DECISION POINT: You are playing an online tournament with a fast structure and blinds are 500/1,000 with a 1,000 big blind ante. The tournament started with 10,000 chips and you are the shortest stack at your table with 17,000 (17BBs). It folds to the Hijack who open limps, the Cutoff limps behind, and action is on you with 7♠7♣ on the Button.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing an online daily tournament with a fast structure. We are in the middle stages with 500/1,000 blinds with a 1,000 big blind ante. The starting stacks were 10,000 chips and we’ve managed to build up to 17,000 chips, which is good for 17 big blinds. We are dealt 7♠7♣ on the Button. Everyone folds to the Hijack who open limps for 1,000. The Cutoff limps behind and action is on us.

Many players are tempted to just limp behind and see a flop in this spot. While limping behind in this spot is profitable from a theoretical chip EV standpoint, there are more factors to consider. When the Hijack and Cutoff both limp their ranges become capped and open the door to aggressive action. Most players won’t open limp big hands like AA/KK in this spot, as encouraging a multiway pot vs 3-4 postflop opponents who have entered the pot with fairly wide ranges is often a recipe for disaster for big overpairs.

Since our opponents' ranges are capped we likely have the best hand at this point. Though we likely are ahead at this stage, our pocket sevens are still quite vulnerable in a multiway pot as we are 50/50 against any hand with two random overcards. There are already 4,500 chips in the middle which represents around 30% of our remaining stack. The times we move all-in and get called, we often will have around 50% equity with a lot of dead money in the pot. The times when we go all-in and everyone folds, we gain a huge boost and chip up above 20BBs.

This is a great place to shove and potentially pick up a bunch of dead money that will help keep us ahead of this fast tournament structure.

Moving all-in is the best play.