I often hear many coaches, players, etc saying that you want to be sizing 4bets online at 100bb eff stack size to roughly around 20-25x. that way your opponent is not getting direct odds to draw with whatever he has should he choose to flat.


For example, villian opens to 3bbs, we 3bet to 10bbs, villian 4bets small to 15bbs.

We need to pay 5bbs to win ~26bbs including the blinds.

Since were getting about 5:1, we need hands that have roughly 16% equity.

At this point people whip out pokerstove to show that any hand will have at least 16% equity, even if villian has a range of only KK, AA. So therefore 4bets should never be sized so small, otherwise hero will have a +ev call with ATC


Here's my issue though... arent these calcs assuming that we get to the river without having to pay any extra bbs? Pokerstove is showing equity to the river, not the flop.

In a real life situation, it is highly unlikely that villian will allow you to see the river for free to realize your equity. You will likely need to pay much more than 5bbs after the flop comes out, since villian will likely cbet flop and or turn.

Ie a hand like A5s has 27% equity vs KK+, but if you tell stove to deal only to flop, it only has half that, about 13% equity.



Somethings not adding up, maybe you guys can help me figure this out

Yes we need that much "realizable equity". Its already a thing and its very helpful. I suggest you look it up

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Im familiar with R. im not sure how it pertains to my question though.

We are being charged 5 extra bb to win 26bbs which means we need 16% equity.

With A5s, we only realize an immediate 13% on the flop according stove. That means we flop a straight, flush, trips 13% and are ahead of Kk/AA.

Villian isnt likely to check down to the river and lets us realize that last 14% eq for free

Sorry the only question i see has to do with your calcs and being able to get to the river. I'm not sure what youre looking for

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I am not understanding the 14% equity at the end. You only really need to "realize" 3% more equity to break even.

If you meant the extra equity you need relative to the equity you have that would be 3/13 which is 23%.

Any way you are correct that the calculator shows showdown equity but you are not correct that post flop play only benefits the AA/KK and since you only need to compensate a small amount of money post flop for your marginal -EV call preflop it's really not that hard to make up in value with bluffing and future betting with remaining stacks.

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This isn't even possible.