My Confession

[Cornell Fiji]

It was my first WPT event. The WPT Niagra 10k main event. We had 20,000 chips and after donking off 5,000 to Gavin Smith I got lucky and was able to double up when I turned the nuts against my opponent's turned top two pair.

I ran the 30,000 into 50,000 before I got moved to a new table with Captain Tom on my left. Tom was the table chipleader and I raised a couple hands preflop only to have him smooth call and take the hands away from me on later streets.

I didn't know who Captain Tom was at the time but I did hear him bragging about his WSOP bracelet to some kid with effeminate speech tones (the kid didn't look a day over 19) who told him that even though the Captain was an old school live player that the kid was better and more experienced than him because of all of the hands that he saw online. Well, that seemed to piss the Captain off and he seemingly decided to not let anyone under 25 win a single pot at the table. I raised a couple pocket pairs and AK over the next hour but I missed every flop and Captain Tom floated my c-bets and bet when I checked and before I knew it my stack was back down to the original 20,000.

Thankfully, my table broke after the dinner break and I got moved to a much friendlier location in the back of the room.

The players at my table were fairly solid and between their good play and my 20,000 chip stack I did not have much room to maneuver.

David Singer was nursing a short stack and a couple young kids were making moves. There was also an Asian guy at the table who defied all stereotypes by not playing a hand for two hours... Actually, thats an exaggeration, the Asian guy once raised preflop with kings and got his money in on an all undercard flop to double up.

I stole the blinds a couple times and lost a couple small pots to leave my stack at 17,500 in the 300/600/100 level when the following hand came up.

The Asian man with the Buddhist disposition (15,000 chips) raised under the gun to 2,000. It folded to me in the cut off and I had A[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]K[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]. I looked around the room and saw a pale faced guy in a green Red Sox hat on the rail. Action Dan and I made eye contact and he gave me a little nod.

I was playing for first place in this tournament and I was willing to push every single cEV edge that I could find so I thought for about 15 more seconds before I sighed and tossed my cards into the muck.

[MJBuddy]

Oh hell, it was probably AQo.

[woohoo88]

lol. good title/story

I'm sure this is fine. With your description I really don't see him raising UTG wider than QQ+.


Why didn't you post this in HSMTT? [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[MJBuddy]

Because we have TOO MANY arguments here regarding folding AK pre-flop. I doubt HSMTT has as many problems as we do.

As well, HSMTT focuses on typically deeper MTTs where AK has folding equity against itself. It doesn't in the basic everyday micro-donk MTTs we deal with.

If you're playing the 11$ Deep Stack and someone pushing a starting stack in round 1 vs your AKs, I'd consider folding. If someone pushes 1500 chips into me, I would not.

I've been 800BB deep on a FT before. Eventually I was down to 500BB and another stack was up to 500BB as well. He was to the right of me. If he limped UTG, I raise to 4xBB and he jammed on me, I'd CONSIDER folding AKs because the equity of a QQ+ range vs my calling off a dominating chip lead on a FT where taking the slightest slightest edge and losing would cost me hundreds vs folding and making hundreds and choosing another spot.

Most of this is beyond the questioning of the posters here, who AK runs into AA or KK and they want to know the magical formula for seeing people's hole cards.

[cheburashka]

So is this one of Sherman's 0.3%?

[Sherman]

:Sigh:

This post is going to make a lot more players worse than better.


Sherman

PS - I spent all day trying to figure out what to write for my 3000th post. I guess I'll settle for this.

[Cornell Fiji]

[ QUOTE ]
So is this one of Sherman's 0.3%?

[/ QUOTE ]
***IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION***

This post was meant to be the exception to the rule... the 0.3% of the time where it is acceptable to fold AK. The play was only made because of a spot on read that I had in a very specific situation. Attempts to duplicate this play will cost you chips in the long run.

This post was made because over the course of the past week I have made more posts than I can count giving reasons why AKs should <u>correctly</u> be reraised and shoved so I decided to think of the last time that I folded it...

I checked the date, the last time I folded AKs was on October 26th, 2006. THAT was supposed to be the point of my story!

Please do not interpret this story as MJBuddy did with me saying that the 'fold AKs camp' is correct. I only support those people in the absolute rarest of circumstances, it pretty much happens once every 6 months.

[footnbaseball]

Is there actually a "fold AKs camp"? It seems like its one big joke at this point. I don't remember seeing where anybody has ever actually advocated folding AK preflop (in any situation without very strong, specific reads like the one Fiji had).

but in all seriousness, any hand is a fold if harrington nods at you from the rail.

[JoeyJoJo Shabadu]

I think you're not telling us the complete truth cornell... I'm betting it took more than 15 seconds. GF.


PS Scariest part fo that story is having to sit with Gavin Smith..

[ChipSpeak]

Obvious point, but fold equity is a big part of this hand, and we have none. I think there's still value here, albeit thin. Why can't we flat call, see a flop with ~30BBs in position, was Singer yet to act? I think the squeeze is a non factor here either way, nobody's coming over the rock without QQ+.