The exact amount of chips in comparison to your
opponents where you lose fold equity is not exact,
but here are a few examples. If you have 500 chips
and your opponent has 10,000, you don't have any
fold equity. He or she will not be hurt much if
they lose to you, so they can call with a wide range
of hands to take a chance to knock you out of the
tournament. If they only had 2,000 chips, the range
of hands they can call with is much narrower, because
they will be risking 25% of their stack.
One thing that you must realize though is that the
strongest hands will call you, regardless of your
chip stack. Hands like AA KK QQ JJ and AK are going
to call anyway. However, by being able to get weaker
hands to fold and stealing the blinds for a few
rounds, you can survive until you find a good enough
hand to double up with.
You can use fold equity to your advantage though,
even when you lose it. Usually when you land a big
hand like AA or KK, you make a standard raise to
keep an opponent in the hand for the chance to win
a big pot. When your chips are low enough, you can
just move all in and get a call with hands as weak
as KJ and small pairs sometimes.
The next time you are in a tournament, try to determine
at what amount fold equity would be lost as you
move deeper into the tournament and use it to your
advantage. Until next week, good luck at the tables!
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