5 Poker Tournament Myths Way Too Many Players Believe

June 6, 2017 by Miikka Anttonen #5

You Can’t Raise/Fold with Under 12 Blinds

The game is called No Limit Hold’em; you can do pretty much anything.
Many players assume that a 12 blind stack is push/fold territory — and it often times is. It’s a relative disaster when you have to raise/fold with a 12 blind stack; you could’ve just gone all-in yourself to maximize fold equity and guarantee you realize your hand’s equity.
But that doesn’t mean you should never raise/fold with a short stack. And if you think outside the box, you’ll discover opportunities everywhere. A great example would be the endgame of a Turbo online. In those tournaments, everyone has a stack in the 10-15 big blind ballpark towards the end.
Some people play very scared during these late stages. There will be cases where people will continue with the same range regardless if you raise small or go all-in. There is no reason to risk all your chips when you can achieve the same result with a smaller raise.
If you never raise/fold with less than 12 big blinds, make yourself a goal: try to find one spot to do it next session. Don’t push it, just try to find one opportunity to do it. Trust me, they’re there.
I also think that people overdo the open-shove game nowadays as a result of playing with simulators like HoldemResources Calculator and ICMizer, which show how wide you can unexploitably shove (usually, this is wider than you’d think). When it’s mathematically proven that you can just click all-in and make a profit without giving it much thought, many players are tempted to do exactly that…
…but it’s not necessarily the best option. In many cases it’s optimal to raise/fold with hands that would profit as a shove, as well as hands that wouldn’t. It all depends on your opponents and the specifics of the tournament.
I’d also recommend you to make notes on players capable of raise/folding with a shallow stack; in fact, this is one of my favorite notes to make. When I see someone raise/fold the button with 12 big blinds, I immediately write that down. Because next time I’ll know that they are likely full of shit and I can 3-bet shove extremely wide on them.
Some players only ever raise small with a monster when they’re shallow, and this is an important note to make as well. There’s are many dumb regs who only ever minraise with K-K or A-A with 10 big blinds and shove or fold everything else. Having a note like that is extremely valuable, not only because it allows us to avoid running into their obvious trap in the future, but also because it means that their actual shoving ranges don’t contain the best possible hands.

I’m sure there are a bunch of misconceptions I failed to cover here. Feel free to share your favorite tournament myths in the comments section below, or on Twitter @chuckbasspoker.