Knowing when to shove will help bring success

Imagine you’re playing in a poker tournament under the following conditions. Half the field remains, the blinds are 5001,000 with an ante of 100, and you’re the short stack at a nine-handed table with 12,000 in chips. Action folds to you on the button, and you look down at Qc Jh. What should you do

n this spot, the odds say it’s justifiable to go all in with the top 38.2 percent of all hands, which includes Q-J offsuit. In fact, under these circumstances you should be shoving any pocket pairs, any ace, and middle suited connectors and one-gappers (e.g., 7s 9s, 4h 5h). You can even correctly shove with hands such as Q- 6 suited and 10-9 offsuit.

Now, let’s change things up slightly. It’s the same scenario, except this time you’re under the gun. Because you have eight players left to act behind you instead of two, your shoving range shrinks. Here, you should only be shoving with 13 percent of hands, which means you can forget about the small suited connectors, pocket twos through fours, and any ace worse than A-8 suited or A-J offsuit. Also, it’s not mathematically sound to go all in with that Q-J in this spot.

Unless you’ve memorized charts and statistics, it can be tough to calculate shove ranges, especially with ever- changing scenarios. Your chip stack in relation to the blinds, the number of players and your position at the table are just a few of the things that you need to consider.

Fortunately, as with most things in this day and age, there’s an app for that. The best-reviewed app for calculating shove ranges is SnapShove. It’s a powerful tool that you can use at the table (though not during a hand) to help you make the right decision when it comes to going all in. It’s as simple as plugging in the aforementioned criteria and hitting “calculate.”

Let’s look at another example. Say there are six players at your table, the blinds are 600-1,200 with an ante of 200, and you’re in the hijack seat, meaning you’re second to act, with a stack of 13,500. Even before you look at your cards, do you know the range of hands with which you should shove?

In this case, you can correctly jam the top 24 percent of hands from the hijack position for 11.5 big blinds. Do you know the top 24 percent of hands in poker? If not, you may want to start familiarizing yourself, because your opponents certainly are.

For those wondering, your shoving range in this spot consists of all pocket pairs, any suited ace, A-7 offsuit or better, and hands such as Qd 9d, Jh 10c and 8c 7c, just to name a few.

An old saying in poker suggests that you should play the player, not the cards. There’s some truth to that, but oftentimes, successful poker players are simply playing the circumstances. You should be doing that, too.