, IMO, to gather some chips.

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Options:
1. All-in. It might work, but it also might be a classic case of everyone folding with bad cards and calling if they dominate hero. I don’t really like the risk/reward as Richard P said of 107k for 13k. With no read, I definitely don’t make this play. Each person who goes out before hero means a much bigger pay increase at this stage.

2. Raise-call. What flop would you want to see here? If someone three bets pre-flop and an ace comes out, you might get it all in completely dominated. Similarly, if the flop is 832 you are still beat by 99-AA, all of which will undoubtedly call you (and what turn card would make you happy besides an A/8?) I would have to make top two or trips to feel happy about the flop, which would justify calling with any two cards (J2 has the same chance of flopping as strong a hand), which makes this not an option for me.

3. Raise-fold. True, the CO is a great spot to steal. But here are 3 factors against:
A. We have no read. Did the three players behind us make their money off of playing tight and folding a lot? Or aggressively re-raising to steal PF raises? Hero has no idea.
B. Two very big stacks behind hero, both of which would be likely to raise instead of flat call to negate being OOP and because hero is in the CO.
C. If we raise to say, 35-40k, the dealer will have 40% of his current chip total in the middle. This would be a perfect shoving opportunity for the short stack, and not setting up a perfect shove is incredibly important late game in tournies. Which leads us to our final option of

4. Folding. Simple, costs us nothing, doesn’t risk chips on a weak ace, doesn’t set us up to be re-stolen by big stacks and doesn’t set up a shove by the short stack. Sounds good to me.

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Voted fold. I don’t want to potentially do battle with 2 of the big stax holding this hand. If I raise to say 15K and the BB calls, I need to be prepared to c-bet at least another 20K if I miss the flop, which is 2/3 of the time. Risking ~35% of stack seems like imprudent gambling at this stage.

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Nits.

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Raise-fold

This isn’t a bad hand to steal blinds with, the blinds are significant enough to matter, seeing a flop in position as the preflop aggressor when you could be called by inferior hands from the BB is usually a nice this. Whatever value you have however evaporates to nil if someone reraises as you are a slight underdog with 2 unsuited overs to dominated over a very large portion of most people’s reraising ranges so raise-call is -EV.

Shoving is foolish as the you maximize your risk while keeping the reward, stealing the blinds, the same as a smaller raise would accomplish as likely 90 to 100% of an opponent’s calling range would have you crushed and the other 0 to 10% you would be flippng.

Fold is second to raise-fold but you need to try to pick up blinds when possible to stay alive in tournies, and this is a good spot.

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I will say that one thing in favor of a raise-fold I forgot to mention is that this is a $109 buy-in, so people in this tourney won’t call with anything. With that said, big stacks are much more likely to re-steal in a higher buy-in affair. I guess one of my problems is how much to raise?

A raise of 35k is 23.5% of hero’s stack. Even if one of the villains flat-calls, a c-bet of 2/3 the pot is 60k (of hero’s remaining 112k), essentially forcing a . . . continuation all-in? Doesn’t sound so good too me. The raise-fold here also puts hero much closer to being forced to shove with an M of 9ish.

Sure, if I knew the table was a bunch of tight players I would raise. In fact, I’d probably raise with 52. But a steal situation requires knowledge that your opponents will fold. It also, to me, requires options when you don’t get the absolute best result of 3 people folding. What if the SB and BB absolutely love 3 betting with a big stack? What if the dealer has been shoving his/her short stack over and over into pre-flop raises? I’m picking a different spot.

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raise-call. make it something like 17.5k and call up to 40 ish.

unless the blinds have been playing very tight.

we have a tight image, this is exactly where that image pays off. we have position, and unless the blinds are very aggressive or tight and wake up with a top hand, we should take this down. if theyre very aggressive, we probably have the best hnd anyway. the whole point of building a tight image is be able to make exactly these plays.

now if we get 3 bet, im still playing position and reading the flop. a player could be thinking we are stealing, or just be making a move. we could get 3 bet with any number of hands. that doesnt mean we dont have the best of it, or wont be ahead once the flop comes. play position, play poker.

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Raise-fold.

If someone comes over the top – more power to them, I am not calling with a weak ace at this spot. However, A8 is enough of a hand to attempt a steal with. Put it this way – if you fold A8, what would be your opening range here? Are you only opening with hands that you’re willing to shove with?

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@ catcher

I think you have to almost assume the BB is going to come over the top. All the people voting bet-fold here just goes to show that if you are ever in the BB’s position you have to 3-bet almost any two cards in this spot. The amount of weak tag’s out there who will bet/fold/donate to your stack is hilarious.

The reason we are in a bad spot here is because the chances of stealing the big stacks big blind are not good. A decent aggressive big blind with that stack size is going to defend their big blind and defend it hard.

If the others fold to the BB 3-betting is just such an obvious move against a TAG CO.

But like I said, if I thought the BB was passive or tight I’d probably play the weak ace here.

I don’t like bet/folding in general and try to avoid those spots but everyone should be able to agree there is no long term value in bet/fold spots if the most likely outcome is folding. Thats just giving money away.

So it all comes back to what read we have. Lacking a good read getting loose with A8 at this point seems reckless, there is still plenty of poker to be played.

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Fold this one wait for a better spot

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