Guess I misunderstood you. Sounded like you were saying, "I have AA. I'll make it $15 pre-flop and shove in the dark if I get 8 callers." The problem is you betting dark. If the game is sufficiently deep-stacked, I should call with ATC and play fit or fold. And if you're offering that bet to the whole table (as it sounded) you'll get murdered. I had been writing my super long post when GG wrote that to which you responded:

"Absolutely disagree that raising 5x and getting 8callers is an +EV move (especially at a readless table OOP where we have zero clue what anyone is doing postflop), unless we're all agreeing to check down the hand postflop / only started the hand with 5x. Also, see next response..." and you responded. I just saw your bet and edited my post to say it was ridiculous without reading the previous posts.

In retrospect GG is just wrong. Just because we don't have >50% equity with AA doesn't mean we don't have everyone else crushed. Of course opening 5x with the best hand in poker and getting any number of callers is +EV. How would they feel 8-handed with 33 or J9o or 84s? Unless they randomly clobber the flop they're going to be more lost than the guy with AA.

Also we should have a significant post-flop advantage and not mind so much if it isn't always 100% clear whether we still have the best hand. 8 players, flop comes K92. We're probably good. If it comes JT6....we're probably still good, but likely won't be by the river. If we can read board texture halfway decently we should be thrilled to get AA or KK UTG regardless of number of opponents.

That does go to this post, though. OP had KK UTG against unknowns. We're discussing whether to raise or limp it pre-flop.

Sure, as long as people will call with more than KK+. Not sure if you meant that literally. Limping is bad, I agree, particularly for new players. They limp KK, find it 6-ways to the flop, they get their overpair, bet the flop and turn, there's still one guy left, and the river is an A and/or completes an obvious draw. They bet again, then get check-raised. Yikes.

Pretty much how I play KK. Except I'd consider raising if an Ace came on a wet board since callers are likely to be on draws and put you on AK or AQ. Don't know why GG thinks it's so tricky. It's only tricky if you're like 200BB deep and triple barrel then get reraised all in on the river. But 1/3 players very rarely do that with a hand that can't beat an overpair. So it seems pretty easy...fold in that spot.

I'm totally in!

I'll take 77 please.

You *might* win money (I'm not convinced you will, but you might).

But I will absolutely *destroy* this scenario with 77.

ETA: Ok, I read your next post, but the point remains. I'm not *nearly* as convinced as you that you're making a crap load of money in this play, I'm just not. But I know which hands make a crapload more money in this spot. AA is flying blind on the flop vs the world. 77 knows exactly where it's at. As do a lot of other hands like 87s. Admittedly, KJs will usually find themselves in a very bad spot; you'll do well against those hands (if someone else doesn't have you crushed). This is very similar to an example in HOC that I was going to post for RR; HOC Pg 58 regarding normalizing hand values, in how AK crushes 87s if they get it in preflop, but if they see a flop, and 87s isn't ******ed, the 87s will do better than the AK when the real money goes in. In the end, I won't go far as to say your scenario with AA is unprofitable (I'm not convinced, and I'm pretty sure it is far less profitable than you think it is); I just think there is a *far* more profitable way.

GwinningatpokerG

@ Shai,

As I say, one of the things I really disagree with PNLHE is what it considers a bad SPR and a good SPR. It fears 13; I don't. Very few opponents PSB each street, so an SPR of 13 actually gives us quite a lot of play. Instead, I fear SPRs in the ~6-9 range. Most opens from EP will setup the SPR I don't want to play at.

GcluelessSPRnoobG

I'll try not to make this too ******ed...

Say you live in a world where you could open shove AA for, say, 100bb (assuming all stacks are 100bb) and always get 8 callers - you would choose that sizing every time for unequivocal max value.
You would have no post flop decision to make. (most profitable)

Now say, you could no longer choose that sizing, but rather had to choose any smaller size. You would, hopefully, elect 99bb because that would be unequivocal max value under the new conditions - remember they always call.
Post flop, you would have very simple (profitable) decisions to make.

