Earlier today, I was playing a game of holdem. On the very first hand, I was the big blind on a table of ten with pocket aces. The first three players to act went all in. By the time it came to me, six players were all in. Thinking that the odds were against me with six other players, I folded. Did I make the right move?
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I think this will do better in IMHO.
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What was the winning hand?
One guy had pocket jacks and caught a jack on the flop and another on the turn. He had nuts.
I think early on, it’s usually a good move to get out of the way. I know a couple of guys who make their living (mangy, but a living nonetheless) playing online poker. They tell me they just go for broke early on to try and get the chips to muscle everyone around. When you’re playing 5 or 6 tables at the same time - that’s probably a good idea. See which one you build up a chip lead on, and then focus on maximizing your profits from a strong position.
So anyways, yeah you did alright. I probably couldn’t have resisted the temptation of trying to catch six other players all in so soon. That’s why I have a real job. 
What? Do these people know how to play poker?
You did the right thing. When playing people who have no idea what they are doing the best thing is to sit back and try to out play them.
This really only works when playing against bad players. But there is no shortage of bad players playing internet poker. However, even though it works long term it has a very high variance. If you know what you doing it better to play a more conservative game.
Then yes, folding bullets was the right decision.
It would be very hard for me to let go of AA in this situation, although it’s probably (my estimate) only a 30% chance to win in this situation. Anything lower than that I almost certainly would fold. Let the idiots get out of the way between you and your money. You can always outplay the dummy that wins that hand.
It depends on how much money you have at stake and how much it is worth to you. In a cash game (non tournament) I would always make the call.With aces, even if all 10 go in all in before you, you will ALWAYS have pot odds- even if you have a 12% chance of winning initially, if you can win 10 times your money its a good bet that will pay of in the long run if you always make the call.
Two things:
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If I were sitting at that table, I would probably suspect that the deck was stacked. Three guys go all in on the first hand, and pocket rockets (had you stayed in) loses to quad jacks? Uh… that’s a bit too much of a coincidence for my taste. At the very least, the deck wasn’t shuffled enough.
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Assuming the deck isn’t stacked, I think the statistics would dictate staying in the pot. Someone may come along to calculate it and prove me wrong, but what are you afraid of? That the other two aces are held? That would work in your favor. That someone else has pocket pair? Higher than aces?
I can understand folding in such a situation, but that’s an extremely conservative move.
You made the wrong choice. It’s true that you were not a favorite to win the hand. But the expected value (EV) of calling is greater than the EV of folding.
Some Numbers:
Ace-Ace versus 6 random hands has 43% equity.
If we give your opponents credit for decent hands*, your equity is 45%
Equity is similar to winning %, but accounts for the possibility of split pots. Saying that your equity is 43% means that you “deserve” 43% of the pot.
Let’s say everyone at the table had $100 before the hand began. When 6 players push all in, there’s $600 in the pot. If you call, there will be $700 in the pot. And since your equity is about 45%, you would “deserve” .45 * $700 = $315. This is your EV for calling. This means that if you were in this situation an infinite number of times and always called, your average stack after the hand would be $315.
If you fold, there is a 100% chance that you’ll have $100, so your EV for folding is 1.0 * $100 = 100. This means that if you were in this situation an infinite number of times and always folded, your average stack after the hand would be $100.
Playing poker successfully is about recognizing what play maximizes your EV. It will make you the most money in the long run. In this case, you gave up a tremendous amount of EV by folding. It’s not easy to calculate EV equations at the table. For example, I didn’t know what the equities I listed above were until I ran a simulation. and it becomes much more difficult when we don’t have the best possible hand, and we don’t know what the other guy has. But with AA, we shoul be more than willing to go all in and get called by everyone at the table.
For a great explanation of EV, equity, and estimating them at the table, I recommend the excellent Getting Started in Hold’em by Ed Miller and David Sklansky. If you want to seriously study and play the game, there’s no better resource than the 2+2 internet forums.
