How to play AA early in a fairly tight MTT?

[wilhung53]

I got AA EP, we all started with 10,000 chips (because I was dealt AA first hand). I wasn't sure - and I thought I need to play it fast and protect it, so I made a huge raise to 1,000. I got no action. I realisticly hoped for another pair or AK to call me - so I can push on flop most of the time. But I'm not sure if that's a good play.

Another note is that if I raised to 150 or 250 (Blinds 25/50), I get called by too many hands.

What are your suggestions?

[chardrian]

How do you know the table is tight if you got dealt AA first hand?

AA at any point in a tourney is a hand that you want to make as many chips as possible. The benefit about it being early in the tourney is that you can still get away from it if the flop/board is just horrible.

Two options IMO:

1) limp hope for a reraise and then isolate.

2) Make a standard raise and then play poker.

[bluedevil907]

Well, depending on whether this is live or online, you might want to play it differently, but online a common trick is to just go AI if you hit a monster first hand if you're playing at lower limits. A number of people might think you're just setting up a table image, and will be willing to call with Ax or any PP, whereas a solid raise from EP that early with the blinds where they are will easily get more callers than you want. Yet a raise for some obscene amount of money (as in 1/10 of your stack at start) will no doubt be a tell for a monster since risking that many chips to just steal the first blind level would be dumb.

So, you're either limping, raising (large but not THAT large), or pushing.

If you limp, you're hoping for someone else to make a raise. If everyone just calls you're bound to run into trouble. If someone raises, you want to make sure and get it down to 2 or 3 handed, so if the table starts calling all-around, you need to make a sizeable re-raise. If it comes around to you, I'd say just flat call after a bit of thinking.

The raise is mainly just to limit it to 2 or 3 handed, but you definately want at least one caller. Whether you limp or raise you're looking for the same post-flop situation.

The push is just a matter of whether you can get that caller or not.

It's nice to open up pocket rockets, and if played well early on can set you up to run the table.