Hi guys

Table dinamics : deep in the money but still far from FT. Everybody is playing this table pretty tight.
My image : like 2-3 hands ago i doubled winning a flip with AKs
Villain : 23/16, i dont remember nothing special about him

What do we do?

[converted_hand][hand_history]Poker Stars, $1.80 Buy-in (10,000/20,000 blinds, 2,000 ante) No Limit Hold'em Tournament, 9 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

SB: 208,156 (10.4 bb)
BB: 290,086 (14.5 bb)
UTG+1: 298,084 (14.9 bb)
UTG+2: 312,532 (15.6 bb)
MP1: 188,698 (9.4 bb)
MP2: 514,491 (25.7 bb)
Hero (MP3): 549,928 (27.5 bb)
CO: 210,772 (10.5 bb)
BTN: 318,873 (15.9 bb)

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with 7 7
3 folds, MP2 raises to 40,000

Jam or fold. You can’t flat on this stack size. I would jam and hope villian finds a fold.

Ditto, if I were the villain, being that this is a tight table I'd be opening every suited ace, most broadway combos, suited connectors down to like 87 or something and pairs down to around 4s. Against such a range jamming 77 is definitely a good play. That said I wouldn't make that play with much worse due to various reasons like icm, players behind and likely skill edge against the table overall.

No shoving doesn't feel right.

There is a 25% chance one of the other stacks call you with a top 7% hand with 38% equity.

The MP2 will call you about another 25% of the time with 35% equity.

25%[(28.5BBs * 38%) - 12.5BBs] = -0.42BBs

25%[(52.5BBs * 35%) - 25BBs] = - 1.66BBs

50% * 4.5Bbs = 2.25BBs

cEV = 0.17 BBs.

This is just barely borderline profitable as a direct cEV analysis. And this doesn't take into account the times there may be an overcall or any ICM effects. Granted ICM is small, but even at only 10% ICM pressure, this becomes unproftiable without taking overcalls into account. Overcalls could happen about 5% of the time, which reduces the fold equity which is th eonly number that came up positive so far and we would have about 24% equity in an overcall pot.

Additionally, MP1 is the 1 player at this table we want to avoid playing a huge pot in a marginal spot.

So shoving has to be incorrect here.

jj has convinced me that shoving is too borderline to be any better than folding which gets you about the same EV without any of the variance. If we use the same numbers (only assume that MP2 will shove with a few more hands that he won't call with), raising to 6 bbs then folding to MP2's shove but calling off any of the short stacks comes out to worse EV than just shoving to begin with so that's out.

Folding is fine but it's boring. Is flatting that awful? If one of the shorties squeezes, we have an easy decision based on what the original raiser does. If we play a pot, we're in position and will be able to call almost any flop. MP2 should be just as scared of you as you are of him. Is he really gonna barrel off with AK on some low board? He'll probably stab once then want to take it to showdown. So let's say you get squeezed 40% of the time, half of which MP2 calls half of which you call. That leaves 60% of the time where you're going to the flop. How much money do you have to make in these situations to make this better than folding (0) or a slightly +EV shove?

.2 * -.42 = -.084
.2 * -2 = -.4

.6 * ??? =

It's .8 big blinds to be 0 and 1.09 bbs to beat a +.17 shove. Granted, this is like back of the napkin math mostly based on what JJ has already done. (For example, your equity against a wider squeezing range would be slightly better, but whatever.) I would guess that anyone playing in position that has the biggest stack with a hand that can withstand at least one bet vs someone who has a stronger range but is probably going to play pretty straight forwardly should be able to play well enough post flop to be +1.09 big blinds.

If I were to 3bet here it would be to about 5BBs and not 6BBs, which does affect the math. I have not run the numbers yet, because while I think the short stacks will be fairly inelastic with their shoving, I haven't yet nailed down what I think MP2 will do. What does he 4bet shove? Is he only going to play shove/fold or will he have some calls?

If he has a call range, some of the hands that call the shove might only call the 3bet instead of shoving, like AQ/TT/99. Sometimes they may shove, but I can also see a good number of villains at this level flatting the 3 bet with those.

I can also see some bad villains calling with hands that should be folds.

But then again, I don't see calling as that horrible either. If he is opening about 15% of hands, 77 is definitely in the top 1/2 of his range. However, if I do flat this, I want to try to make it to the turn as often as I can with this hand and see where I am going with it. Obviously, if I hit a set that's great and I am going all the way here. Additionally, 77 has about an 8% chance to be an overpair on the flop.

But when we get to the turn unimproved and we can get to showdown cheap, 77 should win a good amount of the time.

What flops am I getting away from? Obviously any flop with 3 overs is horrible. Any flop with 1 over, I'm never folding the flop and may even venture a turn call once in a while. Flops with 2 overs and no ace, definitely worth 1 post flop call and evaluate the turn.

Flat sounds bad. I think shove is correct vs that profile, he's not a nit we have bunch of FE and decent equity vs his calling range (sometimes he calls 66...).

I'm not sure if flatting is that terrible. We are borderline getting odds to set mine and being deep in a tourney players with bigger stacks often become more careful about when they bluff and make thin value bets. Now of course our stacks may not be that big on the whole in this tourney, but they are big at this table.

Good analysis - I agree. 88 I feel similar, 99 I start leaning toward a shove

Im not sure flatting is that terrible. If we were at 20 BB it would be a little worse. IF we flat and a shorter stack behind jams we get a lot more information about V's hand. If any of the shorter stacks behind are competent they will be jamming pretty light and we can call them easily if V folds. If everyone behind folds we get to play a flop in position with a solid pair against a fairly wide range.
The worst thing that can happen is we call, shorter stack behind jams and V instacalls at which point we should probably just fold and get to the next hand with 22BB

Hate to be a Doug Polk here, but I think all 3 options are pretty close in this spot. So do what’s in ur gut