QQ Preflop All-In in Tournament – Right Move or Not?

[maxstell]

Hey everyone!
I was playing a $100 freeroll tournament and I’d like to hear your thoughts on this hand:

Blinds: 200/400
My stack: 9,800
Opponent's stack: around 11,000

I was dealt Q♦ Q♣ in middle position.
It folded to me, I went all-in preflop.
The big blind called with A♥ K♠.
Flop came A-high and I lost the hand.

Do you think going all-in with QQ in this spot was the correct play, or should I have raised smaller to avoid a coinflip?

Any feedback is appreciated!

 

[black and]

In such situations, it is worth taking into account the play of your opponents. You could have observed their play prior to this situation and make decisions based on this information, which, in my opinion, is a very important factor.

 

[sandy358]

Hey everyone!
I was playing a $100 freeroll tournament and I’d like to hear your thoughts on this hand:

Blinds: 200/400
My stack: 9,800
Opponent's stack: around 11,000

I was dealt Q♦ Q♣ in middle position.
It folded to me, I went all-in preflop.
The big blind called with A♥ K♠.
Flop came A-high and I lost the hand.

Do you think going all-in with QQ in this spot was the correct play, or should I have raised smaller to avoid a coinflip?

Any feedback is appreciated!

Jamming with 20BB QQ there was not a good idea, but the problem is that the correct move would be minraise and after a BB jam call it. Yeah, the result is going to be the same but:
* In general you should not jam your best hands preflop, because you are just announcing that you have a strong hand, generating a lot of folds and just winning 2BB most of the time instead of extracting value postflop, while leaving your minraising ranges vulnerable due to the removal of your good hands from there
* If you are more sophisticated, you should not open jam the queens until you are 10BB or less. Openjams from MP appear when you fall below 20BB, but they are mostly coming from the offsuited aces/low pocket pairs/and some suited broadways (as a bonus) sections, while your big pairs prefer minraising.

But!
If your table was full of unflexible calling station type players, that are going to mass-call min and small raises it could have been a justified shove, as QQ performs really well heads-up and minraising with an intention of setmining for queens multiway sounds like an overkill and wasted potential for this type of hand.

 

[AAluckyQQ]

Well I would only raised smaller on that case, but still the bb would go allin most of the times preflop with AK. Soo it would be the exact same thing

 

[mssmotilda]

All-in preflop with 24 blinds is a bad play.

 

[Hospedar]

Do you think going all-in with QQ in this spot was the correct play, or should I have raised smaller to avoid a coinflip?

EDIT: I did a mistake on my analysis, as I considered you were at BTN, and not at MP (you didn't specified MP1, MP2, MP3...), sorry, but what I said beneath this comment is useful anyway and your situation on the middle of the table makes the things even worse for your decision, as your and villain's risk would grow even more, giving villain way more advantage against your decision...

I was writing a big text about some possibilities, but when I saw you both had like ~25bb, I just decided to say the obvious: you should simply do a mini raise (2bb) and wait for villain's reaction.

25bb of effective stack is way too big to just shove any hand without a very specific and assertive reason.

When you do a mini raise. you can filter his range by what he will do on pre-flop.

He is the BB, he would need to defend his blind against BTN a lot of times, according to GTO:



Every green is call, every light-red is a common 3-bet, every dark-red is a 3-bet shove and blue is just fold.

Obviously, most part of players don't even know about this, but I'm just bringing you the base of the poker range theory...

He would fold only 17.1% of times...

Now, see how many hands villain would raise up on pre-flop against you, according to this "perfect" range:



Can you see how many hands he needs to raise against you as a 3-bet? Your QQ is clearly winning against most part of his range.



But let's look what happens when you just open shove on pre-flop:



Now his calling rate and his folding rate inverted: he will call only 18.8% of times.

"But why this happened?", you may ask...

Because the risk for him is way bigger and he will only pay you with pocket pairs (including the AA and KK, obviously), some high connectors, and some hands that blocks your premium opening range.

But I'll be honest: I think people with a minimal sanity on their head would just call it with something like TT+ and AJs+ or AQo+ (but this may vary, obviously)...

Also, I need to say that I simulated this on GTO Wizard, with 25bb of effective stack and on a 8 players tournament situation.

And according to GTO Wizard, you should never do that open shove, as you can see:



And if you are wondering why there is no combos of all-in, I will answer you: this is a very lazy and, especially, riskily way to play premium hands (or any hands, actually).

You putted the pressure all against yourself. If that guy should just call your mini raise with a QTo on the correct situation, you made the things way more easier to him by shoving pre-flop, as he would never try to play a completely ruled hand like QTo against your QQ on a pre-flop all-in situation.

Also he would never 3-bet shove those almost completely dominated hands, like the 66, for example:





Concluding: yeah, wrong movement on pre-flop, of course; however, if you are a beginner on poker studies, this is comprehensible, but you need to never do that again (in normal situations, at least), for your own good...

 

[sandy358]

should not jam your best hands preflop

Small fix: open-jam, 3-bet and (when more deep stacked) 4-bet and 5-bet jams are alright, but it depends on your position and the type of strong hand you have.

 

[Jdawglet]

Your question has merit, however only you can determine if it was a mistake or not. The biggest factor that none of us truly know is the play and style of the remaining players…along with your playing style. If you’re an unpredictable type then that shove will help you win a lot of hands vs small pairs and suited connectors. Will you lose some of those hands…of course but that wouldn’t have changed if you min raised.

The other piece is this was a freeroll. So depending on how close to the money/how many players were left…some might fold big hands and not risk big stack vs big stack…or some will be bingo players who don’t care because it’s free.

I know and see all the theories around what hands to play and how to play them…the truth is 90% of players are not following them so trying to guess the range of possibilities of a hand without studying the player is a futile endeavour.

In short…it’s situational. The next time your in that position do what you think is best based on all the information you have gathered about your opponents.

Good luck!

 

[frost234]

I would have just raised to 2 blinds preflop, but I would have called all-in.

 

[fundiver199]

You started with 24,5BB, which is far to much to open jam. The guideline is 10-15BB, and even in this interval I would have min-raised a hand as strong as QQ to induce more action. With 24,5BB you can go slightly larger than a min-raise say up to 2,5BB, and your intention should always be to get it in against a 3-bet. Most likely the guy with AK would have 3-bet, so the result would have been the same this time, but you get more value in the long run.

 

[bazza155]

What site was this on?

 

[Robervent]

Jamming with 20BB QQ there was not a good idea, but the problem is that the correct move would be minraise and after a BB jam call it. Yeah, the result is going to be the same but:
* In general you should not jam your best hands preflop, because you are just announcing that you have a strong hand, generating a lot of folds and just winning 2BB most of the time instead of extracting value postflop, while leaving your minraising ranges vulnerable due to the removal of your good hands from there
* If you are more sophisticated, you should not open jam the queens until you are 10BB or less. Openjams from MP appear when you fall below 20BB, but they are mostly coming from the offsuited aces/low pocket pairs/and some suited broadways (as a bonus) sections, while your big pairs prefer minraising.

But!
If your table was full of unflexible calling station type players, that are going to mass-call min and small raises it could have been a justified shove, as QQ performs really well heads-up and minraising with an intention of setmining for queens multiway sounds like an overkill and wasted potential for this type of hand.

Exclente analisis, en este sentido lo tomare en cuenta para mis torneos como principiante..