Best hands to push with

[kurosh]

I'm sure there's been a thread about this before... I just can't find it. Does someone have a chart or ranking of what hands are best to go all-in with PF? Math would be good.

[eastbay]

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I'm sure there's been a thread about this before... I just can't find it. Does someone have a chart or ranking of what hands are best to go all-in with PF? Math would be good.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's a complex, situation-dependent topic that certainly can't be answered with "Hands X, Y, and Z."

Let's narrow it down to a specific situation on which we can do some analysis:

6 left, even stacks of 2000, and you're on the SB when it's folded to you.

You figure BB for a reasonable player who will call if he picks up 77+, A5+, and KJ+. You haven't been playing wildly or pushing much so you'll get some credit for a push here.

You have to weigh the upsides of picking up the blinds against the likelihood of being called, and how well you fare when you do get called.

Just for argument's sake let's say you pick up QTo:

http://sitngo-analyzer.com/poker/QTo-ex1.PNG

Here you can see that you're going to get called about 17% of the time, and when you do get called, you're about 36% to win the hand.

If you folded this hand, you figure for about 19% of the prize pool. If you pick up the blinds, you figure for about 22% of the prize pool. If you get called, you figure for about 12% of the prize pool since you're behind most hands that call, and if you lose, you bust out of the money.

Putting all of that together, you average about 20-21% of the prize pool for moving in here. So this figures for an all-in by this type of analysis, and experience confirms this is a reasonable play given these assumptions.


In fact, you will find that your results here are relatively insensitive to your actual holdings. This is why I would discourage you from thinking about these plays as "what hands are good to push with." The old adage of "play the other guy, not your cards" is in effect here.

If you repeat the analysis for 86s, for example, you'll find that you still figure to boost your equity to 20% of the prize pool to move in here.

On the other hand, supposed you've picked up 4 good hands in a row in this spot and have moved in every time on BB. At this point he thinks you're a bluff king, and is ready to call you down with any pair, any ace, any king, and Q9+.

Now pushing 86s is a big mistake. You need something like K9 or better for a push to be correct.

Returning to the first scenario, imagine now the same situation except that you're on the button, and have the same feel for both SB and BB. Now for the same hand QTo figures to be a fold, since you are twice as likely to be called as in the first scenario, and your equity suffers when you get called.

Bubble play has its own intricacies. Like I said, complex topic, but this gives you a feel for some of the important ingredients.

eastbay

[shejk]

Eastbay, I've only been hanging out here for like a week, and already you have hit me like five times with magnificent posts. Just giving some encouragement. I have nothing to add to the question though.

[Blackjack]

That perhaps is the best tool of all time for poker players next to poker tracker.

Thank you so much.

Blackjack

[Blackjack]

Also is it free?

[ilya]

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Also is it free?

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I don't think it will be, but even if it was gonna be, don't you think any decent person would make a voluntary donation? /images/graemlins/blush.gif /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[Blackjack]

For a tool that good, I prolly would!

Blackjack

[Vetstadium]

I like to push with Aces that's just me LOL.

[kurosh]

What I was more looking for is something like how any ace is a favorite to any other nonpair that doesn't include an ace. Any pair is a favorite to most nonpairs (with a few exceptions of big suited connectors). Any two hands that both have one of the same card is 70/30 with 70 going to the one with the larger other card.

[eastbay]

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What I was more looking for is something like how any ace is a favorite to any other nonpair that doesn't include an ace. Any pair is a favorite to most nonpairs (with a few exceptions of big suited connectors). Any two hands that both have one of the same card is 70/30 with 70 going to the one with the larger other card.

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Ah, you're asking for how hands match up preflop, more than "what hands are good to push with."

The best way to learn this type of thing is to go to the calculator at twodimes.net and just start playing around with various scenarios.

Some ways to organize the matchups:

pair over pair
two overcards vs. pair
one overcard vs. pair
two undercards vs. pair

two overs vs. two unders
split cards with a common rank ("dominated")
split cards with one overcard

Once you have the value for all those things memorized, you can get more detailed by considering adjustments for suitedness (flush potential) or connectedness (straight potential), although these corrections are usually relatively small.

While this is a necessary first step, the problem with all this is that it's not how you need to think about matchups at the table. This is because you can never put someone on a specific hand preflop. The best you can do is put them on a range of hands of various flavors. So what you really need to know is how your hand matches up against a range of hands. This is not so simple to memorize because the answer is a weighted average of the various matchups you may face, the weights being the relative likelihood the person may be on each hand (for example, a person is more likely to hold AK than AA and KK combined.)

pokerstove is a free calculator for doing this sort of calculation.

eastbay

[kurosh]

Well yeah, of course you're going to have to make adjustments, like A2 is a horrible hand to call all-ins with even in late stage because most pushing hands have an ace in it. But it's important for the fundamentals.

[eastbay]

[ QUOTE ]
Well yeah, of course you're going to have to make adjustments, like A2 is a horrible hand to call all-ins with even in late stage because most pushing hands have an ace in it. But it's important for the fundamentals.

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Perhaps this is the kind of organization you are looking for:

http://www.sitngo-analyzer.com/poker/hand-rankings.html

eastbay