hello guys. I wasnt sure if folding was too awful but i just felt like to. Both villains were tight in 20 hands i had of them. we were close to FT, like 17 players left




Hero (SB): 377,540 (12.6 bb)
BB: 27,831 (0.9 bb)
MP1: 591,918 (19.7 bb)
MP2: 1,160,715 (38.7 bb)
MP3: 2,157,120 (71.9 bb)
CO: 334,352 (11.1 bb)
BTN: 572,241 (19.1 bb)

Preflop: Hero is SB with J J
3 folds, CO raises to 330,602 and is all-in, BTN raises to 568,491 and is all-in, Hero ??

You have 12 bb's. The blinds are going up so you need to take the best spot you can get to gain chips. The CO jams a stack of 11 bb's which has a decently wide range. He can have two overs but he's likely shoving AJ-A8 and probably a bunch of Ax suited's. Maybe he's shoving any off suit A tbh. He's shoving all pocket pairs tbh and you crush those. Then there's some KJ/KQ/KT hands and maybe some suited connectors. You have a great amount of equity against him.

When the btn jams overtop the only two hands you're crushed by are QQ and KK. I would suppose that AA flats trying to get more action from a hand like jj-88/77, but I could be incorrect in that line of thinking. He likely has two overs that might be blocked by CO or a lower pocket pair like 77-TT. You should take this spot 10/10 times. They pay jumps are generally flatter from the 10-18 range so unless you're near the final table bubble I couldn't rationalize a fold. Even then I probably wouldn't. You will lose here sometimes but often you're going to have 40ish% equity 3 ways.

Against AK suited and A8 suited you're 50%! Against AK suited and KQ suited you're 39%! Against AK suited and 88 you're 43%. You'll only have 18% against one over and an overpair but that is not very likely. If our button is isolating 77-TT and all AK's and AQ's then you're getting it in good against 56 combos (some of which might be blocked.) You're behind likely 12 combos of QQ and KK. Even if we throw Aces in there its only 18 combos vs 56 that you're ahead of.

If you win you triple up and are likely cruising to the final table (albeit if you just blind down you'll make it with a pretty short stack.) This gives you the best chance win the entire tournament. I don't know the payouts but generally on the final two tables you've 3-4x'd your buy in. Wouldn't you rather have a high equity shot at winning the tourney and potentially 60-180xing your buy in? If we fold here we're basically saying we value one pay jump (which we might not even make) over some massive pay jumps. That increase alone projects to dwarf the amount of times we lose and bust out of the tourney with JJ here.

Put this spot in ICMIZER/HRC and play around with the ranges. Since you mention they are tight (though 20 hands is no sample at all) - try to both look at Nash ranges first, and then tighten up 1 and then both ranges.

As it is an ICM spot make sure to look at it as ICM and not ChipEV.
In order for an answer from other people i would suggest to share the payouts and money jumps.

Never a fold imo.

yeah you really wanna have the 38.7BB stack spot against a 20BB stack and a 12BB stack and sticking your chips in with JJ rather than having 12BB stack and sticking it in. then if you win with JJ you have a 70BB stack instead of a 40BB stack. if you lose you still have 18BBs and a second chance which your not going to have with 12bb stack.

get it in anyway. your all in. in the future look for spots where you can accumulate chips to not be in this situation if you can help it. you have to get players to play badly and switch gears on them. its gotta be done by feel and no book GTO mathemactics can teach you that. live poker is particularly better for it. theres a place for gto and fundamental sound poker too. only takes 1 player to give you all his chips when your 75bb deep to change the whole tournament.

With 13bb you will be hard pressed to find a better spot to get your chips in, JJ is still actually a top 2% hand. They can both roll over lower pps or both share AK or AQ or one have a lower pair and you flip with the other getting 2-1.

I would never fold a tier 1 or tier 2 hand here (JJ+,AK)(TT+,AQ+) a tier 3 hand (AJ+,99+) is a decision tho.

We also want to have a stack to be competitive on the final otherwise we end up getting heaps of 5th - 3rds

fist pump call

17 players can take a long time to whittle down to.

Call is totally std here. To fold there would need to be some really significant pay jumps that would justify passing on this spot.

Online, this is a snap call, although I think the button will turn over QQ+ pretty often. CO being the shortest stack can have all suited aces, any pair, A8o+, all KQ, KJs KTs which JJ matches up well against. BTN can raise to isolate, and show up with pairs as low as 55 since he is also short.

Live, I'd have to get a read on the button and even the CO. If CO looks sad that his raise didnt get thru, then you can confidently call. If CO is licking his chops at getting called once, and maybe twice, then fold. The worst is seeing what each guy had and knowing u were too scared to call with JJ and would have tripled up yourself.

If you want to live, you must be willing to die. JJ is too strong to fold any time other than a major, major high buy-in event were pay jumps are low to mid 5 figures at least. In a local weekly tournament, this is a call for sure and come back next week with a little more knowledge if you were wrong and bust.

I'm no world champ, I learn as much from criticism of my posts as I hope others do from mine.

All in All day..

11 BB shove in CO is very WIDE cuz they are desperat for chips and the guy on the button knows that and will be reshoving ISO very wide also.

This