AQs - check my line here ($10 PS)

[taipan168]

Should I have re-raised preflop? I thought that the flop was relatively non-scary but would likely have hit my opp so I bet 2/3 the pot. Or would you push the flop in case villain has something like KT or AJ?

On the turn, I pretty much have to push, right?

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t200 (4 handed) FTR converter on zerodivide.cx

Hero (t3010)
UTG (t6130)
Button (t1020)
SB (t3340)

Preflop: Hero is BB with Q, A.
UTG raises to t600, 2 folds, Hero calls t400.

Flop: (t1075) 7, J, Q (2 players)
Hero bets t800, UTG calls t800.

Turn: (t2675) T (2 players)
Hero bets t1585 (All-In)

[GatorJH]

Why not re-raise pre-flop? AQs is a very strong hand against one opponent. You also need to consider the situation. UTG is the chip leader and the button is the short stack. If UTG open raises that would prevent the short stack from doing anything without a monster hand. That leaves two players who are both in mid position and don't want to "screw up" their chances of making it into the money. This could be a pure steal attempt with a marginal holding.

If you put in a good size raise (say 1,000) you would be dangerously close to being pot committed.

I may have seriously considered pushing pre-flop and DEFINITELY would have pushed on the flop.

Ramp it up with a reraise preflop 3 handed.

Your play isn't too bad at all here though.

[Fnord]

check/raise flop all-in.

Ramp it up with a reraise preflop 3 handed.

Re-raise commits us, may as well VQC it.

[mcatdog]

This is a basic situation that you need to get used to if you want to do well at sit-and-gos. There's a big stack, two medium stacks (including you), and a small stack. In this case, you should never be messing around with the big stack unless you have an absolute monster hand, so you should just fold this hand preflop. You have too much to lose. I might even fold AK here depending on whether I thought UTG would call if I went all-in.

Right now your equity in the tournament is 26 percent of the prize pool. The thing is, even if you win the sit-and-go your equity is only 50 percent, so taking a coinflip would be a horrible result for you right now. You lose all your equity if you lose the coinflip, but you don't double your equity if you win. In fact, if you double through the big stack, your equity only goes up to 36 percent of the prize pool. If you move all-in and UTG folds, your equity is now 29 percent of the prize pool.

I've found that in low buy-in tournaments, if someone raises and you come over the top of them, they hardly ever fold. So let's assume that you're a 60-40 favorite over UTG's hand, and that if you move all-in, he'll call 70 percent of the time. Then your equity if you move all-in is (.30)*(29%) + (.70)*(.60)*(36%) + (.70)*(.40)*(0%)= 23.8%, worse than it would have been if you'd simply folded. And I think these assumptions are pretty favorable to you, there's a good chance his hand is a coinflip against you or has you crushed. Getting involved here is not worth it, at all.

Once you hit the best flop you could hope for, check-raise all-in.

[STIdrivr]

i would check-raise all-in on the flop.

[taipan168]

In this case, you should never be messing around with the big stack unless you have an absolute monster hand, so you should just fold this hand preflop.

I understand the percentage and ICM analysis, but if you're playing to win (or at least 2nd) can you really fold this preflop? If the big stack knows what he's doing, he's raising a lot of hands here, can you really fold every hand except (say) AA-QQ when the big stack raises?