I should add WRT the hand in question, I think it’s a fold. People tend to squeeze super tight versus UTG raises, and since villain makes it a sizing where he/she can’t fold if you jam, it seems to be a nutted range. You have very little to no fold equity so I think 99 would be the top of my folding range here.

I can’t quite see the image but it looks like you gave them a squeezing range of around 6%? I think this is too wide, especially since you only had them calling 3.5%. I doubt they have a squeeze-folding range here, which would make 99 a fold.

As far as whether we take a 0.25bb profit if we can find it, absolutely. Most people have winrates in the 2-5bb/100 range at 19bb stacks (many players are breakeven or worse at these stacks) and when you find a hand that makes you 25bb/100 (0.25bb) hand, you have to take it. The more of these spots you turn down, the lower your winrate at those stacks. The only players who can afford to fold these spots are, paradoxically, the players with the highest winrates who will be more easily able to recover chips, and the way they got those winrates wasn’t by folding profitable spots.

MovieFX said
In regards to open-shoving I completely agree with theginger45. I don’t see a reason for it. I can open-fold 99 depending on the situation.

As played, V just raises our open here. I think we are indifferent to fold vs shove? I’d want to know more about our image and the table flow. V stats don’t tip it either way really. 

The 3-bet can mean a number of things. Perhaps V has a hand like 88 and wants to take control of the betting and keep out callers, for example. He could have AK and call PF but might be passive post-flop. I don’t agree that V’s 20BB stack is a short stack that will be gambling wide with a 3-bet open and then call 4-bet-shove. That takes real strength.

So… I don’t mind a 4-bet bluff-shove here and I can’t find fault in a fold either, though it does mean 15BB after going through the blinds. Interesting spot.

I call it a bluff-shove because it is relying on fold equity to be +EV right? V’s calling range should have us crushed considering our position. This also means V needs to have a hand he doesn’t have all that often. That is why I’m indifferent and shoving is probably +EV (which I think was shown in the OP sims). V’s calling range should be something like AK+, QQ+ (2-3%?). AQ would be a bad call IMO. JJ feels like it is on the fence to me. I wouldn’t be shocked to see TT, but I think that is a bad gamble with V’s stack to a UTG 19BB 4-bet shove range. I am definitely 4-bet shoving JJ+, AQs+, AKo+ for value, and anything else is in the balanced bluff side of the range? I’m not sure about TT. I call with AQo and some AQs and AK depending on the V. Last night I was at a final table with 2/3 of the chips in play and found a situation against an aggressive short-stacked player, who opened from the CU, folds to me in the BB with AA and I just flatted and let him c-bet off another 1/3 of his stack. It chopped off his legs and he was out a few hands later for a nice ladder for the table. Any other player at the table I would have 3-bet. In that situation 99 is an easy shove though.

I agree it is good to have a plan pre-VPIP but that should be a general sense of options rather than a firm plan. There are a huge number of variables to consider depending on how the actual action goes. What if there are 2 callers to this 3 bet and we close the action? What if a 100BB stack shoves with a 60BB stack left to act…or maybe there are 3 12BB stacks left to act, etc., etc.  

Specifically WRT the idea of 99 being a ‘bluff-shove’ in this spot, it’s worth noting that there’s not really such a thing as a ‘bluff-shove’ in preflop spots. Our EV in a preflop shove spot is a function of both our fold equity and our equity when called – obviously in some spots fold equity is the primary generator of profit, but there’s no specific line at which fold equity becomes more important than all-in equity.

In the sense that we’re rarely getting called by worse this is a bluff, but in the sense that we often get called in a great spot for flipping this is a value bet – you can see that there are positives and negatives on both sides. What this also means is that there’s no spot where shoving a weak hand but not shoving a stronger hand is a good idea, unless the stronger hand is played as a flat-call – a hand like A5s, for example, will always have a lot more all-in EV when called than a hand like K9o (better blocker+more equity when called), so the only reason to shove K9o but not A5s in a certain spot would be if we believed that shoving was profitable with both, but flatting was more profitable than shoving in the case of A5s.