[PrayingMantis]

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I am just starting in tournaments; would you please help by explaining this in more detail? Unless the blinds ALWAYS called or unless the other players NEVER raised anything. I would be pushing here since I may not get another chance to steal and my stack is looking a bit dodgy.


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Yes, pushing here with this hand is probably more than marginally OK, you are correct. You are 5th stack, have 6XBB, and you should look for spots for steal-pushing. This is not a bad one, with your position. Another fact that makes it stronger is that the big-stacks already folded. So this might be a good spot. It Depends on how loose/tight the blinds are. However, there are reasons for waiting for a somewhat better hand - especially if there's a chance you'll have to stand a showdown.

But still, as I said, pushing is VERY different from raising 3XBB (which is half your stack) and then calling the rest with 98s. By raising 3XBB, you are inducing some aggressive players to push against you with a wider variety of hands you'd face if you had pushed to begin with. When you call their raise, you are now facing a hand that is almost surely ahead of you, either as a big or a small favorite (you can hope for Ax, Kx, when x<8. in these cases you're about a coin-flip. Edit: and, of course, that's about the case against pairs lower than 8's). When you do the raise-call, you'll much more often face it. When you push, the hands that will call you will be generally stronger, but many times you'll win it uncontested, which is extremely important, in EV terms. It's much more difficult to win it uncontested with the 3XBB raise, and since you're going to be pot commited anyway, you should push.

Raising small to induce a bigger raise can be a good move with certain strong hands, in certain situations and against certain opponents. This is clearly not the case.


I hope I wasn't too blunt in my original reply. But he specifically said "Feel free to flame away"... [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]