DECISION POINT: In a live $1/$2 game it folds to the Cutoff player who raises to $5. You reraise to $15 from the Button with K♣Q♣ and only the Cutoff calls. The flop is K♥T♣3♠ and your c-bet of $16 gets called. The turn is the K♦ and the Cutoff checks. You bet $32, your opponent check-raises to $96, and action is on you.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: In a $1/$2 cash game we are dealt KQs on the Button. Action folds around to the Cutoff who raises to $5. Our specific hand is an excellent candidate to reraise on the Button here, as it is ahead of Cutoff’s likely hand range and plays very well heads up in position. We reraise to $15 and the Cutoff is the only caller.

The flop is KhTc3s and the Cutoff checks. We flop top pair with a good kicker and a backdoor flush and straight draw. This flop also significantly favors the preflop raiser’s range over the preflop caller’s range so this is an excellent spot to continuation bet. Given our range advantage and our hand’s lack of vulnerability since we block QJ which is the most significant drawing hand here, a purely game theory optimal (GTO) strategy would have us c-betting closer to ⅓ pot. We elect to use a slightly larger sizing of $16, or closer to half pot, and our opponent flat calls.

The turn is the Kd giving us three of a kind and the Cutoff checks again. AK is likely not a significant part of Villain’s range here as most players would have reraised preflop, so we’re well ahead of many of their hands and really only behind KTs/TT/33 that they may have played the hand this way. We bet $32 and the Cutoff check-raises to $96.

Now, realistically the most likely hands that beat us here are KTs (2 combinations remaining), plus TT and 33 (3 combinations each). Based on these assumptions that means we are currently behind 8 of the combinations in the Cutoff’s likely range. Our opponent could also be doing this with a hand like KJ (8 combinations).

Although realistically they may only play the suited versions here, slow played pocket AA (6 combinations), the remaining KQ hands we don’t hold (3 combinations), and the occasional bluff. We can discount some of the KJ combinations given the Cutoff is unlikely to play all the offsuit versions. Additionally we can discount some AA combinations as they would elect to reraise preflop with some frequency. This decision is actually much closer than it appears on the surface, even though we have 3 of a kind and a strong kicker.

Since our hand is very close when up against the Cutoff’s value raising range here, if we continue it is very important to allow our opponent to keep bluffing with AJ/AQ/QJ type hands in their range.

If we go all-in here the Cutoff may fold some bluffs that they would potentially shove the river with if we continue by calling the check-raise, costing us value. When we’re behind in this situation our opponent is unlikely to fold to aggression if we do take that round.

Trip Kings is too strong to fold in this spot, so proceeding in a way which allows our opponent to get the rest of their money in with the widest range possible is best.We should call this check-raise on the turn, with the plan of calling any bet on the river as well.

Calling is the best play.

DECISION POINT: You are in a large field WSOP bracelet event with blinds at 1,000/1,500 with a 1,500 big blind ante. A very loose UTG player who has been opening 50% of hands (showing down hands such as offsuit connectors and Ax from all positions) min-raises to 3,000. The UTG+1 player 3-bets to 4,500 and you 4-bet to 15,000 from MP2 with J♥J♦. The Button calls, the original raiser folds, the UTG+1 player makes it 65,000, and action is on you.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are in a large field WSOP event shortly after the dinner break. The blinds are 1,000/1,500 with a 1,500 big blind ante. The UTG player has been playing wildly, opening and 3-betting an estimated 50% of hands, showing down hands such as offsuit connectors and Ax hands from all positions. We are dealt JhJd in MP2 and the loose, wild UTG player makes a minimum raise to 3,000. The UTG+1 player then 3-bets to 4,500 and it folds to us.

Under normal circumstances an UTG raise and an UTG+1 reraise would make us think twice about playing our jacks. Given the tendencies of the UTG player though it is quite likely that the UTG+1 player would make a small isolation raise with a much wider range than normal in an attempt to isolate the UTG player’s wide range and play heads up in position.

With so many players left to act it’s unlikely they are isolating with a super loose range, but they could easily be isolating with the top 15% or so of hands and our jacks are well ahead of that range. We 4-bet to 15,000 and action folds to the Button who just flat calls our raise. Everyone else (including the wild UTG player) folds and then the UTG+1 player 5-bets to 65,000!

