Regular game is 2/3 NL w $300 max buy-in.

Curious what you guys think about flipping vs. much worse opponents and where you draw the line based on how deep you are. I'm sure some will say "+EV is +EV, just ride the variance train", and I get that in theory (and have been playing with that mindset thus far). However, if you if you have a very bad player that is routinely willing to GII preflop for 100+ BB with almost ATC, is it optimal to just get it in whenever you're think you're ahead? Should you take the 60:40 spots or flips for 100BB, 200BB+, etc. when you have a much bigger than 60:40 or 50:50 skill edge? I wonder if it's a mistake to give this V a flip when he has very little chance of stacking me in a hand that's played street by street, even if I am getting it in as a slight favorite.

I've had a few sessions where I've lost 60:40/50:50 flips for 100+ BB versus very bad players. They end up deep stacked, I'm limited to rebuying for 100BB so I can't rebuy deep enough to just win it back in one hand. Inevitably, the donk then loses it to another player at the table before I can capitalize and now my chips are sitting w a better V than I lost my flip to.

I know this is a general question, I can give a sample hand if need be.

Certainly there is a significant cost to being stacked when you are 300bbs deep and can only rebuy for 100bbs, particularly if you are playing lots of pots with this player and have a higher likelihood of taking his money than other players at the table. I'm not sure how one can quantify that cost though. In general, I'd advise against these sort of flips.

That being said, if the villain is shallow (100bbs or less) then I'm ok with getting it in with him even in slightly -EV spots if I'm playing lots of pots with him and he is likely to lose it all back (or go on megatilt, don't want to take him off tilt though).

honestly 2/3 with 3oo max buy just sounds like its gonna be a pretty hard game to beat its super shallow and im sure pretty loose

Huh? It's a 100bb BI (which is standard in most games, no?), how is this "super shallow"?

G\derailG

Sounds like a super easy game to beat and with loose aggro monkeys like this the game probably plays quite big and gets quite deep.

i mean if evvery one is buying in for 300 and constantly topping up then ya i guess but since they prob arent the general structure of a game like this just sounds like it plays big, super fast and flippy. maybe not neccesarily tuff but reall slow going if u wanna make money without alot of flips

in regards to OP i guess just bring reloads and flip it up or play hella tight and gii huge favorite every 3rd hour

One thing that I consider is the other stacks at the table. If I flip and lose, and end up sitting at a max buy-in of $200 or $300 when there are fish sitting on $800 ... I'm less happy flipping since losing can hurt me a lot in later hands.

If re-buying/losing still leaves me in a spot where I can stack other players I'll flip all day for small +EV. Helps get me action with big hands too.

It's starts at 100 BB, which is fairly normal, but routinely ends up w several players having $1k+ in front of them. My win rate is good so far (~$40/hr) even w some runbad and a few bad plays so I'll stick w the game for now.

Depends on stack size (yours, his, fish-at-tables').

I generally don't want to flip preflop for more than ~30bb unless I have a hand that I think could easily dominate. So if V is moving in with any ace, I'll jam pf with AQ, AJ, and 1010+. But I'm more likely to just limp a lot of pots, let him do the raising, and then outplay postflop. I want to keep my stack deep so I can use it against the rest of the table.

Overlay. If there's $100 in overlay in the pot, not putting in another $250 on a coinflip (or even as a slight dog) is a big mistake. If there's $10, maybe pass... but if you're up against someone who's moving all in a lot, your range probably crushes theirs. Even if it's likely a coinflip, you'll be dominating them lots of other times.

For example, I've played with a guy who gets it in pre for 100bb multiple times per hour, often with almost ATC if you raise his straddle. Most of these are "coinflips" just because of how the cards happened to line up, but they were much more likely for me to end up crushing him. Some sample hands I remember vs. him: 55 v. Q8o, 88 v. JTo, AK v. 44, TT v. Q6s. Switch the cards around a little and he's crushed in those spots -- i.e., it could easily have ended up 55 v. 44, 88 v. Q8o, TT v. JT, AK v. Q6s. I'm happy to flip a coin 3 times if the 4th time I'm a 70/30 or 80/20 favorite.

I think the biggest thing to look at is only being able to buy in for 100bb's. personally I would never play in a game that swallow period.

But yeah If your going to be sitting w/ 100bb's and the rest of the table has 250+ that to me is terrible. especially if you have a substantial skill advantage over your opponents.

If a guy is constantly jamming like this I'd call w/ TT+ and AQ+, that way its less likely to be a "flip" and more likely your a solid favorite. Your still giving action while not giving anything away.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...easer-1166314/

The lower your skill level, the more willing you should be to GII preflop and flip. The better you are (and the worse your opponent is) at playing after the flop, the more willing you should be to manipulate the betting so that more of the money goes in after the flop (when you want it to go in).

