Folding AA preflop!

Rodge

If you were to try and analyse each action before it got to you?

You are the first to act after reraise. What hand would you consider to be worth an all in raise? AA KK QQ, JJ? How many players would risk it with AKs or someother Ax?

Anyway second to call, it has been raised and reraised all in before it gets to you. What would you call all in with? AA KK QQ? It would have to be a monster or you would just leave the other two at it. But you call anyway.

Third to call, now by this stage there has been raise, reraise all in, call. If I was in this position in the WSOP I would only consider a call with AA, but you call anyway.

If this scenario did arrive, you would have to think that the last caller before you has the real monster hand, 1st all in could be anything from AKs to 99. 2nd probably a pp, JJ or higher.

I would put the first all in on AKs, 2nd on QQ, 3rd on KK and me on AA. I'd put the house on a flop of 367 or some similar rags.

ALL IN has to be the only option.

mewso

Hectorjelly wrote:

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.

Hmmm. At no point did I suggest .. oh look scrub that just point me to my post where it says you should fold because you are a better player. Also point me to where I said it wasn't a maths problem. What I was saying was that if you are analysing the maths it's a more complcated maths problem if you are willing to include the prize money in the equation. I need to be clearer in my own mind before I type anything I suppose.

Hectorjelly

musician wrote:

Hmmm. At no point did I suggest .. oh look scrub that just point me to my post where it says you should fold because you are a better player. Also point me to where I said it wasn't a maths problem. What I was saying was that if you are analysing the maths it's a more complcated maths problem if you are willing to include the prize money in the equation. I need to be clearer in my own mind before I type anything I suppose.

Yeah, you have to include the prize money.

Samba

Just can't do it.....physically. It's risky in that situation but Hector is right for the pot you are going to take down if they hold, well worth the call.

krattapopov

in the situation presented i'd fold no shadow of a doubt, get up into those money poitions then play like and agressive fcuk for the rest of the game

Lafortezza

To me what it really depends on is how much of a shortstack you are.

If you are 15+ times the BB then I might dump it.
Say 3 players all-in ahead of you, P1 has J10s, P2 has AKs, P3 is gambling on QQ.
3 pretty good hands to beat you, their collective outs probably make you a dog but I'm not mathematically inclined when it comes to poker so I'll let someone else figure it out.

What I think alot of people might be missing is that if you still have a reasonable stack (even though you're small stack at the table), if you fold AA in this situation it doesn't mean you've given up hope of finishing further up the prize money. depending on relative stack sizes and the blind structure there still may be plenty of play left to win. Especially if you think you're a better player.

dirkey_wynne

musician wrote:

I've heard better bad beat stories from Dev ffs!"

Now muso, there's no need to exaggerate.

DeVore

dirkey_wynne wrote:

Now muso, there's no need to exaggerate.

Dirkey. Two words. Ace, Queen.

DeV.

BigDragon

DeVore wrote:

Dirkey. Two words. Ace, Queen.

DeV.

Witness for the defence. I have seen dirkey fold AQ. Honestly I have.

BigDragon

On the matter of the maths...from someone still trying to get to grips with basic stuff I'm gonna play the people in this situation and I think most people will.

Live - (depending on people acting before me) ..........All-In
Online - Probably Fold

Now ask me this question again in 6/12 months and I'm pretty sure I'll give a different answer.

DeVore

[url]http://twodimes.net/h/?z=673879[/url]
pokenum  -h as ac  - 9d td  - ah kh  - 4s 4c 
Holdem Hi: 1086008 enumerated boards
cards     win   %win    lose  %lose   tie  %tie     EV
As Ac  529345  48.74  548216  50.48  8447  0.78  0.491
Td 9d  248706  22.90  835483  76.93  1819  0.17  0.229
Ah Kh  125876  11.59  951685  87.63  8447  0.78  0.119
4s 4c  173634  15.99  910555  83.84  1819  0.17  0.160

Ok, here are just 3 opponents to AA and you are less then favourite to win the hand, admittedly its going to triple you through if you do win but its certainly no better then a coin flip. This is why at 3 or more opponents I start to consider folding as I said at the start.

