Folding AA preflop!

Mr. Flibble

Ok, hear me out here, it may seem a little crazy at first but maybe it isn't always black and white. I can imagine tv comentators chastising a player for doing it but perhaps it would be the best move ever.

Would you (or have you) ever fold AA preflop. Or ever heard of it happening?

Say for instance you are in a big tourny with the following payout
1st: 100 000
2nd: 85 000
3rd: 75 000
4th: 60 000
5th: 50 000
6th: 40 000

and there are 7 of you at the final table. You are the shortstack in the BB. UTG, the chip leader goes all in and gets 3 callers.

Would it not be most sensible to fold. What if there were 4 or 5 or 6 callers (hyperthetically speaking !

DeVore

If you do a search for this you'll find we've talked this one to death. I think the answer was basically "any more then twop people already all in and I'd drop aces". At least, thats my answer and I think it was the general consensus too.

DeV.

mewso

Yes it's been discussed here before. This is one of the few circumstances where it is correct to fold AA imo.

mewso

Hey found the old discussion. This thread may also have been the first time the idea of suited aces came into peoples heads i.e. Pudding recalling that my question was to do with, I quote, "KK (off suit I think)".

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=147465

Mr. Flibble

Ah, cheers. To death ain't wrong!

karlh

and there was an article knocking around where a guy chronicled his quest to fold AA preflop just to see how it felt.

every time he saw them, he'd get carried away, forget his mission and raised.

it made me feel like a poker perv even reading it but twas funny!

Imposter

It's on pokerpages.com
Can't look at it now cause work have deemed it unsuitable (the cheek)!
It's the first guy that writes the articles. The article is called something like "the worst mistake in poker" or something.

Hectorjelly

Id love to hear from people as to why they would fold AA here. Numbers please!

Hectorjelly

DeVore wrote:

If you do a search for this you'll find we've talked this one to death. I think the answer was basically "any more then twop people already all in and I'd drop aces". At least, thats my answer and I think it was the general consensus too.

DeV.

Have you ever folded AA preflop? Would you really fold AA if two people went all in before you? You know your probably a 70% favourite to treble up?

karlh

well you can go up against 4 people and hope your aces hold up and make you chip leader (which they probably wont....considering the hands people will be calling with)....against sitting the hand out and potentially having 3 people knocked out, bumping you up 3 spots in the prize pool, giving you another shot at doubling through afterwards.

With 4 players and you, you can safely presume your hand is not going too improve to much.

Even if you are told preflop that it will take you even 2 place further in the money they would be worth tossing IMO.....actually managing to do it in a real game situation is another matter

DeVore

Unless those 4 hands come down AK, AQ, KQ, KQ (which I doubt they will!),
My AA is more likely to lose then win. I dont care that I'm ahead of any one hand, I care that I win and continue on in the tournie.
Find me 4 hands they could reasonably have that still leave me favoured to win the hand and I'll call. I'll take even a 40% chance of winning.

Kiss the cards and wave bye bye to them, this is one situation when you should put them away imho.

DeV.

bohsman

Again as HJ asked Tom, Have you ever? I only would in the traditional last three of the tourny where youve one chip left and the 2 chip leaders go in against each other

DeVore

Hectorjelly wrote:

Have you ever folded AA preflop? Would you really fold AA if two people went all in before you? You know your probably a 70% favourite to treble up?

I said "more then 2 people".

DeV.

DeVore

I've folded Kings once, I've never been in the situation where I would fold aces but to be honest, yeah I would. Its just another hand in the end of the day and with that much action preflop (ie: 3 or more people all in) its not that great. No preflop hand is!

DeV.

DeVore

Read the question again guys. There are 4, count them 4 people all in before you. You will make it 5. I dont have a multi-way odds calculator but I know that AA sinks to near or below 50/50 when its facing 3 opponents. Against 4 its under water for sure. Given that you will benefit FOR CERTAIN when this hand is over, probably going up a notch or two with at least one player crippled... I'd take that as a good result for AA and toss them.

DeV.

Hectorjelly

DeVore wrote:

Read the question again guys. There are 4, count them 4 people all in before you. You will make it 5. I dont have a multi-way odds calculator but I know that AA sinks to near or below 50/50 when its facing 3 opponents. Against 4 its under water for sure. Given that you will benefit FOR CERTAIN when this hand is over, probably going up a notch or two with at least one player crippled... I'd take that as a good result for AA and toss them.

DeV.

A 50 50 when you get to quadruple your chips is usually a good bet. Now in this paticular instance folding might be right because of the unusual payout structure, but nobody has mentioned that. This is a maths question, pure and simple.

Hyzepher

tbh - this is a unrealistic situation. In most cases the 3rd & 4th caller would have folded regardless for the same reasons most of you guys are advocating folding AA.

In the cold light of day you should fold in this situation. In reality I would call - in fact I would have them in so fast the chips would be glowing. Dev talks about the Evil Hand and I think most people would have a serious problem folding AA even if they knew it was the right thing to do.

Hyzepher

Hectorjelly

DeVore wrote:

I said "more then 2 people".

