Since I play multitable tournaments almost every day, I thought it'd be fun to post a series of important decisions from real life hands, for general review. This is the first, and fairly easy.

225 entrants in a MTT; about an hour in, blinds are 100/200, you are sitting comfortably at 8000 chips. You are dealt A Q on the button; the player on your right side limps, holding about 6000 chips. You've seen him play tightly all along, raising the few hands he plays preflop with high pairs and AK. You raise to 700; SB and BB folds, and the limper reraises to 1400. You call.

Flop comes A A J . Opponent checks; you bet 1200 chips, he calls. Turn is 5 . Opponent goes all in. What do you do?

The limp-re-raise is one of the sexier moves in poker preflop. To me, the most likely hand he can hold here is KK. I put him on red kings here, and I call pretty quickly. And, if he doesn't have the Kh, you've got the flush redraw. I think AK is unlikely because of how many aces are out, and I don't see a limp-re-raise with AKo from a pretty tight player. Furthermore, JJ is too weak for a limp-reraise that doesn't push. The smallish re-raise (as opposed to a push or a committing re-raise) tells me he's just adding value to the pot, not trying to isolate out overcards. Plus, AQ is a KK magnet. Happens all the time... and part of the reason I advocate limping AQ in the middle stages of a tournament from early position.

The way I see it, he's most likely behind. If he isn't behind, then he's a collosal moron for limp-re-raising whatever it is that he had that's ahead of you right now. I'm sticking to red kings.

Would someone do that with JJ though. I know most people wouldn't... but some people really like to see a big pair and try and get funny with it. I'd say JJ is more likely than KK. But either one is possible. I agree it isn't really an AK or AJ move preflop. I also can't see a made flush.

I think I have to call though with the 3 Aces either way. If he has JJ maybe you can catch a Q or 5 on the river.

Hmm... Thinking further though...

KK might be right. The turn was a scare card, and coming out with the big all-in is a pretty common bluff move on a scare card where he probably put you on the Ace. I'd say it's very possibly the KK.. Because the JJ might have tried to C/R this turn.

a tight player with KK wouldn't call a flop bet with AA showing, no matter what kind of pot odds he has. especially since if he had 6000 to start the hand, a call here is basically the difference between 4000 and 2000. i'd put him on JJ, which means you are behind. though JJ reraise is weak, he may be playing his table image.

JMHO

Meh.

You're almost price in to call even if you knoew he has the flush or JJ.

are you going to post the result or what you actually did?

i call... wrong or not.. i call it every time, usually

Thanks for the responses. I called - there is almost no choice here but to call in my situation. I doubted he had a made flush, because that would require some junk hand like K 10 . I think he would've pushed all in on the flop if he had A K, since my bet was a third of his remaining chips. I was almost certain he has AJ or JJ, JJ being more likely.

But, he turns over Q Q ! I guess he felt that I couldn't have an ace because of my 1/2 pot sized bet on the flop, and instead had a lower pocket pair or a flush draw. He is drawing completely dead to my A Q ; a strange play for an usually tight player, but I was on the lucky end of it.

"Meh." KK, QQ, I wasn't far off. The point was I couldn't see him doing that with a hand that had you beat on the turn. The key to the hand was the limp-reraise. For almost any normal tight-aggressive player, that INSTANTLY narrows down the choices of hands he could have... especially when you flopped trip aces. A matter of deductive logic. Elementary.

Ahh, nice to see we were close. Well, I was off at first, but I did figure it out after thinking about the play on the turn That's nice.

With my read on this player as tight aggro, I would probably fold this hand preflop to the reraise. You won the pot but imo you made a mistake preflop.