1.1. Introduction

• Pushing strong hands which have low playability
  
• 4 different pushing charts

Let's assume the following situation:

Hero reached the heads-up of an MTT after several hours of hard work. He has already secured a sizable amount of prize money but first place is clearly more lucrative. Thus Hero is extremely nervous and desperately wants to avoid making mistakes, no matter whether it's with the mouse cursor in an online tourney or at a real B&M table.

Hero sits in the small blind and receives A7. The blinds are at 5,000/10,000. Hero has 260,000 in chips. His opponent Villain is an experienced and really cunning player with about a same-sized stack of 250,000.

What to do?

Hero perceives his hand as being strong but is afraid of his opponent holding a stronger ace or pocket pair. Not wanting to risk his whole stack, he raises to 40,000, ready to fold after a re-raise all-in.
His opponent only calls though and the flop comes with T J 9. Not really what he was hoping for. Villain checks, Hero makes a CB of 50,000 and Villain pushes all-in. Hero folds without a second thought.

His situation is now considerably worse (170,000 to 340,000) and his experienced opponent can put him under pressure even better now. Hero frets over the raise. Would a push have been a better choice after all?
As we will see later: Yes. Even a push with a considerably larger actual stack would have been +EV, whereas the raise puts him into a difficult situation in the post-flop game should he not hit his ace.