OK, $5 buy-in tourney on bet365, 1060 runners, top 100 places paid. Pretty much on the bubble. Blinds 1,250 / 2,500. I have 26K in the small blind, find A-Q o/s and everyone folds to me. Decide not to get cute and raise to 8,000. Am smooth-called.

Flop: A-K-5.

I check. Villain bets 4,800.

What do I do?

Fold, he has A5. Listen to Phil Helmuth.

(seriously, lead and call any raise)

Don't check for a kick-off, you took the lead preflop so why slow down now, especially since you hit?
Only hands you're really worried about are AA,KK,55,AK,A5, with all but two of those holdings he surely would have re-raised, and by checking you don't really find out if he has the others.

His bet size is really weird, 4800 into 16000? Raise that crap up, and judging by stack sizes...

...shove

EDIT: I guess by the thread title you lost this hand, tough titties, I still think pushing is right

raise

I would probably shove preflop. You are pretty much committing yourself with a raise pf.

As played, try to trap him with a minraise, and call his shove.

I like this line in principle, but I think I would want to do it with a stronger hand. I mean, a min-raise gives him odds to take a card off with K9. If I checked the flop, it would be with the intention of check-raise pushing. Anyway, folding is never an option here. If you choose not to just push preflop, you certainly aren't getting away from the hand when you flop top pair.

Why do you check? Push Push Push!

Come on man you should at the very least do a feeler bet here after you hit the ace. You lost this hand right? What was he holding A/K?

In any case I think you should bet here.

Youre pretty much on the bubble, you put in a raise to 30% of the effective stacks (I assume you were covered) and get called. Youre in deep trouble! His range is extremely narrow hereunless hes a total donk or youve been playing like a maniac. He should have QQ+, AK and youre crushed by most of them. I insta-fold to his bet, but the problems started pre-flop.

There is no point to an 8k raise preflop with these stacks. If he's folding, he's almost certainly folding to a min-raise too. With 16k in the pot and 18k behind there is no reasonable post flop play other than fold or find a way to get all the money in. You dont want to commit that much of your stack to a 30% situation, OOP.

20k in the pot, after calling you have 13k-ish remaining



insta-shovel

For the record, I hate all minraisers. They are not inconspicuous.

"Youre pretty much on the bubble, you put in a raise to 30% of the effective stacks (I assume you were covered) and get called. Youre in deep trouble! His range is extremely narrow hereunless hes a total donk or youve been playing like a maniac. "

Knowing they bought in for $5 each, I'm assuming its the prior.

shove every time unless you have a great read on your opponent to think that you're beat. Next time raise less with AQ if you don't want to play your hand all the way. When you raise 1/3 of your stack PF, you should think about playing this all the way. You only have about 10BB left bro.

Shove. Hand ranges in the blinds are and should be much wider. I don't understand why you checked the flop.

If you were looking to get villain to bet, then you got your wish, now c.r.a.i.

If you were looking to check/fold w/ TPTK after raising preflop... quit poker.


And no offense cop... but why in god's name would we ever fold here? We've invested almost a third of our stack, and we have TPTK. I think this is a relatively standard push. We get called by Ax a lot that we beat, and if he happens to have A5, we have 6 outs to catch up. We really can't afford to play scared here w/ all the money invested. Plus, it's a $5 buy-in. You won't make much money at these levels folding TPTK in a blinds battle.