DECISION POINT: In a Tournament where blinds are 600/1,200 a Middle Position Player reraises to 3,600 and it folds to you on the Button. You hold 9♠9♣ with a 13.5BB stack and the Blinds are still left to act. Action is on you, what do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: Our opponent raises to 3BB in Middle Position. With no antes in play this is probably tighter than a typical Middle Position tournament opening range, but still includes somewhere in the neighborhood of the top 12% of hands, which might look something like 77+, A9s+,KTs+, QTs+, JTs, ATo+, KJo+.

Our 99 is roughly 50% against that range with some dead money in the pot and some fold equity if we choose to shove.

With just under 14 big blinds we don’t have the luxury of waiting for perfect spots, and this spot is easily +EV (positive expected value).

If we had some specific information that our opponent is capable of limping some of the more marginal hands in their range such as A9s and QJo, then perhaps we could find an exploitative fold here as that would make their opening range narrower.

Absent that opponent-specific information, our hand is too strong here and we don’t have enough chips to just call.

Moving all-in is the best play.