A♣K♦ vs an All-In, what do you do here?
Decision Point: In a Cash Game, a UTG player raises and you reraise from the Hijack with A♣K♦. It folds around to the Big Blind who reraises All-In. The UTG player folds. Action is on you, what do you do here?
Pro Answer: After we reraise an early position player preflop with AK, the player in the Big Blind moves all-in. Whenever you consider calling a preflop all-in, you should determine your pot odds and the minimum equity you need to call. Then you should estimate your opponent’s range of hands.
Continued below...
In this case, it costs us $1000 more to potentially win $1215. This corresponds to pot odds of 1.215 - 1. If we call, the total pot will be $2215, so the minimum equity we need to call would be 1000/2215 or about 45%.
After our opponent makes this overbet shove, we can assign them a hand range heavily weighted to premium hands. Most opponents would not make this play with AQ or medium pocket pairs. In fact, most opponents would have a hand range of QQ+ AK when they take this action.
Against this range, our AK offsuit has about 39% equity (which can be determined using a hand equity calculator). Even if we add hands like JJ or TT to their range, this only increases our equity slightly to just over 40%.
In order for us to have the minimum equity needed to call this shove, our opponent would have to take this action with hands like AQ or worse. Without any historical opponent information to indicate that they would take this action with these hands, we should simply fold against what is likely a very premium hand range.
Despite 3-betting the initial raiser for value with AK, we should fold to this overbet shove from the player in the Big Blind.
Folding is the best play.
How would you play it?
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