hmm im a tourney donk and never have a big stack late in a tourney

[ortega,juan]

There are approximately 20 people left in the stars 20 buy in yesterday. One other person and myself have about 4 times the average chip stack.

villain is a really bad player. essentialy if he raises at all preflop he will call your shove.

so the hand goes like this

blinds 600 1200 he open raises to 8000 from the cutoff. i have about 120K villain has about 110K way more than anyone else at the table.

im not really into flat callng AK but this is a weird spot where my fold equity is rather low and i dont necessarily want to flip with the other big stack at this stage because its not going to give me a huge edge in the tourney. im already in really nice shape.

[helter skelter]

It's best to use a hand converter. You didn't even say if you are in one of the blinds or on the button. How much is in the pot? How many players at the table?

[ortega,juan]

ill post the hand if i get the tourney history. but basically it was 7 or 8 handed. im in the small blind. but in all honesty the summary of the hand is huge donk makes a 7x bb raise in the cutoff position. (never seen him 7x before.)

Basically between the two of us we have a huge percentage of the chips in play just wondering if its ok to play AK passively?? knowing your fold equity is not what it usually is (i.e. im getting called by 22 - 77.) sorry ill see if i can get a hand history when i have more time.

[helter skelter]

Well, it looks like you don't need fold equity for a shove to be EV+ since his range is so wide.

I'd say the decision to flat call would be based on whether you think you could outplay him after the flop and get away from a loser preserving most of your stack.

If no A or K flops, you might have some difficult post-flop decisions.

[sharkscopeaholic]

let it go, even if he has a stupid hand like 7-8 you're not that big of a favorite at the showdown if you push and he calls or you get blind sided on a flop of A 7 8. If you have many more chips then others just start stealing from them and flipping with them for their tourney lives, they will usually fold anyway and try to move up the pay scale so late in the tourney. Stay away from other big stack and go deep!

[helter skelter]

Are you suggesting he fold AK? I don't even think he considered that as an option. I certainly wouldn't.

[Mench]

call, take it from the flop. folding is too weak and 3 betting sucks. has he been opening this large continuously or is this obscure for him?

[Eratosthenes]

It would be good to see the converted HH, but based on what I see now:

Accepting that villain is not folding preflop, you cannot fold this. If his range is any pair, any A, and any 2 broadways, then your equity is 64%. Adding more hands to this range is not going to change the equity much because it is so close to the equity of AK over two smaller unpaired cards.

The hands you really fear, AA and KK, are unlikely, because you have AK and he is not likely to be raising 7x with a big pair.

So you want to find an option that is +EV and lower variance than reraising AI.

I don't like reraising <AI, if you are sure he won't fold. Any normal sized raise is going to make the pot pretty big compared to the remaining stacks. If you reraise to 3x his raise it is very close to a pot committing raise. I also would not like cleaning the vomit off my keyboard if I reraised and he shoved.

I don't like flat calling from the blinds because you are out of position after the flop and you have very little information about his hand. Are you going to give up if you miss the flop? Are you going to donk bet any flop? Are you willing to get AI if an A or K flops?

The villain has made this a difficult decision (which is his job) with his unusually large preflop raise. I don't think that you can pass on a spot this good for the sake of lowering variance. If you shove and he calls you will be in a dominating position in the tournament 2/3 of the time and can start another one the remaining 1/3 of the time. If you shove into AA or KK, well that is just life.

[ortega,juan]

i used my whole time bank earlier and had the hand folded.

most of his ranges were 3x or 2x so the big raised perplexed me.

playing with him more he seemed to bet more with his big hands. who knows maybe he had aces.

its a weird spot because you have to look at it that AQ likely is in the guys range from the cutoff.

so i suppose the only way to play it is all in. i guess thats what makes tournies tough when you are in a huge down streak. it would suck pretty hard to finish 20th when you have a huge stack.

[udbrky]

[ QUOTE ]
it would suck pretty hard to finish 20th when you have a huge stack.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think this sentence explains why you're struggling with deep runs in tournaments. Yeah, it sucks. But so does limping into the final table bubble, and going card dead when everyone's all-in happy, and you get stuck having to make a stand with a weak hand.