Say eventually, these conditions continued to deteriorate, ultimately reaching the point where you are forced to open limp 1bb for unequivocal min value. (other than folding of course).
Post flop will now be at its most complex point given MAX SPR (least profitable) and your decisions will be at their most difficult.

Now, in a practical world, of course you cannot get to max value by open shoving because your real life opponents are never calling frequently enough.
On the flip side, you also cannot guarantee min value by open-limping because your real life opponents will raise at some frequency which allows you to back raise for value. However, limping will also frequently result in multiple overlimps (min value/max difficulty post) which will of course steal value from the EV of the limp overall. You likely also lose value in the play because of perceived range (strong hands might fold that you might otherwise have gotten more value from pre/post with another line)

The point of all of this is that if you cannot practically open shove for max value and open limping can flirt with min value, then there will be some in between open raise sizing that works best under whatever conditions you play. If you have the opportunity to open to $25, you can capture value pre, like my offered game, and you now have relatively easy (profitable) post flop decisions. You can shove $275 in to $225 flop, and only need 35% equity against a single caller....26% against two callers...20% against 3 callers etc. Choosing any raise size that allows you to stack off AA on all flops ~SPR 1 (your favorite) is more than likely the most profitable way to go under such conditions.

We simply disagree on this (as would PNLHE). Having a maximum SPR is perfectly acceptable. We have lots of room to play and aren't handcuffed by stack commitment decisions (like we are in the middling SPR situation). Heck, if all we did was check/fold these cases we probably wouldn't be doing all that bad; yeah, it would be a mistake overall, but it's a small pot so a small mistake. It'll have little affect on our bottom line.

We're not going to agree on this, and that's fine.

OP has his options. He can make up his own mind which route will be profitable for his own style of play.

GgoodluckG

Some tough spots will occasionally occur at 9, very rarely at 6. Our opponents are not wizards, there is nothing to fear.

With TP type hands, I mostly fear spots where 3 normalish sized postflop bets will be for stacks, especially OOP, especially against unknown (or difficult) opponents. Raising preflop here gets us in that spot almost always, so I'm simply saying we'd better be comfortable with that result. Sounds like most here are, and that's fine.

Gouropponentsaren'twizards,buteitherareweG

auto-call, i'm not capable of folding here as you under-repped your hand

dude losing to that hand was just an act of anarchy, can't blame yourself at all lol

Something really bothers me about this magical spr concept.....
If we are taking a pot Hu, and we are setting up a favorable spr, are we not just doing the exact same thing for our villan....if spr is such an important concept why is our villan not using the spr's we are setting up for them to there advantage?
Or am I asking a stupid question...

Why are you convinced this is so profitable? Do you have a mathematical reason for believing this? Do you have an unusually high winrate for good players at your stakes? Not a diss if you don't, but if you've been playing for a while and your winrate has stagnated you may be making serious mistakes.

And I just want to point out in the AK vs. 87s scenario, Harrington is assuming players of similar skill. You should be far more skilled than your opponents at low stakes games. Especially postflop. I'll take AK over 87s 100BB deep against anyone worse than me all day.

We don't fear 13 because of opponents making three pot-sized bets and putting us all-in. That is often fine if we have an overpair. We fear 13 because we make three value bets and get bluffed off the hand.

EX: Stacks are $375 at 1/3, we make it $12 pre-flop and the BTN calls. We have KK and flop an overpair. Pot is $28 giving an SPR of 12.96 ~ 13.

We bet $20 and get called. Turn is a blank. Pot is now $68. We bet $45 and get called. River is a blank. Pot is now $158 and we have $298 left. We make a final value bet of $100. Our opponent shoves. Now the pot is $258 and we have to call $198 more. Yeesh. Against most opponents we're behind here and should fold, but we have tricky opponents who can bluff us off the pot this way. They can do this OOP too by x/c, x/c, crai with a missed draw for instance. This is a much worse spot than having an overpair and our opponent bets pot on the river.

Basically, an overpair is worth three streets of value against most opponents. We fear an SPR of 13 because we're basically facing four streets.

