Fold? Cooler? AK

Perhaps could've played differently but I think this was basically a cooler,
https://www.cardschat.com/replayer/1253Xfp6J

What hands would your opponent open UTG, 3bet pre and pot jam flop with?
3betting ranges UTG in small stakes are usually nut heavy JJ+, AK, maybe AQ, A5s.


You are 60BB effective stacks in a 8 handed game.

The question is, would your opponent jam AQ, with a GSD or QQ. If not, or if rarely, then you are either flipping with AK (50% equity), or crushed by AA, KK, JJ (you have 5% equity). Against this shoving range you have 26% equity. If he mixes a few bluffs with AhQh and AdQd then you have 33% equity. So basically your call breaks even or is slightly behind.

Your biggest mistake here was calling preflop instead of jamming. If you jam and he calls with AQ, you have him dominated with 70% equity. Or he folds and you win the pot uncontested. Also villain probably folds JJ and maybe QQ, and maybe even AK. This is a huge chunk of equity you could have had for free.

Also if you miss the flop with AK are you going to fold to every jam or call every jam? You are going to miss 2/3rds of the time and will again have about 30% equity against their jamming range.

Really I think the preflop call was not a good choice here.

From the blinds 10/20 I see you are at the beggining of the mtt. So I think it was not wise to go all in so early. Yes, you had AK but you hitted just a pair and your opponent is betting too much. Not wise too, but this time he was lucky.

Hard to find a fold there, dont know if i would have but thats always AA or KK especially if the buy-in was pretty low

That depends on each type of game, at least in my case I would go with all the chips, AK it has always been a very strong hand in any position at any time in tournament play, it's actually the best hand in Texas hold'em.

AK is certainly a strong hand but I usually fold when my reraise is reraised from early position, especially in the early stages of the tournament

Here, either an all-in preflop was needed, or a fold before the flop.

I'm astounded at the people saying a jam pre was the way to go. We were 60bb deep early in a tournament. Anyone who is 4-betting pre has AA, KK or AK. That's 2 where we are crushed and a likely chop. With the 4-bet being as large as it was, I'm not sure I want to commit another 20bb pre to this. Does V really go up that high with AK? Given that, calling the 4 bet was a scary but possible right way to approach this. But put a big question mark on that.

That said, the overpot shove of 45bb OOP does not look very good. Going back to those 3 likely V hands above, AA we are toast, KK we are toast, and AK we are chopping. But do you want to put your tournament life on that?

I think you did everything right, you just got unlucky. It happens

Preflop our opponent opened with a 2bb minraise from UTG. Called a 4-bet at 3.45 times your 3-bet. On the flop, K didn't get scared and went all-in. Villain is either bluffing or playing for value. If you have statistics or notes on the player, then you can draw a certain conclusion, for example, exclude a bluff. Bluffing is not as common at the lower stakes. Since he was aggressive from an early position, it can be assumed that he has either a pair of A or a set of J. If you play at many tables at the same time, then sometimes it is not immediately possible to quickly build a logical chain correctly. It is very risky to play all-in with one top pair for your entire stack. It's good when you have a stronger combination.

makisaa said:

From the blinds 10/20 I see you are at the beggining of the mtt. So I think it was not wise to go all in so early. Yes, you had AK but you hitted just a pair and your opponent is betting too much. Not wise too, but this time he was lucky.

Click to expand...

Right on target.

When the original poster (OP) reraises preflop and they call its QQ JJ TT. AA or KK are probably not there because the OP has those cards.

The betting on the flop tells you they have a set of Jacks, the play of QQ or TT doesn't make sense unless they're an aggressive donk with the King on the board.

A set of 4s really doesn't make sense either with all that raising and the action on the flop. Its a dollar tourn but still that's an out of line play unless they're a uber beginner calling station that can't let go of a pair.

Or someone that could watch you and comes to learn that you probably have/play AK or Ace x like that and knows you're way behind if big cards don't come on the flop, but whatever.

The only things left from the flop action are AA, KK although unlikely they are, a set of Jacks, QQ and TT very unlikely but depends on the opponent.

As a few folks said already, the OP seems to have went WAAAAY TOO FAR with that hand at the beginning of a tourn where the blinds are almost nothing.

That's a tourn and you have to play the structure of the tourn not just what you have in front of you. That hand makes zero sense to me.

Even if you lost 200 on that hand you're still in great shape. There is very little reason to go that far with that action. Even if you lost 500 there, you're still in great shape!!

Another mistake besides ignoring the tourn structure was telling them by your play on the flop that YOU HAD THE KING!!! lol
The OP told them everything they wanted to know when they have them crushed, lol.

That whole hand, the way the OP played it says "I have a great hand and I'm going with it regardless" then you flip over the cards and realize, maybe they shouldn't have told the opponent all that info by betting and plays with that board, umm maybe not, lolol.

That's up to you folks to think about, either way, there were multiple ways to play that hand besides the way the OP did.

