AQo in the BB facing a MP raiser after early limper

[rudefella]

Blinds 120/240 antes 25. I have 10,800 in BB

UTG with 31,000 chip limps (playing 42/15 on 97 hands)
MP with 28,000 chips raises to 1300 (playing 17/8 on 64 hands)
folded to me in the BB with AQo

I struggle knowing what to do here. If I raise, I'm kinda commiting myself. If I call, I'm playing OOP. Not too worried about limper, since he's limping loose even from early.

Some help?

[chrisav74]

If I think I can get heads up with MP I might flat call and try a stop and go. If I think there is a good chance UTG will come along too I shove/fold depending on what type of hands MP has shown down so far, if he has folded to re-raises previously and what stage of the tourney we are at. Your M is 18 so it isn't exactly do or die yet.

[rudefella]

Yeah, so that was my thinking as well, except whether I "went" was gonna depend slightly on the flop texture. I think it's exactly because of how many BB I have that makes it difficult, if you are much shorter you shove over no question, if you are a much bigger stack you can either call or reraise (and then fold if he shoves). It's right in this range that I have a hard time knowing what to do, where calling is a decent portion of your stack, folding is too weak, and reraising all-in with a medicore holding is questionable.

I have only recently been adding stop and gos into my arsenal of moves. Are there any stickies that anyone knows of about stop and gos? I really don't have a good feel for when I should be trying these.

[baudib]

Shoving is probably meh, calling seems kinda gross. Folding seems too nitty but is probably the right thing to do.

[DoanDiggy]

I can't fold AQ fast enough in this spot. Lately, any time I have a reasonable excuse for folding AQ I'm doing it. Call it results-oriented or nitty or whatever you want, but I've lost so many tournament chips and cash game dollars overplaying AQ that my new default play with it is to fold to any type of aggression.

The problem with shoving AQ over a raise is that it mostly only folds out worse hands and gets called by better hands and coinflips. If villain is calling 88+,AQ+, we are a 63% dog. Make that TT+,AK and we are a 68% dog. With your stack (not short but not big enough to take a risk like that) against a reasonable player, I think folding AQ is the best play here. Calling and then stacking off on a Q- or A-high flop against a 17/8 MP raiser is also undesirable, so what is the point in playing it?

Here's a better analysis for you. On an A73 rainbow flop against top 8%, we are a 78% favorite. On a Q73 rainbow we are a 77% favorite. The problem is that we only get an A-high flop 17% of the time (actually less since A is a large part of villain's range) and we only get a Q-high flop (Q no K) about 15-16% of the time. That doesn't account for times that there are too many broadways (AJT, QJT, etc.) and we still don't love our hand, so we only really like 25% of flops, and on the ones we like, we're about 75% to win. So calling and playing fit or fold on the flop, we are getting our money in a whopping 82% bad (1 - .25 * .75). Getting about 2:1 to call here from the BB is not good enough. So definitely a fold.

[rudefella]

Full Tilt Poker Game #9925414358: $5,000 Guarantee (Rebuy) (75336297), Table 30 - 120/240 Ante 25 - No Limit Hold'em - 14:16:26 ET - 2009/01/08
Seat 1: William Hun (15,235)
Seat 2: BIG-DARIUS (5,565), is sitting out
Seat 3:Hero (11,225)
Seat 4: jrh002 (26,985)
Seat 5: maleman820 (9,985)
Seat 6: Nc_Kid_72 (5,460)
Seat 7: Floggingm (11,595)
Seat 8: deadknaxa1 (32,875)
Seat 9: thanks1111 (12,175)

Dealt to rudefella5123 [Qd Ac]
jrh002 calls 240
maleman820 folds
Nc_Kid_72 folds
Floggingm folds
deadknaxa1 raises to 1,300
thanks1111 folds
William Hun folds
BIG-DARIUS folds
Hero has 15 seconds left to act
Hero folds

[DoanDiggy]

Excellent .