99 utg 15 bb $10 tourney mtt

So playing a $10 mtt 900 players with 150 players left. I got 99 utg with 15 bb and the rest of the table ranges from 15-80 bb. The bb has about 16 bb. Blinds are 300/600. I min raise and it folds to the bb and he shoved. My thought process was he's got to be strong to shove an utg raise and I fold...he shows one card, an ace. Against his range it seemed like I'd be flipping for my tourney or just be in bad shape against an overpair. Looking back, idk if maybe limp over calling to hit a set would have been more efficient or if maybe min raising 4 bet shoving would have been best. I clearly had no idea what my game plan was before opening but I don't think folding is the best play utg inthat spot. It had me a bit pissed off and wondering what the optimal play was..he hadn't been acting out of line and had been pretty inactive for a while so I put him on an overpair. What would you do in this spot?

raise/call
& if we're flipping... this is a great thing! (obv.)

floppymcflopperson said:

My thought process was he's got to be strong to shove an utg raise and I fold

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Could please explain in more details, how you determined that he had a strong hand without hud stats ?

preflop min-raise is fine and playing on whole stack with 99 this is a very profitable situation with you size stack..

was there any antes, if so it's likely our best option to just jam it in preflop. But depends a bit on antes, the table and the structure of the game/how far we are away from the money and how many chips we need.

fwiw there are plenty of hands i would min-raise here, but pairs like 77-TT are almost always better off by playing a shove/fold type game, as they do NOT play well postflop at all, and since we are UTG, the chances we will get called and go to a flop are pretty high, and getting 3bet puts us in no mans land and we're stuck making a crying call vs a likely strong range, so it's basically the same thing. The best thing about jamming is that it's the easiest option, but also we might make some of the calling or 3betting hands fold like KQ, which we are fine with, and if they want to call, that is their mistake not ours.

so the key is to take away all the postflop action in which we have no idea what to do with such a small SPR and we will be facing overs always. We are going to call a 3bet jam anyways, so if they wake up with TT+ we're screwed regardless, so it leaves jamming as the clear choice imo to fold out all of the speculative hands that might call to a flop, and we will likely be vsing a tighter range than if we just min-raised in general, which is great for our particular hand type and position at the table.....

99 against Ax,you got a pretty strong chance of winning the showdown.Looking at the bb stacks my suspicion is the villain got something like AJ+.

in this situation I would rather of a mini raise to see the flop if the contrary I would fold

Thanks for the posts guys. A lot of good points here. Yeah Wizzim, I agree that just jamming would be the best option and fold out medium strong hands. I find myself in this spot very often (with a medium pair in early position on a shove stack deep in a tourney). The antes were 120 at the time.

floppymcflopperson said:

Thanks for the posts guys. A lot of good points here. Yeah Wizzim, I agree that just jamming would be the best option and fold out medium strong hands. I find myself in this spot very often (with a medium pair in early position on a shove stack deep in a tourney). The antes were 120 at the time.

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well when we account for antes our stack is more like a 13BB stack, making this a clear jam preflop. I'm assuming you didn't take antes into account before you posted the 15 bb stack size...

With a 15bb utg shove you could get small pairs, AQ, AJ, A10 to fold there since it looks super strong and could cause a serious damage to other players stack. Against AK you are flipping. Against bigger pairs you are in very bad shape. I mentioned that AQ and AJ would be an easy fold for other players to make because most of the mtts pay around 15% of the field so when 900 were registered and there are 150 left you are very close to the money. I think you should shove there.

In your position I thinks you have to fold or shove. Like wizzim said with the ante you have 13BB stack it's really close the push or fold stack and you are UTG so the blind are on you. So let's go. But take you decision at the first time.

Of course, like always, it dépend if your goal are min cash or if it's not really important for you.

floppymcflopperson said:

So playing a $10 mtt 900 players with 150 players left. I got 99 utg with 15 bb and the rest of the table ranges from 15-80 bb. The bb has about 16 bb. Blinds are 300/600. I min raise and it folds to the bb and he shoved. My thought process was he's got to be strong to shove an utg raise and I fold...he shows one card, an ace. Against his range it seemed like I'd be flipping for my tourney or just be in bad shape against an overpair. Looking back, idk if maybe limp over calling to hit a set would have been more efficient or if maybe min raising 4 bet shoving would have been best. I clearly had no idea what my game plan was before opening but I don't think folding is the best play utg inthat spot. It had me a bit pissed off and wondering what the optimal play was..he hadn't been acting out of line and had been pretty inactive for a while so I put him on an overpair. What would you do in this spot?

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I would fold especially if he plays tight. Maybe he had AK AQ AJ or even pocket Aces cant be sure but since that was a 10$ tourney i dnt think he was bluffing.

I think in this hand you played it as you should the min raise fold was good. You could argue for no open at all with 99 but that is pretty tight as it stands You have 13 BBs lleft and you can either min raise one more hand shortly or wait and jam with 10 to 12 BBs. I see nothing wrong with what you did in the hand, just because you did not take the hand down does not mean something is wrong.

If you min raise or limp, I would suspect he would jam it anyway. Same situition.

I agree, from the start, play would either be fold or shove.

i prefer mini-raise in your position cuz if villain make call(all in utg) i think we losing