Ace-King Suited Versus a Raise and a Call
DECISION POINT: In a no-limit hold'em tournament, an early position player raises and it folds around to the small blind who calls. You are in the big blind with A♦K♦. Action is on you...
What do you do here?
PRO ANSWER: Ace-king suited is well ahead of both players' ranges and we should reraise both for value and to deny our opponents their equity.
There has been a raise to 2.1x the big blind and a flat-call from the small blind, with both players only starting with about 23 BBs. There really isn't room for three-betting smaller to be more profitable than jamming. This is a great effective stack size to shove.
Another way to think about this is to have a shoving threshold as a percentage of the effective stack. If more than a certain amount goes in with a standard raise, that raise instead becomes an all-in. Many players use one-third of the effective stack as a rule of thumb.
A standard raise out of position from the blinds would be three times the total raise amount plus any callers. In this case (3 x 2.1) + 2.1 = 8.4 BBs or 8,400 chips. That represents about 37 percent of the effective stack.
Since this standard raise is more than about one-third of the effective stack, we can simply move all in instead.
Moving all in is the best play.
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