DECISION POINT: You are moved to a new table in a daily mid-stakes online tournament with no specific reads on your opponents. Blinds are 400/800 and you have just over 13,000 (16.5BBs) in your stack. The Small Blind has over 40BBs, the Big Blind has under 1BB and is automatically all-in, the rest of the table are shorter stacked at around 5BBs-20BBs. The first player to act folds and action is on you with 6♠6♣ in the UTG+1 seat.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are playing in a daily online mid-stakes tournament. We are new to the table with no significant reads. The blinds are 400/800 with an 80 ante and we have just over 13,000 chips. The rest of the table has mostly shorter stacks at around 5-20 big blinds while the Small Blind is the big stack with over 40 big blinds. The Big Blind has just under 1BB left and is all-in to start the hand. The UTG player folds and We look down at 6♠6♣ in the UTG+1 seat.

There are two unique problems this table presents that we must be aware of when deciding what kind of hands to open. First, with so many short stacks around the table, any hand we open is likely to pot commit us. This means most of the time when we enter the pot there is a higher likelihood we will be all-in and must account for that possibility in our strategy.

Additionally, the Big Blind is automatically all-in to start the hand because they do not even have 1BB in their stack, so we can never win this hand uncontested without a showdown.

The fact that entering this pot guarantees that we must show down our cards has a huge influence on our willingness to enter this pot. The fact that we ALWAYS have to show down the best hand to scoop the pot significantly tightens the opening hand ranges we would use if we could potentially get a fold without showdown.

Using a GTO Solver to analyze this spot a little further, the smallest pocket pair recommended to open in this situation is pocket eights. If we change the variables and instead give the Big Blind 20BBs instead of being all-in, the lowest pair we can open from the UTG+1 seat is pocket sixes. While these differences may seem small at the outset, it’s important for your development as a player to constantly be aware of factors that can affect your decision-making.

Because of the presence of multiple short stacks as well as the fact that the Big Blind is all-in for slightly less than 1 big blind, a hand that is within our first-in range from UTG+1 with 15BBs becomes a must fold.

Folding is the best play.