[petronder]

This hand still troubles me days later, and I am curious as to some other thoughts. First the background on the play.

About 100 people in a live tournament. With about 40 people left the blinds are 200/400 and I have 400 in chips left. I wind up double and tripling up a few times and soon I have about 38k in chips. It is down to 5 people left and my stack is about average. Now I had a pretty good run of cards but things had slowed down. I am one off the button when the player utg goes all in before the flop. He had 35k in chips so if I call I will still have 3k left but the blinds are at 1k/2k at this point. If I win I become the chip leader if I lose I am basically done. This player plays quite a few pots and is pretty agressive but he doesn't play many awful hands but will sometimes play some marginal one.

Everyone folds around to me and I look down and see Ace Hearts Queen Clubs . This is a really tempting hand and I go into the tank and think about this. I finally fold the cards with the feeling that he probably has a pocket pair and I just couldn't justify the cost in race situation.

I wound up coming in second but I think I could have one if I hadn't been so short stacked when it got down to heads up. When it was two left he had me about 6 to 1 in chips.

Thoughts???

[easyguy]

Thoughts? I think you did the right thing. I don't even think it is close. Even in the best case scenerio where you have the guy dominated (AdTd)...he still is going to win close to a third of the time. If he has a "marginal hand" such as KsJs you don't have a significant edge. You have no money invested in this pot. It's one thing to raise allin with this hand...quite another to call with it. The increase in prize money from 5th to 2nd should be comfort enough for you. Even if you race here and win...there was no guarantee that you would take first. However when you managed a headsup finish, you had second locked and freeroll for first.

[ThomasR]

You could have become chip leader and probably won, but in the circumstances you did what any sensible player would have done - folded to preserve your stack. In that situation, I would be looking for a high pocket pair to go into any hands, especially if the guy has showed form and seldom played poor hands.

He would have been looking for a high pocket pair to try and narrow the competition down somewhat, perhaps you disappointed him by folding