Stealing From The Button
Our opening average will be at its widest on the button.
It can vary from around 25% versus tough aggressive players (think about leaving this table!) to 100% versus passive fish.
Use HUD to look at BOTH villains fold to steal stats from SB and BB.
It is very important to look at the stats of BOTH players (I have been guilty of overestimating fold equity here due to bad maths [see below] and possibly my stint at heads-up
).
My "standard" opening size on the button lately has been 2.5bb.
The simplified formula for break even point is BE = Risk/(Risk+Reward).
I risk 2.5bb to win 1.5bb (the small and big blind).
So for me it is BE = 2.5/(2.5+1.5) = 0.625 = 62.5%.
So, I need the blinds to fold a combined 62.5% of the time for me to break even opening to 2.5bb and this ASSUMES NO POSTFLOP PLAY!!!
(Btw, a 2bb open requires 57.14% folds and a 3x open requires 66.7% folds).
To find out how much the blinds are folding we multiply their fold to steal stats together. So, for example, if SB is folding 80% and BB is folding 75% we do 0.8 x 0.75 = 0.6 = 60%.
I have been guilty of not doing this multiplication and assuming they will fold a lot more than the figures suggest!!
How much we can vary our opening average from the break even success figure (and with what cards to do it with) depends on a lot of things...
For example, if we have a player who calls in the blinds preflop a lot but then plays too fit or fold on the flop we can open 100% and cbet lots of flops(remember to consider the other player too though!!).
If we have a player who is just a massive station then we can keep our range wide and weighted to high cards and take them to valuetown!
If our villain 3 bets a lot (they steal OUR equity) we should tighten up a little and maybe open for a min raise, this means we can call some 3 bets and play with position with a decent SPR.
Be aware of short stacks, they usually play 3b or fold so open for a min raise again.
Always remember we will have the advantage of being in position postflop.
REALISE WHERE YOUR PROFIT COMES FROM!!!!