I
was watching a poker tournament on television last
night when the following situation came up. It was
down to two handed with Barry Greenstein and Phil
Ivey, and Greenstein had a very large chip lead
with the blinds quickly eating away at Ivey's stack.
Ivey was dealt Q 2 off suit and Greenstein moved
all in.
With
the chip stacks and blinds where they were, Ivey was
going to have to move all in on either this hand or
the next one. He decided to fold and moved all in with
5 4 off suit on the next hand and lost to Greenstein's
Q J. (If I remember correctly. I am a little fuzzy about
Greenstein's hand, but it was two face cards.)
Looking
back, of course Ivey would have been better off
calling with the Q 2, but hindsight is always better
than real life pressure packed situations. Also,
understand that I am in no way questioning Ivey's
play, as he is somewhere around a million times
better than I am at playing poker.
The question is, how good does a hand have to be
in the above situation to call? I would have called
with the Q 2, but that does not make it the correct
play. Another thing to consider is that it is almost
always better to be the one who moves all in than
the one making the call. When I will be forced to
move all in on one of the next two hands, the following
are hands that I will push with on the first hand.
·
Any Ace or face card.
· Any two suited cards.
· Any two consecutive cards. (On these
hands below 98, I will push if possible, but will
not call an all in.)
I
do not have a scientific reasoning behind these
hand selections; they are just the ones I am willing
to gamble with when I am forced to gamble. Realize
that you have no fold equity, so your opponent will
call you with just about any hand. In certain situations,
it would even be incorrect for them to fold 7 2
off suit, which is the worst possible starting hand.
If you play poker for long, the odds are that you
will find yourself in a similar situation to the
one above. Consider what hands you will be willing
to play, and that is one less thing you will have
to think about at the table. Until next week, good
luck at the tables
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