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Old 01-19-2006, 09:43 PM
Dromar Dromar is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2006
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Default Re: Deep in the tournament and your tournament life is at stake

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Just saying "push because most of his hands are worse than yours" just means your making a mathematical play.

Sorry I'd rather use more skills that just one to beat my opponent. I'll take playing lots of pots and winning most then playing fewer pots for all my chips. Because eventually someone lucky will suckout when you give them all 5 cards to see like this player has.

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I get what you're saying. It seems though, that you're implying that you'd rather not get your money in with the best of it (most likely), which is contradictory to good poker strategy. However, since you're in a tournament, obviously it's more complicated than just making +EV plays. And since the blinds are low enough to leave room for postflop play, a call as an attempt to outplay him (or at least see some cards before you commit your money, seeing as how he's gonna give it all to you if he plays anyway) is legitemate. Then again, as you've said, there isn't much to his postflop play. It seems to be either check/fold, or go all in.

That said, the flop is about the best flop you could hope for. If you consider folding to his push at that point, you probably should have folded the AK preflop. Honestly, if you aren't gonna call this guy when you flop tptk on an AK, what are you gonna call him with?

Along the lines of "tournament strategy," if you don't wanna tango with a guy who can bust you, you have to actively make that decision, in which case you need to fold the AK preflop. I personally don't play that way, but I'm sure it benefits people if they conciously only play hands with people who can't bust them (barring AA, KK, and maybe QQ). I really don't know if that's a better approach than just playing solid with whoever is in the pot with you though.

For a 0% chance of busting on this hand, fold your AK preflop.
For a better chance at placing higher in the tournament, push your AK preflop.
Or, if his postflop play really is that predictable, and you want to play cautiously, seeing a flop is an okay idea.
The time when it's bad to see a flop is when you've got AK and he's got AQ, AJ, or whatever, and you hit the flop but he misses, or if you both miss. One of those will be true most of the time. Then he doesn't give you all of his money.
Or when you've got AK and he's got, say 99. If the flop comes AK5, or AQ5, he's probably not going to give you the rest of his money. I suppose this is countered by the fact that if you miss your A or K, then you don't give him your money, but that effectively turns the call into a much smaller coin flip, with the added disadvantage that you only get three cards to win with, whereas all in you'd get five. That's no longer a coin flip.

Definitely a debatable situation. I'll have to give it some further thought.
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