Q♠Q♥ Facing an All-In, what do you do here?
DECISION POINT: In a Tournament where blinds are 1,000/2,000 you raise from the Hijack with Q♠Q♥. It folds to the Big Blind who calls. The flop comes 3♠4♠5♥ and your opponent checks. You continuation bet and Villain raises all-in. Action is on you, what do you do here?
PRO ANSWER: We are dealt pocket queens in the Hijack in a tournament with 1,000/2,000 blinds and a 2,000 big blind ante. It folds to us and we make a raise to 6,500, which is likely too large given the effective stack sizes. With effective stacks of around 30 BBs, a raise size of between 2 to 2.5 BBs is generally optimal. It folds around to the Big Blind who calls.
We see a flop of 3s4s5h which is fairly good for our overpair. The Big Blind will be defending preflop with a wide range given they have to call 4,500 into a 11,500 pot preflop, for slightly worse than 3:1 pot odds.
Also, our perceived range in the Hijack is pretty wide, so our opponent will be calling with a variety of hands that connect with this board in some way.
Continued below...
The Big Blind checks to us and we continuation bet 10,000 chips. Our opponent check-raises all-in. As stated before, the Big Blind is likely to have a pretty wide range here. That range does include hands like 55/76s but it also includes a lot of Ax hands, spade draws, 6x hands, and overpairs we currently beat that would also make this play on this board.
While this is a somewhat coordinated and scary board for us, our pocket queens have far too much equity versus the range of hands with which Villain would check-raise all-in.
Calling is the best play.
What would you do here?
Share your answer in the comments below!
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