If you want to increase your poker skills and learn to crush games, check out Jonathan Little’s elite training site at PokerCoaching.com.
I was recently told about a hand from a $1,000 buy-in poker tournament that illustrates a big mistake that many players make on a regular basis.
With blinds at 250-500 with a 500 big blind ante, everyone folded to the button, a loose, aggressive player who recently lost a large pot, dethroning him as chip leader. Despite this, he still had a nice stack of 21,000. He raised to 1,150 and the action folded to our Hero with 12,500 in the big blind with 9♦8♦.
While calling is certainly better than folding, when facing a 2.5-big blind raise from a likely wide range, going all-in for about 10 times the initial raise could potentially be the best play, while also being the easiest to execute.
To figure out if an all-in is profitable, use this equation:
- Profit = (% opponent folds) X (amount you steal) + (% opponent calls) X (equity in pot – amount you put in pot)
Let’s suppose the button is raising with 60% of hands (many loose players raise wider) and that he will only call the all-in with the top 15% of hands (many players call tighter). This means that when Hero pushes all-in, he will get called 25% of the time (15/60).
When Hero pushes all-in and the button folds, he wins the 2,400 pot (the button’s preflop raise plus the blinds and antes).
To find Hero’s equity when called, you take his 9d 8d and run it in an equity calculator against the button’s 15% calling range. In this case, Hero will win the all-in pot about 37% of the time. To determine Hero’s equity in the pot, you take the total pot size after the all-in and call and multiply it by Hero’s 37% equity, which is 9,509 (.37 X (12,500 + 12,500 + 250 + 450)).
Now you have all the information you need to determine if Hero can profitably push all-in.
- Profit = (.75) X (2,400) + (.25) X (9509 – 12,500)
- Profit = 1,800 – 748
- Profit = 1,052
While winning two big blinds by going all-in may not seem worth the risk, two big blinds is actually a huge amount of profit. Any time you expect your opponent to fold more than 65% of the time to a reasonably-sized preflop all-in, you can push with an incredibly wide range because your opponent will fold too often.
You can tinker with your opponent’s calling frequency and also your hand’s equity (weaker hands have less equity when called) to see how wide you can profitably go all-in.
But just because going all-in is profitable does not mean that it is the best play. If you expect to win more than 1,052 chips by calling, then calling is superior, even if it is a more difficult strategy to implement. That said, you will have a difficult time winning more than 1,052 chips by calling with a marginal hand from out of position.
Going all-in will occasionally leave you broke, but scooping up two big blinds on average is well worth the risk. If you instead call and then frequently check-fold when you miss the flop, you will eventually blind out, making it close to impossible for you to succeed at poker tournaments in the long run.
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Jonathan Little is a WSOP bracelet winner, two-time WPT winner, and the 2024 PokerGO Cup champion with nearly $9 million million in live tournament earnings, best-selling author of 15 educational poker books, and 2019 GPI Poker Personality of the Year. If you want to increase your poker skills and learn to crush the games, check out his training site at PokerCoaching.com/cardplayer.
Photo by PokerGO – Antonio Abrego