Correctly playing QQ

[Fjaman]

The situations is as follows, you are an average stack 2.5h in a 50$ rb tourney and have a M of about 18 and pick up QQ in middle pos.
You make you standard raise and get reraised by the small blind, since you´ve been playing with him for a while and by the size of the raise you figure that you are probably up against AK, the size is decently big and the villain has an M of about 15, What do you do?
take a flop, or push all in and preserve your equity adv. of 54-57% ????

[Ramster]

hes probly not gonna fold to a push so you might as well call and see the flop

[baudib]

Do you have a read that he will lead out if he bricks the flop?

[Fjaman]

yes my read was that he would go all in or bet the pot even if he missed

[cremson687]

If that is your read then call is the play because unless he hits he's going 2 give u chips and if he does hit maybe he slows down and u can catch up. I don't like shoving because it gives him a chance 2 race and take all of your chips.

[dthorne04]

In situations like this, it's a leak to peg someone for a certain hand, rather than a range. This is the incorrect thing to do. It's nearly impossible to just peg someone for one hand and one hand only from just a simple 3 bet. For example, giving someone an uber nitty range of TT+, AKo, AKs+ leaves you as a 52.3% favorite against his range. I wish you had the hand history as that would further help, but the way it sounds, the absolute best play is getting it in right here and now for a few reasons. For one, if he does have a hand like 99, TT, JJ an unfavorable flop may freeze him up, whereas you're almost certainly getting called preflop due to the pot size. On the flipside, the same kind of flop may let you get taken off the best hand as well. It's not like you're super deep stacked here. Make the standard play and get it in.

[cremson687]

your not factoring in the part where he said the villian would fire at the flop empty so his chances of freezing him up will slow him down.

[dthorne04]

you're not factoring in the part where villain will probably call with most of his 3-bet range (unless op had seen him be aggressive with his 3-bets), if not all of it, and we beat a lot of it. therefore shoving is easily the best and most profitable play.

[cremson687]

i agree with that we probably have most of his range beat but i don't like getting all my chips in against someone who is likely 2 call in a coin flip situation for all of my chips.

[dthorne04]

That's a really bad mindset, as you shouldn't be passing up 6% edges...pretty much ever.

Note: I don't think villain in this hand necessarily has to have AK even with op's read on him. To just put him on that hand alone is ludicrous. Pre flop play is about ranges, not taking blind shots in the dark and putting people on one and one hand only. Sure, there will be certain situations where you can narrow a player's range greatly, but you should never (EVER) be saying one hand only. It's bad. Very bad.

Also, if villain say shoved over our opening raise, and we could see that he had AK, we should still be calling 100% with QQ in this spot.

[cremson687]

i never said i was folding i was on the calling side. I thought u were talking about shoving over top.

[dthorne04]

Ah, I should've specified. I feel our most profitable play in the hand is exploiting that 6% edge (if we somehow Hellmuth soul read them for AK), rather than playing a flop against someone who's already told us they like their hand, and are probably willing to go the distance with it.

[baudib]

I'm pretty much shoving here 100% of the time. Often you can say the all-in overshove after a minraise is AK from many players, but to think he wouldn't do this with TT/JJ/AQ is a bit much. In fact this is a common play for hands like TT/JJ/AQ oop.

We have villain dominated much more often than you think. The reason we push is not because we want villain to fold (he's likely not) but because we want all of his chips in situations where we're large favorites.