Here is the setup.  You are 8 handed with 22 players left.  Top 12 paid.   Winner gets over 5K.  Average chip stack is about 15K or so and your stack is just over 21K to begin this hand.  Blinds are 600/1200 and you are UTG +1. Blinds go up every 20 minutes with next one 800/1600 coming up next hand.  You are 3rd in stack size at the table.  The largest stack is immediately to your right and held by a loose (limps often and when he raises preflop it's 4-6 times the BB) but predictable player post flop who you have played twice blind vs blind and outplayed on the flop both times.  The next largest stack is to your immediate left and this player is a decent straight forward and somewhat tight player.  Large stack has 40k and next stack 35K.  Other stacks, 10k, 17k, 4k, 9k and 11k.


You get dealt 10 10

You raise to 2700 and player in cutoff position re-raises allin for 17K, so another 14.3K to you.   The small blind also calls allin for 3k.  Pot is now about 25.5K.

Call and win and you have a nice stack that will probably ensure the final table.  Lose and you are left with just about 4400 chips.  Fold and you still have over 18k in chips.


The Villain is fairly new to the table and the only hand you saw him play was a limp UTG w A4o (bl600/1200) which was folded to the blinds and the board checked down.





What do you do and why?




Kash

Thanks for your post Bigvee.


Ok,  does anyone else want to chime in before I say what I did and why?



Kash

I would have to lay it down vs a 17k All-in. Being 3rd in chips-plenty of poker to go.

Nice stats Big Vee!  

Thanks for the posts guys. It's funny how you all thought I should fold here. At another site I posed the same question and everyone thought I should call. Pocket 10s in this spot is always going to be a 50/50 situation in my opinion.

I folded my 10s. I just didn't want to get into a flip situation unless I knew I was a big favorite. Two over cards to my 10s and under 60 percent favorite, One over card to my 10s and I'm a 70 percent favorite. Js-Aces and I'm a 4-1 dog. I know he was a bad player but bad players have a tendency to get lucky and eventually I did get busted by a player I considered bad. I took several minutes on my decision here so it wasn't like I didn't think it through.

Another factor was that I still had enough chips to play with. Finally I really liked the position I was in at the table. The big stack (very bad) player was to my right, had another big stack to my left that I could steal blinds from and the best and most dangerous player was 2 seats to my right. I felt I could outplay most of the players post flop.

As it turned out villain had A5s and I would have won the hand. Flopped a 10 but that's the way it goes. I'm not upset with my decision to fold.

I got exactly what I wanted 2 hands later.

I had been waiting to snap off the big stacks aggression pre-flop with his 4-6 times BB raises. I had AKs in SB and he open raised to 4800 from the button (only 3 times this time which was unusual but I sensed he wasn't that strong). I put him on any ace, small pair, paint, suited connectors etc....basically a huge range. I shoved for 18k and he instantly called me with KQo.

Flop was 410J, turn 8 and river 9 and I'm out 21/105...top 12 paid. I was extremely disappointed of course but that's poker. I played a pretty good game overall and got my money in just about every time with the best of it. It's all you can do sometimes. After 3 months of not playing live I probably was a little rusty but certainly not out of my element.



Kash

Well yes, you are right but I was ignoring the all in bet from the short stack because it was insignificant and didn't factor into my decision other than I knew I would see what hand the re-raiser had if I call or not.


Kash