But if you don't have tricky, bluffy opponents, you shouldn't fear an SPR of 13 at all. In the above example, if your opponent shoves the river, you're almost always beat, so you can fold. When he flat calls you're usually ahead, and he often folds and you scoop up the pot.

So, one way you can manipulate the streets of value when you're afraid of being bluffed off is by betting more yourself. In the above example, if we bet pot all three streets our opponent's range is not changing that much, and we never have that yucky river shove to worry about.

We can manipulate the SPR to favor the type of hand we have vs. our opponent's range. For instance, if our opponent bets UTG and we call on the BTN with 98, we would like an SPR around 13. So depending on raise size, number of callers, etc., we might decide to fold more marginal SCs. On the other hand if we're out of position we have more control. Our callers are more likely to be on speculative hands and if we have AK we know we're hoping to hit top pair and would like an SPR around 5 or 6.

So you estimate the number of callers and typically increase your bet size. I do this a lot in straddled pots because most players don't understand straddles. EX: UTG straddles, I'm in MP and have a 100BB stack but open say 12.5BB with KJ, rather than my typical 5-7BB. It's very likely I'll set up an SPR of 2 - 4 and the straddler will just call with whatever he has. It sets me up for a very easy decision and if he has a speculative hand a difficult decision. If I hit, I'll make a 3/4ish flop bet, and he has to decide if he should call with his weak draw or weak made hand (he should not, because a low SPR prevents me from paying him off, but often will). I'll shove most turns so he can't extract max value playing a draw passively with a low SPR.

I find SPR useful as a guide for when I can safely get it in with relatively marginal hands like KJ. I take reads into account but if I have an SPR of 3 with KJ and the board is J94tt I'm usually good to bet flop and shove turn.

I also find it useful as a concept of when to be careful against good, aggressive players with hands like QQ or AK. But I still play these hands even if the SPR sucks.

Here's where I diverge from GG: We both probably manipulate the SPR but if I can't get a great SPR I don't decide to limp it, or worse, fold, because I can probably outplay my opponents, who are rarely aggressive enough to be scary anyway.

GG - would you fold AQ if there's a HJ raise and it gets folded to you in the BB with an SPR around 9 - 13 or whatever your scary level is? You can't limp it. Against most low-stakes players you probably shouldn't 3-bet it. You're probably ahead of the raiser's range enough to call. Do you call and take the nasty SPR or fold?

And this particular hand (AQ) is not the point. I mean what do you do when you have a good hand and your only options are raise, call, and fold, and raising and folding are bad options but the SPR is your nightmare scenario?

If anyone is interested...

There is an interesting interview with Matt Flynn on Deuce Plays podcast #12 (near the bottom of the page).

https://www.deucescracked.com/podcasts/deuceplays

Discussion about the origins of the SPR targeting concept and its applicability or non-applicability begin at 0:37. Note this is 8 years ago but Matt is even then pointing out that many players in many games had become sufficiently better (i.e. Non droolers) that it's applicability was diminishing to some extent.

There is actually some other cool stuff in that interview (the 2+2 split with Matt, Sunny and Miller for one).


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Nice find. Somehow GG has thousands of strategy posts where SPR is vital to his decision making process.

Shai hulud....
Another insightful post, you should post more often.......

What you say makes sense to me to a point, but I have been doing that sort of thing for the last 15 yrs, not because I read a book on spr, or that I was even aware of the concept of spr, but the basic principles seem obvious....and something I have been doing for ever....

What annoys me with many posts about spr in these forums is that it's just used to legitimise nitty play in an effort to keep the Spr high.....

I find that at llsnl I just don't care if the spr is low, I'm exploiting players, I don't care if the spr tells me I'm pot committed, if a omc is jamming the river and it's 40 to call into 4000, it doesn't matter what peripheral stuff is going, the omc has the nutz and I fold..... If my overly aggressive lag is going to keep firing three streets regardless I don't care what the spr is, I'm going to make tpgk or better and call him down.....

If utg makes it 5x and then everyone calls and I'm in the sb with 98s and an effective stack of 300x I just don't care that this gives me a crappy spr out of position, it is an obvious call..... Given the direct and implied odds....

