I'm presuming that you believe they will respect a good re-raise on the flop from him and he will therefore know where he stands. However, given his stack size I think they would gamble on the flop and call any re-raise with a wide range. The only chance he has of them respecting a re-raise is preflop, but the range will still be high for the re-raiser ahead of him.

Also, I'd give chip value some consideration here. Perhaps my EV is greater with a call than a shove, but the pot is big enough that given chip value I'd be prepared to take it down now if I could.

Dario is aggro but not stupid. He will weight your range as KK+ after you flat the reraise and he will assume that he has no fold equity. He is not shoving TT,JJ,QQ,AK,AQ after this action... and if he does shove Amir is definitely folding QQ and maybe KK.


I also vehemently disagree with this assumption. I think that you are turning your hand face up more than you realize with your flat call and I think that Amir is usually shutting down completely on flops he misses (unless he has QQ as an overpair that he cant get away from or has AK that flops a K or something like that) Even if Amir is as sloppy as you seem to think there is no way that he is betting EIGHTY PERCENT of his range after you show this tremendous strength with your flat call.

wait wait, you called to avoid your hand becoming transparent?

For the random, semi-unknown player in these big buyin tourneys, I would put the range of a button shove in this situation as QQ+, AK. I would put the range of a button call as JJ+, AQs+, AK. But hey, that's only my opinion given my experience. And I'm not saying that those ranges are optimal, just an observation from actual play, right or wrong. If this were the Sunday Million, no question that the range of a button shove is wider than that of a call. I totally agree that a button call here SHOULD indicate more strength, but in these tourneys, in this particular spot, I don't always think it does, because so many satellite qualifiers and nits just dont want to go bust on a weaker push that might get called.

p.s. By the way, I'm going to conceed the better play was to shove rather than call (based on overwhelming market reaction). But it still seems like a close decision.

a lot of people underestimate how much better it is to get your whole stack in with aces since a lot of their hands they'd get it in with you pre will be scared off on the flop.