While poker players often say "It depends" in response to hand questions, this one really does depend on a couple of key factors
Most important questions here are:
** What was your stack size and your opponent's stack?
** Were there a lot of much shorter stacks?
** Was it the stone bubble or how many to go before ITM?
** How many buy-ins was a min-cash?
As Collin Moshman say, "it depends". But with that being said there are very few normal situations, where its correct to fold AQ against a SB open jam. If you play this tight, SB can literally print money by jamming any two cards against you. But rather than just saying "it depends", lets create a scenario in ICMizer and see, what kind of range we are actually supposed to call with.
* Tournament 27 paid on
888 Poker
* 28 players left on 4 tables
* Hero is BB with 15BB
* Everyone else at Hero table has 20BB
* Tournament average is 20BB but with a random distribution at the other tables
* It folds to SB, who jam on Hero
With these variables SB is supposed to jam any two cards, and Hero is supposed to call 17%. The exact range is 55+, A8o+, KTo+, A5s+, K9s, QJs. If Hero fold AQo, he is only defending 5,7% of the time or around 1/3 as often, as he should. We do want to consider the option though, that Villain might not be jamming 100%, as he is supposed to. But even if Villain is only jamming 50% and then folding or limping the other 50%, Hero is still supposed to call 88+, AJ+ and ATs. So folding AQ would be a very big deviation, which required a rather extreme read.