DeV.

Apologies, have you ever folded it to more than two all ins then? Ive been in that situation a few times.

Hectorjelly

DeVore wrote:

Unless those 4 hands come down AK, AQ, KQ, KQ (which I doubt they will!),
My AA is more likely to lose then win. I dont care that I'm ahead of any one hand, I care that I win and continue on in the tournie.
Find me 4 hands they could reasonably have that still leave me favoured to win the hand and I'll call. I'll take even a 40% chance of winning.

Kiss the cards and wave bye bye to them, this is one situation when you should put them away imho.

DeV.

The only hands that are Really Really great preflop are pairs. They kick ass! Now if we agree on a few things we can see how great pairs are.

Player 1 is moving in on any broadway cards, or any Pair
Player 2 realises this and is moving in on any pair 88 or higher, AK or AQ
Player 3 Moves in on AA - TT, or AK
Player 4 Moves in on AA - QQ, or AK
Player 5 (us) has AA

Using poker stove which will calculate the equity of ranges of hands, i get these results:

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

53,377,715,663 games 256.453 secs 208,138,394 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity (%) win (%) / tie (%)

Hand 1: 13.8942 % [ 00.14 00.00 ] { AA-22, AKs-ATs, KQs-KTs, QJs-QTs, JTs, AKo-ATo, KQo-KTo, QJo-QTo, JTo }
Hand 2: 11.8489 % [ 00.11 00.00 ] { AA-88, AKs-AQs, AKo-AQo }
Hand 3: 10.0589 % [ 00.09 00.01 ] { AA-TT, AKs, AKo }
Hand 4: 11.3473 % [ 00.10 00.01 ] { AA-QQ, AKs, AKo }
Hand 5: 52.8507 % [ 00.51 00.02 ] { AA }


---


so against this range of hands you will win 1/2 of the time. And when you do win you will end up with 5 times more chips than when you started! This is a much greater + EV situation than just calling all in with AA vs KK

Say you have 1,000 chips. Would you prefer a

80% chance of doubling up
50% chance of 5 timing up

The actual ev of each is

80% of 2000: 1600
50% of 5000: 2500

So folding here would normally be a worse move than folding AA to a single all in, so normally folding AA to multiple all ins (from memory I think the EV peaks around 8 players) is a VERY big mistake. Now, in the situation described a its not so clear cut. Because depending on stack sizes (which werent given) we are sure to move up a certain amount of places anyway, we would have to work out what the $EV is as opposed to the CEV.

So to sum up, its a maths question; and we dont have all the inflo neccesssary. But folding AA to multiple all ins is usually a mistake.

Mr. Flibble

HJ, you are the shortstack in this sceanrio. So if anyone beats you you are out with no cash...

Iago

Can't fold AA..the question is do you want to win the tournament and take the hefty first prize or limp in to finish amongst the also rans??

If you have any intention of winning the tournament you have to call this hand, if you win you're in an excellent position, if you lose you get a reasonable placing and a good bad beat story to tell

If you don't call then you're realistically not going to finish first and if the big stack doesn't win then you could still go out only one place better off...

also need to establish how much more it is to you after your BB, and allowing for the fact that you'll be SB next hand either way..

All-In

mewso

If you wish to make it a purely maths question then you must take the prize money for each placing into account.

1. If you fold and the big stack knocks out the other 3 you go up 3 places, guaranteed 4th place.
2. If you fold and say 2 players are eliminated then you go up 2 places, guaranted 5th place.
3. If you call and lose you go out in 7th place.
4. If you win the hand you will not knock out any of the other players so you get more variables:-
a. the big stack takes out the other 3 so are now guaranteed 4th place and your stack is bigger.
b. 2 get knocked out and you are now guaranteed 5th place.
yada yada.

1. - 100% chance at getting a larger cash prize.
2. - 100% chance at getting a larger cash prize
3. - 100% chance of finishing 7th (no change)
4. - 50% chance of having a bigger stack but no certainty of guaranteed placing..............

O.k. now I've given up on the maths after about line2 or 3. I think a fold is a valid action. We keep coming back to this time and time again. Maths is the definitive answer if we have 7 robots with the same stack size, the same skill and the same etc. Take the cash into consideration I say. If you want the bracelet then call maths or no maths.

DeVore

Iago wrote:

Can't fold AA..the question is do you want to win the tournament and take the hefty first prize or limp in to finish amongst the also rans??

If you have any intention of winning the tournament you have to call this hand, if you win you're in an excellent position, if you lose you get a reasonable placing and a good bad beat story to tell

If you don't call then you're realistically not going to finish first and if the big stack doesn't win then you could still go out only one place better off...

also need to establish how much more it is to you after your BB, and allowing for the fact that you'll be SB next hand either way..

All-In

Iago, would you call if there were 7 callers/Alin's before you?

DeV.

mewso

Iago wrote:

If you have any intention of winning the tournament you have to call this hand, if you win you're in an excellent position, if you lose you get a reasonable placing and a good bad beat story to tell

Can't wait to tell that bad beat. "I called with pocket As after 4 players had gone all-in and you'll never believe it...", "I'm gonna stop you there mate I can guess the rest. I've heard better bad beat stories from Dev ffs!"

