DECISION POINT: You are in the late stages of a fast structured daily live multi-table tournament with blinds at 1,000/2,000 and a 2,000 big blind ante. There are 18 players left and 5 places getting paid. Most players have between 10-20BBs and you are the shortest stack with 10BBs. The Under the Gun player (who is the chip leader) folds and action is on you in the UTG+1 seat with A♠7♦.

What do you do here?

PRO ANSWER: We are in the late stages of a fast structured daily live multi-table tournament. There are 2 tables left and the final 5 get paid. The blinds are 1,000/2,000 with a 2,000 big blind ante. Everyone is starting to get shorter stacked with even the chip leader having 40 BBs and most everyone else at 10-20 BBs. We are short stacked with exactly 10 BBs and get dealt As7d UTG+1. The UTG player folds and action is on us.

It can be quite tempting when we get short stacked to just start to shove with any Ax hand. In fact, there is popular literature that advocates that exact strategy created prior to the current study tools we have that allow us to examine these spots more closely.

Previous to the advent of game theory optimal study tools the strategy of shoving any Ace first-in with 10BB or less was likely the correct, as players tended to over-fold to all-in bets significantly more than we now know is correct based on advancements in technology.

If the players in our game are observed to be not calling all-ins wide enough then making an exploitative adjustment to shove here would be preferred as our hand contains an ace blocker and is likely to have 30% equity when called. If we assume that the players in this game have general knowledge of correct short stack play and have observed they have some grasp on correct short stack strategy, A7o is much less appealing to open shove.

Using a GTO Solver to analyze this spot we can see that shoving A7o in this spot has a -.34BB expectation. If we look at hands such as Q8s/J8s that are recommended to fold when first-in in this spot, we see that A7o has a worse EV expectation. If we dig deeper into the results, A7o becomes a neutral EV as we reach the MP2 seat, and starts to show a significant profit once you get to the Hijack or later.

From UTG+1 at a 9 handed table, ATo is the worst ace we can shove profitably while A9o is very close to breakeven against good opposition. While it may seem counterintuitive with such a short stack and an Ace with a decent kicker, folding is preferred based on the expected value calculation.

Folding is the best play.