DECISION POINT: You are deep in a multi-table tournament with blinds at 1,500/3,000 and a 3,000 big blind ante. UTG, UTG+1, the Cutoff, and Button all limp into the pot. You raise from the Small Blind with A♣Q♣ to 25,000. The Big Blind folds and you get called by all four limpers. Five ways to the A♠8♣5♣ flop action is on you.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are deep in a multi-table tournament with 1,500/3,000 blinds and a 3,000 big blind ante. We have nearly a 40BB stack and are dealt AcQc in the Small Blind. Under The Gun and UTG+1 both call and it folds around to the Cutoff and Button who also call.

Preflop we actually have a very compelling case to just complete here and take the 13:1 immediate pot odds with a hand that plays reasonably well multiway. There is also a case for just open shoving with AQ suited, as we can add 20% to our stack with a hand that is likely ahead of most limping ranges when we take down the pot uncontested. It’s important to note however that in the instances our shove is called we are often dominated.

At a table where opponents are observed to play a more “fit or fold” strategy on the flop, we can make a standard raise here to around 24,000 to attempt to thin the field and will have a good chance to take it down with a continuation bet on many flops. We elect to take the latter route and raise to 25,000 and surprisingly we are called by everyone but the Big Blind.

The flop is As8c5c and we flop top pair, top kicker plus the nut flush draw. Often in a 5-way pot top pair will not be the best hand at showdown, however in this case there are specific factors we need to consider that make a compelling case to take our 1-pair hand to showdown.

The pot is 131,000 and we only have 92,000 behind. That means giving up our equity in this hand is catastrophic since the pot is bigger than our stack! With a stack to pot ratio (SPR) of less than 1 our hand has WAY too much equity to ever consider folding.

Even though our hand is incredibly strong in this spot, slowplaying isn’t a preferred line given the size of the pot and effective stack. Potentially allowing our opponents to improve with hands like 76s or 87s with so little behind in relation to the pot is a scenario we want to avoid.

Factoring in the absolute strength of our hand and the amount of chips in the pot, the only real play is to move all-in.

Moving all-in is the best play.