What do you do, & why?

[tikay]

I saw this hand in a Live Tourney, & I thought it played out very interestingly.

I'm interested in what you'd do if you were our Hero, and why.

If you know what happened, or have heard, please don't reveal, yet.

Tomorrow, I'll do the Reveal, & the reasons given for the play. And I'll send a Link to our Hero, (a well-known blonde) who, I hope, will comment on the play.

Here's the context.

Main Event Final, 5 left I think. Big money to the winner, and a very top heavy prize-structure. (Top three get £54k, £32k, £18k, or similar).

Blinds are about 6k-12k, RA 500, 5 players left (all approx), average stack about 450k. But one player has over half the chips at this moment.

It's unlikely that the Chip Leader, or our Hero, wants to cut a Deal, both are very clearly going for the outright win, or so it appears.

The stack distribution is (something like) 1.1 million, 100k, 460k, 250k, & 300k. Our hero has 460k.

2nd to speak, the shortie (100k) shoves. Could be atc, (obviously).

Our Hero, next to act, has Jacks.

What did he do, & why?

2 answers, please.

A). Pass, Call or Shove all-in?

B) Why?

[TheChipPrince]

Shove.  To isolate and avoid giving yourself migraine like decisions if any others tag along for the ride and fire out a flop bet on a flop we havent remotely hit...

[TightEnd]

So chip leader with 1.1m has passed? He's first to act according to the order of stacks you give

[DaveShoelace]

I'm guessing he passed the hand, fully expecting to be well ahead of the shortie, but wanting to exploit the bubble type scenario that was evolving to get to that lucrative 3rd place or better pay out. He reasons that if he can keep the short stack alive, he can accumulate a significant portion more than that 100k of the shorties chips from the the 250 and 300k stacks while they try and hold out to 3rd.

[boldie]

I quite like both Chippie's and Dave's thoughts. Especially young Mr Shoelace's thinking I quite like..though I probably shove to isolate here. (Like Tighty I am assuming chip daddy already passed)

[TightEnd]

surely the standard play is to iso-shove, way ahead of shortstack's range and knowing the other two have to have monsters to get involved. So he can't have done that

does he flat to get one of the two medium stacks to squeeze?

[kukushkin88]

Folding to exploit the bubble is certainly still an udervalued concpet in poker, I'm not convinced that this situation suits it particularly well though. The big CL if he plays well can obstruct our stealing from the shorties quite effectively and should actually target us to steal from as the second stack.

If we only have eyes for first place and the big stack hasn't acted lets flat call and hope he sets us in, he is likely to do this with a range of hands that we dominate.
 

[tikay]

So chip leader with 1.1m has passed? He's first to act according to the order of stacks you give

In the context of the question, it's not relevant Rich.

I can't actually recall if the Chip Daddy had Passed UTG, or was BB. For the purposes of your thoughts, ignore him.

[Longy]

What is this bubble ppl are talking about, surely we are ITM just a top heavy prize structure.

Iso shove looks like the super standard play here.

In these situations as the 2nd chippy we are the ones who normally get exploited, by not wanting to risk our whole stack against the cl. As we have the most to lose by clashing with him.

Obv tikays reveal isn't going to involve iso shoving.

[MC]

Iso shove looks like the super standard play here.

Agree, I don't see much way around shoving here...

We're way ahead of shorties range and we're basically forcing the blinds to pick up only 6 hands we don't want to see AA, KK, QQ, AK, AQ, KQ ... and they're passing KQ and probs AQ. They don't pick up those 4 hands any where near often enough to consider passing.

Calling is dangerous cos you don't want the blinds iso-raising behind you, and we're surely committed to calling at least the 250k stack if this happens anyway getting over 3 to 1? So might as well shove if we're calling one of the 2 remaining stacks regardless...

[kukushkin88]

If they have a hand that beats us then they're getting them in behind our shove anyway. If we have them dominated then by calling we get their chips some of the time when they shove with hands we dominate like AJ,A10,1010,99, Calling is > than shoving here.

[George2Loose]

Deffo Iso shove imo

[MC]

If they have a hand that beats us then they're getting them in behind our shove anyway. If we have them dominated then by calling we get their chips some of the time when they iso shove with hands we dominate like AJ,A10,1010,99, Calling is > than shoving here.

Interesting point...but do we really want a 30% hand in there when we have a good shot at taking down a nice pot against a random(ish) hand?

Surely getting rid of AQ, and you never know possibly even AK too much of an advantage to flat call?

[kukushkin88]

Nobody should be folding AK behind our shove here, we aren't delighted if they have KQ or AQ but we are ahead of both of these hands (if os about 54-46) and they don't have these hands often enough to make it a problem. The more I think about I can't get away from the call being comfortably the best play.

[AlexMartin]

deffo flat and hope chip leader abuses the scenario and snap him off imo.