Satellite for a £10 entry tournament so not exactly huge stakes, I know, but the principles are the same, independent of stakes.
6 players left, 5 seats available, 6th place gets his entry fee back (or thereabouts).
Blinds are 1K/2K.
Blinds increase every 7 minutes.

I’m not sure about the exact stack sizes but these are near enough:


UTG:  42K  chip leader
HJ: 10K
CO: 14K
Button: 12K
SB: 18K
BB: 28K (me)


UTG min raises.
Everybody folds to me.
I have AA in the BB and go all-in.
UTG calls with JJ and flops a set which holds up – I bubble.

I’m sure that this situation will have been discussed before but I’d appreciate comments.
Is it lunacy to take on the one guy who could knock me out when I’m a clear 2nd place?
The reason I did it was because
a) I thought I had enough chips to make him fold – I thought that he would realise that I wouldn’t be risking my tournament on anything less and, if he lost, he’d be right back in the mire
b) once everybody else starts going all-in as they feel the pressure of being blinded out, it’s possible that they might get lucky (or steal enough) to put me under real pressure – although, I guess this would be unlikely with 4 of them being roughly equal stacked and way behind me.

I didn’t have much information on anyone else on the table but clearly, the chip leader hadn’t been just twiddling his thumbs to accumulate that stack.

Flat pre

Can you expand pleeeease?

If you re-pop here you telegraph your hand, i don't really see the point.

If you flat you let the lunatic in (hell he might even squeeze) you also increase your own range so post if it comes 622 etc you are stacking the SB if he has TT+

I like this.

Trapping with KK is nice. You want the raggy aces in. If you get outdrawn then so be it but you're always favourite.

The big raise leaves you with difficult questions when he repops all in because you quite rightly narrow his range down to 2 or 3 possibilities.

To be fair AA vs KK it's all going in at some point. Chances of an ace hitting the board are very slim so KK is unlikely to escape.

If I had been in a different mood, I might have tried this. I guess my wish was that the maniac UTG would call with something marginal and that the SB would fold. I didn't want to play KK 3 way - is this too tight an approach?

You should never fold here...

I can't remember ever folding KK. I'm not saying it's not possible full ring or with lots of info and things...but 3 handed I'm never folding...

No, I don't think that I could ever fold KK. (I was just wondering if anyone else would have taken a different approach). But what about QQ? This seems a much more interesting question now.  

P.S. I don't want to sound too much of a creep but I appreciate how much effort you're all putting into this

[With QQ you don't want to be committed]

I just wondered if it is EVER right to fold KK pre-flop in a 3 handed cash game.

I guess if you're playing razz you could find the fold. Otherwise they're going in.

If Dan can get it all in with kings then everybody can.

Btw. With QQ I'm getting it in as well once I've committed this much.

Against a very tight player, do you want to be re-raising that much if you don't want to commit?  The re-raise to £50 is committing you to getting it all in to a further re-raise or on a favourable flop.

Would a re-raise to £30 be a better idea?  Or should you be trying to get it all-in here?

With QQ or KK?

TBH with either hand I don't like the £50 raise. It's too much. With QQ you don't want to be committed, with KK you don't want to scare off the weak aces, jj, qq etc.

£30 would be much better for either hand.

Thinking about it because of the £50 reraise you can quite easily put the OR on AA or KK. He can't be doing that with many other hands.

The problem with the over raise is it invites the all in because who would do that with anything other than KK or AA.

£30 next time please.

description of the player was

SB: £131 - playing reasonably snug

Why is everybody considering folding QQ here? Nowhere does it say the guy is the rock of all ages. You're three handed..if you can't go broke with QQ here you really need to loosen up IMO.

OK. A couple of clarifications.

The guy with AA was definitely tight. Sorry to have misled you with my understatement with "reasonably snug". (It's a bad habit of mine). I based this on his play when the table was full - we'd only played about 20 hands 3 handed. My feeling was that he would be capable of loosening up 3 handed though - otherwise he's a very odd player indeed.

The reason I raised so big was that I wanted to clear the maniac UTG out because he was very capable of calling £30 with a rag ace. If they both called my £30 raise and an ace comes on the flop, I feel that I have to fold to a big bet by either of them. I guess that is probably a risk worth taking. So the play then is to raise to £30, and if no ace on the flop, stick the lot in? (I can't see any point in holding anything back on a favourable flop)

QQ in the same situation, and I'm probably folding against a tight player.

So, with QQ, re-raise less (say to £30) and then fold to an ai from the tight player (and he was definitely tight)?

This may be a simple one, so feel free to lay into me.

Online cash table: big blind = £1
We had been playing 3 handed at around 2am for about 20 hands and I had been probably playing too tight after making a bit of a gain when the table was fuller.

UTG: £120 - playing loose/aggressive and raising just about every pot pre-flop
SB: £131 - playing reasonably snug
BB: £175 - me

UTG raises to £4 - shock
SB re-raises to £14
I'm in the BB with KK and re-raise to £50
UTG folds
SB sticks his remaining stack in
I call

SB shows AA and it holds up


My reasoning for re-raising with the KK was that although the SB was playing fairly snugly and hadn't been re-raising much, I assumed that he had got the hump with the UTG player who was a frequent pre-flop raiser. Even if he hadn't he could have re-raised him with a whole range of hands including AK, QQ & JJ specifically. I didn't want to give the UTG any reason to make a loose call with a rag ace either.
Once I had re-raised to £50, I was committed to stick the remaining £80 in to call the all-in, I guess.
I'm 20/80 even if he has the AA and obviously at least 70/30 favourite against any other hand (except KK). I'm paying £80 into a £185 pot.

