Push or Fold in Heads-up
by PokerStrategy.com
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1.1. Introduction
In this article- Pushing strong hands which have low playability
- 4 different pushing charts
Let's examine the following situation:
Hero finally reached the
heads-up stage of an MTT after several hours of hard work. He is already assured a sizable amount of prize money, but would win a lot more as the winner. This makes Hero nervous and desperate to avoid making a mistake, whether it's by pressing the wrong button in an online game, or making the wrong decision on a real-life 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 player with a big bag of tricks, and a similarly-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.
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