This might be a "clear" decision but the hand caused more discussion than expected between friends so I'd like a little outside input.

Well into the money but ladders still slow and not overly significant. 172 out of ~5000 entrants remaining. A4o in the BB; Hero has 19.3bb behind after posting the BB and the BB-Ante. Folds to the BU who is the big stack and a highly active player. BU opens for 2.6bb, SB folds.

What's hero's best option(s) and why?

Also should I be posting this here in the "Mid-High Stakes MTT" section, or in the "No Limit Tournaments" section?

Thanks

My chart mixes between a shove and a flat in a vacuum.

I lean toward a flat since I dont think we have a lot of fold equity considering we are against a big stack in a bounty tourney.

I agree with ledn that calling is best. Jamming can’t be terrible, unless he has well over 100bbs in which case he’s never folding and A4o won’t perform well against anything he decides to call with (A2, A3. We’re not in great shape against 910.

Even if the ladders aren’t significant, we’re very deep in a tourney and stack preservation is huge. I think we can find a better spot to jam preflop.

Chances are we’re ahead, and if we hit an ace we can just go with it. Probably a lot of aces left in the deck given preflop action.

I think a jam 100 in a standard tournament. Better hot/cold equity than playability. This deep in a standard bounty, the bounties don't mean much, so I'd probably go with it.

Jam. And maybe call at a super low freq.If player has been active, should be opening very wide on the button. A lot of villains range can’t call a 20bb win honestly. A lot of their suited one and two gapper hands, maybe 22/33/44/55, kj,q10-10, etc type hands are probably folds (maybe not due to bounty).

There are no real icm considerations here and we have 19bb. We need to find ways to chip up. I think calling is a mistake somewhat. Let’s say I’m on the button. I’m going to cbet almost all flops that don’t favor a bb calling range. Like any Qxx Kx Axx flops, I’m cbetting 1.6bb (20%-25%) into 6.7 bb and barreling some turns when you just call flop. It’s just very easy to get owned by decent players that play aggro if you peel here and A4o doesn’t play well on many flop textures.

I can be wrong here and maybe we should be flatting more often but I just like ripping pre here and using fold equity to my advantage. When we are called, we get to see all 5 cards and don’t just bleed chips which is going to be the case often when we just call pre in this spot. You run into a bigger hand, who cares. That’s the game when stacks are shallow. A4o is a great hand to rip here and pick up 4.6bb.