Maybe Im missing something fundamental, but I have always maintained that I just don't care if I'm setting up tough decisions for myself (I'd rather not obviously), because I'm invariably setting up tough decisions for my opponents also, and I will always back my self to make better decisions than them. For me the eV of a decision is far more important than anything else....

Kk pre flop it's +eV to get as much money in the middle as possible so it's a trivial raise vs any field with any stack size....

We're somewhat in agreement here, but somewhat not. I agree that an SPR of 13 is fine for TP type hands.

Regarding an overpair being worth 3 postflop bets against most opponents is incredibly opponent dependent. I of course have a very nitty image (because I believe the best way to play relatively shortstacked games is by being nitty), so if I raise preflop and barrel 3 postflop streets with an overpair, especially PSBs, I better hope my opponent is an idiot, because otherwise I'm rarely good. And this is exactly why I fear SPRs in the ~6-9 range (especially the middling portion of that range); because 3 very reasonable bets gets stacks in, and I basically commit myself with the second bet, and yet unless I'm against an idiot I'm getting myself in a very poor situation.

These are admittedly all difficult spots, and there's no easy answer. I would obviously prefer to play exactly in my wheelhouse, and do my best to get there, but sometimes whatever I do produces a meh result. I simply take my opponent into consideration and then do the best I can. FWIW: My tables have changed drastically over the years; I don't have nearly as dismissive an attitude towards a fair number of my opponents as most others do. If everyone at your table is a complete monkey, no matter what you do will probably be absolutely fine.

Overall, people are welcome to think about the game however they want, and they can all still be winners. I think mostly in terms of setting up a good situation for myself (which involves SPR, position, opponent, stack sizes, etc.). Others think differently, and that's fine. So long as everyone is comfortable with the situation they are creating, they'll most likely do fine. OP (in another thread) says this year big pairs have been a complete write-off for him. Big pairs should be your number one money maker in this game. So unless he's having really bad selective memory or running extremely bad (which are both possible), he might want to consider thinking about things from a different point of view from what he is doing now ("I haz big hand, I raz"), otherwise it's likely he's going to continue to lose with them.

GgoodluckG

Look, the main benefit of SPR has ALWAYS been that it keeps you from folding in situations where you shouldn't fold. This benefit is most useful to beginners, of course.

That being said

This is an odd statement, because SPR is just the backwards way to figure pot odds, and pot odds should always figure in your decisions, to a greater or lesser extent. Maybe he is saying that with non droolers the pot odds aren't as important (as someone said in a thread earlier "pot odds don't mean nothing when you are drawing dead"), however, since we are always playing against a range, I don't feel that the importance of pot odds has diminished at all, and we should always at least know the pot odds as we are making our decision.

EDIT: However, SPR as a concept was only designed to help keep you from folding incorrectly OTF, as we move into the turn and river, other factors may outweigh pot odds for sure.

Villain can only have A6 or A2 if he's terrible. Calling with A2o or A6o in the sb is bad, A2 or A6 suited pre from the sb is marginal, 4 bet jamming them on the river for value is horrible.

He's pretty specifically talking about targeting spr (which as presented in PNLH is a strat for aariving on the flop with a desireable spr).

Employing the strat often requires significant, exploitable variation in pf Bet sizing which works vs droolers who will call And stack off with dominated hands.

SPR has little to do with pot odds though. Pot odds are BET to pot ratios. SPR is STACK to pot ratio) targeting is specifically suggesting to regard stacks as fundamentally more important than blinds and solely pot odds. Implicit in the SPR strat is planning around pot commitment and limiting / exploiting implied odds exposure.


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Sure, sure, SPR does include implieds, but not really that different when you get down to it.

Thank you. Professional No Limit Hold 'Em was written for beginners mostly. The concept of SPR is just a way to quantify a hand's vulnerability to reverse implied odds. You seem to understand this intuitively, so it may not be a useful concept for you.

I agree. Just because an SPR is not ideal does not mean we should avoid playing the hand, or take a nittier line. "Danger zone" SPRs are just a reminder to be very careful and have a plan, IMO.

