Ignore the charts
I realized that most of my decisions about hand values had been influenced by charts in beginner poker books showing the probability of a particular hand, say 10-10, holding up against two random cards. I had neglected to fully consider fold equity and conditional probability.
The player who reraises all-in with 6-8 is, of course, hoping to take down the pot without a fight. The probability of doing this has to be reasonably high for this play to be correct, though perhaps not as high as one might think. Let’s say that the blinds are $400 to $800 with a $100 ante, and your stack going into the hand is $11,500. You are in the big blind. The button (chip stack of $15,000) raises to $2,400 and the small blind folds. I would rarely flat call in this scenario, but I’d strongly consider a push.
Push it
A fold leaves you with $10,600 in chips, whereas a successful push will increase your stack to $15,100 ($10,600 + $2,400 + $400 + $800 + $900 antes). The interesting thing is that almost every hand that the button might raise with in this scenario is a favorite over yours, but, conditional on a call, 6-8 plays reasonably well. An aggressive player might raise from the button 40% of the time in this scenario, but only call your all-in with the 20% of his raising hands. In this case, the EV of an all-in is clearly positive.