AKo from BB facing a BTN shove — call or fold?
The answer
Fold
lock up the seat
The math: AK crushes in chips · but two seats pay the same, so a flip that can bust you is a fold.
Why
In a satellite the finishers all win the same prize — here two of three seats, each identical. Chips above the seat are worthless; chips that bust you are catastrophic. A♠ K♦ is ahead of the button's shove for chips, but calling risks your tournament life on roughly a coin flip, and losing hands the last seat to your opponent. Fold, let the others battle, and lock up your seat. Even aces can be a fold in a satellite.
The spot
- Your seat
- BB
- Stakes and stacks
- 1,000 / 2,000 · 12bb
- Your hand
- A♠ K♦
- Board
- Preflop — no board yet
- Pot
- POT · 27,000
- Action on you
- BTN shoves 12bb
Every option
Foldlock up the seatCorrect
Why not: A♠ K♦ smashes a shoving range for chips — but this is a satellite. Two of the three of you win an identical seat, so extra chips are worthless and losing your all-in hands the last seat to the other short stack.
Callcall it off
The idea behind it
Satellites break normal ICM: above the seat, chips have zero value, so survival is everything. You fold hands you would happily stack off with in a normal tournament — sometimes literally everything, because busting for a coin flip forfeits a seat you were about to lock.
Concept: Satellite survival
Terms in this spot
Play it instead of reading it
The trainer deals this hand with hints, grading and spaced repetition — and randomized variations of it once you have seen it.