While UTG+1 might isolate the UTG player with a wide range, to 5-bet after we 4-bet and the Button cold call is likely a VERY narrow range, something like QQ+/AK. If we knew that the Button would fold 100% of the time we would have around 36% equity against the UTG range.

The raise is effectively all-in because if we elect to continue in the hand neither player should ever fold a future street, barring extreme circumstances like exposed cards. If we evaluate this as an all-in situation then we’d be calling 73,500 to win 125,500, which is a little worse than 2:1 odds.

If we knew the Button would fold 100% of the time this decision would be incredibly close assuming the assessment of our opponent’s ranges are accurate. However, given we can’t be certain the Button will fold, we have to consider a possible slowplay with a big hand that would have us dominated.

It feels bad to 4-bet and fold, but our jacks are in bad shape against a likely very narrow range from UTG+1.

Folding is the best play.

DECISION POINT: You are dealt J♦J♣ in the Big Blind at WPT Gardens Poker Championship final table with blinds at 5,000/10,000 and 3 players. The Button folds, the Small Blind raises to 33,750 and you reraise to 100,000. The Small Blind goes all-in and action is on you.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are at the final table of the WPT Gardens Poker Championship with only 3 players left! We have the chip lead with nearly 775,000 chips while the other stacks are approximately 700,000 chips and 311,000 chips respectively.

We have position on the second biggest stack which puts us in a great spot. Since we have the Small Blind covered they are constantly under threat of busting out third before the shorter stack any time they play a pot with us. This gives us tremendous leverage making both floating and 3-betting light preflop great tools to accumulate chips in this spot. If the Small Blind is adjusting appropriately they should be entering fewer pots with a narrower range in this situation and potentially 4-betting a bit lighter to try and take advantage of our likely wider 3-betting range.

We are dealt pocket jacks in the Big Blind and the Button folds. The Small Blind then raises to 33,750 and action is on us. We’re already in a situation where we are often 3-betting lighter than normal to exploit our chip advantage, so the fact that we have a top 5 starting hand in this spot is a huge bonus. Even though the Small Blind should be opening a bit narrower against us pocket jacks should still be well ahead of their starting range. We 3-bet to 100,000 and the Small Blind shoves all-in.

In situations like this it is often best to start by analyzing the best and worst case scenarios. The worst case scenario here is that our opponent is moving all-in with an extremely narrow range for this situation with hands such as TT+/AK. In that situation, we will be all-in for a slightly over 1.4 million chip pot with 43% equity. This means that on average we will end up with around 677,000 chips (the 73,000 we have Small Blind covered by plus 43% of the 1.4 million chip pot).

Folding in this spot leaves us with 673,000 chips, so even in the worst case scenario we end up with a positive expectation of around 4,000 chips. This doesn’t tell the whole story because chips we win in tournaments are often worth less than chips we lose due to the way tournament payout structures work. In reality if we use ICM calculations here there is probably a slight real dollar loss. Doing these calculations in our head at the table would be quite difficult however we can estimate our equity is somewhere between 40-45% vs a narrow range with dead money in the pot.

Our best case scenario is that the Small Blind recognizes we are 3-betting light and their value 4-betting range goes up to something like 66+/AQ+ with some suited Ace-wheel cards. We’ll say A5s and A4s for our estimate. In that case our equity increases to a 58% favorite with dead money in the pot which is a tremendous situation for us.

So the best case scenario here is quite good and the worst case scenario isn’t all that bad as even when we lose we have over 7BBs to try and rebuild our stack.

If we had some sort of specific read that we could just walk all over these two players with complete impunity and gain chips with relative ease we could make a case for passing this spot up and continuing to chip up without a big all-in confrontation. Absent that specific information this is just too good a spot for us to pass up.

Calling is the correct play.

DECISION POINT: You are in a large field online tournament with blinds at 100/200 and a 25 ante. An Early Position player limps, it folds around to the Cutoff who raises to 600, and the Button calls. Action is on you in the Small Blind with A♥K♥.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are in a large field online tournament with blinds of 100/200 and a 25 ante and are dealt AhKh in the Small Blind. The Under the Gun player open limps for 200 and everyone folds to the Cutoff who raises to 600. The Button calls 600 and action is on us.

