Bubble of SPT Manchester final what would you do?

FarmerWife

Hi, this is my first post on here and was just wondering whether I made a mistake on the bubble last night?

I was playing the SPT Manchester Semi last night and we were down to 4 players and 3 seats for SPT Manchester, so on the bubble.

I have 12k in chips, others players have 9k, 11k on small blind and 12.5k on big blind, so quite even the blinds are 400 / 800.

I am first to act and have AK offsuit, what should my play be here, min raise to 1600 or just shove all in?

Second part of question is if you min raise are you calling a shove?

MattBates

I just shove, you can raise call (or raise fold if action goes crazy) but I am happy enough winning the blinds.

FarmerWife

I did just go all in, I figured if I min raised and just got shoved on I was putting myself in a difficult spot, thought I would give the opponent the difficult choice of having to call my all in.

As you say if I min raised and got 2 all ins, then its a fold.

The small blind called with queens and the rest is history as they say, just was questioning myself because of the result rather than the play I guess.

MattBates

I find sats do make us question decisions a lot due to the nature of the payouts. Given the stack sizes I think all in and putting our opponents to the test is best. The stacks are so similar such that we hope to get our shoves through and that an opponent gets their all in called. Unless our opponents are being super super tight (so we can raise a lot and fold to any resistance) we cant be raise folding from these stack sizes.

sam1234

I think fine as played, shoving is the lower variance route. Min raise leaves you open to shoves from small PP's that may fold to your open shove. The fold equity you create by shoving is definitely the better play. If you min raise and bb peels and you miss it also puts you in a difficult spot with 15 bb effective.

The result is vul but the play was +ev

madprof

Hey

I watched this play out- I would have played it exactly the same as you- as Matt said, at that stage, no-one wants to bubble so with little or no hands they fold and you collect the blinds...unlucky to run into pockets which makes you 43/57 to win(approx)

Anyway GL in the 50/50 and hope your luck turns in that should the same situation arise

(ps, if it helps- I know it doesn't- but whenever I call with QQ, it always loses...even to the point that now I actually consider folding them!)

cowhead

Devils advocare here, is nobody folding AK here?

MattBates

If we are folding AK, what hands are we playing?