Playing Pocket Tens Versus a Raise and a Shove
DECISION POINT: In a multi-table tournament, a player in middle position raises and the hijack reraise-shoves. You are on the button with 10♥10♦. Action is on you...
What do you do here?
PRO ANSWER: In this hand, a player in middle position open-raised, then the player in the hijack seat moved all in. Should we call, reraise, or fold with our 10♥10♦ on the button?
Any time a player is all in preflop, you should pay attention to the number of big blinds in their stack and their position.
In this case, the player in the hijack seat reshoved with 15 big blinds over the opening raise. This is a good stack size with which to reraise all in and many players will reshove with relatively wide hand ranges in spots like this one. With 15 big blinds, they can still exert pressure on the open raiser and win an uncontested pot.
Many players in this spot would have a range of at least 55+, AJs+, KQs, AJo+, KQo — that is, pocket fives or better, ace-jack or higher both suited and unsuited, and king-queen both suited and unsuited. Against this range our hand is about a 55-45 favorite. In addition, if the hijack player is shoving a wider range than this, our hand wins even more often.
The presence of the initial raiser decreases our overall win percentage, but not enough to make this a fold.
Pocket tens is a premium hand against a 15-big blind reshove, and we should continue in this hand. Since calling would cost us around 75 percent of our remaining stack, we should simply move all in.
Moving all in is the best play.
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