This might not be a very practical question, but I just thought of it now so any help would be appreciated.

Let's say you are going to play a hand pf that's like +0.02bb/h after the rake in a raked game. You play it, and then you find yourself in a very marginal spot post-flop, say he shows strength when you have somewhat of a hand, or you have a draw that's very close to BE, or whatever.

Now, let's say that the rake in the hand is going to make your play extremely slightly negative. Maybe like -0.05bb or something for the rest of the hand. Let's say that without the rake you'd be like +0.02bb for the remainder of the hand.

Anyways,

1) if you were to play optimally, would you fold?

2) If you were folding in this spot, would it really hurt you in terms of meta EV?

3) If you were folding this spot, would it adversely affect the initial estimate of your bb/h (+0.02bb/h) or would it actually increase the initial estimate of your bb/h that you were making pf?

This is quite interesting and I've thought about this before in the past when trying to hone my 6-max LHE pre-flop strategy for SB/BTN.

If the BB will call regardless then it becomes -EV for you, but in turn just by him threatening to call he has gained EV from your fold...

It's the same problem as spite callers in SNGs and tbo I'm not really sure of the best way to tackle it. My best guess is to treat it like the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma and use a "tit-for-tat" strategy against an awkward BB (see this thread and this thread).

It's an interesting problem.

Juk

Thanks.

edit: with a big roll, vs a reg, I'd totally be a spite caller.

probably... not sure. I'd have to know how damaging it is first, I guess. I don't play SNGs.

I think if you were playing "optimally" in a game-theoretic sense then alot of the time you would end up being forced to play these tiny -EV situations to avoid opening up an exploitable hole in your game, but whether that's the case for real poker I'm not sure. I think again another SNG analogy would be a player blindly following a multiway push/fold NE solution whatever the other players were doing. Yes he would be playing "optimally" but they'd be (accidentally) spite calling him alot of the time from their sub-optimal play...

It seemed irrational to me to design my 6-max LHE pre-flop game around calling station BBs who just want to "play poker", so I stuck to the idea if it was very close to 0EV or -EV then I'd just not play it. If the BB was rationally trying to maximize his own EV then it would have meant I could have played more hands profitably from the BTN and SB, as he would have been (correctly) folding more hands.

Juk