http://twodimes.net/h/?z=673885
pokenum  -h as ac  - 9d td  - ah kh  - 4s 4c  - ad qd  - 7s 8s 
Holdem Hi: 658008 enumerated boards
cards     win   %win    lose  %lose   tie  %tie     EV
As Ac  199344  30.30  453942  68.99  4722  0.72  0.305
Td 9d   81817  12.43  575945  87.53   246  0.04  0.124
Ah Kh   89505  13.60  563781  85.68  4722  0.72  0.138
4s 4c  108396  16.47  549366  83.49   246  0.04  0.165
Ad Qd   61685   9.37  591601  89.91  4722  0.72  0.096
8s 7s  112539  17.10  545223  82.86   246  0.04  0.171

At 5 opponents you will win 30% of the time. Ok, I selected these opponents specifically to perform well against AA but in the interest of fairness I ran it again with all the top pairs and an AK, chosing suits that suited the AA. Its still only 38%

http://twodimes.net/h/?z=673902
pokenum  -h as ac  - kc kh  - qc qh  - ad kd  - js jh  - tc td 
Holdem Hi: 658008 enumerated boards
cards     win   %win    lose  %lose   tie  %tie     EV
As Ac  252511  38.38  396634  60.28  8863  1.35  0.389
Kc Kh   69588  10.58  585311  88.95  3109  0.47  0.107
Qc Qh  106705  16.22  548434  83.35  2869  0.44  0.163
Ad Kd   44245   6.72  604660  91.89  9103  1.38  0.073
Js Jh   92363  14.04  562776  85.53  2869  0.44  0.141
Tc Td   83493  12.69  571646  86.88  2869  0.44  0.128

Interestingly if you replace just one pair with suited connectors the % chance of the Aces holding up plummets again.

Now, its not like I go around folding aces every time I get them but I can certainly conceive of a situation where I would.

DeV.

dirkey_wynne

BigDragon wrote:

Witness for the defence. I have seen dirkey fold AQ. Honestly I have.

Thanks BigD. I'd give you points for that one but they don't seem to be available anymore!

Waylander

I agree with Iago, if you are init to win the tournie, then I think you have to call. If you are looking for a high finish as opposed to a win then a fold might be the better option. Bear in mind that one player is going to have a monster stack after this hand and it is unlikely he will be hauled back in, and it is possible only one, or worst case scenario the next shortest stack could win, which leaves you further adrift, with no players out. I think I would have to call.

DeVore

I really seriously disagree. You can find better odds or better places to push then this. For a start there is no folding equity here at all.
I think you will profit more from the free places and still be able to play aggresively. Use the opportunity to advertise and wait to double through on a lucky hand or two. I mean, if we're allowing ourselves the luck to win this hand, shouldnt those who say "dont play" be allowed to factor in some luck further down the road

DeV.

Hectorjelly

DeVore wrote:

I really seriously disagree. You can find better odds or better places to push then this. For a start there is no folding equity here at all.
I think you will profit more from the free places and still be able to play aggresively. Use the opportunity to advertise and wait to double through on a lucky hand or two. I mean, if we're allowing ourselves the luck to win this hand, shouldnt those who say "dont play" be allowed to factor in some luck further down the road


DeV.

No, seriously this is a great situation to be in, theres a few misconceptions:

1) Allthough each extra player increases your chances of losing the hand, your EV (how much you win on average) increases with each player that calls. You want more callers, not less, there is no better place to call regarding odds. You cant find better odds because they dont exist, unless you forsee a time when you go all in with AA and are called by two of the same pair (QQ and QQ).

2) You have picked hands that you dont want to up against you, its unlikely that all of the big pairs will be out and wont take away any of your outs, this is pretty much a worse case scenario (bar the whole table having suited connectors). A much better way to is to use poker stove which will calulate your equity against a range of hands.

To prove why working it out against a range of hands is better, have a look at this:

http://twodimes.net/h/?z=673991
pokenum  -h ac as  - ah kd  - qc qs  - ad qh  - kc ks 
Holdem Hi: 850668 enumerated boards
cards     win   %win    lose  %lose    tie  %tie     EV
As Ac  626962  73.70  211241  24.83  12465  1.47  0.741
Kd Ah   16299   1.92  821904  96.62  12465  1.47  0.023
Qs Qc   81127   9.54  757472  89.04  12069  1.42  0.101
Ad Qh   16372   1.92  814583  95.76  19713  2.32  0.028
Ks Kc   90195  10.60  755652  88.83   4821  0.57  0.107

Which is a lot more likely than your scenario.