Our hand is likely way ahead of our opponents’ ranges here. The UTG limp is potentially a wide range and the Cutoff could easily be trying to isolate and get heads up in position with a wide range of their own. By limping behind the Button is encouraging more calls so it’s unlikely, but not impossible, that they have a premium hand and therefore have a capped range. The main question here isn’t if we raise, but what amount should we raise to.

Default in this spot would be three times the raise amount plus the call amount, or 2,400 chips. The issue is that two of the players involved have 5,000-6,000 chips.

It’s important to be aware of when you are reaching the pot commitment threshold, a point at which you have enough chips in the pot that you are committed to continuing with your hand no matter what. For most players this threshold range is 25-40% of your remaining stack, with ⅓ stack as a standard amount.

With just under 9,000 chips to start the hand we are dangerously close to that amount and a raise amount of 2,400 chips would be in excess of the commitment threshold for two of our opponents remaining in the hand.

The amount already in the middle is also over 1,900 chips, an approximately 20% increase to our stack. Taking the pot down right here, right now without a showdown is a very good outcome.

Even if we don’t manage to take down an uncontested pot with our shove, getting heads up against a single opponent with lots of dead money in the pot and a top 5 starting hand is still a great result.

Moving all-in is the best play.

DECISION POINT: You are in a multi-table tournament where blinds are 3,000/6,000 with a 6,000 big blind ante. There are 13 players left and 9 places paid. The action folds to you in the Cutoff with A♠A♣ and your raise to 15,000, the Button folds and both the Big Blind and Small Blind call. Your opponents check the Q♦J♥T♣ flop and action is on you. What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are in the mid to late stages of a multi-table tournament. There are 13 players left and 9 places are paid with a fairly standard, top heavy payout structure. The blinds are 3,000/6,000 with a 6,000 big blind ante. We are dealt AsAc in the Cutoff six handed and preflop the action folds to us.

At this particular table, smaller raises are frequently being called in multiple spots. Even though making it 12,000 is normally a fairly standard raise in this spot, we decide to raise to 15,000 in the moment and get called by both the Small Blind and Big Blind.

The flop is QdJhTc and both players check. This is a very coordinated board that often connects with the Blinds’ calling ranges. The issue we are facing is that we only have 95,000 chips and the Small Blind only 41,000 chips and there is 51,000 in the pot.

With a stack to pot ratio of less than 2, an overpair to the board, and a potential draw to a straight we have a situation where we really aren’t deep enough to ever fold here. However, our hand is also quite vulnerable to many of the types of hands the Blinds would call with and in some cases we are even behind on this flop.

If we were much deeper stacked there could be a case for playing this hand a little more cautiously, but at this stack depth we really have to go with our hand and we can still extract a lot of value from KQ/KJ/KT/T9s/Q9s/J9s type hands.

The Blinds are also quite likely to have reraised preflop with AK/QQ/JJ/TT so most of the hands where we are really crushed shouldn’t be in their range,aside from 98s and if they call really loose perhaps some K9s. When we are behind it’s often against two-pair hands where we will have 9 outs on the flop and often when we miss the turn we pick up 3 additional outs to improve to higher two-pair.

Normally we would continuation bet a little on the higher side here to protect our hand but with the Small Blind’s shorter stack we can bet 20,500. If the Small Blind were to shove it technically reopens the betting which would allow us to shove over the top should the Big Blind decide to call.

This sizing adjustment may seem minor, however it avoids the awkward situation of us betting 30,000 and the Small Blind shoving that can entice the Big Blind to call. In that case we would have no option other than to call and then face the additional potential complication of an eight, nine, or some other action killing card coming off on the turn that will make our decision even more difficult.

Bet sizing must be a critical area of focus in order to improve your game, and in this spot the precision of your bet sizing will make a huge difference.

Betting half the Small Blind’s stack is the best play.

A♠A♥ vs a Flop Check-Raise

In this cash game scenario a UTG+2 player calls, you raise from the hijack seat with A♠A♥, it folds around to UTG+2 who calls your raise. The flop comes 2♥6♦9♠, the UTG+2 player checks, you bet, and UTG+2 check-raises.

🡆Would you fold, call or reraise?

A♦A♥ on the River

In a Tournament, you are dealt A♦A♥ in an early position and you raise. It folds around to the Big Blind who calls. The Flop comes Q♣Q♥5♠. The Big Blind checks, you bet, and the Big Blind calls. The Turn is the T♦. The Big Blind checks and you check behind. The River is the Q♠. The Big Blind checks, you bet, and the Big Blind raises All-In.

