40 away from the bubble in a 1900 person NL Hold'em tournament. Blinds are 150/300 with 25 Ante. I have 1800 chips on the Button with AK offsuit. 2nd person to act moves all in for 5000. Folds to me. I decide to fold. Good play, acceptable, or Bad play?

I won't tell the outcome of the hand for now. Thanks.

This is an easy call. Folding is bad.

You don't give a whole lot of information in your post, but I'd usually be glad to get my money in here so short stacked with a hand thats either dominating/flipping (no one shoves AA/KK for that much). With 40 people to the bubble and your short stack you're probably going to need to make a move sooner rather than later.

Easy Call. We could care less about results.

Well My thinking was that it had to be a pair. No one will shove with AX I don't feel in that spot. Then at best its a coin flip for tourney or dominated by KK or AA. Someone earlier said not much of a chance on AA or KK but at the time I'm thinking he has a monster pair. So feeling 50/50 at best decided not to gamble. Ended up he had AA becuase BB called with QQ but presonally I feel it was a bad spot. I totally understand the short stack issue and I know results aren't the important factor but if you think you are getting it in bad or coin at best why do you " have " to push?

With an M of around 3 you should be ecstatic to get it in as a 50/50 coinflip.

Also, this will be 88, 99,TT, AJ AQs ect ect many more times than its aces.

Because you only have 1800 chips with blinds at 150/300, you're still 40 from the bubble in a large-field tournament, and this may be the best chance you have to chip up before your stack dwindles to nothing. I don't have much experience in MTTs, but from what I understand about them you have to be willing to take chances to chip up when those situations arise - even if you know you are at best on the wrong side of a coinflip. If you sit and wait for big pairs to make you the fav, the blinds will eat away at your stack.

With your M < 4 a call here is necessary.

"Blinds are 150/300 with 25 Ante. I have 1800 chips "

Thats why.

Go with your gut. Don't listen to anyone. If you can fold AK and feel good about it, then go ahead and do it. Your insticts are vital to your success in poker. Do not underestimate them.

This is a meta-game question more than a tourney question, if my read is correct. It costs you nothing to fold here, you're reading him for a monster, just do what you feel is best and get ready for the next hand.

Of course, if you have 50k and he's got 5k, you beat him into the pot regardless. Go with the book advice when you've got chips to play with, go with your gut in survival mode. It's two entirely different animals.

No offense at all intended but I think encouraging a fold in this precise spot with AK is really bad advice. Just my 2c.

I don't think this is good advice in this particular situation. (About the don't listen to anyone part, he's obviously
posting here to hear our opinions!)

It's not just about instinct vs. reasoning, and in fact I think this distinction is a false one. When you train yourself well enough in strategy certain decisions can float down to a subconscious level, or certain conscious reasoning processes can be informed by information which you perceived in a way you don't understand.

It's a big mistake not to go over everything you can and understand as much as possible on a conscious level, to understand why you make the decisions you do and to make them from a position of having worked out a strategy.

Case in point:

"Well My thinking was that it had to be a pair. No one will shove with AX I don't feel in that spot. Then at best its a coin flip for tourney or dominated by KK or AA."

Note that he's not just working from "instinct" here, he is reasoning about what someone would do in that situation. He also has certain ideas, like notion that he doesn't want a coinflip for his tournament life, which is an assumption worth challenging.

It's also true that intuitions and instincts can be wrong. I am not arguing against using all information available, including hunches and gut feelings, but you must have a base of good reasoning to combine them with.

To the OP -- the problem really is that you are so short stacked that even if this situation is not ideal (although it's not that bad!) you don't have time to wait for a better spot. Even if you double up now your stack is still pretty much in the danger zone. If you wait another round, you will have basically no fold equity (you can't really make anyone fold with your shove) and will most likely be forced to get it in with hand much worse than AK, with at best a small chance to double up to an even shorter stack.

Just gonna quote myself and condense. Survival mode *is* about gut intstinct.. It's an important distinction to realize. He *knows* folding AK there is bad. It doesn't do much for the conversation to just say "shove, you won't get a better hand" because that isn't groundbreaking advice.

Here's what I have a problem with: He probably won't get a better hand. He can get a better situation. And that *is* the distinction. He saw that someone in front of him was willing to put *their* tournament life on the line, and decided not to put all his chips in the middle, too. I'm sure you folks would all line up at 25/50 blinds to tell him to not go broke playing a big pot with AK, and to a man you want to play the biggest pot in your tournament with it. Yeah, it's situational, and we cannot control our cards.... but we certainly can control our situation. Shoving AK > Calling with AK. I don't see how late game changes that dramatically. Yeah, you need to double, but you can always float 87 sooted 2 hands from now and scoop some blinds.

Of course, comfort level isn't a be all end all, if you are in your comfort zone, you aren't playing NL hold 'em correctly. Still, you have to trust your hunches. I'm sure I'll get flamed to high heaven on this, and I really don't care. We all play our cards our own way. If he gets a funny feeling and wants to lay down AK in this spot, I say good for him. He knew it wasn't mathmatically correcy: he posted it here, didn't he?

If he was sitting with a stack of 300 I'd be happy for him to go broke here playing a 'Big Pot' with AK.




This isn't the biggest pot in our tournament or at least it shouldn't be. For him to be sitting with 6xBB's he has had to of played (and lost) a more important pot.




See this is the problem, he can't. He has little to no fold equity at all and is likely to get called by a range of hands especially out of the blinds. All of which he is behind.


