OK, I didn’t need to go allin pre flop. I understand.
Hadn’t’ played a hand in 20 minutes…
But if YOU are in first place, would YOU call my all in with 67o ?
what happened the hand before ?
Villain wasn’t even 1st place at the table. Is this the final table? What am I missing?
If you want me to analyze Villain here, he snap calls all-in with a weak hand (with 4 callers behind no less!) and didn’t have you covered by all that much (approx 30%). I’d say he played like a fish and buttlucked you hard.
You regret shoving pre, but with 12bb left AJs is a great shove. I’d jam that 100%, even UtG. You have two suited broadways and an A. What more do you need to go all-in with here?
If you’re looking for sympathy you have mine because you played this perfectly (whether you know it or not) and Villain played this extremely poorly.
The first thing that I looked for in the hand to answer the question was how badly you were outstacked, but was rather shocked to see that no one there had you badly outstacked. The tallest stack had you only about 2 to 1.
If you want to know what I would do if I were Villain, I would fold like the Sunday Times.
If you want to know what I would do if I were chip leader, it would depend on the stacks. There is a decent chance that I will call you with 76o if I have two factors in my favor - 1) I have you outstacked massively (like 8 to 1 or 10 to 1 or bigger) and 2) I know that I can isolate you. I need both of these.
Isolation: I want to be heads-up with you because 2 Villains doubles my chance of losing, 3 Villains triples etc … Also, If I flat call this with 4 people left to act, I must ask myself, “am I okay with folding this if someone else raises?” If yes, then I can flat you, if no I fold or raise/jam. I want to make the people behind fold and play only you - isolate you. Additionally, remember, what if someone calls and I whiff the flop and he bets?? Oh s**t! What do I do here? It’s better to raise pre and get them folded out before they hit something. Or what if the flop comes all clubs monotone and the other guy bets? Is he bluffing? Does he have ONE club? Playing the later streets when you whiff sucks! Make them fold pre.
Anyways, stack advantage: Okay so here’s the (very rough) math. AA all-in pre wins 85% of the time. That means that any 2 cards beat AA roughly 15% of the time or roughly 1/6th of the time. So if I have you outstacked 7 times over or more, it actually starts becoming less profitable to fold garbage here than to call. If I call you 6 times in this same situation, it is mathematically more likely than not that I will felt you before you felt me. (even with crap) ; ) So if I have you outstacked 10 to 1, calling you with any 2 napkins is a pretty easy call. I might have garbage but I always have suckout value. ; )
In this hand, if I were the chip leader (to the left of calling Villain) I would have neither isolation nor significant stack advantage, so 76o is a no-brain fold 100%.
My advice to you is to make friends with him. Then you will always see what table he plays at and can join him. You will make lots of money off of him in the future. ; )
Also, with more practice you will improve your table awareness, the stacks the position, players left to act, etc. There are so many factors here that you ignored, far more than what cards either of you had. You didn’t even seem to know that you had basically played the hand perfectly. At 12bb, you are pretty much jamming or folding and only a total nit folds AJs here - even UtG. Yes it generally sucks to jam UtG but you’re not getting abetter chance than that beautiful hand.
Hope this helps. : )
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Thanks for your analysis napkin_holder.
Quite honestly, I figured two things when I shoved:
- I wanted to steal the blinds with a strong hand, and
- I hadn’t played a hand in 20 minutes
To see a chip leader at the table take that risk, that late in the tourney, just blew my mind. If my AJ holds up, I probably become the leader - and this guy has his legs cut off.
We’ve all seen strange plays - I just thought this won wins the prize for March (for me).
Ironically, about 5 minutes before the hand, I praised the entire table for a GG as there’s still SIX (!) of us left at these blinds. In my experience, that’s rare for replay. The game had been really good.
GL at the tables n_h.
The hand before:
I folded 92o, the table folded around to the sb, who called.
SB raised pot on flop, and won the hand.
With AJs you probably don’t mind a call and double up. Although we’re happy with a steal here for sure. Most pro players do NOT consider AJs a prime hand, but it’s very close. I don’t think that you will find a single pro who would not shove that pre with 12bb from any seat at the table. With 20-25bb different story of course.
But yes, your table image matters. If you have not made an aggressive action for several orbits your table image will be tight. This means that anyone paying attention to such things will take your betting seriously. As in you are waiting waiting for awesome cards. When Villain sees this he will more apt to fold. This can be quite valuable at low stakes where it is difficult to get all the call station fish to fold.
What you did is called leveraging your table image. In this case your image was tight. So suddenly you bet big, and that scares people into folding. Doesn’t always work and of course hands like AA KK etc aren’t folding to anything.
The opposite is playing lots of hands and your image is loose. When this happens you will get more calls because Villains think you are full of bs with all of your betting. Which can be good when you actually have a strong hand, so you can leverage that.
One thing that I often do is - let’s say we’ve had like 5 strong hands in a row and we have opened the betting and been aggressive. Then we get a good (not great) hand like J9s. This is a hand that we can open but it’s near the bottom of our range. I will fold this because my image is loose (from that run of good cards) and I don’t want anyone not taking my bets seriously when I have an ok (not great) hand. Then also by mixing in some folds, my image becomes more balanced and it’s difficult for Villains to read me.