So, I'm pretty sure that this is "just one of those things" but I just wondered if it is EVER right to fold KK pre-flop in a 3 handed cash game.
Also, did I re-raise too much initially, which is what left me "pot committed"?

This is a genuine question.

Met Phil Hellmuth at the Premier League of Poker launch party - he seemed fairly ordinary (apart from being exceedingly tall), which lends weight to the suggestion that the poker brat persona is just for marketing.

Whereas Devilfish - complete t0$$3r

I agree that it is quite possibly just for marketing. I think that makes me hate him more. If he couldn't stop himself from behaving this way, I'd edge towards pity. 

Jon's not that bad.

 

Met Phil Hellmuth at the Premier League of Poker launch party - he seemed fairly ordinary (apart from being exceedingly tall), which lends weight to the suggestion that the poker brat persona is just for marketing.

Whereas Devilfish - complete t0$$3r

I agree that it is quite possibly just for marketing. I think that makes me hate him more. If he couldn't stop himself from behaving this way, I'd edge towards pity. 

It may well all be part of his self-publicity drive but he's still a pr@

I despise Phil Hellmuth with a passion.
The guy is such a hypocrite and has the social skills of a backward 10 year old.
I cringe when I watch him on tv but I still do it just to see him get stuffed.
He may be a fantastic NLHE tournament player but I don’t think that I’ve ever seen him have a winning cash session on tv.

The Poker After Dark series being shown on Challenge currently is really great to watch because he gets beat up so badly.
After storming off set in a previous game when he was totally outplayed and lost a hand to Annie Duke and whining that people were talking when he was trying to get a read – he constantly talks while other people are playing big pots.

In the cash game currently been shown on Poker After Dark, there are three hands that made me laugh out loud.
He has made his usual statements about how he is going to slow play and really trap someone and that will show people what a great player he is and the other guys at the table aren’t worthy of playing with him.

It’s a 6 seater table and the blinds are $200 and $400 with a $100 ante. I’m a bit surprised that they’re playing an ante for a cash game but I guess that they can do what they like.

Hand 1:
I’m a bit hazy about the amounts bet but it’s something like this.

David Peat: QT in early position raises to $1,200

Hellmuth:  AK in the sb re-raises to $3,400

Peat calls.

Flop = KJx
Hellmuth checks dark (genius) and Peat checks his draw.

Turn = T
They both check again.

River = 9

Hellmuth check calls $1,100 on the river and then tells everyone how great he is for not losing more!

…

Hand 2:

Hellmuth:-    limps

Mike Baxter:- raises to $1600

Guy Laliberte:- calls

Hellmuth  calls the raise

FLOP is

Hellmuth checks.
Baxter bets $4,000
Laliberte folds
Hellmuth calls


Turn is

Hellmuth checks dark

Baxter bets $8,000

Hellmuth calls


river is

Baxter bets $16,000

Hellmuth insta-calls

Baxter says “2 pairs” and turns over his KK pretty quickly.

Then Hellmuth whines about Baxter slow-rolling him – very classy.

…


Now for the piece de resistance:

David Peat:- raises to $1,200

Hellmuth calls with

Cunningham calls with

The flop is

Peat bets $2,200

Hellmuth calls

Cunningham raises to $11,000

Hellmuth says “This is what I was waiting for fellers, I’m all in – all of it”.
Cunningham quietly says “I’m going to call you Phil”

Hellmuth says “Thankyou, I think I've got the nuts” with a really smug look on his face.

The cards get turned over:

Hellmuth says “Wow – set over set”.

The set of 10’s holds up and Hellmuth reloads for $100,000.

Pity that Hellmuth only had less than $20,000 at this point because he had lost so much already but it made me laugh.

It’s obviously unlucky to lose to a flopped set over set and I’d probably have some sympathy if he wasn’t such a t0$$3r.


I've had a bad day on the cash today with a number of bad beats but this has more than made up for it.

[everyone despises successful businesses]

Free in terms of doesn't cost anything, but there is a cost in privacy. Much like supermarket loyalty cards.

...and their results can be manipulated - if you have the resources.

Interestingly it's this that's likely to keep google on top of the tree. Most web pages are built to try and rank highly on google, so how does anyone else have a chance to do search better when everyone else is marching to google's drum?

Ah, now the truth emerges. As with Microsoft, everyone despises successful businesses, in fact the EC tries to legislate aganst them. Because they are too good at what they do. I'm curious how that came to be a crime?

Market forces, & the laws of supply & demand, will never be beaten by the EC or anyone else. But t's a shame that a gullible public fall for the EC's rhetoric.

I'm not sure how the above statement can be used as evidence of despising Google (or any other company). To use a VERY bad analogy (because I think this debate is missing something without one), it's like saying that trains in this country tend to be built with a certain wheel width because that's how far apart the tracks are laid. It would be very hard for someone to start a rail network with wider tracks because the existing trains wouldn't run very well on them.

You're using a web browser to view the forum right now, you just didn't know it...and I can promise you have no idea which one you're using.  

Wrong. It's a Toshiba Equium. State-of-the-art bit of kit unless I'm very much mistaken.

It's more likely to be called "Internet Explorer" or "Mozilla Firefox" - but I'm just guessing.

One of your favourite companies, Google, has been busy and are launching a web browser...

There's a 40 page comic explaining it all here:

http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

A rather interesting move I thought.

If it does what it says on the tin, this should be a boon.

Aaaaaagh - my time was sabotaged by the server not responding - that's so not fair. 

Was asked to review a potential player survey at work, and I'd noticed that some of the questions were phrased in a non neutral way ('Do you think X is good?', rather than the better 'What do you think of X?').

So I sent an email saying that I thought there should be 'less leading questions', thinking the meaning was clear enough.

'How many do you think there should be?' was the reply...

    

That's why I love our language.