I'm by no means a math guy at all. I just can't see how anyone can advocate folding here fullstop. Anyway I guess we will have to agree to disagree here because I can't see myself ever changing my mind as the situation was portrayed. Now if there was a raise, a shove and a call in front of us then the situation obviously changes but to fold in this situation I believe is just wrong.

I Disagree. Survival mode is about making an informed decision about which is the best circumstance to go with in the face of dwindling options.

I'm not convinced he knows that. I refer again to the quote in my previous post where he claims not to want a to race against a pair here. I think he doesn't understand that taking 50/50 with his current stack gives him better equity than taking a 60/40 with a third of his stack a round later.



Ok, at least now we are discussing strategy! So it's not about gut instinct then, you have reasons see?

His M is 2.5. He's going to have a very hard time just picking up the blinds with 87. In a few hands he will have about 1M and will have zero fold equity. It's just too dire a situation to pass up AK even though its a call. That guy could be shoving with any pair, AQ, AJ, even KQ and some other stuff. Are you sure you're not biased by knowing the results here?



Again, his post does not convince me he knew it was incorrect and the reasons why.
I'm not flaming you, but I do strongly disagree.

All right, let's consider another factor then: The push is 5k.. we don't even have nearly that.

We're essentually hitchhiking in a pot, where our "investment" won't even discourage someone else from calling the "actual" shove. Will this alter anyone's perspective? This situation isn't as simple as running your hand against the raiser. And we have 0 chance to increase our stack without a showdown on top of it all. Just some things to consider.

I'm cool with being disagreed with here. I'm not taking the standard line of thinking, I expect it. I'm not saying we fold AK a ton here, but the above paragraph, coupled with the bad feeling, could definitely let me lay it down on occasion. I'd be making the "wrong play", but I'd be okay with it.

This factor is in our favor. We are playing for 1800 of the shover's stack. The other 3200 is insurance AGAINST playing multi-way.

The problem I have with this fold is that there really is no reason to believe we're coin flip at best. Give us some kind of read on villain that suggests this. In my experience, this shove is more likely JJ or something that doesn't really want action than it is a monster pair. If you have history on the villain that suggests otherwise, please share it with us.

"Gut", or "instinct" is our sub-conscious reflecting our experience and knowledge. If our instinct is to be trusted, then we should be able to figure out why we feel a certain way about a situation. If we cant, then it's more likely our "gut" is superstition, and to be ignored.

This is an easy call. Dan Harrington would be rolling in his grave.

Good point.



Harrington isn't dead. OP had a hunch, tossed his hand, and found out it was a nice, lucky fold. He posted it in here because he *knew* (just like the rest of us) that it was totally against math and tournament logic. I've played my share of MTTs, I can recite HOH and SS verbatim. I know the "proper" play here. Sometimes you go against common logic in an effort to survive. That's all I'm saying. Reminding me of the math, M levels, and game theory doesn't change anything. We already know it's not the optimal play.

This is such a horrible fold, it honestly makes me puke.

Why shove? Maybe because you have a VERY strong hand that coujld easil be dominating you're opponent, and your M is less the 4. Dont tell me he cant have Ax, players that shove that much generally aren't very good in general, and could easily be shoving weaker aces, weaker kings(K9s+) just because they dont wanna raise, and have to play a pot with a lot of their chips already in.

This is about the 3rd time Ive said this in the Tourney Strat forum today.....

Instashove, Phil Hellmuth style

Again, this fold is just sickening, its so gross, I dont care if he has AA or KK, and oh, boy you look like a genius. But the other 90%+ part of the time, you look like a ****ing dumb piece of shit because he has a hand you have dominated and you're just trying to fold to the money which is just a shitty thing to do

Maybe we are on the same page, and maybe we're not. If we're not, it lies in here. I don't go against common logic to survive, and I don't knowingly make non-optimal plays. If your point is that it's defensible to do so, then I disagree. OP made a bad play that worked out well in hindsight, but the play was still wrong. If he keeps making hunch plays like this, he will be wrong far more often than right. Don't fall victim to results-based thinking.

We are both on the same page, we both by now wish this thread would just go away.

The most amusing part of this thread is for the people calling for "Hellmuth-style" shoving in of the chips, which could be a strong interpretation of ultimate irony: Hellmuth is exactly the guy who could make this lay down. Hellmuth is exactly the guy who would ponder this, and weigh his edge over the field vs. his edge vs the range vs. those left to act and stack sizes. I'm sure Hellmuth ships it in far more often than not, but he's beating people into the pot with a flopped set on a ragged board, not AIPF for his tournament life with the best drawing hand in poker.

No matter what the outcome of the "conversation", I'm showing my true colours as a mixed-game player. I'm a few years into the "poker boom" and it saddens me to see all this talent on these forums going into the one bastardized form of poker where it's "I like my two cards, here comes my tournament life!" style of play. Makes for great TV, but if your true goal is to exploit small edges at lower limits, everyone is missing the boat in NLHE. You rarely exit a HORSE or a Stud tourney muttering "I was wrong once". You often exit a NLHE affair muttering "I was never wrong and it didn't matter anyways".

Disclaimer: Deeper stacks (esp. live structures) give us forum monkeys more of an edge to work with. But in your standard NLHE donkfest, that guy who put two people down with 47os on the first hand of the tournament now has a couple cracks at waking up with a better hand/sucking out on you for your proper decision. But of course, the instant life/death nature of it does feed the action junkie in all of us rather well, so meh.