Iago

musician wrote:

Can't wait to tell that bad beat. "I called with pocket As after 4 players had gone all-in and you'll never believe it...", "I'm gonna stop you there mate I can guess the rest. I've heard better bad beat stories from Dev ffs!"

Ok so maybe Bad Beat was a little optimistic, but seriously though you have to be thinking about calling here if you want to win.

If you just want to finish in the money and are happy to settle for 4th or 5th then fair enough.

DeV, if everyone called (which is a little unlikely to say the least) then I don't know. What could they have, at most there's 2 others holding Ax, that leaves 5 players take KK and QQ out of the equation and you still have 1..

would a player on a final table call these all-ins with JJ or worse? Would anyone call these all-ins with QQ or even KK if they were 3rd or 4th to act?

Potentially you're looking at 2nd place here, but would the big stack win? UTG all-in on the final table, I'm betting he's got a mid PP or something similar and wants 1 caller at the most. I don't think he's winning this hand whether I call or not...

DeVore

My point is that there is a number of players (clearly more then 4) after which you would consider putting down aces because of the low chance they have to winning and you continuing on in the tournie. So the difference between you and I is just a matter of degrees rather then a difference of kind. We both agree that you should consider folding AA preflop we just differ on how many callers there would have to be ahead of us... or are you saying regardless of what they have, you'd call All In in the big blind if every player at the table went all In ahead of you?

DeV.

Hectorjelly

Mr. Flibble wrote:

HJ, you are the shortstack in this sceanrio. So if anyone beats you you are out with no cash...

What are the stack sizes of the others? How short a stack you are matters a lot.

Hectorjelly

DeVore wrote:

My point is that there is a number of players (clearly more then 4) after which you would consider putting down aces because of the low chance they have to winning and you continuing on in the tournie. So the difference between you and I is just a matter of degrees rather then a difference of kind. We both agree that you should consider folding AA preflop we just differ on how many callers there would have to be ahead of us... or are you saying regardless of what they have, you'd call All In in the big blind if every player at the table went all In ahead of you?

DeV.

1st hand of the WSOP, everyone at the table goes all in. Id still call. Now if I could pick, I would just have 8 of them go in; because the EV is slightly better, but a fold is still a 100% hot diggigidy dog joe montana royal banana split mistake. The only reason to fold is if you are in (or close to) the money and then $EV considerations have to be taken into account (you should usually still call).

The reason you call is thus: Even the best player in the world is less likely to get to 9 times his starting chips by normal play than anyone is by making this call. This isnt like passing a 60/40 edge where the answers close, this isnt close. Call.

Hectorjelly

musician wrote:

O.k. now I've given up on the maths after about line2 or 3. I think a fold is a valid action. We keep coming back to this time and time again. Maths is the definitive answer if we have 7 robots with the same stack size, the same skill and the same etc. Take the cash into consideration I say. If you want the bracelet then call maths or no maths.

I dont want to make this a maths problem, it is a maths problem. You can include in your calculation whatever edge you might feel you have over the other players, there are ways to do that using maths. The point is that the equity you give up by folding a such a heavy favourite is more than the edge a good player has over a bad player, especially at this stage of a tournament where the blinds tend to be big and most action is either fold or all in.

Also most people tend to greatly overestimate how good they are, so perhaps leaving it out of calculations isnt such a bad thing.

Hectorjelly

Hectorjelly wrote:

The actual ev of each is

80% of 2000: 1600
50% of 5000: 2500

The actual ev is the result - the orginal stack, so 600 and 1500 respectivelty.

Iago

DeVore wrote:

My point is that there is a number of players (clearly more then 4) after which you would consider putting down aces because of the low chance they have to winning and you continuing on in the tournie. So the difference between you and I is just a matter of degrees rather then a difference of kind. We both agree that you should consider folding AA preflop we just differ on how many callers there would have to be ahead of us... or are you saying regardless of what they have, you'd call All In in the big blind if every player at the table went all In ahead of you?

DeV.

Would I consider folding in this situation, yes I would consider it. Would I call or fold if everybody on the table in front of me was all-in, I was the short stack and one of us wasn't getting paid, that would depend on a number of factors..

1. How small is my stack, individually and measured against the rest?
2. What % of my stack just went on the BB and what % will be going on the SB next hand?
3. Based on my knowledges of the players at the table what are the two biggest stacks holding? (Again this comes back to the fact that I don't think the UTG Big Stack has a great hand)


With everyone all-in before me I think I would fold in this situation, it's too good an opportunity to make the money to throw away because AA looks pretty. This might also be true if only 4-5 players have gone all-in before me, although I'm more likely to call then. Again you have to ask yourself, am I hanging in here for the places or do I want to win this tournament.

With everyone all-in before you, you're unlikely to improve your hand (both A's are probably out already) but then you don't need to improve, the rest do.

As Hector said though, first hand in a tournament I'm calling every time