Opponent all-in pre-flop, what do you do..

peter27

One place where my game is lacking is when the opponent (or villain as people say, although for the record I don't like that term, sounds far too vicious for my liking!) goes all-in. Far too often I think to myself: "he may be bluffing, I'll just call and see what happens" - I guess that is the gambler in me.

I particularly struggle with this when it happens pre-flop. Curious to know what hands you guys would call with, I don't really know what range I should be calling with. Obviously it depends on stack size, so if you could provide three different opinions (when playing deep/mid-stacked/shallow) - that would be a great help!

Hope this is not too much to ask. Assume you're on the button and have no reads on the opponent.

THEROCK573

theres no table chart saying you must call with 30bbs if you have AQ etc, just pay attention on the table and go with you're read bud.

Lambert180

Well you could write an absolute novel on this question but I'll just keep it as simple as possible

Deep (imo 40xBB+) - Without reads on the player and such we can't expect many players to be attempting to get it in preflop this deep without at least JJ/QQ/KK/AA/AK, so it's generally bad for us to be calling off for 50xBB with JJ because us having JJ makes it very unlikely they do too which means we have QQ/KK/AA that completely crush us or AK where we're only a very slight favourite. Without reads on a villian I'd never consider doing anything other than trying to get it all in pre with AA/KK... QQ and AK, you're more likely to be in good shape the shallow we are... i.e. if we have 50xBB, we're less likely to just get shown AA/KK than if we were 200xBB deep.

Mid (20xBB - 40xBB) - This is a pretty big window, i.e. people won't have the same range for getting it in with 20xBB than they would with 40xBB, but the top end of this stack size is often gonna be very similar to deep. It's only around 20-30xBB that people may even consider getting it in with TT/AQ on top of the hands above.

Shallow (<20xBB) - This is WAY more opponent dependent and you wanna pay attention to how often people often, how often people 3bet etc. The lower it goes below 20 generally the wider people will (or should) be shoving preflop, whether it be open shoving, or 3bet shoving. To give you an idea of how wide it can get, if it came to me unopened on the BTN and I have 10xBB, I'd probably shove anything in this range 22+, A2s+, K8s+, Q9s+, J9s+, T8s+, 97s+, 87s, 76s, A2o+, KTo+

The caveat to all of this, is that you often have an impact on whether you allow people to get it in pre. For instance, if you don't want to get it in pre with JJ then you don't need to 3bet. Unless you think they will call 3bets with lots of weak hands and very rarely 4bet then 3betting JJ with the intention of folding to a 4bet turns a very strong hand into a bluff (bad).

Another caveat... if it's a BH, people can/will get it in with anything lol

Phantom66

I used to crash out of a lot of tourneys early/mid stages with a tendency to call too light. I read TJ Cloutiers book (I don't particularly recommend it by the way - some interesting stuff on his life - but a bit thin and not much on poker strategy). Harrington definitely the best place to start for MTT strategy.

One piece of advice stuck with me though and that is early-mid stages of a tourney he will only call all-in pre with AA/KK - I started following that and results improved considerably.

That might be "old school" thinking but I think that holds good for freeze-outs.

B/H and rebuys can be a different story! People are shoving and calling very wide early. Some players I know will start a number of MTTs and deliberately play loose and aggro early doors with the aim of getting chipped up in a few
knowing they will bust out of the others. They are good enough to then adjust and use the big stacks well and it works for them.