PRO ANSWER: We are playing a live $600 mystery bounty multi-table tournament. We are somewhat new to the table but have so far observed the Hijack mixing it up a lot and attacking weakness. There are varying stacks from as small as 10BBs and as much as nearly 100BBs, but most have around 50BBs. We are one of the shorter stacks with a bit over 25BBs.

We are dealt pocket queens in the Big Blind. UTG folds and UTG+1 moves all-in for 38,000 (9.5BBs). Two players fold then the Hijack just calls and everyone else folds to us.

In mystery bounty tournaments, there is an added incentive to knock other players out of the tournament. Assuming players are adjusting properly, the UTG+1 player should be shoving a slightly narrower range than they would in a standard tournament and the Hijack should be willing to call a bit wider. In essence, the Hijack is getting improved pot odds since there is a form of real money reward should they get all-in versus the UTG+1 player and win.

When the Hijack just flat calls instead of reraises, this is often a somewhat polarized range. They are often leaving room to fold against one of the bigger stacks with hands like 88/AJ that are likely in a good situation against UTG+1’s range but are in trouble against a much stronger range.

The other potential reason for the Hijack to simply flat call would be to slowplay big hands such as AA/KK to induce action behind them. Flat calling in this spot is not as likely with hands including TT/JJ/AK that prefer to isolate the original raise and not encourage any additional action behind, as they are too strong to fold preflop but lose a lot of equity when more players enter the pot.

It can be tempting to slowplay our hand, however given our stack size we are likely to get called by many of the 88/AJ type hands in the opponent's range that we currently dominate. The Hijack will be getting very compelling pot odds plus the added value of a bounty. While there are a few big hands possible in the flat calling range, we are likely to lose the rest of our chips postflop on a variety of boards when they have AA/KK in either case.

It would be catastrophic if Hijack folds hands like 88/AJ on scary boards postflop when they are highly likely to call our shove preflop when dominated to 2 or 3 outs at most. This is a spot where we just have to push all the chips in to maximize the value of our queens.

Moving all-in is the best play.