O.K. this hands was from the $5 rebuy last night on stars. Villan and I are both top 5 in chips with 30 players left. I want to illustrate what I do with AA in situation like this from time to time.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t8000 (8 handed) from (Format: Bet The Pot)

saw flop|saw showdown

SB (t122860)
BB (t156888)
UTG (t97782)
UTG+1 (t261460)
Hero (t225498)
MP2 (t177687)
CO (t111791)
Button (t223778)

Preflop: Hero is MP1 with , .
1 fold, UTG+1 raises to t24000, Hero calls t24000, 5 folds.


O.K. preflop villan makes a standard 3x BB raise from early position. This is generally considered a pretty strong hand for him to be openin so early. I look down to see AA. Here is my thought process for just calling:
1. Villan is one of the few people left in the tourny that has me covered, I don't want a small pot off him, I want all his chips. If I reraise here it makes it very easy for him to throw away an AJ, AQ type hand.
2. This masks the strength of my hand. He isn't going to put me on a big pkt pair when I just call preflop. Therefore if he hits top pair on the flop he is more likely to go all the way with it.
3. This invites someone behind me to try and pull a squeeze play seeing all the "dead" money in the pot.

Now this move is going to backfire from time to time and it is going to cost memost if not all of my chips, but that is a gamble I am willing to take to become the chip leader.

Now how the hand played out:

Flop: (t50800) , , (2 players)
UTG+1 bets t64000 Thats a huge bet....overbetting the pot there tells me he is trying to protect a very vulnerable hand (something like QJ), or he is on a draw. I push to either make him pay to hit his draw or hopefully let him get it all in with his QJ type hand. Hero raises to t201098, UTG+1 calls t137098.

Turn: (t452996) (2 players)

River: (t452996) (2 players)

Final Pot: t452996


As you can see the play worked perfectly. Unfortunately he had JT and that was the end of my tourny. .

However this shows just how profitable just calling a raise w AA late in a tourny can be. If I come back over the top of him preflop with a big raise he lays down his hand. Yeah in this instance it would have kept me in the tourny....but 4 out of 5 times I will win after a flop like that.

32 bbs is not a deep stack. you shouldn't be playing games.

Doinog this "from time to time" is probably fine, you may get a short stack to push behind you and trap him for a big pot, but I would play it more straight forwardly most of the time.

You did get him to commit all of his chips as a big dog, but I am not sure that targeting the bigger stacks is the best play at thist stage.

Nice finish though.

yes, doubling up is great,

but a lot of the hands he is raising here, you wont get any more money from him unless he really hits the flop hard.

If he is raising an unpaired hand, he is only going to hit that 1 in 3 times are less, and all them wont be good for him.

He may get all in now with JJ-99(or worse) and AK or AQ, but you may not get anymore money from him on the flop if he has those hands.

I see more reward and less risk with raising PF.

And once again I will say it, you stack is far from being deep.