Thanks for sharing the hand. It might give some folks some other ideas on how to play that hand or some things to look out for at the beginning of a tourn.

its a low buy in tournament and players tend to play more loose in lower buy in tournament., so that hand was an absolute cooler. maybe i would just shove all in after villain makes the 3 bet... in deeper buy in tournament you can consider folding a shove however in this spot ( low buy in tournament and 40 bb left) its an instant call.

Preflop
There is some argument for just flatting AKo preflop against an UTG open. But there is also value in driving out the players behind you, especially when he only min-raise, which is very small for this stack depth. So I am totally fine with 3-betting here, and sizing looks good.

Now however he 4-bet, and this just suck. When I played 5-16NL cash games back in the day, I learned the hard way, that for a lot of nitty regulars in these games a 4-betting range especially from early position is often pretty much only AA and KK. And of course this mean, that if we have AK, we will get 4-bet less often, because we have the blockers, but when we get 4-bet, we are still against it a huge percentage of the time.

Its different, if we have sort of standard tournament stacks here like 30-40BB, because then the 4-bet is a jam, the range is wider, and we just call it off, even though we are not totally loving it. But we are chopping with another AK or flipping with TT-QQ or even beating AQ or AXs often enough to justify getting it in.

Here however you are 60BB deep, and especially when he only min-raised, this is very close to a 100BB cash game, where the open size would typically be 3BB. You also cant really call here, because you will be committing 1/3 of your stack, and what then is the plan, if you miss the flop? If you are folding on all flops without an A or K on them, its better to just fold now.

So if you continue here, it should be with a 5-bet jam, but the best play is to just fold, unless the opponent is a LAG or maniac. I know, its a really tough fold to make in real time, so I dont blame you for calling, but this is a spot, where you can gain an edge by learning to make a tough but correct fold.

Flop
You hit the K, and he move all-in. There are 6 combos of AK, while there are only 4 combos of KK-AA, and you are getting 2:1. That means, that if this is his range, you are priced in to call it off, even you are only calling for a chopper. The whole reason to call preflop has to be, that you think, you are not only against a range of KK-AA, so as played this is a call, and unfortunately this time it was not a chop.

With a 30 BB effective stack I prefer to open-raise to 2,25 BB instead of 3 BB.
This because you get the same result with 2,25 instead of 3 BB.
If you always open 3x it´s less important. Opening 2,25 as standard open sizing at medium stacks (50-25 BB) more variance and the ability to play more hands because you invested not that much.

After the 3-bet I would go all-in. So no, this is just a cooler.
How big is the chance that somebody has two Aces against somebody holding an A.
Playing against AA or KK with your AK happens just once in 250 hands with AK.
Sometimes it´s just your time to lose.

Early in a low stakes online tournament, this is just a cooler.

If this was the wsop main event, and I bought in for $10,000 I would fold to the EP 4-bet with AKo.

Depending on the tournament, my roll, the villain, I'm calling the shove with TPTK easy, but I prefer to bust early on a combo draw shove vs. Grinding a min cash.

In poker, a cooler is a situation where a strong hand loses to an even stronger one. Classical coolers are cases when, for example, a pair of kings crashes into a pair of aces. There is no recipe for how not to get into this unpleasant situation. After all, it is very difficult to fold strong cards. The cooler is an integral part of poker, which adds drama to the game. Professionals advise you to immediately forget such painful fiascos. Like, they did everything right - it means there is no point in sprinkling ashes on your head. With AK, I always call.

dreamer13 said:

In poker, a cooler is a situation where a strong hand loses to an even stronger one. Classical coolers are cases when, for example, a pair of kings crashes into a pair of aces.

Click to expand...

AK running into AA is not quite as much of a cooler though. As I said already, I do think, AK can sometimes be folded preflop to a 4-bet, and I think, this was one of those spots. The opponent min-raised UTG with 7 players left to act behind him, and when 3-bet he put in a 4-bet, which was big enough to almost commit him to the pot. But he did not actually move all-in, which is like screaming "please give me action". It does depend on the opponent type though. If a maniac takes this line, then I am jamming AK every single time. But if its a tight regular like a 17/13, then I think, we can pretty safely assume, we are against KK or AA the vast majority of the time and let our AK go.

fundiver199 said:

AK running into AA is not quite as much of a cooler though. As I said already, I do think, AK can sometimes be folded preflop to a 4-bet, and I think, this was one of those spots. The opponent min-raised UTG with 7 players left to act behind him, and when 3-bet he put in a 4-bet, which was big enough to almost commit him to the pot. But he did not actually move all-in, which is like screaming "please give me action". It does depend on the opponent type though. If a maniac takes this line, then I am jamming AK every single time. But if its a tight regular like a 17/13, then I think, we can pretty safely assume, we are against KK or AA the vast majority of the time and let our AK go.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure my browser is technically keeping up on this forum...
It's ok to fold AKo to an UTG 4bet

Point is, this analysis needs to be read.