Folding can be logical because even though he had the best odds to win the hand, he still was more often than not going to lose the hand, which means he is more often than not he will be out of the tournament, if it is a tournament.
That aspect of tournament strategy (dealt with extensively in David Sklansky’s Tournament Poker For Advanced Players) applies to close decisions. This is not a close decision. As has been pointed out, the EV difference is huge. I don’t think any pro would fold here.
Seconded. The same generally goes for pocket kings, though with a few more exceptions.
I was watching late night poker on TV about a year ago and something very similar happenned: the first two players beat very heavily on their hands and the third player folded with AA.
Let’s assume that your equity against 6 random hands with AA is 33%. That means if you call, a full two thirds of the time you’ll be out on your ass, watching from the rail.
A third of the time you’ll have 7 times your buy-in. In a single table tournament, you’re a lock to win money and a near lock to win the whole thing. I would take that risk every day of the week. You’re playing to win, right?
There is but a single time in which folding aces is correct. You’re in a tournament like a super-satellite where everyone who gets a prize gets the exact same prize. There’s 10 prizes and 11 people left in the tournament and 3+ players go all-in ahead of you. It’s better to fold your aces and ensure a prize than it is to play it out and hope the odds are with you.
Any other time, ANY other time, it is not correct.
It is so preposterous, so illogical, so anti-mathmatics and anti-good strategy to suggest folding at any other time or to fold at any other time, that message boards discussing poker would consider this OP to be a troll. That’s how clear cut the decision is.
Aces are meant to be played. Period.
It depends on how big the tournament is, and how early you are in it.
Is Daniel-Negreanu-with-$70,000-in-chips-on-day-one 7 times more likely to win the whole thing than Daniel-Negreanu-with-$10,000-in-chips-on-day-one?
I just thought of something - let’s discuss it.
You’re sitting on pocket aces. 6 Players have gone all-in in front of you. That means 5 people think they’ve got the best hand statistically. It seems to me that one or more of them are playing pairs. But also, what are the odds that one or two of them aren’t also holding an ace? (E.g. playing AK suited). That would reduce your odds of catching another ace if you needed it. Someone playing a lower pair, say 10s, it seems to me, would have a greater chance (based on the information given) of catching three of a kind.
Does that reasoning / should that reasoning affect your choice?
So if you are in a 100 table tournament and on the first hand 6 players go all-in, are you going to go all-in as well? I suppose if it is a $5 buy-in, but what if it is a $500 buy-in or $5,000? It simply is not the case that you should never fold pocket Aces pre-flop except in extremely rare circumstances.
If this was online and not for real money (copperwindow doesn’t say), it’s been my experience that people frequently go all in with full knowledge that they likely don’t have the best hand. They think it’s “bluffing.”
On the other hand, I was recently in a non-tournament situation where it would have made sense for me (note: for me) to fold if I had those cards. It was my first time playing live (at a casino), and I was going home when I was done. It wasn’t a tournament, but I suppose my decision to buy more chips when my buy-in was gone made it similar.
If that situation had come up, I would have had to balance the 40% (or whatever) chance of winning with the 60% chance of going home after five minutes. Knowing the exact odds, I’m not sure what I would do, but wanting to stick around and play is worth something, in my head at least. Economically and statistically, I understand why it’s a good call. But there are sometimes other considerations.
Math is math is math. What’s correct in one situation will also be correct in another situation if the only difference is the buy-in. The money should never matter. If it does, you’re playing too high for your own good because the fear of losing is radically affecting your ability to make correct choices.
I kind of agree about the buy-in, although I think you can play poker with different risk tolerances.
The EV calculation for a given hand is not the correct calculation for a given hand in tournement play as to the correct play. The correct calulation is the EV of the tournament, not the hand.
So let’s say we are at the first hand. Your inital EV is your buy-in (presuming all the buy-in is paid out). Suppose you are in a hand that is 40/60 against and is all-in. We know that 40% of the time you wil end up with 0 and 60% of the time you will end up with the EV of the tournament if you win that hand. With a larger stack and fewer players your odds increase. To be correct to play that hand you would need an expected value of the rest of the tournament to go up 60%. In a ten handed game, that is very possible, in a thousand handed game, highly unlikely.
was it a final table situation? if two people are in before you, you can increase your payout just by sitting back and watching one of em bust out.
Sorry, I’m not following this. Are you saying that you’re against one other person all-in and it’s 40/60 against winning?
No, I am saying you are against, say, 5 other players.
OK, then, let’s throw some math into the equation. You buy in for $10 and it’s a ten handed game, as in the OP’s scenario. That’s $100 up for grabs. $50 to the first place, $30 for second, $20 for third.
Let’s assume that you’re as good as the average player and this table is filled with average players. That means that at a ten handed table you’ll win 1/10 times, come in second 1/10 times, come in third 1/10 times.
So you play 100 tournaments and you’ll expect to spend $1000 and win $1000. Exactly even, as one would expect.
OK, now six people go all-in ahead of you and you rate your pocket aces as a 40% favorite to win. You’ll lose 60% of the time and be out. You’ll have 7 times the rest of the table when you win 40% of the time. 70% of the chips in play means a 70% chance to win the whole thing. So if you follow all that, then 40% of the time you’ll win the whole tournament 70% of that time. In other words, you’ll win the whole thing 28% of the time.
