Flush draw facing a shove on the flop in a tournament – Fold or Call?

Hi everyone, I need some help with a tournament spot.There was 5bb in the pot pre-flop/post-flop.
An opponent shoves all-in for 15bb total after the flop. I have a flush draw (9 outs) and I am pretty sure I am behind his exact hand right now.
Should I call or fold here?
What math and tournament factors should I focus on in spots like this? Thanks!
if Possible as well I need ACM explanation , anyone has full course of tournaments ? I wanna check if there is something I dont know .

You have 34% chance for your flush to complete by showdown, or 2 to 1 odds against you.

Is there a pair on the board?
What are your exact cards - do you have nut or close to nut equity? (ie what is your highest card in flush suit? and what suit cards are on the board?)
Do you have any other equity besides flush? (overcards? straights?)
If you are sure that Villain is ahead, what do you think that he actually has and what makes you think this?
How big is your stack? <- this is a HUGE question, perhaps the most important: can you afford the call?
Is there anyone else still in the hand? Do you have or are you confident of getting isolation?

As you can see, it's not so simple as "These are my cards, am I good here? Can I call or not?" It;s rarely that simple.

Well need more info to get a more helpful answer..., chip stacks, stage of tourney, board texture...


....check out types of equity and pot odds, there's also an ICM section too👍

Let's take a look at the pre-flop. You say that the pot is 5bb. This means one of 2 things:

1 - Someone opened 2x and you are heads-up with the BB folding. One of you is on the SB, either Villain jamming into you or you checking to him before he jams over.
2 - 5-way limp pot.

This flop will be played VERY differently depending if this is spot 1 or spot 2. In a 5-way pot, we need to hit and we need to be strong. Do we have enough chips to jam over and make everyone else fold? Even so, bluffing 3 Villains at once is extremely risky and I would not advise it. Heads-up, we only need to beat the other guy so it comes down to stacks.

So did you limp in with like 75s? Or did you open 2x with say A8s and get called? Or did you flat call his 2x open with like J4s? This again could make a huge difference to how this should be played.

Hey, maybe it is a monotone flop and you have 1 card in suit?

A8s is a nut flush draw which is safer. Remember that a hand like 75s loses to a single high card in suit if the board runs out 4-flush. Having the A is automatically good if it comes in (barring boat). The K is probably also good. Q is pretty good too, although we'd hate to see a 4-flush. J4s is NOT automatically good if it comes in, so it's not that simple, although pretty tough to fold a flush with a chance to knock someone out.

Is there a bounty to be had?

And we still don't know the most important question. What are the stacks? Can we afford to call him. It's 2 to 1 against us (as far as we know) so we want to outstack him bare minimum 2 to 1. I'd want to be probably at least 4 to 1 and even then be certain of isolation. We don't want anyone else in this pot. If I have 9 outs to the nuts and have him outstacked 4 or 5 to 1 heads-up I probably call. Anything worse than that I probably fold, but hey, I'm not the best player here. Maybe I am wrong.

Not nearly enough info provided , as others have noted .

Its 15BB for you to call to win a pot of 35BB, so you need 42.8% raw equity to make the call. If a flushdraw has nothing else to go with it, it has less than 42.8%, so it would be a fold. Unless you have the nut flushdraw, there is also a risk, your opponent could be jamming a better flushdraw, in which case you dont have 9 outs to a flush but 6 outs to a pair or no outs at all. Lets say you opened from BTN, and BB defended. Flop comes , and now the oppoent donk jam into you for 15BB. Here I would fold, because if he has a made hand, its very unlikely, your pair outs are live, and if he has QX of spades, you are drawing nearly dead to a runner-runner. But if the flop was , I would at least consider calling, because now your pairs outs are at least sometimes live, if he is jamming a hand like , and you also have a gutshot to a . But even here it could still be reasonable to fold, its you are on the final table, and 15BB is a significant percentage of your stack.

louuu19 said:

Hi everyone, I need some help with a tournament spot.There was 5bb in the pot pre-flop/post-flop.
An opponent shoves all-in for 15bb total after the flop. I have a flush draw (9 outs) and I am pretty sure I am behind his exact hand right now.
Should I call or fold here?
What math and tournament factors should I focus on in spots like this? Thanks!
if Possible as well I need ACM explanation , anyone has full course of tournaments ? I wanna check if there is something I dont know .

Click to expand...

GTO WIZARD--free version 1 post flop hand per day will answer your question best.
Input the exact flop and proper stack sizes in the MTT section and then you can see what flush draws do in that spot and if some fold and some call. You can also see what hands your V may have to take an action like that.

eetenor said:

GTO WIZARD--free version 1 post flop hand per day will answer your question best.

Click to expand...

Most likely the solver will not have any range for open shipping the flop for 3x the size of the pot. And a human, who do this, will not be playing anything resembling a GTO strategy.

With just a flush draw, it's usually a math problem rather than an automatic call or fold.

In your example, there are 5 BB in the pot and Villain shoves 15 BB, so you'd be calling 15 BB to win a total pot of 35 BB. That means you need around 43% equity to break even.

A naked flush draw with 9 outs has roughly 36% equity from the flop to the river, so against a made hand it's often a fold unless you also have overcards, a straight draw, or some fold equity from an earlier decision.

As for ICM (Independent Chip Model), it's what converts tournament chips into real-money value. Near the bubble or final table, chips you lose are usually worth more than chips you gain, so you often need more equity than the chip EV calculation suggests before calling an all-in.

If you're serious about tournaments, I'd recommend studying ICM concepts and using software like HRC or ICMIZER to review hands. Those tools are excellent for understanding spots like this. I'd also be interested if anyone has recommendations for a really comprehensive tournament course.

Nameless14 said:

A naked flush draw with 9 outs has roughly 36% equity from the flop to the river, so against a made hand it's often a fold unless you also have overcards, a straight draw, or some fold equity from an earlier decision.

Click to expand...

Agree. And in this case, Villain jammed so there is no fold equity, and even if he wasn't all-in how much fold equity does a 2bb bet pre get us? Hero either bet 2bb pre and got called, or called (or limp-called) 2bb, or limped 5-way, so yea, previous street aggression is null here.

fundiver199 said:

Most likely the solver will not have any range for open shipping the flop for 3x the size of the pot. And a human, who do this, will not be playing anything resembling a GTO strategy.

Click to expand...

My point was to get them to think about the data that they would need to input the hand as they only stated shove and flush draw -no board- no hand- no stack size for them. When using the Wiz you have to input all of that, which helps you to learn to think about all of those things when studying a hand.
Therefore, the next time they post they might add in the details that allow advice to have strong value as not all flush draws are equal.