Folding Equity is usually only mentioned when you might not have the best hand. In this case you want callers anyway so its immaterial.


There is a case to be made for folding here, but nobody has made it.

Hectorjelly

Im going to write up one more post on the subject, to try and tie up all the loose ends.

Whats important here, but nobody has really mentioned; is the prize structure. Normally the payout structure is such that its very top heavy, so winning or placing in the top 3 should be your main priority. Usually 1st place would be more than 10 times 6th place. However in this situation 1st is only 2.5 times 6th place, so moving up the ranks isnt as important as normal. So a case could be made for folding, as depending on the exact stack sizes it might better in terms of $EV. In fact I think its pretty likely to be. This is because if you fold you are guaranteed $40,000, but if you call you have a 50% chance of 0 and a 50% chance of one of the other prizes. Using a very simplified method, the average payout at the final table is 68.3k; so you would need to win to end up with enough chips more than the average at the table to overcome the 6k difference between 50% of the avg pay out (its 34k) and the guarantted 40k.

However, normally with a normal top heavy prize pool (or if your not in the money yet), you are litereally giving away money if you were to fold here. To be honest if you havent grasped that its a mistake to fold AA to x no of opponents then I dont think theres any thing I can say or do to persuade you. It doesnt matter how good you are, because nobody is that much better than people than they can fold such positive EV happenings, because there arent that many big + EV events around. Your EV on this event is bigger than getting someone all in on the flop if you have top set and they have a flush draw.

DeVore

Er, I had 5 opponents plus the aces. Whats *your* argument against calling here?

I'm sticking to my guns and saying that there are times that calling 3+ opponents with AA would cause me to stop and consider laying it down.

DeV.

Hectorjelly

DeVore wrote:

Er, I had 5 opponents plus the aces. Whats *your* argument against calling here?

I'm sticking to my guns and saying that there are times that calling 3+ opponents with AA would cause me to stop and consider laying it down.

DeV.

Well if your far from the money then your making a bigger mistake than laying down AA to a single opponent.

Hectorjelly

DeVore wrote:

Er, I had 5 opponents plus the aces. Whats *your* argument against calling here?
.

look up one post!

DeVore

Yeah I posted after you did but started it before you. Damned job...

DeV.

mewso

Hectorjelly wrote:

Whats important here, but nobody has really mentioned; is the prize structure.

Wheras I was saying you should consider the prize money available. Must have clicked the convert post to swahili button.

DeVore

Also what noone has really mentioned is:

How many times do you win a tournie from the starting chips compared with how many times you win a tournie if you were given 3 times the starting chips.

If the latter were "practically all the time" then I would agree with your logic. If it was "it hardly makes any impact on the likelihood of me winning" then it would be nuts to make such an unlikely gamble.

Early on in a tournie, I really really dont think it makes that much of a difference, certainly not enough to expect me to risk 2-in-5 tournie entries for it if its an expensive tournie!

DeV

bohsman

How could you not take 5 to 1 when youre going to win 1 in 2 or 1 in 3. First hand in the World Series, most definately.

Has anyone here actually folded aces preflop?

Samba

Yeah.....by mistake

mewso

Probably while I was out for a smoke

Hectorjelly

DeVore wrote:

Also what noone has really mentioned is:

How many times do you win a tournie from the starting chips compared with how many times you win a tournie if you were given 3 times the starting chips.

If the latter were "practically all the time" then I would agree with your logic. If it was "it hardly makes any impact on the likelihood of me winning" then it would be nuts to make such an unlikely gamble.

Early on in a tournie, I really really dont think it makes that much of a difference, certainly not enough to expect me to risk 2-in-5 tournie entries for it if its an expensive tournie!

DeV

I really hope this is a joke, it is right?

