Playing Ace-Jack from the Blinds vs. a Raise and Call
DECISION POINT: You're playing a tournament, and after posting the big blind (400) you're down to 5,850. Preflop action folds around to the player in the hijack seat who raises. The cutoff folds and the button calls, then the small blind folds. You're in the big blind holding A♠J♦.
PRO ANSWER: After the hijack raises and the button calls, action is on us in the big blind with ace-jack. With just over 15 big blinds, we have an excellent stack size for a reshove. Stack sizes between 10 and 20 big blinds allow us to reshove preflop very effectively, since we have enough chips to create fold equity but not so many chips that we are giving ourselves a poor risk-to-reward ratio.
In this hand, we are risking about 6,000 chips to win just over 3,000 chips, so we can potentially increase our stack size by 50 percent without a showdown. This is an excellent risk-to-reward ratio for us. In addition, our hand has value against a hijack open and a button call.
Had the initial raise come from early position, the best play would have been to fold. However, with the raise and call coming from late position, we should move all in. We can win this pot uncontested a fair portion of the time and still have reasonable equity when our all-in push is called.
Moving all in is the best play.
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