Open pushing in later stages

[beenben]

I think it was Rizen who posted a tournament history where he was open pushing quite a bit and was wondering aloud whether it was a good idea. It's part of his game, partly to be "lazy" and to avoid making mistakes on later streets.

I've been open pushing a bit more lately myself when my M is around 10, maybe a little bit over. the blinds are getting up there.

The dilemma is, do you want to be offensive minded, be the aggressor and give up the ability to play defense while at the same time taking away the chance that you'll be defensive when you shouldn't, or have the chance to back off if others throw strength behind you.

If your M is around 11-13, if you make a 3x raise, and a 1/2 the pot continuation bet, that's more than half of your stack. So some people argue that you should just push
all-in since you're likely to be pot-committed on the flop anyway, thatyou should want to see all five board cards and that open pushing keeps you from making a mistake of folding when doing so would make you a small stack. It also
takes away a better player's ability to outplay you on later streets, and it may get better hands to fold.

On the other hand, open-pushing removes your ability to get out of harms way. If you raise to 3x the BB, and get an all-in and a call from a big stack, you can fold those good but not premium hands (ie 99 or AJs). If you open-pushed, you've lost your ability to get out of the way. if you raise to 3x the BB and get two callers, miss the flop, you can either continuation bet, or check-fold.

So the question for debate is, when should you open-push all-in in the later stages of an MTT?