Would you shove this with 12BB?

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Nesehorn156

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Imagine you're on the button with A8o and around 12BB. It folds to you and both blinds have you covered.

I can see the argument for just shoving and picking up the blinds, but I also don't love getting called by a better ace.

Would you shove this or make a smaller raise?
 
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Nesehorn156 said:
Imagine you're on the button with A8o and around 12BB. It folds to you and both blinds have you covered.

I can see the argument for just shoving and picking up the blinds, but I also don't love getting called by a better ace.

Would you shove this or make a smaller raise?
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With 12BB, I’d usually prefer shoving A8o from the button. The stack is too short to raise small and then fold, and there is a lot of value in the fold equity. Getting called by a better ace is part of the risk, but waiting for a better hand can leave you with very little fold equity 🤷
 
Yes you rather shove or fold. Don't try to raise with that small stack
 
Shove At 12BB on the button, min-raising just gives up fold equity.
 
This is generally a shove, yes. If I know that both Villains are excessively limpy foldy say near the bubble I can standard open this and get them to fold, but this is a very good spot to open shove.

1- We have an A. If we hit an A we have top pair. If the board bricks out we usually win.

2 - We are suited. This gives is an extra 3% equity to nut spades, a small thing but anything helps at this point.

3 - Our 8 may not be an awesome kicker but it does cut the deck in half which roughly doubles our equity against small pocket pairs. Also a very large stack will call us with any A and we actually dominate roughly half of those.

4 - Our position is decent on the BT. Post-flop position is meaningless to us if we jam. The blinds are the best place to be, but the BT is the next best thing because we still get to see most of the pre-flop action before we commit to jamming this fairly speculative hand.

5 - The action has folded to us. The table is weak so far and only 2 potential callers. If there were 2 limpers, that would be 4 potential callers and kills our fold equity. If someone had opened before us, they have a hand that competes well against A8s. But the blinds are 100% wide here and any stack with 40bb or less will think twice about putting 12bb at risk, so we have strong fold equity. Furthermore, say the SB folds and the BB is very large like 60-80bb, he will call us wide and we will be ahead of most of his range with a good chance to double up.

There is far from a guarantee here but so many things have gone in our favor so far in this hand.

Also, if there are antes, jamming here is probably better than waiting another orbit for a better shot.
 
Its definitely not a fold, but if the players in the blinds are passive and rarely 3-bet, you can also get away with min-raising and then stabbing a lot of flops. Against strong players its always a jam though, because we dont want to induce a rejam from hands, that would have folded, if we had jammed ourselfes. Even suited broadways have near coinflip equity against A8o. So we are not particularly interested in having to call it off against such hands after min-raising, and we cant raise-fold a hand as strong as A8o from BTN, if the rejam will come at a high frequency.
 
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Nesehorn156 said:
Imagine you're on the button with A8o and around 12BB. It folds to you and both blinds have you covered.

I can see the argument for just shoving and picking up the blinds, but I also don't love getting called by a better ace.

Would you shove this or make a smaller raise?
Click to expand...
With 12 big blinds, I play push or fold, so my advice is to go all in with any hand you want to play.
 
miric007 said:
With 12 big blinds, I play push or fold, so my advice is to go all in with any hand you want to play.
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U play push or fold 100 bb deep 🤣
 
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With 12BB, I think shoving can definitely be an option depending on the position, hand and action before me. At that stack size, I don’t want to miss good opportunities to pick up the blinds and antes. ♠️
 
At 12BB from the button, this is a pure open shove spot; making a small raise is a mistake because you give the blinds excellent odds to defend or shove over you with wide ranges. While getting called by a better ace is always a worry, A8o is way ahead of the random hands the blinds will fold, making the immediate dead money highly profitable. If you min-raise here, you are essentially committing yourself to a pot while losing all your fold equity....
 
Personally, I would fold here, without much hesitation. With only 12BB, I don't like putting my whole tournament life at risk with A8o, especially when both blinds have me covered. I understand the argument for shoving and picking up the blinds, but there are still plenty of hands that can call us, and against a better Ace we're in a pretty bad spot. I would rather wait for a better opportunity than risk most or all of my stack just to win the blinds. For my playing style, patience is more important here. With 12BB, I know I can't wait forever, but I also don't think every short stack situation means I have to shove. I'd rather preserve my remaining chips and look for a stronger hand or a better spot to make my move
 
I think I'm missing a lot of information, and it depends on the opponent they're facing. There are paid positions and a lot of other things, but in the beginning, I wouldn't judge anyone who bets everything.
 
Depends on tournamsnt stage.If rebuy is available then yes also matters on opponents stats
 
as is often the case we don't have enough info to answer the question .are you anywhere near the bubble ? when do the blinds go up again ? do you have any reads/stats on the 2 players behind you ? as wave function said , can you re enter if you want ? is the event a bounty or PKO ?etc etc
 
The only situation where I'd consider folding is if I'm so near the bubble that I can cash by folding. If we're not near enough to the bubble to cash by folding I'm shoving every time we don't have big enough stack to play post flop so the best result is a shove and so we can steal the blinds. I don't see how it matters if it's a KO or bounty....in my opinion it only matters if you're close enough to the money that you can fold and make it. Yes they're more likely to call in a KO or bounty but you gotta double up anyways to have any chance of cashing and A8s is likely the best hand even if by a small margin against two random hands. If one is going to comeback and cash or have any chance at winning the MTT these are hands you gotta win. If you run into a better A-x hand then that's just poker and we weren't ever meant to cash or win this one. That's poker. On too the next one we go.

Cheers!!!
 
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