It's well-known that in live cash games, the raise sizes used online and in the usual solver outputs bandied about do not induce nearly as many folds as you get in those settings. So one approach to this is to rev up the raise size until you tend to only get 2–3 players seeing flops (as opposed to the near-family pots you might get if you went with 2.5BB or less).

From a theoretical standpoint, how much does using a larger open-raise size—say, 5 BB—affect the RFI ranges one "should" use by position (100BB effective stack)? Is this simply an ill-defined question because it depends too much on villains' ranges, postflop play, etc.? If you lock a solver into only being able to use a 5BB preflop open-raise, how much EV will it lose overall by position?

[Prior similar question I found: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...tions-1764981/ … Not much uptake on that one, but thought I'd bring it up again.]

the moment you decide you need to open to 5x to increase EV you should give up justifying it with a solver since it has all to do with insane whales.
You woud just open whatever you think happens to make money

CO open 5bb


BTN open 5bb


So both opening ranges get significantly tighter, but the shape of the range also shifts to top-heavy cards.

Opening 5bb causes everyone else to start playing raise/fold strategies in equilibrium because they're getting such a terrible price on a flat. So the solver prefers to open hands that block raises rather than opening drawing hands.

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BB vs BTN 5x open: BB defense looks similar to a SB raise/fold strategy


If the blinds are flatting more (like you'd see in a live game) then obviously the opening range would change.

And I don't even believe the "common wisdom" of opening tight and huge to be true. So what if 4-5 players call? Massive multiway pots where everything revolves around drawing to the nuts and blocking the nuts are exactly where extremely loose players will make the biggest mistakes. A loose rec will hardly make a mistake calling you down with top pair in a HU pot, but change it to 4 ways and it's an entirely different story.

Personally if I was in that situation I would still open small and welcome family pots. I would just change the morphology of my range so that I'm always drawing to the nuts or close to it (eg suited Kx goes way up in value).

As long as the splashers don't 3bet (which they won't) you can go crazy with opening and just trying to make nutted hands. The advice of playing tight and opening huge just seems like an easy way out for players who don't understand how postflop works in multiway pots. It may also have to do with the fact that correct play in multiway pots involves a lot of check folding so players may get the feeling they're doing something bad or being too weak.

Alternatively if we want to get really spicy just play face up and open 5x with hands that want to go HU. I doubt anyone will care or adjust.

Yea the problem is for some hands going multi is a bit of an equity nightmare, and those hands are the ones that make up most of your winrate, like overpairs. So I think opening big with shose makes a lot of sense, and tehn opening smaller with **** that likes going multiway seems good as long as people don't give 2 shits that you only have nut draws in range lol.