04- 4-05, LearnTexasHoldem:

Folding Good Hands Early In Tourneys

Question: Hi, recently, I have played a lot of multi table NL tourneys. I rather get bumped out at a fairly bad place or make it to the final 5. Mostly, the reason gets me out is because ALL-Ins, when I get high pockets or hands like AKs, I get excited preflop, don¡¯t get me wrong, I can muck these hands when I feel that my opponents have me beat. However, pre-flop¡­ I would NEVER dump them no matter what happens, and most of the times if there were ALL-Ins, I would call them down and end up losing AA to KK or KQ and other second class hands which gets out of the tourney right there. I tried folding them, then found out in regrets that if I didn¡¯t fold my QQ I would have won big! The last tourney I had, about 5 minute into the game, one person went ALL-IN, I immediately called him down, in the 1v1 ALL-in, I lost my KK again to an AJ.

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So my question are, should I fold these hands when there are ALL-IN in front of me? (Early in a tourney especially) And when there are 2-3 people that already called the ALL-IN in front of me should I consider go ALL-IN with my pocket pair with some serious discretion? But then again, you rarely get these good hands in a tourney; folding them seems like a very good opportunity wasted.

Thank you for your time!

Confused

Xavier

Answer: If you should just muck depends on the texture of the hand and the players. First of all, often times when we get beat down in a number of hands, the tendency is to second guess our play and become more passive. To muck AA or KK preflop in a tournament is virtually never correct. Maybe the only exception to mucking AA preflop would be if you were last to act and everyone else called all-in. Then you might just pass and wait since AA doesn't do well against 9 opponents, but heads up or three way, you are stuck with AA or KK.

With that said though, it isn't the same with hands like AK, AQ and QQ. With AQ and QQ, you might actually muck a lot of the time if there are raises and reraises before you and it is early in the game -- especially if they are all-ins. With AK, you might call their all-ins some of the time, but you have to expect that someone already has you beat with a small pair and the other player in the pot may have one of your Aces or Kings.

Now all of this stuff goes out of the window when you are low on chips; you take what you can get in that position. Early in a tournament though, you are looking for places to bet where you are a big favorite, so passing with AK is sometimes correct. Don't ever feel as though you are married to hand and you have to go down with it regardless of what your gut is telling you.

How you play the above hands -- AK, AQ, QQ, etc -- when there are raises and reraises before you also changes when the raises aren't all-ins. You might go all-in with AK or QQ if someone else hasn't already since that gives you the extra power of possibly making them fold a little hand like 77, 88, etc. With the all-in bet though, it will go to river so if you can avoid a coin flip, you would prefer it.

Lastly, all of the information I just gave is contingent on the hands being multi-way -- a raise and reraise before you get to act. How you would play if it were just heads up is again different.

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