Post-flop betting

In this article I will be discussing push fold ranges late in a tour nament for when you are short-stacked. Before we get started, I would like to look at the situations in which we should be looking to shove.

When thinking about shoving ranges it is often less about the two cards you are holding and more about the size of the blinds/antes relative to your chips. Often, late in a tournament we are going to find ourselves short-stacked, and will just have to be patient, take our time and wait for the right oppor tunity to steal the blinds and antes. After all, tournament poker is all about survival. We have to be there at the end in order to win. By stealing those blinds and antes we have bought ourselves another round of survival.

WHY SHOVE ALL-IN?

When we’re short-stacked we will play what most people call push-fold poker. This means pre-flop when we decide to play a hand it will either be push all-in or fold. But why do we have to shove? This is kind of stating the obvious but I want to be thorough.

One of the reasons we have to shove is that we don’t want players to get the illusion that we might fold our hand after we have made a standard raise. If they re-shove/re-steal on us we may end up racing for our tournament life, when this might have been avoided if we had just pushed all-in to start with.

The other reason we have to shove is to maintain our fold equity. In other words, we don’t want to be blinding away to a stage where the blinds are pot-committed to call us with any two cards. So we want to try to at least maintain a stack that will do considerable damage to the medium- stacks if they call and lose.

Most of the time we will be extremely happy just to pick up the blinds and antes. On the other hand, we don’t want to just go around shoving 30 big blinds when the blinds are 500/1000 with a 100 ante just because we have tons of fold equity. We want to make sure the risk/reward ratio is in our favour.

Risking a good sized stack to win 2,400 chips isn’t even close to worth it, because obviously every now and then we’re going to run into a real hand. For the most part we will only be playing push-fold poker when we are short-stacked.

KEY POINT

Push-fold poker is the only option when you are short-stacked. But always be aware the risk/reward ratio is in your favour

WHEN ARE YOU SHORT?

First off we need to decide when do we consider ourselves a short-stack? The best way to sum this up is to just say, when we can’t afford to open-raise and fold to a re-shove, we are short- stacked. In other words, we are pot-committed if we decide to play a hand. Basically, I consider myself a short-stack when I have less than twenty big blinds.

Even though we are short-stacked it doesn’t really mean we don’t have fold equity. As long as we still have over ten big blinds we still have enough to really hurt an average to medium-stack if they call our shove. Even though they could call and still be in the tournament, they would reduce themselves to being short-stacked if they were to lose in this spot.

So don’t shove any two cards just because you have lost a good portion of your stack, or because you went through the blinds and you’re now on the button. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to get these chips back right away.

KEY POINT

You should consider yourself short-stacked when you dip below twenty big blinds. But don’t start shoving indiscriminately

HAND RANGES TO SHOVE

When we decide to shove and try to steal the blinds we obviously would be very happy just to take the pot down there. However, there are going to be many times that we are called by someone behind us or in the blinds. With the nature of today’s tournaments people are aware that short-stacks are often going to be shoving less than the top 10% of hands. In turn, they are going to open up the range of hands they will call us with.

If had to focus on one key point about shoving to steal the blinds it is running into a hand that has us dominated. I think it goes without saying that the players in the blinds will usually call us with most pairs and a lot of A-x hands depending on how many big blinds we are shoving for. But since they know we are shoving light we will be getting looked up by a lot of Broadway holdings like K-Q K-J and even J-Qs.

Now, lets look at the no-brainers we are going to shove. To start with A-K suited and offsuit, A-Q suited and offsuit, A-J suited and offsuit and A-10 suited. I would also shove about any pair from mid-to-late position. If we get called by a better hand and lose so be it, we did what we could. Our ideal situation though is to at least have live cards. I would much rather shove K-Q suited/offsuit, K-J suited/offsuit or Q-J suited/offsuit than shove an Ace-rag type of hand like A-6 A-7 A-8.

Just because it’s folded to us in the hijack and we pick up a hand like A-6 offsuit, it isn’t always the best option to shove all-in. Hands like Ace-rag honestly just don’t flop well when called. It really sucks to get called by A-J and be drawing three outs for your tournament life.

The other kinds of hands I want to shove are suited connectors and if necessary offsuit connectors too. Hands like 7-8 suited, 8-9 suited and 9-10 suited flop well and are not going to be a huge dog against our opponents’ calling ranges.

KEY POINT

Your range should take into account your opponent’s calling range and so you should be wary of shoving with A-x hands

TABLE IMAGE

The last thing I want to touch on is table image. If you have just lost a bunch of your chips to a bad beat, you are probably better off folding the next few hands unless you pick up a real quality hand. Your opponents may perceive you as being tilted after something like this has happened, whether you are or not. In turn, they may decide to call you much lighter than they normally would.

If you have shoved two hands already on the same orbit of blinds you might also want to think about folding a hand that you would normally shove with. This doesn’t mean hands such as A-K suited, A-K offsuit or A-Q, but throw away hands such as 9-10 suited or K-J offsuit. You will often find that people will want to play sheriff if you are getting out of line, and you have to remember that they are the ones with chips, not you.

When you’re short-stacked you won’t be playing many hands so take this extra time to pay more attention to what the other players at the table are doing. Even take notes on who is folding their big blind, who is calling and who is re-raising. We want to focus on shoving on the tight players’ blinds. We don’t even mind if they are very aggressive players as long as they aren’t calling stations.

You want to avoid the guy who limps every third hand, the guy who flat calls raises just to see a flop, or the guy who never folds his big blind to a raise. We don’t want to be shoving on their blinds.

Just try to be patient and make good decisions. You don’t have to rush into making bad decisions just because you don’t have as many chips as you would like. Take your time and pick your spots as well as you can and it will pay off in the long run.