On the off chance that this isnt a joke, well Im not sure really where to start. Ok, lets take a heads up game; how do you go about winning one? Easy, get all you opponents chips. Now lets take a 10 seater winner takes all tournament. Again, how do you win? Well, its easy get all you opponents chips. Now; lets confuse the issue slightly, its a 10 seater tournament but second gets a smaller prize. So now we're shooting for 1st or 2nd, so how do we finish in the money? Well either we win all the chips, or we win enough chips so that we can survive until we're in the last two. Either way 99% of th e time we are going to have to at least double are starting chips in order to make it into the last two. Ok, weve covered those, now on to large multi table tournaments. Now these are slightly different as there is usually a prize for quite a few at the end. Now its a bit of a con as there is usually only 2-3 prizes worth shooting for, but ignoring that; how do we win or failing that make the money. Well to win is easy, just get every chip in the entire tournament. To make the money we have to get enough chips to survive that far. Now in an average 80 seater mtt with 2000 starting chips there are 160 000 chips in play. By the time it gets down to the final 9 the avg chips will be about 17,800. So to get to the final table with an average stack you must double up....
Once to 4000
Once more to 8000
Once more to 16000
If you have trebled up at start, ie you start with 6000; then you are much closer to you goal. You only need to double up
Once to 1200
Half of a double (!) to 1800.
And your all set!

It doesnt make any difference when you win the chips. If you dont win them early on you just have to win them later.

You can also add to that all the advantages of being a big stack, now admittadly some people play big stacks very badly; but theyre not going to be successfull anyway so worrying about strategy is probably a bit pointless for them.

There is so much crap floating about the place about tournaments, all about survival etc etc, but you wont get anywhere without winnning chips and plenty of them. Now that doesnt mean taking unneccessary risks (like overplaying small pairs) or playing recklessly; but folding AA or when you have any significent edge is shooting yourself in the foot. Winning tournaments is about winning chips, simple as that.

As for your specific questions, well trebling up at the start should (close to) treble your chance of winning, but the chance of any one person winning a tournament is pretty low anyway, no matter how good or bad you are. I think people often forget how unlikely it is that you will do well in any one specific tournament, which is strange as everyone remembers the bad beat that knocked them out of the last one.

bohsman

Much as hes sounding like a WUM and we all know hes bored I really dont think he is

DeVore

"well trebling up at the start should (close to) treble your chance of winning"
^--- this is the root of our disagreement. If you think that trebling up at the start of a two day tournie (almost) trebles your chances of winning... I think you are high.

That is essentially my argument, the reward (treble, quadruple, quintuple chips) is not worth the risk (going out of the WSOP 2-in-3 times you do this). I have no argument with the maths that says I'm getting better odds then anyone else in the pot so I should be the happiest to be there and in a cash game I could never ever fold aces unless I couldnt afford to lose the money that one time, for some severe financial reason. Thats because the reward IS worth the bet when its real cash you can take off the table there and then. I just dont think triple the chips means even double the chance of winning a big 2500 person tournament. Chip leader after day 1 has NEVER gone on to win it in fact. (maybe they werent as skilledas us, yeah, that must be it )

By your logic, you'd take any 54:46 edge for all in FHotWS[1] because double the chips means double the chance and you have better then 1:2 odds??

Btw, whats a WUM Oscie?
DeV.
[1]FHotWS = First Hand of the World Series

Hectorjelly

DeVore wrote:

"well trebling up at the start should (close to) treble your chance of winning"
^--- this is the root of our disagreement. If you think that trebling up at the start of a two day tournie (almost) trebles your chances of winning... I think you are high.

That is essentially my argument, the reward (treble, quadruple, quintuple chips) is not worth the risk (going out of the WSOP 2-in-3 times you do this). I have no argument with the maths that says I'm getting better odds then anyone else in the pot so I should be the happiest to be there and in a cash game I could never ever fold aces unless I couldnt afford to lose the money that one time, for some severe financial reason. Thats because the reward IS worth the bet when its real cash you can take off the table there and then. I just dont think triple the chips means even double the chance of winning a big 2500 person tournament. Chip leader after day 1 has NEVER gone on to win it in fact. (maybe they werent as skilledas us, yeah, that must be it )

By your logic, you'd take any 54:46 edge for all in FHotWS[1] because double the chips means double the chance and you have better then 1:2 odds??

