No, you would not. You would be mocked mercilessly. From the mtt faq:
Should I fold AA/KK pf?
No, next question!
Alright, fine, here’s the thing. In a regular MTT you should never fold AA pf under any circumstances. Well, there’s one exception. If you’re VERY shortstacked in a bubble situation and doubling up will not likely increase your chance of moving up in the money while folding and letting someone all-in bust out may result in making the money or moving up, a valid reason for folding Aces might exist. But this is an extreme example where, for instance, the blinds are 500/1000, you’ve just lost a big hand and are down to 500 in MP with someone all-in in the blinds. In satellites however, there is the rare occasion where folding AA pf is justified given the discrepancy between cEV and $EV. For instance, say you have the second biggest stack in a satellite with eight players remaining and seven seats being awarded. You and one other player are well ahead of the pack, and a couple of players are quite short stacked with an M < 5. You pick up AA in MP and the chip leader, the only player who has you covered, pushes from EP. In this situation, folding your Aces is the right $EV move, because you can easily fold into the top 8, all of whom are awarded the exact same amount (notice that you are turning down cEV when you fold you Aces).
In non-sat tournaments, you should never fold AA pf. Folding KK pf in non-sat MMTs is no less a sin in the minds of many players. If you are in a deep stacked tournament, with some good reads and multiple all-ins in front you, you might find a way to let go of second nuts, but you’re probably losing substantial value if you play with the mindset that cowboys are Ace magnets.
(http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=4202217&an=0&page=0#Post4202217)
You hold aces. five other people go all-in ahead of you. Let’s give them hands across the spectrum. One person has QQ, one person has 65 (one of the best hands you can have heads up against AA), two people have AK (which they tend to overplay), and one complete lunatic has 83 offsuit.
Notice that not just one, but BOTH of your aces are gone. What are your odds here?
Breaking this down into English, you’ll win well over a third of the time. 34.8% of the time to be exact. Against great cards and all your outs used up, you’ll win a third of the time. Now that might not sound like a lot but it’s positively huge because when you win, you’ll win six times your original amount!
Imagine I offered you a game where you roll a six sided die and roll a 6. You have to pay $1 to play and if you won you’d earn $6. The odds say you’ll come out even in the long run.
Now what if I said you’d pay $1 and earn $6 if you rolled a 1 or a 6? Now you’d be a fool not to play because you’re earning double what you should be given the odds. It’s the EXACT same scenario as above.
OK, but what if the game cost $10000 to play and you earned $60000 by rolling a 1 or 6? The ONLY question you should be asking yourself is whether you can afford to lose. It’s the only relevant question. If your thought process is “welllll…I can only win 1 out of 3 times…those are kinda bad odds…I’ll just earn that $60000 by sitting back and waiting for another person who I can outplay at the dice game” then you’re an idiot.
So in the poker example I gave above, who was smart and who was dumb to go all-in? AA obviously, I discussed that one above. But also the 65 which wins 22.93% of the time and QQ which wins 18.34% of the time. They won’t win as often as the AA, but the odds of them winning is greater than the share of the pot that they contributed to. They’re earning money from the two AKs and the 83 who all put in their fair share of the money and do not have a fair chance at winning. The three of them together don’t even have the chance of winning that AA does by itself!
The OP now is saying that it was a 1 table SnG, so you cannot lay this down. If you get busted, go start another one up.
As for outplaying someone later, you cannot outplay someone once your opponent is all in. He cannot outplay anyone in this hand, he has no fold equity, and in MOST situations it is horrible to fold them. You can contrive situations however where you can make a case for laying them down. MTT chip stack management is different from cash game play. You cannot always strictly make decisions following what the math says is correct. In MTTs, you don’t have an infinite number of hands that you can theoretically play like you can in a ring game.
Hell I could probably come up with situations in a 1-table if I really tried. Let’s say you use some player points and win some tourney dollars on a website. For some reason you decide to spend them on a $200 SnG. First hand, 9 other players go all in. If you fold, you are guaranteed a $600 payout for second place. You have AA. I would really consider folding them here, taking the guaranteed 600, and know that I had 50-100BBs still and was heads up against a maniac for the extra $400.
