Calling a shove: why the opponent’s range matters
Ace-king can look too strong to fold, yet a call still depends on the price and the opponent’s actual range. This exercise deliberately assumes a tight shover. It is a range-reading exercise, not an equilibrium shove chart.
How to approach the decision
- Account for the blind already committed: only the additional call is at risk.
- Inspect the exact range being assumed, including pocket pairs and dominated hands.
- Compare the computed call with the wider equilibrium ranges on the push/fold charts.
Your practice hand
The Nit open-shoves 20 bb from the small blind; you are in the big blind. That is 21 bb in the middle with 19 to call, so the pot before the part you have to match is 2 bb.
AA,KK,QQ,JJ,TT,AKs,AQs,AKoVillain shoves The Nit’s range from /opponents: TT+, AQs+, AKo. That is far tighter than the solved 20 bb shoving range on the push/fold charts.
Practise this exact hand →Show the worked answer
Against a range this tight even ace-king falls short of the 47.5% the price demands: two thirds of the range is a pocket pair, which has you at a coin flip or worse, and against AA and KK you are crushed. The solved 20 bb calling range assumes a much wider shover.
The working
- Range. The stated range is 50 combos. 14 of them use a card you can see (your hand or the board), which leaves 36.
- Equity. You win 30.5% and chop 24.6%, so equity is 30.5% + 24.6% ÷ 2 = 42.8%. Each hand class gets 20,000 sampled runouts with its own fixed seed, weighted by live combos. Sampling error is about ±0.13 points (one standard error).
- Price. Calling risks the bet to win the pot plus the bet, so break-even is bet ÷ (pot + 2 × bet) = 19 ÷ (2 + 2 × 19) = 47.5%.
- EV. equity × (pot + bet) − (1 − equity) × bet = 0.4285 × 21 − 0.5715 × 19 = −1.86 bb. Folding is 0, so that is the whole difference between the two options.