Btw, whats a WUM Oscie?
DeV.
[1]FHotWS = First Hand of the World Series

The reason for passing any edge is that in a tournament situation taking an edge and losing can sometimes mean passing up on greater edges later. The reason you might fold a 54/46 edge early is that you think if you hold on you get your money in as a 80/20 fav or better. The reason that it is certifiable madness to pass up on AA is that you have more of an edge that you are likely to ever get again, no matter how good or bad you are.

Can I ask a question Dev? How do you think that tournaments are won? You have to get the chips sometimes, if you pass up this opportunity all it means is that you will have to risk your chips somewhere later down the line, at a worse deal for yourself. Im having a real difficulty understanding where your coming from on this.

It is generaly assumed that your chances of finishing 1st are directly proportional to the amount of chips you have. If you have 50% of the chips you have a 50 50 chance of winning. I dont think anyone has come up with a deductive proof for this, but its all we have to go on. I said close to because obviously skill levels and other matters come into play, but for an average player it should be relatively linear. If you disagree with this you would want to have a very compelling argument.

Personnaly if I treble my chips in the early stages I think that more than trebles my chances of winning. I play best when I have a big stack, and I know how to use it to my advantage. I actually think it might be worth my while taking bigger risks, and possibly slightly - EV moves in order to get a big stack, because it will be such an advantage for me. This has no bearing on this situation however.

The chip leader on Day 1 has never won the WSOP argument is a logical fallicy, the reason given by Sklansky for this is that usually the chip leader is somebody who has taken enormous risks to get there, and never manages to adjust. Im sure youve seen this yourself in many tournments. A inexperienced player (usually a young guy) gets lucky a few times early on, gets a monster stack but has no idea how to use it, and doesnt even make the money. Sklanskly was NOT talking about passing up huge EV events, just about not taking unnessary risks. Calling with AA is not an unneccessary risk.

I actually talked about this in my blog, but all of this comes from people who read, but misunderstood Tournament poker for advanced players. I have never read a book in any field that is so widely misinterpreted.

I get the feeling that you think that 50% is some magic figure, and that if you are more than 50% likely to lose then you can fold. This is entirely wrong. For everybody that doubles up somebody has to lose (or two people lose half their stacks but you get what I mean). But to do well in a tournament you will have to double up several times, and each time you will be at risk of losing. You are more likely to bust out doubling up twice with AA against a lower PP then getting it all in with 3 players when you have AA. Or are you saying that you should pass AA to a single all in?

To put it simply;

Player A gets it all in with 3 players (he has AA). He is LESS Likely to bust out than:

Player B who gets it all in with AA against KK, then gets it all in later with AA against QQ

Lastly, what the hell is a Wum?

DeVore

HJ, you are arguing one specific instance whereas I'm trying to argue with Oscar, You and a few others about various scenarios.
Against 3 players I would think about it but probably call. I was arguing with Oscar about going in with 5-6 players all in ahead of you. I dont consider 50% particularly signnificant but my point remains that you see chip-increase : winning-% as being linear and I do not. That remains the central difference between our stances and once you take that into account, the rest of my point (right or wrong) will make sense to you.

Look at it this way. Say for every tripling of your stack you increase your chances of winning by a factor of two, and vice versa. How would you feel then about the bet?
If you accepted that sliding scale, would you then accept my point of view?

With 3 all in's before me I'd start to have a think about it, with 6 I think I'd definitely fold them. Also, a point I was making with Oscar last night is that it very very much depends on what they have... against KK,AK,AK, QQ, QQ ... sure, I'm all in. But against a variety of other hands, I wouldnt want to be. So even our estimation of the odds of winning the hand arent agreed on!

Are we saying 3 all-in's before you or 6? FHotWS? last table of a big tournie? the freeroll?What odds are we settling on to win the hand? Since this is a hypothetical question we need hypothetical (or well researched!) parameters to work with.


I've been through too many second-last-tables with blinds flying around and around for over an hour, and then the last table lottery to believe that a triple through on the first hand is trippling my chances of winning. Theres just too much play between the first hand and the cheque. When you consider the endurance ordeal that the WSOP is, I think trippling through would be like a gnat flying into an elephants arse as far as making an impression on your chances.

I could be wrong, I'm arguing this more from gut feeling then my usual maths side of things.

DeV.