There is a hand I would like to discuss from a TPE training video I just watched. I don’t want to say whose video it is because I don’t want this to come across as me saying look how much smarter I am than the pro. I’m not smarter. The pro is a stud who does great videos. But I do disagree with the play that was made, and I want to talk it through.

The hero just lost two big hands in a row where all the money went in preflop versus smaller stacks. The first he had A-Q suited vs. Q-Q. The second hand he suffered a bad beat as he had A-Q offsuit vs. j-9 offsuit and villain binked a 9 on the river. So now hero has gone from 71,488 chips to 24,640 chips.

This is a WCOOP $265 NLH event. Blinds are $2,500/$5,000 Ante $625.

Hero is in the cutoff.

SB $90,035

BB $26,340

UTG $9,988

UTG+1 $28,461

MP $117,540

MP+1 $112,071

MP+2 $62,899

HERO (CO) $24,015

BTN $43,137

UTG bets $9,988 (all-in), 3 folds, MP+2 bets $62,899 (all-in), Hero (CO) calls $24,015 (all-in), 3 folds.

UTG has Ac, 6c

MP+2 has Jd, Qc

Hero has As, 9d

What I want to discuss is whether hero should have made the call and gone all-in to two shoves ahead of him.

Let’s discuss ranges without knowing what the players have. UTG has only 9,988 chips and the blinds are $2,500/$5,000 Ante $625. I don’t really understand why UTG allowed himself to get this short stacked. He needed to get it in a while ago. If he doesn’t play this hand he pretty much blinds off the next two hands. So UTG can really have any two cards. Absolutely nothing to fear. If hero was the first player to reshove I’d have no problem with that move. But before hero got to act, MP+2 shoves all-in. MP+2 has a 12 BB stack which isn’t unbelievably deep but it is a lot healthier than hero’s stack. So now the question becomes, should hero have made the all-in call with As, 9d?

Let’s look at ranges without knowing what cards everyone else has. UTG inexplicably has let himself get down to only 2BB. Plus, he will be in the small blind next hand and the big blind the hand after that. He almost had no choice but to play this hand since hets essentially gets blinded out the next two hands. So UTG can truly have any two cards. No reason to be afraid of this bet. MP+2 has 12 BB, which isn’t unbelievably deep but it is still a stack two-and-a-half times the size of hero. Yes, it is possible that MP+2 is trying to isolate UTG light, but given the fact that the small blind has him comfortably covered. This would point to MP+2 having something. A premium hand is possible, but so is a small pair or medium+ suited connected or a couple of non-premium Broadway cards.

Knowing this, should hero call all-in with 5BB with As, 9d? This seems pretty light to me. I get that he needs to get it in relatively soon but is this a good enough spot to do so? If hero was the first person to put chips in the pot after the UTG all-in bet I would agree with shoving. But given that a second player who has him covered has shoved, hero getting it in seems really thin.

As it turns out, hero gets it is about as good as you could hope for. His A-9 offsuit has A-6 suited comfortably beat preflop (57% to 28%). His A-9 offsuit has Q-J offsuit slightly beat preflop (56% to 43%).

But he is not going head’s up on this hand after everyone gets it in preflop. When you calculate what everyone has in a poker odds calculator, hero wins 31.6% of the time, MP+2 wins 42.31% of the time and UTG wins 19.89% of the time. And these are the odds when hero’s opponents turn over cards as friendly as could possibly be imagined for hero.

Now I suppose you could say that hero really only needs to beat MP+2 since UTG has so few chips. But I really can’t see MP+2 making the play he did with a worse ace than hero’s A-9. I also can’t see MP+2 making the move he did with two non-paired undercards to A-9. So at best hero has one overcard to MP+2’s range which it turns out is the case (and I think MP+2 shoved much wider than could be reasonably expected). So given all of the hands that MP+2 could have been shoving with that would have dominated hero, and given how small a favorite hero would be against the absolute bottom of MP+2’s range, I would make the argument that hero should have folded preflop and waited for a better spot.

Does anyone have a different perspective than me? I am curious what the case is to be made for hero getting it all in after a shove (small) and a re-shove (bigger than hero’s stack). I am interested in people’s opinions to either side of this argument.