Folding QQ pre-flop.

I had an interesting experience the other night in a tournament. Let me set it up for you and see what you would have done.

It’s a $5 MTT with 375ish people. The blinds are up to $T50/$T100. I have $T2530 which is a little over average and there are about 200 people left.. To my right is the chip leader with over 10K. To his right is someone with 5K. I’m in the small blind and I’m dealt a pair of queens.

Third to act goes all in for $T835. I’m thinking that this is great. No one else is likely to call that bet, and I’ll probably be able to pickup and extra $T900 in chips. Then a strange thing happens. Both players I mentioned above call, and the action is on me.

I have three choices. I can fold, I can call and hope for a flop with under cards or I can reraise and try to get them to fold.

Now as you can probably guess, I ended up folding, and here’s why. If I play this hand, I don’t think I can get away from it without having to bet all my chips. I don’t have a read on the guy with 5K, but I’ve seen the chip leader call all ins at this table just about every other hand. I don’t think I’ll be able to get them to fold. Now, if I play, what are the chances of me winning? Well I don’t know the exact odds, but I have to think that at least one of them has an ace or king, or both in which case I’m racing for all my chips. I don’t know if it’s a valid comparison, but it was like I was playing against and Omaha hand. They had four cards of which they got to pick two to use to bust me out of the tournament. If only one of them had called, I probably would have played the hand, but I didn’t like my chances enough with both of them in. If I was the big stack, then I would have raised them both all in. As the short stack of the three, I didn’t want to get risk getting knocked out. I figured there would be plenty of other chances to double up later on, it wasn’t worth the risk at this point. So I folded.

A king came on the flop and an ace on the river but they ended up checking it down. The guy with 5K had wired fours, and the chip leader had AQo. The short stack that had gone all in had JQo.

I’m surprised the guy called with fours, but maybe he wasn’t expecting action behind him. He should have reraised to try to isolate the short stack, and he’s lucky the chip leader didn’t bet.

So what would you have done there? Did I make the right choice? It obviously worked out in my favor that time, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it was a good choice.