🡆What do you do here?

Trip Aces vs a River Bet

In a Tournament, the UTG player raises preflop, MP2 calls, you call with A♣5♣ and the other players fold. The flop comes A♥A♦4♣. UTG and MP2 check and you bet. UTG calls and MP2 folds. The turn is the K♦. UTG checks, you bet, and UTG calls. The river is the Q♠, and UTG shoves all-in.

🡆Action is on you, what do you do?

Set of A♠A♣ vs a Check-Raise

In a Cash Game, UTG+1 calls and so does UTG+2, both Middle Position players, and the Hijack. You are in the Cutoff seat with A♠A♣. You raise and it folds around to MP1 who calls. All other players fold and it’s heads up to the flop, which comes K♦A♦7♦. MP1 checks and you bet. MP1 raises. Facing this raise from MP1, what is your play?

🡆Do you fold, call, raise or go all-in?

When playing a poker hand, it's very important to look at all the hands in your range and not just the hand you hold. Pocket aces are the strongest hand in the game preflop, however sometimes it’s pretty obvious that your hand is behind postflop and you need to be present and engaged enough to know when you are beat and fold.

Understanding and mastering strategies such as fundamental 1-Pair Betting Lines, Relative Hand Strength Postflop, and Pot Odds, will give you the opportunities to exert skill edge against your opponents and play your aces effectively.

The concept of betting lines is crucial to understanding your overall game plan.

A betting line is the plan of actions taken across multiple streets, the blueprint of how to play various types of hands. If you have good betting lines that you use in your game plan, you shouldn't think street by street or find yourself on the turn without a plan for the hand.

With 1-Pair hands, specifically a top pair or an over pair, it's important to know when to continuation bet postflop, up against a single opponent and when to take a cautious approach. If you are just focused on the specific hand you hold and not on the situation, you may end up trying to get three streets of value where it's not profitable and find yourself up against much better hands by the time there's a showdown at the river.

Relative hand strength refers to your hand strength changing based on the situation, so your goal should be to start seeing poker situationally and pay attention to the number of opponents that saw the flop with you.

Number of opponents is key to relative hand strength because the more players that see the flop, the stronger the average hand at showdown. You should also pay attention to how coordinated that flop is, for example how many draws are present, how close together and rank those cards are.

Board texture will influence how likely it is that anybody has hit the flop. It’s also very important to note how position can change from preflop to postflop, where from the blinds for example, you can start the hand as last to act preflop but have to act first after the flop.

Stack depth is another crucial factor that you need to consider in every hand that you play, as the deeper the stacks are, the better hand you need to get all your chips in the middle.

Tying all these concepts together, in every single hand that you play postflop you should pay attention to estimate of opponent hand ranges based on actions taken. Note how your opponents played the hand thus far and what type of hand ranges would you put a reasonable opponent on that took those actions.

Lastly, when deciding whether to continue in a hand it’s essential to look at the Pot odds you are being offered in a hand to determine appropriate risk/reward.

Pot odds refers to how much is already in the pot for you to win versus how much you risk in order to win it, or in other words how much is already in the pot compared to how much you have to call in order to continue in the hand. As a quick reference you can always remember that you are facing a one pot-sized bet, the pot odds are 2 to 1, and if the bet is half-pot sized, your pot odds are 3 to 1.

We hope you enjoy these hands and that the strategies you learn will have you singing instead of crying the next time you are dealt the mighty pocket aces.

🗣️🎶 You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table. There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done 🎶

(Sorry we got carried away....)

Keep on practicing!
-LearnWPT

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DECISION POINT: In a tough Tournament where blinds are 100/200 with a 200 big blind ante it folds to the Cutoff who opens to 500. The Button and Small Blind fold and you call from the Big Blind with 3♣5♣. You check the J♥K♦4♣ flop and your opponent continuation bets 400.

Action is back on you, what do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing in a multi table tournament with blinds at 100/200 and a 200 big blind ante. The effective stacks are 10,000 chips to start and there are several tough opponents at the table. We are dealt 5c3c in the Big Blind and everyone folds to the Cutoff who opens to 500 chips. Both the Button and the Small Blind fold.

