Late stages of the Midnight Madness poker tournament and there is a lot of action ahead of me where I have AKos in the big blind. This hand turned out weird because of how one of my opponent's played, but I was still faced with a difficult decision preflop.

As far as poker tournament strategy goes, I am Yellow MZoned here and ready to play this hand with aggression. The field has been pared down to under 60 players now from over 2,000 and I am well into the money, however, that payout at the level is still very small, around 40 or 50 bucks. I had 4 entries into this tournament and 2 of them were ITM. The players at my table all seem like solid TAG style characters.

There is a min-raise from early position (1) and my opponent is leaning to LAG, but not spewey post-flop. I think he is just tricky. Thus, I feel my hand is ahead of his range, and even if he has a pair, I think he would fold to a shove from me, as I have TAG stats. The pot is already 10,800.

Honeslty, what the hell? A min raise isn't so bad when the blinds are this big, but look what results here.20 other players flatting bringin the pot to over 20,400. Flatting here with anything but a low low pair, to me is a poor play, so that's what I think both of these players have now, as well as something like AQ or AJ.

The first flat caller is new to the table and I have no information on him. The second flat caller is classic TAG, so I really think he has a low pair like 88 or under.

Stack to pot ratio right now is about 4:1 and I cannot fold this hand, but I am debating as to calling or shoving here. In deciding what to do, I almost always focus my attention on the first raiser, because the flat callers will likely fold to my reraise if they only were only strong enough to call in the first place. Now also because there were two others in the pot, a shove by me here looks even stronger too. Given the current stakes, my desired outcome here is get all other to fold without a flop.

My decision is to shove because I think there is a very good chance that all players will fold and I will pick up a nice pot. I like this better than calling because with 4 players seeing the flop I am in danger of being behind a set and/or missing the flop entirely. This is one of those spots where my decision to shove is much easier than making a play on a flop that comes KQT or somethig like that. I suppose I could have reraised to, but I might still be faced with difficult decisions post flop. What would you have done?

Everyone folds except the player I know nothing about. Oh oh - for sure I am up against a pair.

What? Pocket Kings!!! He limp called with pocket Kings. I was not expecting that! For him NOT to raise preflop there when there was only a min-raise in front of him and four players to act behind with excellent calling odds. Had he reraised, I could have very well got away from this hand, but as it was... the hand actually worked out for him perfectly because of my shove.

So he wins a huge pot, and if I had won that, it would likely mean another final table appearance at the Midnight Madness. From evidence here, I think he was somewhat inexprienced or nervous though, because even though he had the chip lead after this hand, he finished in 18th place.