Any two cards really mean any two cards?

Xanthro · #1 05-22-2007, 06:10 PM

I encountered a new situation for me, during bubble play and with three players left there was always one exceedingly short stack player, and the player to my left, who had me covered, took advantage of this to reduce my stack, so when it entered heads up I was at $3,500 and he was at $10,000.

This was a turbo and the blinds were $800.

My first three hands were 35o, 23o, 23o, I folded, he pushed and I folded, and I folded. My read was that we would call with basically any two cards. He pushed his next hand and I folded with 24o.

Now of course this is a horrible string of cards, but should I have actually pushed any of them? My two pushes would have been 25o, and 23o.

I ended up pushing 75o, and he instantly called with 73o, so my read on him calling was correct. I doubled up here but it didn't really matter as I was still so short.

I understood my stack was getting killed, but pushing when the likelyhood is I'm playing the board for a chop was just too much for me to push.

How bad of a mistake if any was it to not push here, or should I simply chalk this up to one of these times when the cards are not kind and move on because there is nothing to learn here?

ianisakson · #2 05-22-2007, 06:18 PM

I think it's correct to fold those kinds of hands HU as long as you can leave yourself fold equity for the next hand. since your stack had no fold equity anyway it's actually best for you to push as soon as you can, thus ensuring the maximum amount of chips you can gamble for since he's calling anyway. example, you're probably going to be about 35-40% against his range (pure guess but probably close) in both scenarios where you had the button, but in the first hand you had 3500 chips and the second hand you had probably about 2500 chips(i'm guessing on this cause I can't recall the antes). if you're all in both of these hands the pot will be 7k and 5k respectively and if you're 40% to win in both scenarios you're EV changes drastically from one hand to the next. The moral of the story is: When short-gamble sooner.

holy32 · #3 05-22-2007, 06:19 PM

If you know (!!!) he is calling with ATC then 23o and similar are not a push in your situation. But I doubt that if you had pushed your 3500 stack he would have called with 75o and the likes.

Xanthro · #4 05-22-2007, 06:24 PM

[ QUOTE ]
If you know (!!!) he is calling with ATC then 23o and similar are not a push in your situation. But I doubt that if you had pushed your 3500 stack he would have called with 75o and the likes.

[/ QUOTE ]

I couldn't push the 3500 because he already pushed into me, then I folded the 23o, when I had less than 2600. I think here I should have just sucked it up and pushed my 2600, but he was calling with basically anything. After his next push, I'm down to 1500 and that's when I pushed, but by then even doubling didn't put me back to where I started.

agnoke10 · #5 05-22-2007, 06:24 PM

good point holy, but i dont know if this is anymore than just a string of bad cards, maybe the first one is a push with a decent amount of fold equity and BB 800.

DevinLake · #6 05-22-2007, 07:03 PM

I can't comment on your read that villain was calling with any two cards. If he was, it was probably correct to fold a couple of those hands.

But the fact that he did call with 73o when you finally did push, is not proof that he would have called any two when you started the heads up match.

When you started the stacks where 3500 to his 10,000. By the time you pushed, the stacks would have been 1750 to his 11,750 with 400/800/50 blinds (if you described the situation correctly). So, him calling basically a min raise is very different than him calling a 4+ BB shove.

That being said, I'd would have probably pushed the 35o hand. But, if not, I'm definitely pushing the 23o hand.

ZedDragon · #7 05-22-2007, 07:05 PM

you can blame bad cards for that one. all 3 can be folded. 53o can be shoved if hes calling narrower than top 70% though which he may for 3500?

but if hes calling any tighter than that, then yes you should be shoving any 2 (with a 3500 stack, even if hes calling 67% its ATC)

simonpoker · #8 05-22-2007, 07:09 PM

35o is a push for me, all of them could have been pushes, of course 23o was fold

holy32 · #9 05-22-2007, 07:12 PM

Ahh, okay...

Then:
Folding 53o to his push was obv correct.
Folding 23o from SB was (surprisingly) correct.
Folding 24o to his push is only correct if you had more than 2000 chips, otherwise that would be a call.
Pushing 75o is correct.

Kevin8423 · #10 05-22-2007, 07:25 PM

At a certain point your stack gets to a size where you need to push ATC and if he calls then you are probably a 60/40.. just go for it. Folding destroys your stack, at 400/800 you fold like 2 or 3 hands and its basically game over. Even if you know he will call its better to take a hand that is slightly behind than just fold all the chips to him, and you don't know that he will ALWAYS call either.

I probably shove the two hands when you were SB fwiw.