DECISION POINT: You are in a live $200 bounty tournament with $50 going toward each bounty. There are 9 players remaining from the 60 person field and you are on the direct money bubble with 8 players getting paid. The blinds are 3,000/6,000 with a 6,000 big blind ante and you are 4th in chips. First to act with 35BBs you look down at A♠K♠ and raise to 18,000. It folds around to the Small Blind (with 35BBs) and they reraise to 45,000. The Big Blind folds and action is on you.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing a $200 daily live bounty tournament with a $50 bounty on each player. The event had 60 entries and there are 9 remaining with only 8 players getting paid so we are on the exact money bubble. We are tied for fourth in chips with 35BBs. The shortest stacks have around 15 big blinds and the largest has over 50. The blinds are 3,000/6,000 with a 6,000 big blind ante.

We open raise to 18,000 from UTG with A♠K♠ and everyone folds to the Small Blind who reraises to 45,000. The Big Blind folds and action is on us. To get a theoretical baseline of our best course of action we can analyze what a solver would do in this spot. When we plug this hand into a solver, it recommends shoving AKs with an expected value of just over three quarters of a big blind.

Although the solver output demonstrates shoving our AKs against the Small Blind’s 3-betting range here is positive EV in a vacuum, it’s important we don’t just take what the solver says at face value and consider the likely ranges for our specific opponent.

When analyzing the Small Blind’s range, we see their strategy dictates 3x 3-bet sizing with KK+/AK plus A6s for a bluff combo. It is the potential bluffs in our opponent’s range that make shoving here profitable so if we were to remove bluffs from our opponent’s range then we should actually fold AKs to a 3-bet here. When reacting to this situation in real-time at the table, a good first step is to assess if our opponent is ever capable of reraising light in this spot as a resteal.

If the answer is yes, then we should shove all-in over the Small Blind’s 3x 3-bet here. We will generate some folds which will result in a nice chunk of chips, and when called we will often have reasonable equity to double up and collect a bounty. If we believe the Small Blind never has bluffs in this spot, then we must fold.

Unless we have a confirmed read that the Small Blind is incapable of bluffing in this spot, moving all-in with our AKs is the preferred play.