Tournament Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
You must determine with which hands you can profitably raise
You must determine with which hands you can profitably raise all-in here, as this situation comes up all the time. Suppose you had 50-percent instead of 34-percent equity. Your expectation would now be .05(6) + 0.95[23(0.5)-10] = 0.3 + 1.4 = 1.7BBs. You clearly need a hand that is better than half your opponent’s range if you are to have at least 50-percent equity. You need a hand with about 44-percent equity in order to break even in this spot. But breaking even is not good enough to make a profit, so to make a small expected profit you need a hand with closer to 46-percent equity against your opponent’s calling range, which is most of his raising range in this instance. If your opponent raises only 15 percent of hands, you need a hand with 46-percent equity against those hands to push. The range of hands with around 46-percent equity against this range is something like 7-7+, A-10+, A-8s+ and K-Qs. You may be surprised by how tight this is, but when you have no fold equity, you need a fairly strong hand to get all-in.
Most players will be raising a really wide range late
Most players will be raising a really wide range late in a tournament and will never fold. When I am deep in a tournament, if I raise to 2.5BBs from a 30BB stack and someone pushes for 8BBs, I am never folding because I only need to win 33 percent of the time to show an expected profit. Even if I am raising 50 percent of my hands and I know my opponent is pushing the top 10 percent of hands, I am usually getting the right price to call. Now, say I raise to 2.5BBs and it is folded to you on the button with an 8BB stack. My range is 50 percent of hands. Which hands should you push You have no fold equity, so that part of the equation is irrelevant. It now becomes just 19.5(}) - 8 = 0, so you need to win 8/19.5 = 41 percent of the time to break even. All you have to do now is figure out which hands have more than 41-percent equity against 50 percent of hands. Remember, you want higher than 41-percent equity because that’s the break-even point. Also, you have to worry about the blinds picking up a hand, which will happen from time to time. So, you need around 45-percent equity against my 50-percent raise-calling range. Your range should be 2-2+, A-2+, K-6+, K-2s+, Q-9+, Q-8s+, J-10 and J-9s. Notice that this range is much wider than before because my raising range is 50 percent instead of 15 percent. Your opponent’s raising range drastically affects your pushing range.