Top pair facing a bet with short stack all in, 45 man SNG

Let’s start with UTG. Your top pair is doing just fine against his likely raising range. As for the SB, you’d think if he had any kind of made hand, he would have re-raised preflop to isolate - after all, there was nearly 5k in the middle to protect when the action got to him.

Viewed from that perspective, the SB seems unlikely to have an overpair. What they do seem likely to have is some mediocre made hand that they don’t feel can stand to surrender a free card, a draw, or complete air. Their preflop action suggests a range that’s made up of QTish hands, medium connected cards and small pairs, with the first two making up the fattest part. That’s a good range for your top pair to face off against. Every once in awhile you might run into a better 9, but I think the 2-1 price that you’re getting (albeit diluted by the fact that you’ll only win part of the pot sometimes), and the fact that you’re probably jumping up the money ladder when you do get knocked out makes this a callable hand.

What actually happened: You called and the SB showed Kd Ah. The UTG raiser showed Kc Qh. Your pair held up and you took down the pot.

the blinds are so big u cant let up an oppurtunity like this go but i think the small blinds raise is very scary given the situation but im goin on this hand since there is a range of hands we can beat there arent a lot of hands that the sb cud have played with a nine in it so its unlikely we r out kicked and if he does have a better hand we always have runner straight and flush poss and could hit out second pair so we r 4 to 1 against if we r dominated (which is unlikely given the way the hand was played)but we can beat a lot more hands that beat us

For Chip-EV this is an easy call (you only need to win 1 time in 3), but in case of $EV you need to be more certain you’re ahead to justify calling. On top of that there’s a small chance UTG has both of you beaten, so your edge needs to be even greater (I calculated it using ICM and it’s 60%). So the question is: are you 60% sure you’re ahead of the SB? I wouldn’t be.

This is a no brainer. You’re getting 2:1 odds with top pair and a runner-runner draw two different ways. Call.

Call,

I put SB on a draw or overcards and even if I lose the initial pot to UTG then I think im favororite to take the substantial side pot.

Where was the RAISE button?

push/fold preflop. I lean towards a push, sb can’t really limp profitably, so he is just seeing a flop weakly so so often. Even AK can probably not limp here for +$ev, so fire away.

Calling 2k with 11k behind for a 7k flop is questionable. Obviously flopping top pair you can’t fold or your call pre gets even worse.

(Geronimo run some pokerstove sims, I’m pretty sure we are way past 60% here.)

I voted fold. With only the BB left to act, his flat call could be a sucker move with a high pair. Get us in, hope we catch a piece of the flop and donate much bigger winnings then he could have gotten just against the small stacks all in. AA-QQ could be played exactly the same way. He could also have a set. Its not worth it putting the rest of our stack on a pair of 9’s with top kicker. If I called this preflop, it’s because Im looking for straight or flush draws, not a pair of 9’s to go to war with.

Yeah, I mean wtf @ pre-flop? I guess call/shove now, but PF is beyond terrible.