We don’t have a super strong hand here holding 53s preflop, however there are 1,000 chips in the pot and it costs only 300 more for us to call. We’re getting better than 3:1 immediate pot odds against a player with a very wide opening hand range. While we can fold many of the worst hands in our range here including offsuit combos like T2o, 53s is definitely good enough to continue considering the price. We make the call and it’s off to the flop.

The flop is JhKd4c. In this spot with relatively deep stacks in relation to the pot and both players hand ranges being wide, the Cutoff has a significant advantage by being the in position player. As is preferred when defending your blind by calling, we should be checking them with our entire hand range.

We check and the Cutoff bets 400 chips. A continuation bet sizing of approximately 1/3rd pot size is common in this scenario and the Cutoff will likely be using this size with a big part of their range. A good approach to countering this strategy of frequent c-betting with a likely wider range is to both do some check-calling to keep their range wide and get to controlled showdowns, and mix in some check-raises.

Our check-raising range should be a mix of some strong hands and some bluffing hands that have backdoor equity to account for the times when we are called. We do have good backdoor equity with 53s holding both a backdoor flush and backdoor straight draw. This board is reasonably coordinated and connects with much of our calling range as well. Taking these factors into consideration, we have a prime opportunity to check-raise and reverse the pressure back onto our opponent.

If we had opponent specific information that the Cutoff in this hand was opening with a much narrower than optimal range preflop, or they c-bet a lower than optimal frequency on the flop our approach would be different. We could make an exploitative fold either preflop or to their standard c-bet sizing on this board texture.

However, against good players who will be opening and continuation betting here appropriately, we must mix in some check-raise bluffs to balance and combat their strategy and this is a perfect opportunity.

Raising is the best play.

DECISION POINT: In a $2-5 cash game with 100BB stacks the Button opens to $15 and you raise to $60 from the Big Blind with A♥A♠. The Button calls and the flop comes 8♠A♣Q♥. You bet $30 and Villain raises to $130. Action is on you, what do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are dealt A♥A♠ in the Big Blind in a 100BB deep cash game. Action folds to the Button who makes a standard raise to $15 and we reraise to $60. The Button calls and we’re off to see the flop.

We hit the flop hard with top set on the 8♠A♣Q♥ board. With $122 in the pot and $440 effective stack, there is some potential consideration for slow playing. If we take a closer look at this flop and how it interacts with both ranges we'll see that it interacts with the Button’s range somewhat frequently. This spot is really close.

If we use a solver and choose 3 possible actions of checking, betting $30, and betting $90, betting $30 is preferred 54% of the time and checking is preferred 46% of the time. If the flop is slightly less coordinated, checking will become favored at a higher frequency.

Adding hands like top set and top two pair that block a significant portion of our opponent’s big hands into our checking range can help protect the times we want to check in a similar spot with hands such as pocket tens. We elect to bet $30 in this instance and our opponent raises to $130.

This is a spot where many players lose patience and are tempted to just go all-in, especially given they have the best possible hand at the moment and their opponent is raised. Defaulting to all-in in these spots leaves a lot of potential money on the table. Opponents who are aggressive will be raising with some bluffs, and when we just go all-in here we let all those hands off the hook.

Sometimes our opponent does have draws in their range and if we just call some of those draws may get there when they would have otherwise folded to our raise. However those instances make up a very small overall percentage of their range. Even if the opponent is raising with a hand like JTs has 8 outs that could hit on the turn, we still have 10 outs to a full house (or quads) on the river.

Good opponents will usually just call here with JTs because they often have to fold if they get shoved on. As the in position player the opponent has a ton of float equity when they miss, meaning it is more likely against solid opponents that they are raising here with around 4 outs at best when they have draws.

Unlike our flop decisions, the recommended actions by the solver are not even close and calling here is by far the best play. When our opponent has a huge hand like 88/A8s we usually get all the chips no matter what, so keeping bluffs in their range here allows us to maximize our overall profit versus their entire range.

Calling is the best play.

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DECISION POINT: In the middle stages of a Tournament with 150/300 blinds and a 30 ante, the MP2 player raises to 660 and you reraise to 1,950 with A♣K♣ from the Hijack. The Cutoff and Button both fold, the Small Blind calls, the Big Blind folds and the original raiser in MP2 calls. The flop comes 3♥5♠5♥ and the Small Blind and MP2 player check. Action is on you, what do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing the middle stages of a multi-table tournament with 150/300 blinds with a 30 ante at a 6 handed table. We are dealt A♣K♣ in the Hijack seat. The first player to act raises to 660 and action is on us.

