AJs in BB approaching $55 final table as bigstack

[illegit]

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If the opponent has less than an Ace or a weak Ace and is unpaired, then I'm a pretty large favorite and I don't want to push him off the pot without extracting some penalty from him. This is especially true if he raised with something like A9 or A8.

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The main problem with this is A) He is the preflop agressor and B) He has position. So if neither of you flops anything (and your AJ high is still the best hand) he's still going to win the pot more often because of his favorable position and you not being certain where you're at. Push neutralizes this positional advantage.

[Spee]

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True he might have KQ but you are putting half your stack at risk to be only a 60-40 favorite whereas if you simply call this hand you aren't putting too much of your stack at risk.

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Uffff ..... are you kiddin'? If I am sure of being a 3:2 fave AND getting a call, then I am shoving all day long and not thinking twice about it.

The key here is if you are very sure to be ahead, you most likely don't want to shove unless you are very sure of getting a call.

[Jiggymike]

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True he might have KQ but you are putting half your stack at risk to be only a 60-40 favorite whereas if you simply call this hand you aren't putting too much of your stack at risk.

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Uffff ..... are you kiddin'? If I am sure of being a 3:2 fave AND getting a call, then I am shoving all day long and not thinking twice about it.

The key here is if you are very sure to be ahead, you most likely don't want to shove unless you are very sure of getting a call.

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No no, you are right. I was just saying that one of the BEST possible outcomes you could have was him having KQ besides calling you all in with a hand you have dominated. My point was that the WORST hand I think he could call you with is only a slight dog whereas most of the hands will be either a coinflip or have you dominated, none of which are terribly desirable. With a big stack, you should be bullying, not GAMBLING half your chips on a coin situation when you could easily find better spots. I still stand by mine/our earlier posts which say to call because if you call and flop donks, you fold and move on with your life..."wasting" AJs should be the least of your poker worries.

[Jiggymike]

Two final things. For one, I guess I was wrong in the above post, because pushing is a sort of bullying; there's always a chance that you'll get called when trying to be a bully. Also I did some preliminary calculations (in my head while walking to the train) so they probably aren't great but here's what I found. Assume that he folds 50% of the time and calls 50% of the time, which I think seems reasonable. Then out of the tiems he calls, 50% of the time he has a lower pp so you have a coinflip and the other 50% he turns up a hand that either has you dominated or is a pair between your two cards - JJ, QQ, and KK. I'll just say that AA is negligible. Anyway, doing the math in my head, I got it to be almost exactly even; in any case, it is probably + or - 1000 EV. Too small a profit for too big a gamble at this point in my opinion.

[HoldingFolding]

Approaching the final table make sure you have the other tables open, that way you will have some sort of a read.