Hi, looking for some advice here. Any thoughts much appreciated.

This is a $1 MTT on WPN, late tournament play, pre-bubble.

No Limit Hold'em Tournament T2,000/T4,000
8 players

Stacks:
UTG - UTG (T90,730)
UTG+1 - Hero (T137,910)
MP - MP (T82,714)
MP2 - MP2 (T23,800)
CO - CO (T31,250)
BTN - BTN (T110,540)
SB - SB (T66,950)
BB - BB (T45,395)

Preflop: (T9,200, 8 players) Hero is UTG+1 with A K
1 fold, Hero raises to T8,000, MP calls T8,000, 2 folds, BTN raises to T32,900, 2 folds, Hero ???

My gut says V's 3-bet squeeze from the BTN is very strong since he has been quiet and MP called the open.

If V is not bluffing and never folding, and we put his range as JJ+, AK, AQs then AKo performs: Win: 22.5%, Lose: 47.5%, Chop: 30%.

I've reasoned that calling is awful here since I'd potentially get into a 3-way pot w/ very low SPR OOP w/ AKo... hard to play if I don't hit the flop.

Folding AKo seems reasonable given the read that V is super tight and rarely bluffing in this spot, but obviously we become exploitable if V starts 3-bet bluffing.

Should we assume V is this tight in this spot in a $1 MTT ?
What range is profitable to shove here ?

Thanks everyone.

Folding is not reasonable here. This is a shove or call situation.

Your read on the villain may be right for his range, but it may be too tight. Even given this range your numbers seem a little off. Think of the combos of hands the villain will have given that you have AK. AA and KK are now half as likely as they would be if you did not hold these blockers.

AA-QQ and AK are probably profitable shoves here against most tight players.

30bbs is not deep enough to overthink this kind of spot, easy 4-bet shove.

You definitely can't call, it's shove or fold. And I agree button's range is strong there.

If the chips go in you need about 44% to make the call, but I would add 2-3% to account for the fact that you'll be crippled if you lose.

Villain needs to have JJ+/AQ+/AQs+ to get that equity. I think that's a pretty reasonable range for villain to have there, plus you have to consider that you also have a small amount of fold equity the wider his range gets. If you shove here and put his stack at risk, he might actually fold JJ.

So in order to pass up this spot you would need a super tight read on villain that excludes AQ/AQs from his range.

given villain's stack he should literally never be 3-bet folding.
we have a stack we can open/fold on.
we already look very strong opening utg+1 and if villain is a very tight player committing a third of his stack looks super strong when we take that into consideration.

this spot is more about table dynamics. opening and then 4bet shoving here is basically unexploitable, we have removal against the two hands we're worried about so it's a no brainer play, however if we are at a table where we can expect to get into a better spot within an orbit or two then it's fine to just open this and lay it down.

for example if we have very weak players on our left that we can easily steal the blinds and antes from because they're overfolding when we're in the small blind or on the button then it makes sense to lay this down and wait for a spot like that. or if we can expect the small stacks to be committed with trash when they're in the blinds and we'd rather just wait for a spot to get any ace in position and ship into them instead of playing a 3bet pot with AKo.

if any of the short stacks ship it here it's the easiest snap call in the world. we got the one outcome we didn't want which is a 3bet from one of the stacks which can cripple us.

however if we have been folding to a lot of 3bets and we're folding AK in this spot then we're definitely already being exploited and we need to stack off here or else we cannot even open in early position anything except the tournament nuts.

To those saying you can never call, I disagree.

You have almost no fold equity and we are first to act after the flop. A stop and go is a reasonable play to make here. Shoving is a more standard and obvious play, but I think we might get the button to fold more often than he should if we take this approach.

You mean call the 3bet and donkbet any flop ?

Yes most of the time.

We could check/fold, check/call an all in on certain boards as well, but most of the time we need to follow through with the flop shove.

When the flop comes Q85 rainbow and our opponent holds jacks or AK, what will he do? If he has AA-QQ we were screwed pf anyway and I don't think we were folding out much here to begin with. If we don't have fold equity, the shove isn't superior.

Honestly in any real time situation i'm shoving, but I'm not convinced it's the superior play.

I snap call JJ, and possibly maybe AK as well because your line doesn't make any sens with anything and 67s/gutshots are possible and odds are decent, I'm very confused by your theory, I don't see the logic. When we call the 3-bet we either have to think V has worst hands in his range and thus we can bluffcatch postflop, or we have to think V's range is too strong for us to shove pre and donkbet-bluffing vs a super strong range is a strange idea. Leading AK high in a 3-bet pot forces him to fold any possible worst hand and acually getting something better to fold seems pretty optimistic, it's a great play vs exactly AK and we block AK pretty well.

Do you also donklead Qx+ ? How many Qx+ do you have ? Do you lead sets ? Do you flat KQ/AQ pre ? Do you flat KK/AA and then donklead that ?

It's interesting, the stop-n-go was a big topic of discussion years ago but it kind of disappeared from strat discussions. Probably because people eventually realized that you need ideal conditions for it to be the correct play, and you rarely have those ideal conditions. But I do wonder about it here.

If we assume his range is JJ+/AQ+ and we shove our chips pre, we get it in as a coin flip underdog with a small amount of fold equity (I think he folds AQ and possibly JJ).

If we stop-n-go, do we pick up any extra fold equity postflop? I don't think so. The only hands he folds postflop are the same ones he folds pre: maybe he folds JJ on a Qx flop and probably folds AQ on a T-high or Jxx flop (which is actually a bad outcome). Really the only hand we're targeting for a fold that he would fold either pre or post is JJ.

So I still say shove those chips in.

This play is most effective against bad players who fold too much. You are correct to snap call in the situation, but in a $1 tourney I wouldn't give all opponents so much credit.

Leading AK into a 3 bet bot does not make it so easy to play perfectly. Look at the combos. With your blockers he has 3-AA, 3-KK, 6-QQ, 6-JJ, 9-AK, 9-AQ if we assume the super tight range. Just forcing AK to consider folding on any flop is a decent equity gain. If you shoved you are getting called by all of these hands anyway, so the only loss in this situation is if we lose out on value when we hit the flop and get a worse hand to fold. This is the biggest reason to just shove, but I think the decision is at least close.

If you are worried about balance I think you need to donk lead most of your range. You will also need to check/fold on certain really bad boards and consider check calling a small percentage of the time as well. I would not be worried about flatting AA-KK here against randoms in a $1 tourney.