AJ facing reship, major online MTT

DailyHandQuiz

Game type: PokerStars Sunday Million
Stage of tourney: 18 players remain
Avg stack: ~ 4M
Your image: Fairly tight
Opponent’s image: Aggressive
Your hand: A♦J♠

Setup: So far your opponent has been aggressive at this table. Here you open the pot with a smallish raise holding AJ. Opp pushes on the big blind making it ~ 2.9M more for you to call. What’s your play?

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8 COMMENTS (Jump to comment form)

Morat

Call w/ fistpump?

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Waste_Of_Paint

I am calling this all day long.

Yes, it sucks to put our tourny life on the line with AJ, but I think we have to make a stand here. We’re getting no respect for a button raise when we’re actually holding a near-premium hand. If we fold here, we are just declaring that we were raising light to steal and that we’re going to get run over by this guy.

Even though we’ve got a tight image, there are a wide range of cards we could be raising with here to pinch the 384k in the middle. Knowing that we won’t call off our stack with most of this range, this guy can be shoving back with almost anything. I think it’s quite unlikely we’re behind, and if it’s a flip, well, we’re probably going to have to take one sooner or later to make a final table run.

Table image is so important here. If we can win this hand, not only will we double up and then some, but we’ll get a lot more respect for our raises. If we raise/fold AJ from the button at this stage then we’re going to get pushed around all day long (especially by this guy) until we’re on desperation street anyway. We’ll also become chip leader at the table and will be in a position to do some bullying ourselves.

As it stands, we are one of the shorter stacks and it’s going to be very tricky to find a better spot to double up. I say snap this off and feel reasonably good about it.

[Reply]

_CityBorn_ Reply:
November 19th, 2010 at 7:46 am

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Groundhog day

Good quiz, especially in context of AJs quiz earlier this week, where I think the consensus was to fold. I agree that we need to call here for reasons already well articulated. Fist pump optional.

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samo

Yup, I’d call fairly quickly. WOP says it well. Chance to double-up here and be in good shape to make top $ is worth downside risk. Even if V over-played KK and QQ, Hero still has an A out.

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Markus

raise/call > raise/fold > openshove

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Markus Reply:
November 20th, 2010 at 12:52 pm

…>anything else

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catcher

Not overly ecstatic about the whole thing, but relatively easy call nonetheless.

We’re really crushed by AA/AK/AQ, in a pretty bad shape against KK/QQ/JJ, flipping against TT-22 while dominating AT-A2, KJ/QJ, and ahead of KQ/KT – all of which is reasonably in V’s reship range.

Our M is about 8 which means that, while not desperate, we’re in push or fold zone now. Given the money in the middle and aggressive opponent, this will have to be a call.

[Reply]