[QUOTE=HansSprungfeld;Some sample hands I remember vs. him: 55 v. Q8o, 88 v. JTo, AK v. 44, TT v. Q6s. Switch the cards around a little and he's crushed in those spots -- i.e., it could easily have ended up 55 v. 44, 88 v. Q8o, TT v. JT, AK v. Q6s. I'm happy to flip a coin 3 times if the 4th time I'm a 70/30 or 80/20 favorite.[/QUOTE]

Good points.

If you have a proper bankroll then yeah ride that train.

If you don't, or you only have access to a limited amount of buyins at that moment (suppose if you lose 300BB then you have to go home) then it's sensible to avoid "thin value" high variance spots.

There's no shame in not having a proper bankroll for low stakes live either. Let's presume you're not a professional, you have a job, you're able to save money every month, and at this moment you have 800BB disposable for poker. That's a pretty good situation to be in, you can play as much as you like with minimal risk of ruin, nobody would think you're irresponsible for playing poker. And yet losing 300BB would put your "roll" in a tight spot. You'd then be one losing session away from being one beat away from having your whole roll on the table. And I think that most live low stakes players are actually in that spot bankroll-wise where one disastrous session can put them in peril.

But, here's something a lot of people ignore: the fat value from "much worse" players comes from high-variance spots. Everyone else is sitting there waiting to hit the nuts, and eventually the fish will bleed his chips away, but the real profit is in hammering thin spots at every opportunity before everyone else gets the chance (And, especially, abusing everyone else's loose/passive weak-tight call 6bb pre with anything and hope to hit.) If you're not willing to gamble then you are missing a lot of profit.

The only reasons to turn down a +EV spot are

1. If losing will keep you from stacking a deep stacked fish (I.e. fish has 300bb max BI is 100bb)

2. A loss is unsustainable for either you or a bad opponent (BR issues or someone will quit)

3. A loss will put you on tilt.


Note the solution to two of these points lies outside the game so only #1 is valid within the game itself. That's pretty much it. There's no other excuse for turning down the good side of a coin flip. The problem with "waiting for better spots" is that they're not guaranteed to come. What if 55-45 is the best you're going to get before the end if the night or someone else busts them? You're not guaranteed that 70-30 spot. You're just throwing money away not getting it in. Period.

Thanks for the link. Read the whole thread. Only problem is if I lose a big chunk of my stack to a fish on a flip/small EV spot, I can only rebuy to 100BB and can't win as much on future hands. I do agree +EV is +EV and that's they way I've been trying to approach it so far.

I think one relevant scenario is when you have a choice between 3betting with a small pair knowing that most of the time you are going to GII flipping vs two overs, occasionally running into an overpair, but also having some fold equity, so that a 3bet is +EV against his range, vs just calling a raise and trying to hit a set, but perhaps also sometimes bluff-catching on the right board if you get it heads-up. And sometimes, the stacks, position, and other factors may make you prefer folding preflop.

What do you think your STDev is for the spot. suppose your ev per hand - (.52*100)+(.48*-100)=4. 4bb/hand*25hands/hour = 100bb/hr. It is juicy no doubt.

But my guess is StDev is at least 1000 and probably more like 2000. Here are some outcomes from a RoR calculator i just found...

BB/Hr 100

StDev 1000
1% RoR BR - 23kBB
5% RoR BR - 15kBB


StDev 1500
1% RoR BR - 51kBB
5% RoR BR - 33kBB

What is the right stdev for this? I am not sure but I think this illustrates a bit. Do people have 20k+BB bankrolls. If StDev creeps probably few if any have 51kBB bankrolls (2/5 game that is $250k and $500k for 5/10). And I think Stdev is higher not lower.

A standard deviation doesn't really make sense for a binary distribution.

Yah. Im not trying to do heavy math here. Was just trying to think about how much variance you could expect given the size of the money wagered.

I just ran on excel if(rand()>.48, 100, -100) with 25k iterations. If I expect 4bb per hand then it should sum to 100k.....I saw a range as low as 60-something up to 120k something. I probably ran it 10-15 times (just hitting f9 over and over). You can definitely run bad and need a serious br. That's the only point.

You're not having that spot for literally every hand you ever play though. And hopefully you do have disposable income (Meaning your poker bankroll is not all the money you will ever have free and if it runs out you can never play poker again)

So yes it would skew your st.dev upwards a little bit but not to the point where you need a 200BI bankroll. That's crazy.

What parameters do you think would be appropriate? If we assume playing once or twice a week and being offered the opportunity to flip four times per week, that's around 200 flips per year. Would it be meaningful to figure out the bankroll requirements to flip a few hundred times?

There is more involved. Shania, initiative. Calling allins with AQ vs 4 betting it allin makes a huge difference. There is no vacuum where it's only about the flip. Yes low stakes are pretty easy and one dimensional but it doesn't mean Meta doesn't ever apply. The simplest answer is - your flip range > vil flip range = +EV gogogo!

Not taking +EV high variance spots against stack off monkeys and waiting for a near lock will have a RoR of 100% if 100% of the hands you played were against these villains.