Live tourney NL Holdem. Blinds 700/1500

chipstack: around 12000

TJd on the button, folded around to me, limped in, sb limps, bb checks quickly.
Flop comes AAT rainbow. sb checks, bb, who is chip leader with about 45000, bets minimum 1500.


would you fold here? flat call? minimum raise? all in?

First off, raise that biyatch from the button preflop if folded to you. I never limp from the button as a rule if I have a playable hand and its folded to me....

Three reasons:

A) You can pick it up right there sometimes
If the blinds do call they will often times check to you post flop
C) If the blinds reraise, you know they probably got somethin good and can play accordingly.

See... by preflop limping now you A) have the blind betting into you and have the small blind in between.

But... considering the circumstances, I'd go all-in here. Seems like the BB is betting for info here maybe, and you'll probably pick up the pot with the big raise. If you made any reasonable bet, you'd be leaving yourself severely short stacked, so the all-in bet seems the most reasonable.

If the SB has the Ace, you'll need some definite help here, but otherwise I think you are ahead most of the time here. I would never play that way against UTG limpers, but against the blinds I think you're in very good shape.

Again, I think your big problem was not raising preflop.

have have have to raise the button

Agreed, you have to raise preflop especially with TJs. You will often have a playable hand even if you get callers. If one of the aces is a diamond it would seal the deal for me as far as pushing, even though your probably commited to it at this point anyway.

yes I suppose I should have raised preflop, I guess I was a bit too tentative, as even a minimum raise was about 25% of my stack.


Anyway, this was a couple days ago and I ended up going all in, and the bb had an ace. I've kind of been beating myself up about it for the last couple days, but at the time, I was 95% certain he didn't have an Ace, obviously I was wrong, but it was fairly difficult to put him on an Ace, especially considering he was chip leader and he checked the big blind after me and the sb both limped.