Call or Fold? Ace-King vs. a Four-Bet All-In
DECISION POINT: In a $5/$10 no-limit hold'em cash game, the player sitting in early position (UTG+1) raises and you reraise from the hijack with A?K?. It folds around to the big blind who reraises all in. The UTG+1 player folds. Action is on you...
PRO ANSWER: After we reraise an early position player with A?K?, the player in the big blind moves all in and it folds back to us. Whenever you consider calling a preflop all-in, you should determine your pot odds and the minimum equity you need to call. Then you should estimate your opponent's range of hands.
In this case, it costs us $1,000 more to potentially win $1,215. This corresponds to pot odds of 1.215-to-1. If we call, the total pot will be $2,215, so the minimum equity we need to call would be 1,000/2,215 or about 45 percent.
After the big blind makes this overbet shove, we can assign our opponent a hand range heavily weighted to premium hands. Most opponents would not make this play with AQ or medium pocket pairs. In fact, most opponents would have a hand range of QQ+, AK when they take this action.
Against this range, our ace-king offsuit has about 39 percent equity (which can be determined using a hand equity calculator). Even if we add hands like JJ or TT to our opponent's range, this only increases our equity slightly to just over 40 percent.
In order for us to have the minimum equity needed to call this shove, our opponent would have to take this action with hands like AQ or worse. Without any historical opponent information to indicate the player would take this action with these hands, we should simply fold against what is likely a very premium hand range.
Despite three-betting the initial raiser for value with A?K?, we should fold to this overbet shove from the player in the big blind.
Folding is the best play.
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