I didn't say big dog, but any bad call is an exploitable one.

I guess you're going to have to explain better for the slow folks like me. You think his range is bad. How? I looked at the stove for his calling only range, and it is doing fine given his discount. Could you please lay out specifically what is wrong?

I have no problem with cold calling the broadways. I do have a problem with cold calling 22-77. This stove lays out the best case scenario. Given that we're going to get 4 bet sometimes, and that we have to fold many flops, our odds are worse than this best case scenario. We don't get to realize all our equity. I can't calculate and combine the ev for every flop, which is what you seem to be asking for, but I can estimate. There will be flops that are good for our hand, but they all give us equity between 51% and 64%. So we hit a good flop, check raise the c bettor, and we feel pretty good about it. But a lot of the time one of our 2 opponents will 3bet. I estimate that we get it heads up against the c bettor with a slight edge around 20% of the time. Estimating further, we have about 55% equity 20% of the time for about 11%. Add the chance of flopping a set with some implied odds, and we're back at 25%. Add some good flops that we can check call, this bumps us up to 35% in a heads up pot which we won't always get. Now the question becomes how often do we get free cards on the turn. Never? Our c/c is burning money. Always? We should donk. It's going to end up somewhere between those 2 extremes. In all likelyhood we're going to end up folding a lot of turns, or not getting paid by the weaker parts of the late position players range since when we wake up oop we show a lot of strength. Did I really pick a fight with DougL? It was worth a shot imo.

I don't think I would ever add all my PP, but I started the topic with 66 because I was considering adding 66-88 to my coldcall range.

Not exactly sure what you mean in the 1st sentence, but do you mean adding KQ to the capping range or removing it from the range at all? If we want a wider range I would add 66-88 and KJs,QTs,QJs,JTs. I really don't like playing hands which have a high chance of being dominated in 3-bet pots but that's because of my FR background. In FR people always have AK/AQ when they 3bet Loosening up has been my #1 focus since I've switched but not being able to let go of what used to be good is also one of my weaknesses.

Adding small suited connectors don't have that problem of being dominated, so they might play better but we almost know for sure that top-pair isn't going to hold a lot of value in case we hit the flop. Do we really want to play for Flush/Straights only? We might be better of folding pre-flop, unless being able to hit low flops and being more balanced can earn us a lot of money?


I've don't 4-bet a lot in HU pots, I do 4-bet in multiway pot. That means that in a HUD I have a very small 4-bet %. Now I could "abuse" that by adding more hands to my 4-bet range in this specific spot, however how is putting your money in bad, ever going to get compensated by balancing your range?

I could cold-call my complete range but I always have the feeling that missing 2 bets with my premium hands especially when OOP isn't a great start of hand. Sure we can c/r but what if the pot doesn't get 4-bet by the IR? Then we have charged 2 bets less preflop and c/r the 3-better which means we won't be able to earn these 2 bets back in many cases. To me that has been so far the reason to always cap my premiums, which indeed might be very exploitable (hence this whole topic). Always cold-calling does have the benefit from being more balanced and the IR could always help out by 4-betting but as we've seen that probably only happens 1 out of 5 times so we are still missing the 2bets in 80% of the cases.

Look at our opponent's ranges. How different is 22 than 66? Their ranges are top heavy. Basically, any PP that is below the vast majority of their hands should be nearly equivalent. While I'm fine with your post flop play issues, I think you're forgetting that you can make a mint flopping sets and the impact of these hands on the Shania of your big card hands. I don't think these hands are terribly hard to play, but it could be experience -- I seem to prefer playing 4 handed these days.
Have you considered capping everything you play?
I think you should shift your focus slightly, you should be LAGging it up. By this, I mean that finding cold calling ranges would be far later in my FR-->6m journey.

Also, 5/T is just a tough limit. At the first sign of trouble, move down for your 6m transition. Personally, I had trouble with good LAGTAGs when I first moved from FR. You're going to find good working pros playing 5/T 6m. If you make mistakes trying to exploit them, it will be expensive b/c they are completely comfortable with the aggression. First adjustment, just refuse to play with a good LAGTAG on your right. You want a loose/passive fish on your right and you'd prefer two of them. Not knowing this cost me 100s of bets. 42/29 is a painful player to play against and not enough reason to play, if you've just transitioned from FR. Oddly, my first small sample of a 42/30 player that I bumhunted was slightly off -- it was pointed out that I bumhunted the two biggest winners on FullTilt for a while.

I think it's a stake disconnect. Previously at stars 1/2 and presently at foxwoods 4/8, these situations are rare. I need villains to be spewy postflop to make up the implied odds. If I find such villains, of course I'd play any pocket pair in this situation. You tell me the implied odds are there at 5/T online, and I believe you. Thanks for playing.

I discussed that briefly in my reply above:

I've already played 110k hands at 6-max so with new to 6-max I don't really mean new. Still compared to my sample of 3M+ hands at FR I call it new I do agree that a lot of good "working" pros play 5/T so while playing FR I would hardly table-select at all, in 6-max I'm probably part of the bum-hunt clan

I'm just gonna throw out some numbers here cuz like I said before, I really don't know how to figure this out other than gut feel...

so by cold-calling our entire range the question really boils down to what happens with our premiums?

1 out of 5 times - it gets capped anyway - this is often +EV because our hand strength is hidden.
4 out of 5 times - we miss 2 "small bets", but what happens next?
- most of the time we have the best hand hand on the flop, but sometimes we don't... ie. we capped AQs and the board comes 789 two tone or monotone (not our suit) or KJs on an A98 tt or monotone...

so let's say (idk wtf...) 60% we're good, 20% we're good enough to call, 20% we're smart enough to fold. So 20% of the time we've saved ourselves 3 small bets by not capping and not cbetting our entire range on the flop.

next lets take the 20% we're good enough to call - ie. JJ on Q93 board or AK on a T95 board - we're probably call down some hands, c/r the turn some, fold the turn some. so lets say (idk wtf...) our call down hands are BE assuming the times we cap/3 barrel and win without folding out our opponents is about the same as the times we let our opponent barrel with a weaker hand. lets also say (idk wtf...) the times we c/r here are also about BE since when we cap we're going to get about the same number of folds on the turn as when we c/r after cold calling preflop. That leaves some of the time we are able to get away from our hand on the turn and not only save the 2 "small bets" we missed preflop, but also save 1 big bet the times we're wrong when we 2 barrel thin and we're wrong about our fe and/or hand strength.

so maybe (idk wtf...) lets say 25% of your 80% we're saving bets...

of the remaining 60% - lets say (idk wtf x3...) 1/3 falls into a BE category where after cold calling we call down or c/r with value vs cap 3 barrel where at least one of our villains also goes to showdown with a similar strength hand. 1/3 falls into another the BE category of where we cold call c/r turn or we cap 3 barrel and get raised on the turn. That leaves 1/3 or 20% where we are +EV but I really don't know wtf happens... I'm thinking the two lines are about even in or ability to outplay our opponents - so we're making money here with both lines, and although we are +EV here, I'm guessing the two lines are about BE as well...

so bottom line (idk wtf...) I think we end up saving bets about 20% of the time by cold calling even with our premiums hands oop in this spot and we get additional +EV about 20% when it gets capped by the pre flop open raiser and our hand strength is hidden...

please shred away.. I can't get this thread out of my mind...