DECISION POINT: You’re seven-handed in a fast structured daily tournament, and blinds are currently 400/800 with a 800 big blind ante. Table changes have been frequent so you don’t have any significant reads on the table. The player first to act raises to 2,000 and the action folds around to you on the Button with A♠Q♠ and a 13BB stack. What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We're playing a very fast structured local daily tournament. The blinds are 400/800 with an 800 big blind ante and around half of the field is remaining. Given the fast structure, table and player changes have been frequent, and we haven’t had the opportunity to get any significant reads on our opponents.

We are dealt A♠Q♠ on the Button at a seven-handed table and MP1 raises to 2,000 chips (2.5BB). Everyone folds and action is on us. With 13BBs, we are clearly in the awkward stack range. Although there are some specific scenarios where flat calling a preflop raise with an awkward stack may be appropriate, such as from the Blinds, we generally want to avoid flat calling preflop with this stack size as a default. The primary focus with an awkward stack is to utilize our stack as a weapon and look for spots where we can move all-in with a significant equity edge, or we can generate sufficient fold equity and take down a pot uncontested.

The first step to determining the best course of action is to evaluate our opponent’s likely range.  Our opponent in MP1 started the hand with 15BBs meaning their range should be narrower than a 50BB stack would be raising in the same spot, but they should still have somewhere around 12-15% of total hands. We can assume a range for MP1 that includes pairs 66+, any two suited broadway cards, any two offsuit cards jack or higher, and ATo+.

If we compare how AQ suited performs against that range using a solver, the output shows our hand is a significant favorite. Since stacks are shallow to start with, we shouldn’t expect to see MP1 fold to a reshove often. However, they will fold some percentage of the time, and we increase our stack significantly with no showdown. The remainder of the time when we are called AQ is likely to have strong equity and we have a fair chance to double up.

If we had some sort of read that our opponent was opening tighter than normal, only raising the top 6-7% of hands, we could begin to consider exploitatively folding. Absent an opponent specific read this is a clear spot where we should move all-in.

Moving all-in is the best play.