Hello,

looking at push/fold Nash equilibrium tables, they seem to favor suited cards a lot over non-suited cards.



For example, with 56s, you are supposed to push with an effective stack of 20+ BB. But with 56o, you are only supposed to push with an effective stack of 2.4BB or less. Am I reading the chart correctly?

Why is there such a huge difference? To me, the only advantage of suited cards is that they can form a flush by the river in 6.25% of all cases.

How can it be that you are supposed to push with 56s with a stack of 20+BB, with only a 6.25% probability of winning with a flush? If the villain calls my push with top 50% of starting hands, he will have like a 73% equity over me. How can pushing be profitable here?

What's the mechanism that makes suited cards so important in the push/fold scenario? Or am I reading the chart incorrectly?

Thanks

(% you steal blinds * amount you win) - (% you get called * EV that you lose) > 0

For starters, villain in Nash Equilibrium wouldn't call with anywhere near top 50% of starting hands, and neither do most players.

The "optimal" shoving ranges arise out of villain's "optimal" calling range (and your fold equity), and it's the case that the suited combos have enough equity to break even when called at some frequency by the optimal calling range. (Most of their EV comes from villain folding, but 65s still does reasonably well when called).

Bear in mind that there are only 4 combos of each suited hand, but 12 of each offsuit version. If you treated 65o+ the same way as 65s+ and shoved offsuit connectors as well as the suited versions, you'd suddenly have a LOT of unpaired offsuit junk in your range, so then villain would widen his calling range, and make both 65s and 65o unprofitable.

To put it another way, the 4 combos of 65s only make up a tiny part of your jamming range, so villain can't call wide, as you've got loads of pairs, Ax, Kx and Qx etc in your range as well. If you were also jamming 12 combos of 65o, then your whole range becomes much weaker, and villain should call more often. If he's calling often, you lose your fold equity, and the low ranked hands in your range stop being profitable jams.

FWIW, if villain had a calling range of just AA (which would be very exploitable, but bear with me), 65s would have about 22.5% equity. 65o only has 18.7% equity vs AA. That is a significant difference in equity when dealing with pushing ranges. 65s does pretty well vs tight calling ranges. 65o does significantly worse. Since you are three times more likely to get dealt 65o over 65s, if you treated them as the same hand, you'd be dragging down your overall equity. It's better to play just the 'good' (suited) combos.