Cliff’s Notes: DON’T FOLD ACES PREFLOP. It is always wrong, except for in some very specific and rare tournament situations. Just say no to folding Aces!
Equities calculated using Poker Stove (free software)
- Decent hands = 88+,A9s+,KTs+,QTs+,AJo+,KQo
This type of thinking has no place at a poker table. You use the information you have to make your decisions. Whatever happens after you make the decision doesn’t affect whether or not the decision was a good one. If **copperwindow **knew what cards were coming on the flop before the flop was dealt, I don’t think he’d need our advice!
That type of thinking is beautiful to have at the poker table.
To the OP: Unless you are constructing some crazy payout schedule (*), you made a terrible decision.
(*) Like, the first guy eliminated loses his buyin and the rest of you split the remainder. But under any normal structure, you made a terrible decision. Terrible.
There’s a less contrived situation where it’s a reasonable decision, which is if:
(a) you’re a much better than average player
and
(b) this is a tournament with a huge eventualy payout
(ie, you’re Daniel Negreanu and it’s day one of the main event of the WSOP)
In that case, you figure the important thing is to not get busted out, because as long as you’re still in your superior skill will gradually win you money anyhow. Negreanu is good enough that he’ll probably end up still alive and with quite a large chip stack at the end of day 1. Should he make a play which has 60% chance of busting him and a 40% chance of tripling him up? It’s positive EV purely in terms of chip stack, but the difference between alive and busted is probably a lost smaller, in the long term, than the difference between tripling up and not tripling up.
I would imagine you were playing either a cheap rebuy tournament or a freeroll, if all of those players went all in preflop. In either case, I would make the call.
You might lay down AA preflop in some weird tourney situations where moving up 1 place makes a substantial change to your bankroll…i.e. you are small stacked at final table of big tourney, 2 other small and similar sized stacks move all in, chip leader calls them, you have AA. By folding, you guarantee yourself of moving up one place in the standings since at least one of the smaller stacks will be knocked out, and the payouts are large enough that moving up one spot is worth it personally to you.
Mathmatically, it’s never the right fold, but I can envision situations where the right decision to your personal bankroll is to fold. We could probably debate if you should be in tournaments where you could be put in that situation, since you are probably playing over your bankroll (freeroll qualifiers, etc. notwithstanding)
BINGO.
Just the other day I raised to 225 (blinds 25/50) the FIRST HAND of the tournament, UTG with two black kings. I get a MP caller and the BB calls.
Flop comes Jack-Nine-Six, two diamonds. I bet 675, MP pushes all-in over the top…BB CALLS! :smack:
After my jaw hitting the table in complete disbelief (they were very solid players) I decided there’s no way my KK was good and mucked it face up. Sure enough BB turned over 66 for a flopped set (MP had AJ said he put me on AK).
Then the river comes a king. :rolleyes:
Whle I agree that the EV calculations indicate that going all-in is the right thing I think you need to take into account whther this was a cash game or a tournamment. EV is a nice concept on a hand by hand basis, but it totally ignores the dynamics of a tournament situation (which I don’t know if that is what the OP was). Ideally you want to know what are the odds that winning this hand helps me win the tournament. If this was one table out of a hundred then this was a very good fold, IMO. There is still a alot of the oturnament to go, the odds say you are more likely to lose and be out of the tournament than stay in. I fyou win you will have a nice chip stack to start, but that is hardly a guarantee of anyything. If this was say a sit-n-go then it probably was not a good fold.
Of course if it was a cash game then I think it was a very bad fold.
Unless your EV calculations are expansive enough to include the dynamics of a tournament situation, which they should be.
But, definitely, a straight-up single-hand cash game all-in more-hyphens calculation of EV is insufficient in this spot, and as others pointed out, doesn’t have to be as contrived as my first example.
You got dealt the best possible hand. How could folding be logical. ?They had to get help to beat you. You could also get help; It was not a logical or correct move. It is a game of mathematics after all.