I am unsure whether I made the right play here (hindsight is 20/20) and wanted to see what your takes are.

The situation is that I am in a MTT with 21 players left. The top 12 money, but the difference between 12th and 6th is not all that great. I am sitting on 105k in chips, big blind is 3k, small 1.5k, they're about to rise to 2k/4k. Average stack is around 140k, so I am in the bottom half of chip stacks but not short-stacked.

I get AK offsuit on the button, the table is 7-handed. The UTG player raises 10k, it folds around to me and I re-raise to 35k. It folds back to the UTG player who takes about 5 seconds and then shoves all-in (he has me covered). My table image is relatively right, the UTG player is slightly less tight than I am but by no means a loose player, he is also a very good player.

At this point I have 70k left, facing a raise to my re-raise for my whole stack. If I fold, the blinds will soon hit 4k and that puts me at roughly 17 BB left. I thought for a good minute, feel as though I'm up against a range of QQ, KK, AA, AK, and maybe JJ. Ultimately despite this being the range I put my opponent on, I call, thinking that with 17 BB left I'm likely to miss the money, and especially unlikely to finish in the top 5 where the real money is. If I win the all-in, I am highly likely to money, and have a decent chance of getting into that top 5.

My opponent has AA, and knocks me out of the tournament. Looking back, I feel as though with any of the other, looser/more beatable players at the table, calling is a no-brainer. However, for this one player, I have a nagging feeling I should have known better than to think he would shove on me, knowing my table image, without the goods.

I am just wondering whether you think I made a mistake here. If there were two parts of my game I am trying to improve, it's that I don't three-bet often enough and I find the fold button a little too much in situations like the one above. Thanks

we block AA and KK so it's less likely for V to hold those.

i guess your Intention on the 3bet for 1/3 of your stack was to gii instead of folding to a 4bet?
if you are afraid of his range 4betting you, just call and see a cheap flop.

AKo vs JJ+/AK has 40% Equity
95k to win 215k ~ 44%
should be a fold

We have to call 70k, not 95k, so we need about 33% equity to break even chips wise. (We have to put in 70k of 215k). As you point out, we have 40%. We have to call here.

We could have definitely flatted the first time, but given that we 3b large over a large open, we are committed now to get in.

Thank you for the feedback. My rationale for the initial re-raise was that we're 7-handed, and I have AK in position, so I should be aggressive given those circumstances, and maximize the potential of the hand. My opponent in this hand was not loose, but was not super tight and had raised pre-flop with a decent range. So the 10k raise to start would consist of a fairly wide range (I'd say anywhere from a mid-range pocket pair to KQ/AJ and better).

I was looking to either take the pot down right there, or get a call and play from a position of strength post-flop. Not how it played out though.

3b/c, I like the sizing

I think the call is not bad, although there's two factors to consider not calling:
(The re-raise is definitely good)

- Although equity wise you should be good as it was calculated above, I'm not sure you benefit much from the variance risk if you account for ICM... Also, considering UTG raise/range, and your reraise size, and the player profile...

- 17 BB is definitely a very decent stack to keep playing. By today's standards you're not even yet on full shove or fold mode... Just this weekend I played from 25 players left to the final table with an average of 10 - 20 BB (ITM was 18 players), and I ended up shipping up the tournament. You should not be in the mindset of 'with 17BB I won't make it to the money'

I think AK is definitely overplayed generally, ranges of people shoving in situations like this overestimated (I would not put JJ in it tbh, and for sure there are no bluffs or other combos, you're reraising UTG as a short stack, UTG expects you to call 90% of the time), and people consider themselves committed to the AK too often when it's not necessarily so. I think this is definitely a situation that can be folded, but it's very close (especially if AK is not suited).

Yes, AK can be folded, and this is a close situation..

^ great first post

[ ] not this
[x] this

Hmmm also this. But not in a vacuum

I'll admit, I don't know ICM well so I might be overlooking that. However 9 people from the money I don't think there is much ICM implications at this point.

What does everyone think about shoving for about 10x the villians open? This puts our opponent to the last decision and can get him to fold out 10s and lower and hands like AQ, which overall seams like a good result to add almost 20% to our stack. When he does call he'll have JJ+ and AK which as mentioned in the post above we still have 40% equity against that range.

I think doing this with a strong range of AK, JJ+ and maybe add A5s as a bluff would be my default plan.

In my opinion, shove>3bet-call shove >call

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As played this is clearly a call even if you think villain's jam range here is exclusively JJ+ and AK. Even after factoring in some mild ICM pressure, when we're 40% vs. a range and need to win only 33% of the time to break even, that's just too big a gap to consider folding.

If you think villain has a lot of PP here that might fold, I can see jamming over the UTG being a possible option. We put villain's non nut-hands in some really awkward spots (does villain always want to call off TT-JJ in these spots) and block the only two hands we're really dead against.

1) You are still too far far from the bubble for ICM to have that much impact. In general ICM starts creeping up once you reach spots paid + 50%. So here ICM will start becoming a smaller factor at 18 players. Then at spots paid + 15% it sort of hits a spike. So the ICM spike is around 14 payers. Of course, ICM is always a factor, but it is on the smaller side still with 21 left and 12 paid.

2) So now we resort to a pot odds scenario. Your pot odds give you an break even equity of 33%. But you should not call off at break even here. There is some ICM. I would add another 5% here and call off with 38% equity.

3) When you do a home analysis, you should not rely on a single range. I always use as a middle ground the most likely scenario. But additionally, consider if he is tighter or looser than your expectations. You have to run those as well and compare the results. Sometimes, even the worst case will still end up being a close call. Sometimes you may see the worst case being an easy fold, and the middle case and best case might only be marginal calls. In that case, it might make sense to play cautious and fold.

4) You cannot exclude a bluffing range from the analysis. That is an error everyone has made in the ranging of the players above. The Dan Harrington rule: Everybody bluffs! When ever someone make a big bet in the pot there is at least a 10% chance it is a bluff. When I choose bluffs for my range I will try to choose the bluffs that are a little worse for us. Here instead of choosing A5s (a favorite bluffing hand of many players, I will choose some suited connector type that is not dominated)

Here with 7 players, the 4 bet range should be a balanced range about 3% in total.

Standard case:

http://www.pokerstrategy.com

UTG 57.77% { QQ+, AKs, 98s, AKo }
BU 42.23% { AKo }

Worst case: His value range is a bit tighter and I will remove his bluff. ( I would usually set this at the 10% minimum, but his value range is so tight, 1 hand won't spoil the results that much).

http://www.pokerstrategy.com

UTG 62.98% { KK+, AKs, AKo }
BU 37.02% { AKo }

Best case: His value range is a slightly wider and add an extra bluff:

http://www.pokerstrategy.com

UTG 55.71% { JJ+, AKs, 98s, 87s, AKo }
BU 44.29% { AKo }

What we see from these numbers is even the worst case scenario is only slightly worse for us than the 38% padded equity. It is still more than the real break-even number of 33%. While the standard case and the best case are good for us. With all of this information this has to be a call here.