Pocket Qs all in Question

[jack spade23]

Small 10 online tourney, blinds at 10-20. (early in tournament)Everyone starts with 1500. Pocket Qs UTG, raised to 300. Everyone folds to the BB who goes all in. This is my question: Should I call and risk the Ace or King? Or is this not the proper time to call? I didnt think he had those Aces or Kings, but of course I was the one holding Queens, so i didn't want to be wrong. Results after some responses. BTW, im not that good at tournaments, im way better at ring games, especially brick and mortar ones, online isn'y my favorite thing. So this would be very helpful.

[EverettKings]

Two things

First, I don't raise QQ nearly that hard so early in the tournament. That commits a lot of your chips and you're really only going to be called/raised by AA/KK (any decent player, myself included, would muck AK/JJ and worse). So you're really risking 300 chips to win 30 in blinds. This is definitely not +EV. If you check out Harrington's new book, he describes a situation almost EXACTLY like this, explaining why its not to your advantage to do something like push QQ UTG when the blinds are small.

Second, given the way you played it, I muck QQ to the all in. Unless you have good reason to believe that the all in player is especially weak or LAG, he will almost always have AA/KK (Maybe AK, but even then youre not much ahead). You could have gotten away from this much cheaper had you played it more meekly.

In a low buy in Sit n Go, I raise this to about 100 or so (or somewhere in the 75-150 range), and can get away from it in the face of a big reraise. In higher buy in sit n gos ($100+), I raise much more varied amounts to conceal my hand.

Hope this helps,

Kings

[david050173]

Without a read on the player, you will see JJ (or AQs or a smaller pocket pair) just as often as AA/KK in this situation in a low buyin SNG. They don't care about the size of your raise. They have a hand. Personally I am folding here since I think I can get my money in in better spots when there is this much time left.

[Big Limpin']

QQ is NOT a good hand to raise to FIFTEEN big blinds from under the gun.

That being said, once you are this far into a pot, and you have a heads up situation, yes, you should call.