AK late on

[Pab]

OK, i promised to give a more detailed response to this hand and naturally forgot, but after a quick nudge I will give my take on the situation.

You obviously have a hand that with just one raise to you, you are going to play. If anyone advocates an open fold in this spot, you shouldn't play tournament poker. So by the process of elimination there are two possible options flat call or re-raise.

Option 1 - Flat call

This is a definite possibility, but you are out of position in the hand and everytime you miss the flop, which is more than likely, you lose the hand to a semi-decent player. Continuation bets are the norm so if u miss he takes it. I'm not prepared to call 12k of my 85k stack and then be forced to give up if i miss the hand. The flat call would be much more viable option if u had the button because if he shows weakness you can win the pot regardless of if you hit the board or not. If you flat call and hit the flop, hands like 99-QQ are not gonna play a big pot unless they hit a set, so u still lose the hand anyways. He has a big stack and has opened from the cutoff, you labelled him as solid, but not super tight which means he could easily have a non-premium hand that cant stand a re-raise, but by flat calling you would give him a chance to outflop or outplay you since he has position. There are going to be instances where he has AJ, AQ and the flop is A high and you will probably win a big pot. The chance of the perfect flop is pretty slim though, so all those times you call off 12k, miss the flop and fold don't really make up for the times you get a double up. To summarise, I don't like flat calling out of position for obvious reasons, position is huge in poker, especially in tournament format with ever increasing blinds where you cant afford to bleed off chips by playing weakly out of position.

Option 2 - Re-Raise

This is the more aggressive play and negates the positional disadvantage you have in the hand. I think the fact that you re-raised him last orbit is a reason to re-pop him again as he may get frustrated and make a bad call with AJ, AQ etc.....   You have 30 players left from 600, the big money is gonna be in the top 3 spots, now you have made it this far you need to looking to get in shape to win the tournament. Your hand is excellent and is in decent shape against the vast majority of holdings when you get to see all five cards. Even if you come up against kings you still win the hand 30% of the time. Even though the original raiser has you outchipped it isn't by a lot, so he is basically putting his tournament life on the line if he wants to play with you. As i mentioned before he could very easily have a hand that cant stand a re-raise and you win the almost 20k pot without having to make a hand, bonus!.  So in short id be more than willing to play this pot all in preflop, however i wouldn't just shove it all in on top his raise. I would make it 40k total, showing a lot more strength than pushing in but there is no way in hell I'm folding if he comes back OTT. A problem could occur if he flat calls the 40k, leaving you with 45k going to the flop, with a pot of around 90k. It would be a very tough spot if you didn't hit anything and not one id relish to be in. I think there is too much in the middle to give up on it now and would have to push in regardless, maybe the flop is Q high, and he doesn't wanna call the 45k with his JJ who knows.

I know you ran into AA this time, but thats life. You cant be results orientated on the outcome of the move, you need to play your premium hands aggressively at this stage of the tournament if you want to win it. If you are happy surviving to make a little extra money then by all means call/fold when miss out of position, not for me though I'm afraid. I would vary my play between re-raising and flat calling if i had the button, leaning more to-wards flat calling if, as you said, the player who raised was solid.

[totalise]

good post pab... theres one thing I disagree with :

So in short id be more than willing to play this pot all in preflop, however i wouldn't just shove it all in on top his raise. I would make it 40k total, showing a lot more strength than pushing in

I notice Flushy said the same thing... what I'm interested in is why you want to show strength in this spot? It seems to me that of the hands that you want to fold out (AA and all smaller pairs ) ....AA--1010 (roughly)  aren't going to fold  no matter what raise you make, and the smaller pairs (55 and below) are probably going to fold irrespective of your raise, so by selling strength, all you are doing is giving the hands you really want calling a better chance to fold (AQ---A10/QK etc) Maybe it gets hands like  99---66 folding which would call a jam, but given theres more ways of making high paint combo's then pairs, I dont know if its optimal to sell strength with AK.

I much prefer selling strength in these spots with hands like 88/99 which really benefit from getting overcards out the way, but when you have AK, I think the last thing you want to do is to try and engineer your betting so that the hands you want to call will fold, and the hands you want to fold will probably call or fold irrespective of your re-raise size, which is why I am a huge fan of the push here bc you let the hands you want calling to make hero calls, by selling weakness rather then strength

thats my take on it anyways, I agree that calling here is a pretty bad play, and you are prolly rite that a smaller raise is best, its just not something I would do.

Good post

[Pab]

I think if u shove, people automatically put you on AK, rightly or wrongly but its the assumption most ppl make. If i can take the pot preflop i would rather do that than have to race, and i think there is a greater chance to do that with a smaller raise as TT- 77 probably folds even JJ can fold preflop due to the strength you have shown.