Sorry Grant, but I hate the way you played the first hand. We have an opponent who will definitely double us up when we are really strong and we want to put everything on a gamble against him? AQ is not a huge favourite preflop against ATC.
you are a 62/38 favourite if he calls and gets to showdown. I would never pass up this edge in this spot.
Never? I would, if I was pretty certain that he will get it in when I am 90%+ fav.
As played, yeah go ahead now that we are here but we shouldn"t have got into this situation.
Against this player, who raises or reraises every hand preflop and is happy to get all-in with ATC, I am raising virtually no hand, certainly not AQ, as his reraise will mean we are playing for my stack. If we limp pre and call his raise, we will get to the flop for 250/300 and can then decide how to proceed. Obviously we can"t fold on the flop repeatedly with these stack sizes, but we can this time if the flop stinks.
raise/folding from a stack of 20x is usually pretty poor.... against a maniac who"s range is ATC, is way too weak and spewy.
Agreed, so don"t raise.
In summary, against this player, I think we should get to the flop as cheaply as we can unless we have a genuine monster. If we hit the flop, accept the all-in as we are prob a huge favourite. We should be taking advantage of these players, not playing into their hands by giving away our edge and gambling with a hand that is slightly ahead. If we hit one of our high cards and he misses, if he then goes all-in we are a 95% favourite. As he is going to get it in irrespective, I would prefer to do it when I am going to lose 1 time out of 20, rather than 3/4 times out of 10. This is a tournament, not cash, albeit shallow-stacked. If you are happy to lose your stack 3/4 times out of 10 to a player you should be thrashing, I"m not.
The only justification for raising would be to isolate, cos you don"t really want others coming along. There is no mention in the OP of table positions, or whether any other players are still live at any stage, both of which are critical to how you should play this hand.
PS, separate to the situation with this player, I don"t like the raise size to 2.8 BB out of a stack of 20 BB.
