i'm currently revamping my bb defense range chart. in stox's book, he recommends defending anything with 35% or more equity. this seems too tight in some aspects and too loose in others. is it right to make a chart with only taking hot and cold equity into account? so far i'm using 33% as an equity guideline, and ommiting A5o-, K6o, T2s, etc (trying to take post flop playabilty and rio factors into account). is this a good way to construct a defense chart, or would it be better to go with strict hot and cold equity?

maybe it'd be better to go with 35% equity guideline, and just add in more middle 1 and 2 gappers, and omitting weak a's and k's as i see fit?

Because of implied odds, draws capture a larger fraction of the pot than bluffcatchers of equal equity. I think using a strict equity threshold is a mistake.

That said, against a more passive postflop player, you can play more bluffcatchers in the hopes that they give up.

Questions would be from SB vs Button vs CO, each position tightens and SB is void as your in position. ATC seems possible vs SB steals.

Button and CO steals .. I thought I remember stox saying K3o is fine. I think your pretty good at using 35% hot cold as an estimate.

I try to review these spots a lot in session reviews and database reviews. Remember anything better than .5BB hand is winning. You have .5 in the pot already if you fold 100% that is the best you can do. Make sure your never folding more than 35% vs steal, and work from that point. Work your postflop game, defending is much more about post than pre flop.

there's no way you can be folding less than 35% and be using anything close to a 35% equity guideline. i consider myself pretty loose from the bb and my fold to steal % is around 43%. also, how much of a difference in fts% is there between utg and btn opens? right now mine's pretty much the same, except against a tug open, i fold a5o-, k6o- and a couple of the more raggedy off suit hands, but not much.

steve, I think dmyers is saying that you should never fold a hand with more than 35% equity against the opponent's range. Then also defend hands that have a little less than 35% equity but have good postflop playability.

There is a moderate to huge difference. The opening ranges from any decent player are going to be hugely different there, so your defense range should be hugely different. Your equity will be weaker against the stronger range and you will often have less fold equity as well. Playing more or less the same range against BTN and LJ (there is no position UTG) opens is a significant leak.

More generally, the Stox book says to use 35% as a guideline, then adjust up or down based on postflop playability (RIFE, RIO, IO, IFE). I more or less agree, although it also depends on the rake and the opponent's postflop skills. In general, I found that I could get away with defending lighter than that until I started playing way too many tables, at which point my BB defense went to crap.

How wide you can defend is going to depend heavily on your postflop skill, so using a guideline like 35% is a reasonable place to start, but many players make an error assuming that they are average or above average in terms of blind defense ability. If you want to defend wide, then you really need to work on what parts of your range you should call one, two, or three streets with, as well as learn how and when you can attack pots with pure- and semi-bluffs.

I mentioned that my BB defense took a big hit when I played too many tables. That speaks to the importance of accounting for the specific opponent and making sure to attack the right boards at the right times. It's hard to do that while 14-tabling. But if you're 2-tabling and have a strong postflop game, it's probably possible to defend with a surprisingly wide range.

thanks buddha. yeah, the btn is about 25% more defense hands using the strict 35% guideline. my btn-utg defense range is a lot closer to being the same though, because there is no way i'm folding q9o/q6s or t9o/t7s to a utg open. but you guys are still in favor of defending a2o from a utg open, no matter the player?

i'm just going to forget about this 35% equity bs, and strictly go with hands that have post-flop playability and avoid rio hands. after thinking about it, if you take this 35% rule with a game like lo8, you're gonna get crushed, and i think you could say the same thing about all poker games.

%35 is a good starting point but that is it. Just a starting point.

Post flop playability is important. My advice is, if the hand is suited drop down 2%. If it is connected 2%, 1-gapper 1%. If it is both suited and connected another 1-2%. If it is dominated go up 2-4%.

If the villain is bad another 1-2%. If the villain is good, up 2-3%.

Finally, history is your best friend. Check it once every few months and update your preflop chart. But don't forget importance of sample size and don't make sudden big changes.

Playing by feel can be dangerous and it is not for everybody. It is best to have a default range and deviate from it in small portions as Stox and many other good players suggest. This is true for preflop and all other streets and poker games.

thanks highway. your post really nails it.

BB defense and pre-flop play in general is an area where you really need to just observe the tendencies of the best LHE players in the world. The Stox book is pretty outdated now. Your database is never going to get anywhere near the sample size you need to even begin to make sense out of your observations. Not to mention that you are constantly playig different blind and rake structures which have a huge impact. Oink and DeathDonkey videos actually have such amazing pre-flop play that they are still valid even now.

gonna bump this thread with a similar question. this is the most HC post I've made on 2+2 in a while but I'm learning a new game and I don't play it online so here goes.


the situation:

CO raises, BTN 3bets, SB folds, Hero is BB.

for simplicity's sake let's just assume you flat with your entire range. what are the weakest hands you play against two good villains?



we'll use Stox book's assertion that you need 35% equity or a little less to defend the BB against a single raise. if there was no postflop play, you would only need 1/3.5 = 28.6% equity. from that we can can deduce that Stox thinks we retain, on average, around 82% (.286/.35) of our equity out of position in a HU pot.

I'm not sure how to adjust this number for multiway pots. I can think of reasons we should retain more and reasons we should retain less, so I'm just gonna use the 82% number for my estimations.

to know what kind of checkdown equity we need in the BB facing a raise and a 3bet, we need to take into account the times we get capped by CO. I'm going to assume this happens 20% of the time.



price when CO just calls 3 bets: 2/7.5 = .266 (paying 2 bets to win the 7.5 dead)

price when CO caps and both players call: 3/9.5 = .315

checkdown equity needed to call 3 bets cold in BB: .2*.315 + .8*.266 = .276 or 27.6%


now we need to account for our positional disadvantage to figure out what kind of equity we really need to continue preflop. remember that we're assuming we retain 82% of our equity:

.276/.82 = .3365 ~ 33.7%


please let me know if these ranges I'm using are way off or something. I'm pretty much going off Stox book, online sources, and some pokerstoving.

CO open 34%: 22+,A2s+,A5o+,K2s+,K9o+,Q8s+,Q9o+,J8s+,J9o+,T8s+,T 9o,97s+,87s,76s,65s
BTN 3bet vs. CO: 22+,A2s+,A7o+,K8s+,KTo+,QTs+,QJo,JTs

against these ranges, here are the hands with 33.7%+:
77+,A9s+,ATo+,KJs+



what do you guys think? seems a bit tight to me intuitively, but is it?

my "hypothesis" after coming up with this range is that we retain more than 82% of our equity out of position multiway in a 9.5sb pot because of the insane odds we get on the flop and turn. it may be more appropriate to work the numbers out with something like 90% instead of 82%.

actually I'll just do that now. .276/.9 = .307 = 30.7%

44+,A6s+,ATo+,KTs+,KQo,QJs.

a little looser. also of course hands like JTs,T9s,A4s are close calls, easy to play, good implied odds, so maybe they are as good or better than ATo or KQo.

i think the btn 3bet range given is a little too wide. i'd guess a btn 3bet range would be around 44, a7o/a6s, (kqj)To/(kqj)9s, and maybe t9s for a more solid player. still, an excellent analysis.