…and neither am I: 10 Push Fold Charts for Poker Tournaments - Upswing Poker
These charts assume your opponent is defending optimally, which I promise you almost no one on Replay is doing. If they are folding more than they are theoretically supposed to, you can even profitably shove some of the hands in pale green or light pink (I don’t know the math but if Villain won’t call a 10bb UTG shove with, say, QJo very often, then you can even start shoving QTo, for example).
I haven’t memorized these charts but I studied them enough to get the gist earlier this month. Since then—and I have no data to track here so anecdotal evidence disclaimer blah blah blah—I’ve noticed significant improvement in my late-stage MTT results, where it’s common for 10-15bb to be around average stack.
Other players continue to limp and hope to hit the flop, or raise 2x and fold to a shove. Meanwhile we put our opponents to a major decision whenever we want to play a hand, until our stack gets closer to 20bb again. And if we do get called and win, we get a full double at least most of the time, instead of waiting to finally get a good hand and maybe only winning 5bb when Villain folds on the flop.
Knowing that you play shove/fold, AND knowing that you will shove a short stack relatively wide, also helps protect you from villains who would otherwise speculate/attack you more freely when you are in the blinds.
The downside of this approach is that you feel bad when you play patient, solid, TAG poker for 2 hours and then bust with K9s because you got called by AJ. “Ugh, if I just played super tight, I would have AQs/AK in that spot and stack them most of the time!” Yes, but you won’t get those hands often enough before the blinds eat you alive.
How many of our tournaments end with us FINALLY getting a premium, shoving a 4-7bb stack, and losing bc whoever called had some random trash that we couldn’t force them off of since our tiny stack has hardly any fold equity?
Or because, for the same reason, our preflop shove got called not by 1 opponent, but 3?
In contrast, how many times have we sat in the late stages of a tournament, grinding our teeth as we watch “some donkey” run up a huge stack by going all in all the time?
The bigger the blinds get, the more aggression > cards. When we are short, we should leverage our stack in an effort to win the blinds as often as possible—adding 1.5bb when we have 10bb is a significant pickup. Do it 6 times and we’ve almost doubled up without ever seeing a flop.
Nobody wants to bust, and we can use that against them. When we raise 2-4x instead, suddenly a lot more hands want to try to see a flop. We won’t hit that flop most of the time—so we’re now forced to bluff some hands to protect our investment/realize our share of equity.
Shoving is so much less stressful! 