Short Stacked with K♠T♠, what do you do here?

Short Stacked with KT-optimized.gif


DECISION POINT:
In a Tournament where blinds are 1500/3000, an Under the Gun player raises to 9000. It folds to you in Middle Position with K♠T♠ and 7 big blinds. Action is on you, what do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: Since we only have 7 big blinds and UTG opened to 3 BBs, we have little to no fold equity on a shove. This means that if we move all-in we are going to be called by UTG. Therefore, we need our hand to have sufficient equity against their estimated range to justify a shove.

If we move all-in, we will be risking 21,000 chips to play a total pot of 49,500, so we need 21,000/49,500 or 42% equity to continue (we are ignoring the other opponents for now). Note that when we are at the table, we could round and estimate that we are risking about 20k to win a 50k pot, so we need more than about 40% equity.

Our equity depends on UTG's range. Against a 10% opening hand range, we have about 39% equity. Against a 20% opening hand range, we have about 44% equity. This is pretty close from a chip EV standpoint if Villain is opening wide.

Continued below...


However, the presence of 5 opponents yet to act behind us hurts our overall EV in this spot. One of them will wake up with a premium hand around 25% of the time. This tips this spot to a fold, even though we believe that UTG's range is somewhat wide.

The combination of not having fold equity and our poor position overcomes being up against a potentially wider hand range.

Folding is the best play.

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