I did say "I take reads into account but if I have an SPR of 3 with KJ and the board is J94tt I'm usually good to bet flop and shove turn."

A strong read should override SPR considerations. A low SPR is not a license to get it in against all opponents when you hit. Similarly a 13 SPR is actually great against a LAG who will triple barrel with all kinds of hands worse than top pair.

SPR doesn't seem relevant to your OMC example. You're talking about pot commitment but they're separate (though related) concepts. I agree ideas expressed in PNLHE about pot commitment are outdated, particularly this summary on pg. 143: "Don't put in one third or more of your starting stack and then fold." That's just ridiculous. Suppose I have $300 in a 1/2 game, make it $15 pre-flop and get two callers. The pot is $48 on the flop. I flop middle pair + BDNFD. I C-bet $35 and get one caller. Turn pairs the board and gives us the NFD. Pot is $118. Villain gives up on the turn often so I bet $75 and get raised all-in for $175 more. We've put in 42% of our stack and are well past the "commitment threshold." Apparently we should call. But villain is not the bluffing type. He has at least trips here, possibly a boat or even quads. We're getting 2.1:1. If villain has trips, we probably have 7 outs. Obvious fold.

The authors do list semibluffs among the many exceptions for when you might fold after passing the commitment threshold, but what if we had top pair instead? It's still a fold. Villain is not shoving without beating top pair.

SPR is not as useful a concept when the whole table calls, which would be a very unusual situation also.

You do seem to be missing something fundamental. You don't invariably set up tough decisions for your opponents. Favorable SPRs will be randomly distributed based on previous action if there's no effort made to manipulate them by anyone at the table. This may be acceptable. I'm just saying you can manipulate raise sizes and fold marginal hands in bad spots pre-flop in order to set up tougher decisions for your opponents than for yourself. You can't always do this, but you can make your opponents' decisions on average tougher than your own. And from the fundamental theorem of poker, tough decisions lead to more mistakes, so our opponents' mistakes increase our expectation.

Of course it is opponent dependent. With KK, the authors suggest an SPR of 4 against tight opponents, 6 against average opponents, and 10 against loose opponents. If your opponents are super tight you might lower your target even more.

I was trying to determine what size "very reasonable bet" would triple barrel get it in with SPRs from 6 to 9 so worked out the following equations relating stack-to-pot ratio, r, and percentage of pot bet each street, x, in order to get all-in. We assume this is heads-up (as authors do in PNLHE).

2 + 2x = r (two streets of action)
3 + 6x + 4x^2 = r (three streets of action)
4 + 12x + 16x + 8x^3 = r (four streets of action)

These are some results I found using Mathematica you may find interesting

The first 13 x-values for r=1, 1.25, ... , 4 for two streets of action using .25 increments of r: {-0.5, -0.375, -0.25, -0.125, 0., 0.125, 0.25, 0.375, 0.5, 0.625,
0.75, 0.875, 1.}

This may be confusing so here's an example. The x-value for r=2 is .5 meaning it takes two 50% pot bets to get it in with two streets of action for an SPR of 2

The first 13 x-values for r=1,...,13 for three streets of action using integer increments of r: {-0.5, -0.190983, 0., 0.151388, 0.280776, 0.395644, 0.5, 0.596291,
0.686141, 0.770691, 0.850781, 0.927051, 1.}

Example: The x-value for r=8 is x=.596, so it takes three 59.6% pot bets to get it in with three streets of action for an SPR of 8

For the four streets cubic equation I couldn't get Mathematica to evaluate the x-values for given r-values so I did the reverse.

The 10 r-values for x=0.1,0.2,...,1.0 for four streets of action using 0.1 increments of x : {6.808, 9.664, 12.616, 15.712, 19., 22.528, 26.344, 30.496, 35.032, 40.}

Example: The r-value for x=.6 is 22.528, meaning it takes four 60% pot bets to get it in with four streets of action for an SPR of 22.528

One may linearly interpolate between values for an approximate result at this level of granularity even if the functions are quadratic or cubic. For example, if we want to know the SPR for four streets of action using a 75% bet, it would be roughly (26.3+30.5)/2 = 28.4

Anyway, the reason I computed all this aside from curiosity was to determine what percentage pot-size bets it would take to get all-in for three streets of action with SPRs from 6 to 9 (your danger zone).

