($20 Home) AJo heads up against TAG

Mike MacIntosh · #1 10-02-2006, 10:46 AM

We are now down to heads up action. We use the standard 50/30/20 payout structure. Villan is a TAG, who has a good idea on how to switch gears to heads up play. He tends to open his ranges quite a bit when the table gets down to five or less. I have played with him over 20 times, and I feel that I can get the best of him more often than not.

Blinds 500/1000 (Next level: 600/1200 in 5 min)

SB 13,000
Hero 16,000

Hero (A[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]J[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img])

SB raises to 3,000
Hero raises to 16,000 (all-in)

I really don't want to play big pots pf. I would much rather see some flops and make better descions than my opp. Do I have enough chips to fold this probable glorified coin flip? With the hopes of outplaying my opponent later on, or am I simply a victim of my hand strength in this spot. Please explain.

Gelford · #2 10-02-2006, 10:48 AM

A push is fine, you are way ahead of his range and this is poker not chess, so you can't expect to win every HU battle

bluefeet · #3 10-02-2006, 10:48 AM

Absolutely not. You are crushing his range. Pushing is the only option with these blinds.

Mike MacIntosh · #4 10-02-2006, 10:55 AM

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Absolutely not. You are crushing his range. Pushing is the only option with these blinds.

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How many BB's would we need in these stacks to play some "real" heads up poker?

bluefeet · #5 10-02-2006, 11:04 AM

Eh...it's not entirely because of these stacks that we push here. There are a host of hands that I'd call a 3x here vs. push/folding. But the strength of this hand is plenty. Ample FE to force a fold, taking a 2:1 lead -- obviously strong enough to not hate a call. Remember too we're always talking effective stacks HU. He only has 10bb's left after this raise. A flop pot will be fully committive(sp/maybe not a word) for him.

We're close though. 5k more for each of you provides other options with more starting hands (not that still pushing back AJ would be 'wrong').

Mike MacIntosh · #6 10-02-2006, 11:18 AM

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Eh...it's not entirely because of these stacks that we push here. There are a host of hands that I'd call a 3x here vs. push/folding. But the strength of this hand is plenty. Ample FE to force a fold, taking a 2:1 lead -- obviously strong enough to not hate a call. Remember too we're always talking effective stacks HU. He only has 10bb's left after this raise. A flop pot will be fully committive(sp/maybe not a word) for him.

We're close though. 5k more for each of you provides other options with more starting hands (not that still pushing back AJ would be 'wrong').

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Exactly, what do you mean by the term "effective stacks". Can we play real poker with 20bb? I am trying to find the cutoff (#BB) between pushbot and real poker in a HU situation. I simply did not want this match to come down a coin flip. It looks like that was unavoidable in this situation. I am just woundering how many chips I would need for this not to be a insta-push.

bluefeet · #7 10-02-2006, 11:57 AM

Effective meaning the # of bb's in play is equal to the lessor amount between you two. if you have 567324581bb's and he has 8, we're effectively pushing 8bb's.

A bit hard to pick a precise number for you here bro. Player dependant too of course. Like I said earlier, you're pretty near that line now. If the blinds were 1/2 of that they are here, then of course you have other options. At 1k, with 19k chips in play, pushable becomes pushable.

But again, we ARE deep enough here where it's not simply push/fold. There are hands that I'd simply take a flop with.

Sykes · #8 10-02-2006, 12:40 PM

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Absolutely not. You are crushing his range. Pushing is the only option with these blinds.

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How many BB's would we need in these stacks to play some "real" heads up poker?

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50-100

Diamond Lie · #9 10-02-2006, 05:48 PM

I think you need to have twice as many chips here to play real poker against our opponent here. I do however like your push here, as his range is 77+, KJo+, and A10o+ (from my experience).

You know you are at least a marginal favorite here (if not better). If you both miss the flop, do you really want him to steal the pot with his overagressive post flop play when you miss with AJ here? Good push imo (in my opinion)