The situation
Yes, a lot of the time, players are going to have AK here. Wether or not, we can call depends. Do they also shove QQ, KK, AA? Or are they always playing those normally? From my experience, players that shove AK in this spot also shove QQ, but might not shove AA and KK.
vs a "balanced" premium range
Hand | Pot equity | Wins | Ties |
---|
Js Jd | 36.19% | 20,947,296 | 243,956 |
KK, AK, QQ, AA | 63.81% | 37,027,084 | 243,956 |
vs a range, where the player overestimates his handstrength in relation to an UTG open:
Hand | Pot equity | Wins | Ties |
---|
Js Jd | 46.88% | 44,732,566 | 2,037,466 |
AK,AQ,TT+ | 53.12% | 50,831,296 | 2,037,466 |
vs, an "exploitative" default range:
Hand | Pot equity | Wins | Ties |
---|
Js Jd | 45.75% | 17,156,796 | 157,370 |
AK, QQ | 54.25% | 20,356,522 | 157,370 |
As we can see, we are always behind our opponents range, even when we give him a fairly wide one.
SB covers us, so the effective overbet is 5417/504 ~ 10,21 times pot. We require 10,21/21,42 ~ 47,67% equity to break even. Even against a wide range, we have less than that.
=> We are not giving up any "edge" by folding. This call is -ev, without an additional read, that our opponent NEVER has QQ+ in this spot.
So much for the math. Now let's look at the situation overall.
If we are the kind of player that needs a big stack to function, we might make the call, because we are looking to aquire a big stack as early as possible and just reenter, if we lose.
There are several players left to act behind us. We don't know what they are going to do. The more players in the pot, the more the value of a pair decreases. This is even more reason to fold.
Personally, I try to avoid all kinds of flippy situations for huge amounts of blinds, especially early. When a lot of chips go in, I want to have a clear advantage over my opponents range. There is enough situations, where we getin as a clear favourite and still manage to lose, no need to increase variance in 55/45 scenarios.
If you are worried about being exploited:
You should have enough hands in your UTG opens that can comfortably call in this situation. AA, KK and AK come to mind. Of course, AK blocks those combos.
In the long run, the AK player is actually giving up edge. If the table makes the correct calling/folding decisions, then this play becomes bad.
Last edited by Caterina; 10-09-2018 at 08:34 AM.