With an SPR of 6 you're betting 39.6% of the pot on each street.

With an SPR of 7 you're betting 50% of the pot on each street.

With an SPR of 8 you're betting 59.6% of the pot on each street.

With an SPR of 9 you're betting 68.6% of the pot on each street.

You said you were particularly concerned with the middling range. An SPR of 7.5 takes three bets of about 54.8% of the pot. I don't know if this is "very reasonable" but you may be overestimating how easy it is to get all-in.

These bets are on the smallish side. If you want more like two streets of value you can bet closer to pot. Two pot size bets will get you close enough to all-in you won't really be bluffable if that's your concern. You can also pot control in position or check/call OOP to keep your opponent's range wider.

Love the way you broke down the numbers.

We just totally disagree on what a "very reasonable" bet is / how easy it is to get in. A 54.8% PSB is a pretty small bet. Facing 3 of these pretty small bets (where we are getting fairly awesome ~3:1 odds to call), it's going to be very difficult to avoid committing, unless we have a very good read.

Gwe'reonthesamepage,imo,buthavecometototallydiffer entconclusionsG

^just because a villan is making small bets relative to the pot doesn't mean we have to call them just because it's 50% pot....if a villan bets three streets at 50% each time this isn't a tough decision with 1 pair on the river, it's an easy fold....the decisions don't become.difficult because of the spr, they become difficult because of the previous information we have or lack there of....
Omc bets three streets 50% tptk is no good
Maniac bets three streets 50% tptk easy call
Lag bets three streets 50% tptk is a much more difficult proposition to hold, it's not difficult because of spr, it's difficult because of the ranges we assign to our villan and the potential mis-information a lag would be telling us.
The decisions are tricy or easy because of our opponents play post flop, it doesn't matter what we do pre flop weather we are playing 9000bb effective vs the lag, the decisions are the same post flop.....

The more I see on Spr the more it seems like a tournament concept that is being shoehorned into cash stratergy.

Thanks. Took me a while to calculate all that. I was hoping I wouldn't lose everybody with the math.

I'm fine x/c three 54.8% pot bets with an overpair against most opponents. Against particularly passive opponents I might be hesitant, but against most I'm fine with that. They could easily be betting top pair for value. Maybe we just have very different player pools.

I think the calculations are more useful when we have potential to be the aggressor, though, as we can manipulate which street the money goes in. With an SPR of 6 we could make three tiny bets with an overpair to get it in, or we could, if OOP against PFR for instance, x/r the flop then shove turn, IP flat the flop and raise the turn, or just make two slight overbets. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. We can also pot control IP for one street (probably the turn or river), or against straightforward opponents OOP check the river and if they make a large bet we're probably folding.

@rr - That wasn't the point I was making at all. I was just calculating how many x% pot size bets it takes to get it in for two, three, or four streets given different SPRs (useful stuff to know if you *want* the money to go in and are planning the ideal bet sizing).

I agree with you about the decisions being different vs. OMCs, maniacs, LAGs, etc. These reads can all be incorporated into SPR theory, though. We adjust target SPR down for OMC, up for LAGs, and way up for maniacs.

Why do you think it's a tournament concept? It has less relevance in tournaments due to ICM.

Bet flop bet turn ship river. youve got the 3rd nuts and slowplaying is overrated, not like much of any turn card catches up many hands that wouldve folded flops, so yeah most of the time you take it down, oh well.

original post was grunch, reading thru thread now...


A lot of completely wrong opinions here like this. Villan raising range is basically always 2 pair or better, so you are correct that they dont bluff, but the dude couldve rivered his 22/A2, couldve slowplayed his 33/66/AA/A6/A3/AK. There is all kinds of spaz that this could be.

There is a huge leap between "villan is never bluffing" and "villan always has the nuts". Anyone who even considers folding this river has MUBS plain and simple. Shai Halud's posts are on point.