04-19-05, LearnTexasHoldem:

AJs Hand Analysis

Question: 1) Ok here are the details to my 'bad beat' and please tell me how wrong this was. The table was loose semi-aggressive.

Third level of play at 50-100 blinds. Hero has 2550 in chips the enemy has about 4000 in chips. I am UTG + 1 (early position) with my AJs I raise 400. All fold to BUTTON who re-raises me 600 bucks.

After some thought I call

Flop comes A J x

I go all in for 1550. He calls immediately with AKx

Turn is Q

River is T

I lose to Broadway.

Should I have re-raised or just got out of the hand. Also was my flop play correct or not?

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2) If I am in a tournament and say the blinds are 50-100 with a 25 ante and all I have left is 25 for the ante. Can I still play the hand? Or do you have to have a minimum of some blind money to play in a live hand. What I am trying to find out is how low can you go until you are forced to play a hand…

Thanks

JTS

Answer: I don't mind your raise preflop with AJs. Calling the reraise though may be a little loose. The problem is that if he raises to something that is almost half your chip stack, you are committing yourself to the pot. AJ doesn't play well against a reraise, you don't really know what you want to catch with it. An ace may be good, but you won't have any confidence, same with the Jack if you catch one.

I think you should have raised preflop, then realized that your hand wasn't good and mucked after the other guy reraised. And if you did think your hand was better than his preflop, an all-in would have been better than a call. Whenever you are faced with a decision that will cost you the majority of your chips and you assume you have the best hand, get the money in preflop so you have all 5 cards to draw to (or the person may fold preflop still).

For example, you wouldn't want to just call with AK there because if you missed the flop, what are you going to do? You want to get all your chips in so the thinking is over. You can't do that with the AJ though because it most likely wasn't the best hand, so a better move would be to just muck and lose the 400.

As for only having enough money to cover the ante and not the big blind, a regular side pot and all-in works. You could have just $1 left and the blinds be $1000/2000 and you could still go all-in and potentially win a side pot and a few bucks.

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