Commerce tournament, wrong to shove preflop?
BB was 2K, I was in LJ with 48K.
Villain was the chip leader with about 120K.
Villain was UTG, raised to 4,500
Folded around to me. I had AJ hearts. I shoved all in. It folded back to him. He tanked and then called with KQ clubs.
I hit an Ace on the flop and he hit his King. River was a Queen and I was out.
Was this the wrong preflop move on my end? Solver has this as a call while it has KQ suited as an all-in shove at my stack size.
3 Replies
Shoving 24BB in this spot depends on the stage of the tourney. How many players remaining? How close to the money? Already in the money?
Most of the time, AhJh with 24BB in position for me is a call or a three-bet (3x). The shove here seems like a weak attempt to push through a hand like 77-TT or AK and steal the blinds and the one early raiser. Shoving this into the big stack is dangerous since a big stack may be more inclined to gamble with all kinds of hands that will be a coin flip against your AJ along with AK and AQ that dominate you. I would not generally shove in that spot with more than 15BB since you can call or put in a 3-bet, see a flop, and evaluate based on how the flop comes down in position. Folding such a strong hand is not an option, but shoving is not necessary.
I often will shove with less than 25 bb's when I 3-bet. It is borderline in this spot because Villain raised to 2.5x. If I made it 7.5 bb's that would be over 30% effective stack size which makes it pot committing. So my choice would be to jam or call. We also lose a lot of FE by just making it 7.5 bb's.
Villain here made a huge mistake in calling and you have a 60% chance of winning more or less given the cards.
The one thing here that would have led me to call rather than raise is that Villain is opening UTG. Unless Villain is a GTO/Solver youngish guy I would call because the UTG range will be a lot tighter than MP or later. Also AJs plays well multi-handed. If you know Villain has a wide range here including most PP's, any two Broadway cards and some SC's then its an easy jam.
Going deep in tournaments means you have to win flips and hands where you are ahead all in as you were here. It was just a cooler.
Hard to say without seeing all the details and knowing stage of tournament, but generally its more likely to be a call. You want to be a bit more polarized, so hands like AJs or ATs like flatting as they want to play against weaker aces postflop, while at the same time a weaker hand like KJs or even QJs might be a great 3b shove candidate.
