Tournament Life...?

[tonyj444]

Right, this is a spot that came up early in the recent APAT at Bolton (which was a thoroughly good day as ever).  Blinds are 150/300 (level 5 I think) and I have a stack of 11500.  Image should be pretty solid although have started to open up a little from late position, taking down a few pots pre.  Certainly nothing too out of line.

UTG limps - he has limp folded several times from EP. Not yet seen him limp/raise - stack of about 10k
UTG + 2 limps - newcomer to the table (about 6 hands in), limp-called the button about 4 hands earlier only for the dealer to muck his cards.  He was understandably annoyed but also seemed convinced that the TD"s decision of his hand was dead (which I believe is correct) was wrong.  Possibly still steaming about this. - stack of about 20k
SB (Me) AKo - I make it 1450 total (1150 more), past experience says that this is enough to take UTG off his hand and I have no info on UTG + 2.  I could make it more but don"t like the fact that I"m OOP and think it"s unlikely he is folding to 1800 if he will call 1450.  Also I want to be sure I have 2 full barrels should I need them.

UTG Folds
UTG + 2 thinks for less than 10 seconds before announcing he is all in.
SB (Me) starts to cry

So to summarise, pot is 13600 and it"s 10500 for me to call (my stack).  I"m looking for comments on -
My line up to this point
Your assessment of villains range
Call or fold and how (if it is) it is affected by the stage we are at in the tournament and the fact that torunament life is at stake.

I will post my own thoughts at the time and the decision I reached later.

Thanks,
Tony

[cincicrappykid]

 if he has seen a lot of  raising when lots of limpers in pot and knows you are just punishing the limpers his  range could be quite wide kq suited etc planning to this or trapping with big hand also knowing you will re raise.....   apat has some players who are likely to shove top pair on flop and think they are good  or hands like 10 10 and think they are ahead sooo  beware the lunatic prob had jacks i think ....easy fold  

[deanp27]

call and go to the races - you have an ace and a king

is he really limping AA/KK behind a limper than overjamming?

[Marty719]

Meh - depends on ur table I think - if you think u can outplay the majority of the table and keep picking up small pots then you can fold, but if its a tough table, Im just gng to get it in here.  I dnt think any of his range in this spot really has u crushed wen he limp/3-bet shoves.  I think its likely 77-JJ, AQ+ for the most part.  Cnt see him (as he has zero info on how the table is playing) limping behind an utg-limp with a truly premium hand.  Think he mite show up w/ AK/AQ a good % of the time here as well, as people just dnt like to take flops w/ these hands, so just mass over-bet pre to try and pick it up.

[AMRN]

He rarely has AA/KK here, meaning you are 50/50 at worst, and possibly as good as 80/20.

You have 30 BBs - win this and you are in good shape to make a run at going deep. Fold, and you still have playable stack, but are likely to need to get your chips in at some point, probably in a worse spot than this one.

snap-call

[cincicrappykid]

He rarely has AA/KK here, meaning you are 50/50 at worst, and possibly as good as 80/20.

You have 30 BBs - win this and you are in good shape to make a run at going deep. Fold, and you still have playable stack, but are likely to need to get your chips in at some point, probably in a worse spot than this one.

snap-call

llllllooolllllllllll take the race if ya cant play poker hahahahaahahah

[AMRN]

He rarely has AA/KK here, meaning you are 50/50 at worst, and possibly as good as 80/20.

You have 30 BBs - win this and you are in good shape to make a run at going deep. Fold, and you still have playable stack, but are likely to need to get your chips in at some point, probably in a worse spot than this one.

snap-call

llllllooolllllllllll take the race if ya cant play poker hahahahaahahah

Kinda hoping not to be racing here - a lot of the time, in his tilty state, he is gonna shove with hands ike AQ/AJ/AT... but yes, if it proves not to be ahead, happy to take the race in this spot with AK

[bigredders]

i see these situations all the time at lower to mid stakes mtt"s... 90% of the time its a low-mid pair. I think the aim is that they limp to set mine, then when someone raises they shove over the top because they know they are in a race situation against aq/ak etc.

cant stand the play personally as your completely guessing what the raiser has and just hoping that the raiser has no overpair.

im never one to advocate racing but in this situation you have to snap it off, there is probably a 1% chance you are dominated in this postion

[WYoung83]

hey Tony...Bet you wish you took the race with 77 ?? you know what i talking about. If you had won the flip, you would of had a better chance to win.

Anyway, for this problem. No brainer call. Only a donky limps behind another limper in a tourney with AA/KK. And beign as you have one of each, you are unlucky if he has it.

[cincicrappykid]

lol still not sure.... he had been quite lucky and i had won quite a few flips so descretion was the better part of valor i thought who knows arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh   shuda called aaarrrrraafagsygysdhddjdjkidfjfkfkifkfkmfj poo

[Jon MW]

So everyone is ruling out the possibility that he might be limping behind with AA/KK to induce a squeeze?

[Marty719]

So everyone is ruling out the possibility that he might be limping behind with AA/KK to induce a squeeze?

so u fold bcos he has tht hand 0.005% of the time ?  Card removal + steamed up image ftw!

[deanp27]

So everyone is ruling out the possibility that he might be limping behind with AA/KK to induce a squeeze?

not ruling it out but it becomes more unlikely. If it was initial limper i would be more worried.

also once you make a raise would aces then decide to insta-jam all in?

[tonyj444]

Thanks for the reposnses everyone!  Sorry for the delay - here is what happened:

To start with, I agree with the statement from the majority of people here, that this is practically never AA or KK.  The limp with a limper in front of him added to the speed with which he shoved says it is much more likely to be a mid-small pair.  My initial thoughts were that his range is probably 55-JJ and not a lot else, and against this range I didn"t really want to call as it seemed a tad early for a race and I felt confident about my table.  However, after some more contemplation I started to factor in his possible tilty state and the speed with which he"d shoved.  After much umming and arring I decided his range was actually quite a bit wider than this, so made the call and he shows me AQ - happy days.

I was just curious to see how many people would make a lay-down in this spot, and if we take away the tilt-factor - should we still come to the same conclusion.  As I say my first thoughts were that I couldn"t possibly call for my life in this spot, simply because I don"t want to knowingly (i.e. with no FE) enter into a 50-50 situation for my life at this stage.  If he hadn"t had the issue with his hand being mucked earlier, I think I probably pass in this spot.  But I"m not sure.

[WYoung83]

 Good, but standard call. I hate taking flips early on. But the Apat tourneys get pretty fast around level 6-7. And at this time you were not competetivly deep stacked at all, despite what other people may think.

If he did happen to have a middle pair,  then so be it. It gets to the coin flip time for most people unfortunatly, and i belive the antes had already kicked in also. So when it comes to flips....................Your dammed if you do, and dammed if you dont.

Interestingly enough, i belive if you had AQ or AJ then you should fold, he may actually have AK, and if you are the guy with the middle pair, then also fold because he could also have a higher pair (although thes situations are very unlikly given the line he has taken). But other things come into it, like Price beign laid etc, and your ability to grind away and steal blinds from any tight blind defenders.