How to keep fold equity

Multi Table Tournaments / Marcus Bateman / 23 August 2010 / Leave a Comment

Tournament poker throws up many situations that rarely occur in cash games - and one of the most important is thinking about the importance of maintaining fold equity

One of the most important principles to understand if you are just starting out in tournament poker is the crucial importance of maintaining fold equity with your stack. The term 'fold equity' simply refers to having enough chips in relation to the big blind to at least be able to force your opponent off of a total garbage hand and steal the blinds if you shove.

All in pre flop, even the worst hands have pretty solid odds against quite good hands in Hold'em. Even assuming that you are playing super tight and only shoving hands like 77+, A10s+, and hands like KQs, A brief look at PokerStove tells us that against this range a player looking down at seven two off suit has around 23% equity - enough that they are forced to call if your shove cannot offer them odds worse than 2 to 1.

This means that in order to deprive the big blind the correct odds to call with any two cards, you frequently have to take bigger risks with a small stack when it is still large enough to have some force. Dropping below this crucial threshold in tournaments effectively leaves you at the complete mercy of lady luck, and it is always an immense uphill battle to get deep tournaments regularly being all in for your tournament life.

To think about this concept in action, imagine you lose a big pot and are left with 4 big blinds and are under the gun next hand. Here you shoving range should be huge (close to any two cards on the whole), as you are better off risking your luck with some fold equity than you are waiting for one more hand and the loss of fold equity the minute you have to post the big blind.

Tournament poker throws up many situations that rarely occur in cash games - and one of the most important is thinking about the importance of maintaining fold equity and often going to quite extreme lengths to make sure your stack does not drop below certain thresholds. Think carefully before just throwing away poor hands when short stacked - it may be the longer term consequences of not taking a risk now may well outweigh the current ones.

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