Fold KQs short-handed

[beekeeper]

Three players left from a 20 person home tournament which pays 3 places (3rd place gets their buy-in back).

Blinds: $800/$1600.

Me: BB, short stack, with $1200 left after posting.
SB (tight player) has about $1800 after posting.
Button (loose player) has $4000.

The button raises $1600, and the small blind, who has played very few hands and has always had a hand when he makes a move, goes all in.

I have KdQd and fold. Button calls.

I figured I'd be up against an Ace and a medium pocket pair. Bad move?

[obsidian]

There is absolutely NO WAY you can fold this. You are getting 5.8:1 (2800 from button, 2600 from SB, 1600 from your BB and 1200 left for you to invest). You will almost always have more than 15% equity here. By the way, you would probably get better responses from the Multi-table Tournaments forum.

[bank]

Super-duper easy call.

[Derek in NYC]

Aside from the pot-odds based reason, another reason you must call is because you will need to pay the SB on the next hand. With T1200 left, and a SB of T800, you will effectively be all-in on a random hand that is likely to be much worse than KQs.

I agree with this logic, but one thing to consider is the payout structure of the tournament. Say SB has a 60% chance of winning the pot. Then there's a 40% chance he will be gone at the end of the hand, and we will finish in 2nd place, whether we lose on the next hand or not. So depending on how much the 2nd place payout is, folding might not be terrible here.

[beekeeper]

[ QUOTE ]
I agree with this logic, but one thing to consider is the payout structure of the tournament. Say SB has a 60% chance of winning the pot. Then there's a 40% chance he will be gone at the end of the hand, and we will finish in 2nd place, whether we lose on the next hand or not. So depending on how much the 2nd place payout is, folding might not be terrible here.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with the other posters that my play was weak. But your post points to what my thinking was--that plus my impression that I was up against an Ace and a medium pair (turns out the button had A9 and the SB had 77). I'll post in the appropriate forum.

[aces_dad]

The payout structure does indeed have a large bearing here.
On the other end of the spectrum, for example, if it pays 85% / 10% / 5%, playing for second isn't relevant and it's time to gamble.

And given the large blind structure compared to your stack size it's way too conservative to put both players on such a good range of hands. You could easily have the best hand here and if not aren't that likely to be dominated.

[Derek in NYC]

[ QUOTE ]
Say SB has a 60% chance of winning the pot. Then there's a 40% chance he will be gone at the end of the hand

[/ QUOTE ]

Why would you think the SB will be gone 40% of the time? SB has the button next hand and he will know that hero is all-in from the SB. So if the flop misses him, he can fold no problem and wait for the hero to be all-in on a random hand.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Say SB has a 60% chance of winning the pot. Then there's a 40% chance he will be gone at the end of the hand

[/ QUOTE ]

Why would you think the SB will be gone 40% of the time? SB has the button next hand and he will know that hero is all-in from the SB. So if the flop misses him, he can fold no problem and wait for the hero to be all-in on a random hand.

[/ QUOTE ]

Because the SB is already all in. The more I think about this, though, I don't like the fold, because if Button ends up winning the hand, you and SB would split the 2nd and 3rd place payouts, right? And like aces_dad said, at this point in the tournament you're probably giving the other other playersa too much credit here. It wouldn't shock me if you had the best hand here. Then again, I'm not much of a tournament player...

[aces_dad]

Typical tournament payout pays the player who started the hand with more chips (hero: 2800) before the player with less (SB:2600), so if button wins on this hand, we take down second.