If the standard raise size at this table is this small MP2 should be opening a fairly wide range of hands given this risk vs reward on their raise. With this raise size you’re risking 660 to win 600 when you open. So even without one of the best five starting hands in poker we should be 3-betting here wider than we would if the blinds were 50/100 with an opening raise to 300.

AKs is extremely strong in this spot and it is far ahead of MP2’s opening range, so we elect to reraise to 1,950. Action folds to the Small Blind who flat calls. The Big Blind folds, the original raiser calls and we’re off to the flop.

The flop is 3♥5♠5♥ and both players check to us. This flop is better for our range than our opponents as no one is likely to have a 5 in their hand and we should have all the bigger over pairs that aren’t likely to be in our opponent’s range. That being said there are a couple of factors really working against us here.

First, the Small Blind is representing a very narrow, condensed range when they cold call the preflop 3-bet here. This means that while they are unlikely to have AA/KK here, the Small Blind's range is often narrowed to something like TT-QQ/AK/AQs as they called a raise and a reraise without closing the action. Since we block many of their AK/AQs hands the Small Blind is very likely to have a significant overpair in this spot.

Second, the stack to pot ratio (SPR) here is around 2. This means even if we make a relatively small continuation bet like 2,100 and get called by a single player the pot will be 10,500 on the turn with an effective stack of 10,150. We are unlikely to be able to leverage our stack into generating folds against hands like TT that are in Villain’s range.

If the stacks were much deeper and we could use our stack to apply leverage vs hands like TT/JJ in this spot then a continuation bet along with a multi-street bluff on certain runouts would make a lot of sense. However, with a relatively low SPR, against multiple opponents with narrow ranges that are unlikely to both fold this flop a continuation bet, a c-bet is unlikely to accomplish much other than moving more of our chips into one of our opponent’s stacks.

This is a very sharp contrast from the AK hand discussed a few weeks ago, where we had AK in the Small Blind vs a single opponent in a 3-bet pot with much deeper stacks and much wider ranges where we continuation bet on a similar flop.

Checking is the best play.

DECISION POINT: You are in the money and the table chip leader in a multi-table Tournament where blinds are 5,000/10,000 with a 10,000 big blind ante. It folds to you on the Button with K♠T♦ and action is on you. What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing a tournament where we just got in the money and we are the table chip leader with 1.6 million chips (160 big blinds) at 5,000/10,000 blinds with a 10,000 big blind ante. We are dealt KsTd on the Button and it folds around to us.

We are now in a very interesting tournament spot that can come up quite often, especially if we have a decent stack and there are a lot of players left in the tournament who have what is referred to as "reshove stacks". A Reshove stack is between 15-20 big blinds. The best move for players with this stack size is to look for spots where opponents have a wide opening hand range and then shove all-in over the top when the opponent raises first into the pot. This move is used to induce a fold and leverage their stack to pick up chips.

In this spot, we are on the Button with a hand that we would normally raise first-in with. The potential problem here is if we open, our opponents have great stacks to reshove with. If an opponent reshoves we will be in a very precarious spot because against aggressive players they will likely have hands like JTs and A4s here in their range of which we either dominate or have great equity against. However, we don’t really want to play a 30+ big blind pot with these hands.

Traditional poker logic often says that with and against reshove stacks we shouldn’t raise any hands we wouldn’t call a shove with, but that logic is flawed. If we only raise hands we will call with then we miss out on a lot of opportunities to utilize our big stack here to accumulate chips. We do have another option though.

Against players who resteal aggressively with these stacks (which is often appropriate) we can also move all-in. At first glance it may seems like a large overbet.

However, sometimes when we hold certain hands that we may have to call versus a shove we actually reduce our overall variance by just shoving first. This way we make them fold some hands with which they may have shoved against a small open-raise.

Our opponents will still call with the hands that dominate us, but they would have shoved with those hands anyway, and we may have had to call those shoves.

Against more passive players who don’t reshove appropriately, making a minimum raise and folding here is definitely the superior play. When facing players who are capable of reshoving a very wide range in this spot, open-shoving into these two stacks is slightly higher EV and lower variance than both raise/folding and raise/calling.

Moving all-in is the best play.

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