You (or I should say "I") are about 10 hands into a tourney with 550 or so players. Blinds are still 10/20 (Stars tourney), and you are dealt KK in SB. Sweet!

Now, the table played a couple of hands rather calmly, then got a bit crazy with raising and bluffing all around, but it's too early to have much of a detailed read. Anyhow, EP raises to T180, and LP re-raises to T360. EP has you covered with 1600 chips. You have 1450, and LP has about 1200. What do you do here?

I'll post what I did (as well as my doubts and the result) after getting some comments.

Ais,

My initial thought is that the best option here is the straightforward one; push it in. There's 570 out there, which is a healthy, no-risk addition to your stack if they fold, and you probably have a good chance to double up early if you're called.

I suppose another option would be to flat-call, which gives you two advantages. First off, you can get away relatively cheap if an ace flops...and also, you get to see if EP reopens the betting. For example, if EP comes over the top and LP calls, you might be in a rare situation in which a pre-flop fold of pocket kings is okay...but even here, I'm not sure I'd be able to do it.

Incidentally, if I did flat-call and no other raises happened, I think I'd push on the flop if there's no ace. With over 1000 in there, I'm not giving something like AK or AQ a chance to pot-commit themselves with a check-raise, even though they'd be drawing thin.

Just my deformed thoughts.

-TW

P.S. Long time no see, man!

Well, push it in is what I did... and got 2 callers. EP had AK, and LP had 88...

And, of course, an A flopped, so I was out of the tourney.

Actually, I was wondering here even about the fold option, which sounds incredibly weak-tight, but it's almost like Cloutier vs. Brunson on this hand. Anyhow, in THEORY it's not at all improbable that someone has AA. If that's actually the case, then the A flop is essentially meaningless (except that it means that it's less likely that someone has AA, which actually helps my hand). I don't know, I've been having pretty decent luck lately playing very, very cautiously early, which does put me in a short-stack more often than I'd like at a certain point (even if I can grow, it's usually not fast enough to really keep pace with the blinds).

But, in this case, let's say they showed their cards. I should have about a 70% chance of almost tripling up--and a 30% chance of going out or being truly crippled. This early in the tournament, I'm not sure whether it's worth it.

I do see your case for the flat call, though, too. Maybe that's actually the best option. If an A flops, I get away wounded but by no means dead. Am I now going to fold, though, to an all-in re-raise from EP? In that case, he's seriously representing AA, but, given the table texture, it wouldn't have surprized me if he would have done it with his AK.

Well, I don't think my all-in was really a "mistake" in any sense. But here's a little more on my case for folding: Basically, you let the crazies eat themselves up (at the probable expense of being able to grow) and wait until you really need to before getting out on a limb. Doesn't this actually increase one's chances of making the final table?

Perhaps a bit of my current "tournament philosophy": Avoid getting a call on all your chips (or so many of them that you're in horrible shape) until you absolutely have to. I guess the additional question would then be whether it's realistic to strive for, say, a 90% chance of making it to the halfway mark in the tournament (which I'm defining as when half the players are gone). If so, then the all-in on KK actually does have to be a mistake, because I'm going out something like 30% of the time there (as unfortunately actually happened).

Anytime you have AA KK or AKs you need to get all your chips into the pot. Other wise you are giving hands like pocket 6's a chance to draw out on you.

Unless you are so certain that one of them has AA, I push in no question. Cold calling the raises is not even an option in my mind. So unless you KNOW someone has AA, I'm all in.