This is a great example of why playing above your bankroll is a mistake, because it can force you to make the wrong decisions.
I’d also like to say that I would love to see more poker theory threads on this board. I feel there is seldom ONE, and only one, correct way, and seldom one horribly wrong way to play any situation, and I like to see the mindset behind differently skilled and types of players.
The only thing you are missing is that you shouldnt be playing to get into the money in SnGs, you should be playing to win them. As long as you are playing within your bankroll, play to win them.
Look at it this way-
There are 5 players left. One has such a dominant stack that if he has any skill at playing with such a stack, you are all going to be crippled for the rest of the game. Basically the 4 of you are fighting for 2nd and 3rd. Let’s say it’s a $10 buy in, and you do this 12 times. You finish 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th three times each. You win $150-$120 buy in for a profit of $30.
Now call that hand 12 times. 8 times you are gone. 4 times you have such a dominating stack to 4 guys playing on the bubble that the tourney is over. Let’s say 1 of those times you just hit a horrible run and finish 2nd. Now you have 3x 1st and 1x2nd for a total of $180-$120=$60 profit.
You should be playing to win SnGs from the first hand.
Which is true of every hand. But when you get AA ,you go all the way. It is the best possible start. You were in the lead. Every year a guy gets knocked out in first day with AA. What do you do wait for a better hand. There isn’t one. If they catch you lose.
I can accept that there is, mathematically, one correct way to play a hand, which seems to be what the majority of people here keep harping on. As I said upthread, I think there are sometimes (frequently?) other considerations to be made than simply “my odds to win are greater than everyone else’s, therefore play” or something. I also fully accept that this “strategy” isn’t the best one for making money, and if “professional” poker players want to gloat that they’re making money off of players like me, well that’s fine – so are the dealers, the waitresses, and so on.
It was my first time playing live in a casino. I know I misplayed a few hands (one pretty badly), but my choices weren’t strictly to make me money. I bought-in for the minimum amount and I was playing against guys who started with several times as many chips as I had. I played tight because I wanted to hang out there for a while and enjoy myself. As I said in a previous post I made a similar decision to the OPs near the beginning. I realized I had a fairly good hand, but staying to play longer (a certainty, if I folded) was worth more to me than whatever chance I had of winning.
Near the end I had AQo, played it ($2 was BB), and flopped the flush draw to the ace. My stack was to the point where I would only be in a couple more hands judging by the average bet at the table. There were three players (including me) in for the flop. The first bet (average opening bet for the table), the second called, and I raised all-in. The first guy called, the second guy raised the first guy all-in. The first guy called.
I didn’t hit the flush, but I didn’t mind going home at that point, either. I wasn’t playing to leave with everyone else’s money, I was playing to enjoy myself. Maybe the two are mutually exclusive (for my definition of “playing to enjoy myself”). I’m OK with that.
I don’t mean that there is mathematically one way to play a hand, I mean every action you take, from preflop decisions, to amounts to bet or call or fold down the board are debatable.
The initial poster is faced with a decision: he is not risking 1000 chips to win 6000, or $100 to win $600. In his head, he is risking his buy in for 6000 chips. He is NOT getting a return on his initial investment that is 6x his buy in. There is a world of difference philosophically between cash game play and MTT play. I completely disagree with his decision to fold here, but I can see instances in MTT play where it is possibly the correct move. To figure out his true EV, we would need to know what how often he will win the tourney if given a stack 6x as big as the other 4 players left. Again, I feel he made the wrong call, but I do see his defense of it.
Along the same lines as this debate: I have seen an article showing that it is actually more profitable(cash game) to limp in PF with AA, and build a huge pot, and win 1/3 of them, than to isolate and win 4/5 of them. Now this idea to me makes sense in a cash game, but it’s ridiculous in a tournament setting.