Someone convince me that raising 27o is wrong.

Raise to 3xBB. Risking 2.5 to win 1.5, you need them to fold 60% to break even. Say someone calls 30% of their range and 3bets 20% of their range. At this point the EV of the raise with 27o is -.5BB + equity in the pot when villain calls (obv we muck to 3bet).

To continue with 50% of his range, villain must be playing something slightly tighter than: Pair, broadway, any suited, Ax, any connected. Maybe use Q9 or T8 instead of the weaker suited hands, but basically a very weak range that makes nothing a lot on the flop.

So let's say villain calls 30% of the time. 27o has about 30% showdown equity against a reasonable range here. This means our showdown equity is .3*.3*6 = .54BB. This means that the the raise is +EV by a very slight margin if we can just check it down vs. villain. It is of course possible that our "real equity" is actually worse than our showdown equity, but this is difficult to arrange because we can easily just check our hand down whenever we don't flop a pair (0EV) and we will often win a small pot when we do or a medium/big pot when we flop 2pr+ (rare but happens). Obv we lose sometimes as well, but since we should never be making -EV calls and we have position, we should be able to capitalize on our equity here.

That is with 50%. I think it's hard to get to significantly above this, because even against a random hand you can't really play Q6o OOP. Once you get to about 60% of your range calling, you don't even have much more than 50% equity, and since you are OOP it is going to be more or less impossible to actually make full use of your showdown equity. 40% of your range is something like any suited, broadway, pair, A8/A9o... which is pretty reasonable and is the break even point of a raise with any two cards. Many villains do not even defend this wide, even if you substitute some worse Ax and some K9/T9/89 hands for stuff like T5s.

In summary, it's possible that opening 27o is a small mistake against a very good opponent capable of defending a very wide range OOP, but against most people you are going to be making free money, and even against a bad villain you are going to get him to adjust in ways that get your best hands paid off more easily.

edit: Similar calculation can be done with minraising... villain can call about 65% of his hands which is reasonable (down to stuff like K8o and 64o) and we are still prob breaking even or better.

if you never fold your button, a good opponent will adjust his 3betting range to be much wider. i like to fold my button sometimes because i prefer my opponents to just call me rather than 3bet me OOP (unless they're 3betting way too much). since i'm going to fold some of the time, 27o seems like a great time to start.

sucks when you type a bunch of paragraphs and then a person comes in and says one thing then you are pissed off you typed all those paragraphs

the question i want answered is who says raising 27os is right?

I say it is.

Didn't read the details of your argument, but yeah, against plenty of players it will be +EV and against an optimal player it's probably not a big mistake.

Against an exploiting opponent it sucks.

There are tons of similar phenomena in NL, like 3-betting complete air on a drawless flop.

If there's really no draw and if it's ever correct to 3-bet bluff, then 3-betting air should be at least 0 EV and therefore would only take an opponent who folds slighty too much there to be +EV.

ditto

it's not only that good players will necessarily adjust just by 3-betting more. they can (and will) do that, but it also makes it much easier to play you OOP on the flop when they do just call you. if you know a guy is raising 90%+ of his hands, particularly if he is cbetting a very high number as well, you can be c/r flops profitably with air quite a bit, doing it with top/2nd pair for value, overs, any draw, etc., and it will make life really hard on you when you constantly are dealing with having hands that play horribly post flop.

if you are playing 5/10 and below against players that generally aren't that good HU, i'd def recommend raising as big of a percentage as you can get away with. against mediocre regs at MSNL i'd prob raise 80%+ all day.

tc

Rob if you almost or halfway convinced the great Dani that you were right, I wanna know exactly why- so tell me later.

its rly simple 2 7 shows profit in a vacuum, but you fold it to keep your overall range balanced

bobbo,

what opponents are you talking about playing when you are raising 27o (or the like)? I'm assuming if you are raising 27o, you are raising ~95%+ of your button range, is this an accurrate statement?

i would be shocked if you could play someone like, say, cts, and get away with doing this. although i guess i'd be shocked if you could play cts and do just about anything and get away with it.

my feeling is that this style is optimal against most opponents, but not the ones you will find beating games bigger than 5-10/10-20ish.

tc

im pretty sure 27o doesnt show profit vs me (or most other hsnl regs) in a vaccuum from a random name.

People adjust.

agree w/ this

I just read the first sentence and then was gonna write was duck wrote. your ranges and math is stupid because while it will work for the very first hand you start doing it, your opponent will adjust.