Was it correct to shove?

[jsampson]

I am in early position and table has shown a willingness to fold even the big blind to a raise. I have QJo and raise it 3xBB at 40/80 blinds. It gets reraised but only 150 more. Another person calls the reraise and I want to fold but it was only 150 more and the blinds folded. At this point the pot is 1290. I have about 1300 more chips. The flop comes QJ4 all hearts. So I have top two pair, no heart. I decide to shove all in to protect against a draw. I got called by AA with no heart and AK with the K of hearts.

Bad shove?

[Zorkion]

how many people seated? this is why its good to post full hand histories, as it'll give a complete picture of the scenario.

anyways, fold preflop. or, fold preflop to the min reraise, which is a very strong play by many people. consider it like this, what are the person's objectives in min raising? nobody is expected to fold who was previously in the hand, so it just builds a pot. so why would someone want to build a pot, before they see the flop? because they think they have very good odds, eg with AA/KK maybe even JJ/QQ, but imho, i think thats getting a little low, and against those hands, youre more likely to see a more sizable raise, since they want to push people out who could potentially catch a K/A pair on the flop

as played, flop shove is fine, you have a strong hand on a flushing board that you want to protect your equity against, and any q/j on the turn + river gives you the nuts

running this through stove shows that you have 45% to win, which is a little slim, even if its the highest %eq in the pot. hand like this might even be worth checking flop, and then shoving turn if no h hits, since you can give people worse odds to call with only one card to complete their flush. as is, your shove would have been suicide if anyone already hit the flush

[jsampson]

yeah. Good evaluation. I am pretty sure the table was full at this point. it was a $1.20 tourney. I raised trying to steal the blinds. Which as i say it I am not sure why I fealt the need to do that so early in the tourney. I called the min reraise assumeing I was behind but figured if I hit two pair or trips I would take the lead. As i look at it calling the min rais was the only major mistake as being the first to raise is not necessarily a bad thing as the table has been fairly tight. Shoving all in with the best at that point is reasonable also. When I look back i put the vast majority of the money in when i was ahead but as you point out it was a pretty slim margin. anyway fourth street was a 10 of hearts and my ass is still sore.

[Zorkion]

yeah, definitely fold qj with full table in ep

[taipan168]

Hi, best to post the exact hand (without results!) as it's easier for us to review when we can see all the stack sizes, positions, prior actions etc. in one place.

Anyway, I agree with the others, I am folding QJo pretty fast when I am in EP. You need to preserve your chips as you can't afford to be burning 15% of your stack preflop when you have a marginal hand in bad position. As played, I would fold to the re-raise even though you're getting massive odds as you will typically be crushed by the range that opp is re-raising.

As played, I agree with the shove. The other alternative would be to bet half your stack on the flop, calling a shove over and if you get called, get the rest in on the turn, but with two opps in the pot I prefer to just shove first time around to price out the flush draw.

As played I am delighted that they both called because you're getting 3:1 on your shove and you're much better than 3:1 to win this hand:

Board: Qh Jh 4h
Dead:

equity win tie
Hand 0: 43.079% 43.08% 00.00% { QdJs }
Hand 1: 13.953% 13.62% 00.33% { AdAs }
Hand 2: 42.968% 42.64% 00.33% { AhKc }

[ManicLombax]

Yup I think shoving the flop was good. Unless someone has trips or flopped a flush, you're ahead. The only reason the AK hand was so close in equity was the added straight draw giving him a pretty beastly combo draw. If he'd had AhQd or something you'd have had more equity. Might as well get it in when it's likely you have the best hand. Then as taipan says you're quite happy when everyone calls giving you great odds. Nearly 50% of the time you triple up here.

We can also pretend we don't know the results already. Let's assume Zorkion is right and the min-raise indicates a big hand, QQ+, AKs, AKo. Then the re-raise caller also probably has a pretty good hand to call a 3-bet. Say TT+, AQs+, AKo. Pop that into poker stove and you're well ahead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 45.972% 45.49% 00.48% 296171 3138.00 { QcJd }
Hand 1: 29.233% 27.42% 01.81% 178523 11799.00 { QQ+, AKs, AKo }
Hand 2: 24.795% 22.97% 01.82% 149555 11877.00 { TT+, AQs+, AKo }