So if this situation came up in 100 tournaments, you’d lose flat out in 60 of them. In the other 40 you’d win the entire tournament 28 times
28 x $50 = 1400. That’s a $400 profit by calling and that’s JUST counting the times you win, not the times you came in second or third, which will only add to your expected value.
what if it’s a larger tournament? The logic still applies. You dominate the table you’re at, able to exploit your edge further. You aren’t playing scared. You don’t have to worry about not making moves because of the rising blind structure.
And finally every chip you gain in relation to the average stack increases your ev on the entire tournament, regardless of how big the tournament is.
It’s the same even if you’re twice as good as the average player.
The people in this thread who claim to want to sit back and wait for a better opportunity where they can outplay the opponent are failing to realize that this, right here, is the absolute best opportunity they could possibly get. Failing to capitalize on it IS failing to outplay the opponent.
The rationale for why you should call could be different for different scenarios, but they’ll all lead to the conclusion that you should call.
This is sort of where I was going in post #26 - can you rate your aces based on regular probabilities?
The given rule is that pre-flop AA is around 45% against ALL other hands. So if you were the first man betting, that’s what you have to go on — 45%. Rock and roll. All-in.
But AA against 6 other players all-in? Let’s assume the first guy bluffed with crap cards. The second guy felt confident enough to call him, then the third guy, etc. So you can assume that one or two of them have decent hands. That’s got to change your appraisal of the situation right? Because it’s no longer AA against all other potential hands - it’s AA against 5 players who feel reasonably confident about the supremacy of their hands.
And that’s not even getting into my post #26 - whether we should worry about another player holding an ace - and how that changes the odds. (I would really appreciate it if somebody would touch on this point. Does it make sense or not? It does seem like overthinking to me - but that’s what we do here. 
)
If you wanted to think that far into it, you could just as easily talk yourself into thiking another person had AA.
I’m sure you could contrive a situation at the end of a huge MTT with a large buy in where it would be more profitable to fold AA preflop (like the situation I described above). You could make a case.
I also could say that in either of the last two years at the WSOP, had this happened to me on the first hand, I would have folded. I freerolled into both events, so I wasn’t playing over my bankroll, yet simply cashing at the minimum would be $+14,000 for me, which is a big deal. I would not throw my tourney away on the first hand knowing I wouldn’t win the hand 1/2 the time. I faced a similar decision at the end of day 2 this year.
Carlos Mortenson raises 3x the BB UTG. Very loose player directly to my right (who happens to be #2 stack in whole tourney) calls. I have AK suited. I know I’m ahead of both guys. I call, looking to trap. Guy to my left immediately raises all in. I have 27K left, and there is about 45K in that I can win. Both other 2 hands fold, I think for a minute and fold. I figure I’m in a coin flip, and that probably one of my outs is gone. One huge advantage to playing AK heads up vs a smaller pair is your fold equity if you stay aggressive. I have none with the other player all in(he had me covered). Pot odds dictated that even with one out gone, I should call, however I wasn’t going to risk my entire tournament on a drawing hand when I wouldnt have a chance to outplay my opponent after the flop. I can find better situations to get my money in. I show AK, the guy in BB flips out and goes on and on about how horrible a fold it is. The reraiser shows QQ. We look at the flop and it was Q-7-3.
I think you can contrive of situations in tournament poker when the mathematically right play is not the right play, and I think they probably come up more than you think.
FWIW, I think if you posted this ? on 2+2 or cardplayer forums, you would be surprised how many players would say the fold is understandable (in a huge tourney with a large buy in), especially if you know you are better than the majority of the field.
edit-but this is never a fold in a freeroll, a rebuy tourney, a cash game, a SnG, or a MTT where you are playing under your bankroll.
I play poker for a living. The numerous responses on this thread indicate why it is possible for me to do so.
Except for supersatellites or bizarre final table situations like the one Sklansky covers in TPFAP, you don’t fold aces preflop. Your goal in poker is to get the best of it. Getting it in with the best hand preflop is exactly what you want. Imagine if a genie granted you the chance to buy a lottery ticket that had a 1/100 chance of winning the multimillion dollar jackpot, rather than your typical 1/50 million shot. Would you pay a dollar for it even though “99 times out of a 100, you’ll just be out your dollar”?
It was a tournament with ten players where the top three ended up in the money. I folded my aces because:
- Against six other players, my odds of winning were very bad and if I didn’t win, I would lose right there and
- because chances were that after the hand, there would be five players left. Before that hand there was a thirty percent chance that I would end up in the money and after the hand, there would be a sixty percent chance that I would end up in the money because there would be five players left and the top three end up in the money. How could this plan be wrong?
Under that logic, if I’m the big blind and six players ahead of me go all in, I should go all in regardless of what cards I have because if I win, the pot will be that much bigger.
No, you shouldn’t. The issue is pot equity, not the size of the pot. With AA, you have a giant pot equity edge. You’ll lose most of the time, but the amount you win is greater than the % of the time that you win. Eg, you only win 1/4 times, but when you do, you win 6 times your investment. This is good. In your example, you’ll win 6 times your investment, but maybe only do it 1/8 times, which is bad.
Your logic, however, is quite enjoyable and profitable (for me that is).