Q: Hero and Villian are chip leaders at the table, everyone else is in the 5-15bb range. Both are most active players at the table, Villian continuation bets approximately 65-70% of flops.
$400 +40 tournament
Final Table. 6 remaining
Blinds 1,200-2,400 w/300ante
Villian (57kstack) raises utg to 8k
Folds to Hero in sb
Hero has AKo and 52k stack.
What do you do?
Hero jams
Villian folds.
I thought for about a minute and jammed on the villian, I’m left wondering if there was a better way to extract more value such as flatting and check-shipping over his flop bet.
Another option would be raising to 20-22k and if called ship any flop.
A: I actually received this question before I published last week’s What’s Your Play?, but it seems an appropriate follow-up. In this case your hand is much too good to fold, even against the only player who could bust him at the final table. Given that we aren’t going to fold, though, we do have a strong interest in pursuing a low-risk line. It may sound counter-intuitive, but that means going all-in. Even if the other lines you suggest had a slightly higher cEV, which I doubt is the case, they increase your risk of elimination, which with 6 remaining at the final table is a $EV disaster.
You actually extracted quite a bit of value at a crucial moment in the tournament. Winning this pot without showdown makes you chipleader at the final table by a relatively wide margin, which is an enviable position.
The problem with 3-betting less than all-in is that it will still commit something like 40% of your stack. You aren’t going to fool anyone into thinking that you’re weaker than you are, since you couldn’t really do this and then fold to a shove. If anything, a smaller 3-bet may actually look stronger than a shove.
As for flatting, I don’t think it would be better than shoving. In all likelihood your opponent will play near-perfectly post-flop, folding to your shove when AK was the best hand anyway and calling when he gets lucky and outflops you. If you had AA, a hand that’s extremely difficult to outflop, there would be more of a case for this. Then again, an observant opponent would probably find your call out of position for 15% of your stack very suspicious, so unless you’re sure that you’re up against someone who wouldn’t notice, you’d probably be better off shoving AA as well.
What I’m saying, in a very roundabout and long-winded way, is “Nice hand, sir.”
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Shouldn’t the payout schedule and positions of stacks help you make some of this decision?
If the payouts are more flat I can see risking going out in 6th over say 4th. But where payouts are more top heavy and maybe moving up has more significant value isn’t this normally a fold with some 5bb stacks?
If you have the 2 shortest stacks and they SB and BB next hand and the CL is the button, isn’t this, to coin a term from the forums “lighting money on fire”?
Those are very important factors, and if this decision were closer, I would consider payout schedule and detailed stack sizes/positions essential. In this case it’s such a clear shove that only with some insane, contrived structure ($1/$2/$1000/$2000/$4000/$5000) would I consider anything but shoving. The chipleader ought to be nearly as afraid of Hero as Hero as of him, which means Hero has boatloads of fold equity in a relatively large pot plus very good equity even on the rare occasion that he’s called. If the chipleader had open shoved, which could be the correct play in a scenario like the one you describe, there are some plausible scenarios where it would be correct for Hero to fold AK. Getting in the last bet is quite important in spots like this.
Great question!
I just had a a very similar situation in a smallish live tourney. So what is the average “active” villain’s calling range here? TT, AQs+?