Folding pocket kings preflop


Recently I was playing in a $20 tournament on Bodog.com and we were getting very close to the bubble. I had about 35,000 chips and was sitting in the top 5 when I was dealt KK&spades on the button. A dream situation, right?

The player UTG raised! With blinds at 600-1200 he made it 4000 to go, he only had about 2000 left at this point so I was excited to put him all in as soon as it was my turn. Then the player on my right made it 10,000 to go…interesting.

This set off alarms in my head. There were several things I didn’t like about this:

1. He was another chip leader, meaning if he ended up beating me I would take a significant hit. Putting him all in would cost me 24,000 of my 35,000 chips.
2. He had been playing tight aggressive, which meant he probably had a big hand.
3. I honestly thought he had AA with how quickly he made it 10,000 to go, it looked like he wanted anyone else entering the pot to be pot committed - he had made a similar play in the 400-800 round with QQ.

I have always thought that folding KK preflop was impossible. You’d have to have an absolutely, 100% certain read on a player to make the lay down. For some reason, I really thought my opponent held AA. So what did I do?

I raised him 10,400 and put him all in. Right as I was seriously considering folding my KK preflop I said “This guy could easily have AK, the other KK (unlikely, but I’m looking for any excuse to hang onto my hand), QQ, or JJ. So I put him all in. I wanted so badly to fold, but I couldn’t.

He had AA. The initial raiser had 88 and ended up making quad 8s on the river to triple up, the guy with aces didn’t fair too badly since he took the extra 12,400 from me he ended up making money.

It was a difficult hand, and I really don’t think I could fold KK preflop. If someone has AA, so be it.

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