Playing correctly.

[ChrisV]

"Best hand" here should be defined as the hand with the larger winning percentage on the river, regardless of who is ahead on the flop.

Should you ever fold the best hand, by this definition? Sure, all the time. My favourite example is on the first hand of a SNG, it folding round to the SB who pushes and shows you AK. You have 22, which is the better hand, but you shouldn't call because your stack is on the line. You can construct similar postflop situations if SB limps as well. There's nothing mysterious about any of this, it's just that when you're deciding whether to call you need to use your ICM $equity rather than your chip equity.

Should you ever fold the nuts? It's possible to construct situations where the nuts isn't the best hand, e.g. 9 [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]7 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] versus J [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]9 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] on T [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]8 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]6 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]. It's a bit of an academic discussion though because (1) you never know what they have and (2) normally you're getting laid good odds on your money anyway. Your examples are worlds away from any of this and hugely easy pushes.