Second day of two-day $200 MTT with 1700 total runners. 75 left. Hero has 300,000 chips (25BB), which is a little below an average stack. Table has been pretty tight, but two new players just arrived, including villain with a slightly larger stack ~400,000, but no history with this villain.

Blinds are 6,000/12,000 +2000

Hero is in middle position with 88

Villain opens UTG for 30,000, which is a normal open for the table for this blind level. Folds to hero, who three-bets to 70,000, leaving 230,000 behind.

Folds to villain, who asks to see chip stack, and then snap-jams.

So, pot will be ~630,000 including blinds and antes, so Hero must risk 230K to win $630K, but it's for Hero's tournament life. There are no big pay jumps coming up, so that's not a consideration.

Hero only needs 30% equity to call, but what is villain's range? Having asked to see the stack size, villain can see that hero just put in 25% of the stack, suggesting that villain is likely expecting a call, and villain snapped in the shove so fast.

So, what is villain's range here and do we think we're flipping -- in which case the math would say call -- or do we think villain's range is more JJ+ and we are likely dominated?

(Yes, I know that folding, flatting, or jamming pre-flop might have been better options and would have avoided this spot, but now that we're in it, what do we think?)

Physical description/ age or anything on the villain would be helpful but the general population in live mtts at this buy-in level are more pair heavy in this spot IMO.

Villain was male mid-twenties with a beard and hoodie. Seemed confident and regular-ish, but I did not recognize him.

Villain can have AK here for his shove. But I doubt he has JJ/TT. I would range him at AK/JJ+ but he has AA and KK more than QQ and QQ more than JJ. I think he is calling with some AK and QQ hands and is mostly calling with JJ.

Even if he is shoving with AK all the time, I have him with overpairs about half the time. So calling would be: (20% * 50%) + (54% * 50%) or about 37% equity at best.

Also I don't think your math is right about the 30% to call. it costs you 230,000 to win about 408,000 (assuming 10 players). So its like >=36% equity to call.

It looks close with a worst case analysis (and there are players left to act). Still villain is young and can have AQ. Maybe even AJs. But for every hand I add like AQ, the likelihood goes up for hands like JJ/TT. It is close though. I would go with my reads in this spot. And your read that villain seemed confident and expected to get it in would tend to have me folding.

And yes, I would just call pre-flop for this reason. You give UTG an opportunity to offset his positional disadvantage by shoving.

W 25bb and no significant pay jumps, I def like a 3bet shove pre but played as is I would probably fold since we have no information on villain and hopefully find a better then marginal spot at best for our tournament life.

Fold now, at best you are racing and would still have close to 20BB's if you fold, still enough to maneuver around and play.

I would probably fold to the 4b jam. You gave him an attractive price to flat the AQ and AJ part of his opening range which I see people do all the time especially this deep but I expect him to shove all pairs that have you dominated.

Yeah, probably flat or jam pre, but 3b/f leaving ~20bb isn't too bad. Close for sure but I think he defined his range well enough to TT+, AK weighted towards pps. I'm folding.

Sucky spot, but I think this is a call unless you know the villain well enough that he will only have a big pair here.

Thanks for the thoughts, guys. I tanked for about 3 minutes before folding. Villain later said he had suited AK. Guys around the table confirmed (if you believe them) that they all thought he was more likely AA or KK given the way he snapped the shove after determining that he had me covered. Close spot.

Post script is that about 10 hands latter I shoved my remaining 18BB with JJ over a min-raise from big stack who was UTG. He called with AQ and flopped both A and Q to bury me. I kicked myself for not making the call with 88 vs. AK, but it was basically the same coin flip as the one I ended up losing later.

Happy Holidays!