Heads Up: Push!

The moment when all opponents are eliminated and you are in Heads Up play has arrived. You want to push all your chips in the middle of the table. Very often such decision is a serious problem. The SAGE system, about which I was talking in one of my previous texts, definitely helps. But, I'm interested how high must be the effective stack, so my ALL IN (PUSH) would be correct.

For that calculation I used Sit & Go Endgame Tools again which you can find in the Software and Free Stuff section!

The results are shown in the table and they express justified  ALL IN decisions in relation to the effective stack (smaller of two stacks). If you use M as the stack size measure, then you'll find the exact M value in this table:

If you use xBB as the stack size measure, then you'll find the exact M value in this table:

Example:

We're in the dealer position and we can push all our chips. The question is if that is justified with 76o in the hand? First, we determine the effective stack and that is our remaining 660 chips. Since BB equals 60 the effective stack to BB ratio is 660 / 60 = 11,0. We have 76o in the hand and in the table we're looking for the highest acceptable value of ratio for the hand 76o. The highest acceptable ratio is 3,5, and in our example, the correct decision is FOLD.

Now, assume that we're in the same situation, but now we ask ourselves which are the hands that we should push with? From the table we read all hands that have the value higher than 11,0 and these are the ALL IN hands:

22+, Ax, Kx+, K6o+, Q2s+, Q4o+, J4s+, J7o+, T7s+, T9o, 98s.

Comments please, questions, suggestons ...