If we are in the BB, and we face a raise either from EP to LP, OR we face a steal raise from SB, and we decide to call the 2bet, for a given range of identical hands, should we make more money when facing the raise and playing OOP vs a stronger range or IP vs a weaker range?

I would have thought definately the latter but it seems like my results so far over an 800k hand sample show that it is the former situation that is more profitable. I have filtered for only 2 players seeing the flop and the hand combinations in each comparison are fixed so that I ignore the wider hand combinations that I myself would flat vs the SB that I wouldn't flat vs EP, in order to reduce the variables down to my opponent's and their ranges only.

I win the pot more often when IP, but I very rarely get paid off by the SB when I have a big hand. However when I am OOP, I concede the pot more often but I get paid off a lot more frequently by the IP player and their stronger hand range and this at least at the moment is a bigger defining factor in terms of profitability.

What do solvers think? Could this just be a weird quirk attributable to human player pools?

One thing I will say is that these situations are slightly different in the sense that when faising a raise from EP to LP, there is a 'dead' 0.5bb in the pot from the SB folding, that isn't present when the SB raises to steal your BB. Could this be the reason for it being more profitable to flat a hand OOP?

When defending the BB your goal is to continue with hands that lose less than 1bb.

For example, here's a BB defend vs UTG open, with the EV's shown. KTs has 0.3 EV relative to folding. That means it expects to lose 0.7bb, which is still higher EV than folding your blind (-1 bb). So if you measure that with a HUD, you might think it's a losing call. But it's still higher EV than folding.




Here's BB defend vs SB open. There are many more hands that are "losing, but still higher EV than folding", which may explain your results.



Some people have this idea that "folding is always 0 EV", but that's misleading. We only define it that way because it makes the math easier. Folding loses whatever you put into the pot. The truth is that poker is full of spots where you're deciding between multiple losing options and trying to find the option that loses the least.

You can view these charts for free if you want to study them more.

What kind of question is this lol

Obviously depends on how much "stronger" or "weaker" a range is.
Being IP is obviously more profitable all else being equal, but if you strengthen villains range more and more there will be a tipping point

EDIT: Oh wait the question is even dumber than i thought. You're seriously asking whether it's better to play OOP vs a stronger range or IP vs a weaker range? 100% troll bait