Couple of questions about H2H Head's Up strategy

1) Lets say you have a low pair on the flop. What are the odds of you winning the hand? (eg: A K 5 flop and you have 4 5 in your pocket)

2) You have low stack. Do you go in with junk? Is it a toss up since either player can hit his pair. The only way you lose is if he hits higher pair, or if no one hits pair, and he has high card.

3) What are the odds no one hits their pair after all 5 cards, and high card is the winner? (ie: Odds of winning the hand with A 5)

4) Do you just keep going all in against a very short stack? Lets say you have 100 chips and he has 5. Do you just go all in without looking? If you lose a few hands, you can cover it. You just need to win ONE all in (50/50?)
For example,
5 vs 100
10 vs 95
20 vs. 85
40 vs. 65
You can lose 4 in a row, and still have a tossup in the 5th round to knock him out. Since you can cover his 40 all-in.
Or is this stupid, and you just better off playing tight, and waiting to get him.

No one bothered to reply. That's odd.

1) If you get to showdown against a range of any two in the example given, you'll win about 60% of the time.

2) While not necessarily the best way to maximize expected value, you may want to look into nash equilibrium stuff as it pertains to short stack poker and the concept of making unexploitable shoves. Tournament players in particular should definitely be familiar with it.

3) I'd have to use my sim for you to answer this precisely but as an educated guess I figure it to be at least 20% of the time or so. Shouldn't be too much higher than that.

4) See 2. Generally, the more significant blinds and/or antes are in relation to effective stack sizes, the more terrible a mistake it is to play tight versus a tiny stack.

Probably nobody replied because for the most part they are stupid questions not worth wasting their time on. I have a minute spare so I will answer.
1)Pointless question
2)Basic work in crev will give you the answers you seek.
3)Pointless question.
4)Again basic work in crev

Thanks for trying to help but I've already answered him/her. Insightful stuff though.

DunningKruger said:

Insightful stuff though.

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LOL

1) In H2H, if you hold a pair off the flop, you only have a slightly better than 50/50 odds of winning the hand? I'd have expected it to be much higher than 60, considering you're at 50% before looking at the cards at all. (2 players)

What is "crev" ?

Pairs are huge h/u and ace high will often win. Imho you need to be raising the button almost every time h/u. Good luck.

Ladybugger said:

1) In H2H, if you hold a pair off the flop, you only have a slightly better than 50/50 odds of winning the hand? I'd have expected it to be much higher than 60, considering you're at 50% before looking at the cards at all. (2 players)

Click to expand...

For a pair as low as 5s, that number is more or less accurate. All I did was use a stove like iphone App to run an equity calc for 54o, 54s versus a range of atc and the board AK5. The figure is 59.19%. if you could guarantee that you weren't already losing right off the flop, you'd be at least a 3 to 1 favourite (my app shows almost 78%), but of course, sometimes you'll run into Ax hands, Kx hands, and pocket pairs.

Note that not all bottom pair hands are created equal. Q8 versus any two when the board is AJ8r gives you about 69% equity, for instance.

Ladybugger said:

What is "crev" ?

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Cardrunners EV, or stoxev depending on how long you've been playing poker heh. Tries to solve hands with decision trees. Great stuff for multi street play albeit convoluted and not recommended for a player of your level nor is it directly applicable to your question as you have to make some pretty specific assumptions about how exactly your opponent will react to various plays at your disposal with each and every hand he or she may be looking at.