Multiway Action Preflop with Q♦Q♥, what do you do here?
DECISION POINT: In a Tournament where blinds are 500/1,000 an Early Position Player limps into the pot, a Middle Position player raises to 4,500, and MP2 calls all-in for 4,000. Action is on you from the Hijack with Q♦Q♥. What do you do here?
PRO ANSWER: We are dealt pocket queens in the Hijack position at 500/1,000 blinds with a 1,000 big blind ante. The UTG player open limps and MP1 raises to 4,500. The MP2 player flat calls all-in for 4,000. We face an interesting decision with pocket queens and a sizeable pot at play.
MP2 is quite short here and they only have a few hands before the Big Blind and Big Blind ante take half their stack. While MP'2 range probably isn’t extremely wide they can’t be too picky with hand selecting given the approaching blinds and antes.
The UTG limper could potentially have a fairly wide range given stack distribution and the late stage of the tournament. MP1’s range could easily consist of a lot of hands we are ahead of that would prefer to play in position heads up such as AJ/KQ/TT in addition to some top tier holdings.
Continued below...
In this situation our queens are too far ahead of our opponent’s ranges to consider folding. Calling would encourage other callers and our queens won’t play nearly as well in a big, multi-way pot with a low stack to pot ratio (SPR).
Raising in this spot is definitely the best play. Given that there is already 12,000 in the pot and we have 36,000 in our stack it makes the most sense to maximize the pressure we can put on our opponents now rather than try some trickier raise like to 12,000 to try and induce some action.
Moving all-in is the best play.
What would you do here?
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