So you want pocket aces?

After watching one of the biggest hands of the day, I posed the question...

If you had a chance to have pocket aces one time in a tournament, what kind of opposition do you hope to face?

And I received some very thoughtful answers...

My personal favourite scenario would be at some point well into the
tournament, so you are likely to be able to get all in preflop and get
called, you want to find: AA v AK v AK v KK. Then you are 93% favourite to quadruple up, nice! --Anonymous

I guess I'd want someone to open with a raise, someone to
re-raise, and I go all in with Aces. All the money goes in, and the other
2 have KK!....Making the Aces roughly 96% fav. --Adam

When I'm somewhere near the bubble, not sure I'll make the final table, against an aggressive player who'll take me on and another shortish stack all-in! Pocket Aces are wasted when the blinds are small. --Richard

They are all wonderful scenarios and things about which we dream when we're sitting looking at 83 offsuit all day. Well, consider this hand that actually played out this afternoon.

With the blinds at 500/1000, the player under the gun brought it in for a raise, making it 3000 to go. The player directly to his left called the 3000. The rest of the table folded around to the small blind who pushed in for about 15,000 more. The big blind then announced he was all in for a similar amount. After some thought, the other two players called. At once, we had a pot worth more than 70,000.

With both blinds all-in, the other two players saw the flop, TT5 rainbow. The player under the gun who had been the first raiser pushed all in and the player to his left folded, saying he folded a middle pair.

That left the remaining three players...

SB=AA
BB=JJ
UTG==QQ.

The turn and river, a nine and three, improved no one and the player who found aces in the small blind quadrupled up. He remains in the tournament with 39 players remaining.

Certainly, it wasn't any the perfect scenarios listed above. However, when you have callers, just about any scenario works. In this aces, AA faced JJ, QQ, and a middle pair.


Aces hold up