Similar to previous post but different V. V is youngish east Indian grinder. Who isn't afraid to mix it up. He's opening and 3 betting maybe 25/10 ish at a 9 handed game, especially in position.

Hero is MA card dead effective stack around $800 with tight passive image.

OTTH: V opens the button for $30, folds to Hero who calls in the BB with A2. Should probably 3b or fold against Vs wide range, if it was a suited wheel Ace I pull the trigger. Figured I'd take the cheap flop instead. Heads up.

Flop ($70) - A 6 6
Hero checks, V bets $30. Hero calls

Turn ($130) - A 6 6 9
Hero checks, V bets $50. Hero calls. At this point I expect V to know we have an Ace given our image. Didn't see a need to try to rep a boat or a big Ace given action as this V seems solid and has a fold button.

River ($230) - A 6 6 9 J
Hero checks, an Ace, K, Q, 6 obviously would be better but the J gives us an additional chop against AT. V bets $210. Hero? I expect V to bet both his Ax chops and his A6, A9, AJ, AQ+. Not sure how much air he has but he could view Hero as weak tight and passive and size up a bluff on the river? Easy fold? Or call expecting to chop a lot and occasionally pick off a bluff?

pre is close. If game is high raked you can fold A2o facing a btn 3x. Without rake call is fine

flop good

turn good (his sizing is weird/bad imo)

river the 2d is a nice card to have as we unblock a lot of his bluffs but in reality I imagine this line with this turn/river sizing to be super underbluffed and you can probably call only AQ+ and feel good about it. The real answer is this is a probably a mix with this combo and it probably does more calling than folding. That being said, I'd fold the river and not think too much about it.

we’re getting around the point where i’d top up pre. being 80bb effective i think a2 is more playable as it has a bit more high card value than 53ss or something.

anyway i’m fine with either call or fold on the river. I generally lean toward calling but w your image (and actual nittiness?) i’d fold

This is pretty much a fold pre even in an unraked game and even if V is opening like 50% of hands. In a raked game this is a pretty horrible defend although there's essentially an extra .5bb in dead money (compared to a more "Standard" SB=.5BB configuration) so maybe, just maybe (but dubiously) this is a totally breakeven defend. I 100% guarantee that with the blind structure it is no better than .02-.05bb in +EV and if that were the case it would be solely due to the blind structure--in a 5/10, or 2/5, or 10/20 et al this is 100% a fold pre AINEC

But more realistically, preflop is torching money, and 3b/f (either w/ this particular hand or as a general strategy) BBvBTN is torching money too--you need a defend range.

BTW, w/ this particular hand if someone had a gun to your head and said "continue or I kill you", then this is call because while defend is significantly -EV, 3b is far, far, far worse.

Fold pre /thread.

Thanks all. It is a time game (unraked) so I figured it would be close to a break even defend as well. Also thought the river was close and could make cases for either call or fold.

The bolded statement is just wrong; it's not a significant EV loss to defend A2o here in a vacuum. I'd be willing to bet unraked in the 10/10 structure this makes the bottom of our calling range even 100bb deep. I haven't run the sims on unraked 1bb/1bb games, but I could, so if you wanna bet lemme know. Specifically 80bb deep I think it would be a pure call.

Either way, it's not a big deal because the decision point is so close. It might be the lower bound or potentially below the lower bound of our calling range, but assuming we play our defense strategy better than villain(s) and have opportunities to exploit their strategy then this call becomes +EV pretty quickly.

I mean to the extent we can fold and lose 0EV, defending here and losing even .05BB in EV is pretty bad. "Significant" merely means <0 in this context.

There's prob a couple million exit nodes in the tree and yeah sure you win in some of then and lose like 3bb (which is a lot anyway) in the others but there's an imbalance in terms of how many of those nodes end up in us getting our **** pushed in.

It is a big deal. Everything matters. You think pro golfers step up to a 3-ft putt and say "Eh **** it it's close"? Pretty sloppy thinking TBH.

That being said, you may be right that it is slightly +EV (like so small you need tweezers to grab it) bc I also do not have 1/1 sims though I have ample .5/1 unraked sims at this depth which is what I base my post on. So I'd be wiling to bet $50 that it's no more than .05bb in +EV IF:

1. You use the following (prob unrealistically diffuse--which helps your cause in this wager BTW) range since Indian V sounds kinda spewy (This is the 50% range I based my post on):




2. You have send me the tree config 1st so I can look it over.

3. Gotta have at least 100 flop subsets.

Deal?

Pretty big assumption. I mean, OP did post the hand, right?

Seems pretty arrogant to just throw chips in the pot without an actual plan--just flying by the seat of your pants--regarding which actions and on which textures V will be exploitable and then also knowing how to do the IRL node locking to figure out the exploit and then also actually execute and follow through. OOP nonetheless. It's not trivial to say you're just gonna exploit this guy. And chortling as you say to yourself "Psshhhh I'm so much BETTER than this guy, I call" doesn't count as a plan.

I feel like the goal posts have been moved. It doesn't seem fair to characterize ANYTHING less than zero as "Significantly -EV". Why can't it be slightly -EV in that case? So if it comes back as break a break even call or even +0.02 BB you still win the bet even though your claim that it was "Significantly -EV" was proven incorrect.

No the goal posts have been moved because of one respondant seizing on a possibly superfluous and hyperbolic modifier like "significantly" in a solecistic manner.

And if comes back as +.02 BB yeah I'd win the bet bc that's my stipulation and I'm not doing it otherwise but I'd also tuck my tail between my legs and readily say folding pre is as shitty as I characterized defending pre to be.

And I'm including a confidence interval (<=.05bb) because of how much of a sweetheart deal it is for him given that absurdly diffuse and aggressive opening range *I* suggested we use. Also I originally said anyway that, based on an absurdly diffuse and aggressive opening range, the following is likely true (OK I said "`100% guarantee"--w/e, another solecism don't take things on the internet literally)

I dropped outta highschool man I don't know these fancy booklearnin' words. All I was saying is that if it's super close then it's not SIGNIFICANTLY -EV lol

I pm'd you

So if the hero is in the BB and V is opening Btn @ 50%, and Hero and Villiian are of equal skill levels, then if A2 isn't a call or a marginal call even in a 1/1 blind game, then how are we not hugely exploitable when defending bb in a .5 sb game?

What is the bottom of our defend range in a .5 sb game vs a 50% BTn opening range? I would have thought A2 would have been an easy defend. I'm a lower level player and I don't have access to a solver, but am nonetheless interested.

thanks

Ya thread got sidetracked by A2 nonsense; no way this is a bad call off 80bb stack. We probably have all three options open to us at some frequency. Better question is how we have to defend river on this type of board in BTN vs BB


Flop and turn are kinda small bets so we’ll get to the river with a wide range; we can stuff trips+, call your favorite hands between A2-AJ (maybe a computer will say A7 is better than ATo for example). We can then fold the rest of our bluff catchers and bluff with counterfeited three pairs as well as hands that block 6x

These river ''solutions'' look good.