Because a purely push/fold strategy beyond that point becomes exploitable.

I assumed that winner has bigger edge when stacks are deep then in push-fold stage, so stars structure would better for winning players. There should be a lot of reasons why players on tilt have higher ROIs.

what does the term balancing ranges mean?

i see it often and am unsure exactly what it means and how impotant it is.

It means the act of trying to have a range which is unexploitable for every line you take. For example if you never C/R bluff flops your range is unbalanced in that spot -which is not a problem when you are trying to exploit bad players with unbalanced ranges what you prolly do most of the time- but it is a problem when you are facing a shark and u are both trying to play as close as possible to an unexploitable (GTO) strategy.

sorry cant find the comma character on that laptop :P

how does it suddenly change from unexploitable to exploitable after 7? isn't it still grounded in mathematical theory or something?

It doesn't become exploitable at >7BB, it just becomes a losing strategy. Shove/fold is unexploitable if you play an equilibrium range at any stack size. However, when stacks become deep, you have to fold many more hands, and your equity goes from positive to negative with a shove/fold strategy.

Think if you played shove/fold 93824719837409123874097BB deep. You're obv. losing 1BB every hand except for when you have AA, where you win 1BB. Shove/fold is then horrible that deep, but still unexploitable.

the most profitable between:

2 tables husng 100$ (30 per days)

2 tables nl100 hu nl cash game


?

Ok, assuming that you can play 10 HUSNGs per hour and 400 hands of cash per hour, that's about 1200 hands in the time it'd take to play 30 HUSNGs.

It depends on your relative winrates for each game. Let's say you win, on average, 58% of your SNGs that you play. You'll average $330 a day for your 3 hour session, meaning you have to make $110/hr or 27.5 BB/100 hands to make more at cash. Here's a small table of win percents at $105 reg speed HUSNG and their equivalent winates at 100 NLHE under these assumptions:

53%: 2.5BB/100, you make $10/hr
54%: 7.5BB/100, you make $30/hr
55%: 12.5BB/100, you make $50/hr
56%: 17.5BB/100, you make $70/hr
57%: 22.5BB/100, you make $90/hr
58%: 27.5 BB/100, you make $110/hr

In general, it depends on your relative winrates. If you make 10BB/100 at cash, you need to win more than 54.5% of your HUSNGs to make SNG better, for example.

wow very good work, ty.

clearly, husng are more profitable with 5% roi(=55% itm) and + at lower stakes (less than 50$)

At what levels do the games start to get noticeably tougher and when should I start table selecting? (HU SNG's btw) Im at the $30's now

Because as the effective stack grows bigger, a purely push/fold strategy would force you to fold all but the strongest hands. So you will find yourself folding hands you know would be profitable to make a standard raise with.

Say the effective stacks are 100BBs, you are in the SB and you limit yourself to a push/fold strategy. Your push-range would be TT or better, which is super-duper tight, and you would bleed your stack away by folding too much.

I guess it depends how you define an "unexploitable strategy". I define it as a "strategy which is such that no one can be profitable against it in the long run even without fees/rake".

One could make another definition which made a push/fold strategy with 7+BBs unexploitable, but it wouldn´t be in line with what most sharks associate with the word "unexploitable".

You should be table-selecting from the very lowest buy-ins. But by table-selecting, I mean just avoid players you have had trouble with in the past, and they are likely to be very few at the lower levels.

Don´t bother with Sharkscope. It takes time and it may result in avoiding some sharks you actually would have a big edge against and keep playing some fish you struggle to beat. Just play everyone once, take the names of those you feel you don´t have an edge against and avoid them in the future.

the 6 dollar stake eater lol

Yea but thats quiet interesting. Why exactly 7, why not 8.7BBs? Is there a mathematical proof that there cannot exist a strategy which involves limping/min-betting etc. which exploits a push/fold strat under 7BBs but there IS one after eff stacks get over exactly the number 7? Sounds pretty strange...

I started HUSNGs at the ~-$400 mark, I'm pretty terrible at 45s, I started about 3 weeks ago with $100 as I had to cash out the rest of my roll. I started at the 10s and moved up each time I had 10 buyins, I didnt put in a lot of volume though. Probably a bad idea but it worked out, maybe I'm just rly lucky? I play the 200s right now with a 3.5K roll, Is this enough? I rly dont want to bust my accnt since I cant re-deposit right now. Also are the player pools at the 100s+ rly small? It takes a long time to get games going at these levels sometimes.

There may be other ways to attain a Nash equilibrium if you can properly define your strategy space for lower R. It's just much easier computationally to restrict your decisions to two choices. If the button limps, then SAGE doesn't provide an answer for the big blind. Sage only provides an answer if the button raises or folds pre-flop and so limping and min-betting are not included in the strategy space.

We do know that all finite sum games involving finite moves has a Nash equilibrium. In the binary case for when you can only shove or fold, then it becomes a losing proposition to play the Nash solution for higher R's. There exists some other Nash equilibrium where your pre-flop strategy space is not binary but this solution hasn't been published yet.

play the 100s or variance will kill you. Some1 i know (a solid winner at 110s) started at the 220s yesterday and lost 3k in 25 games. After 73 games he is now up, but he is some1 i know can beat the level and he managed to drop 14 buys in 35 games.

It is not exactly 7, but it is somewhere around there.

The SAGE approach has calculated what the EV of playing their ranges is for the SB and BB for different stack-sizes. And beyond 7BBs, the SB starts having a negative expectancy despite the advantage of having made a smaller forced bet.

http://www2.decf.berkeley.edu/~chubukov/rankings.html

the last number in this chart is the maximum number of SBs i can unexploitably shove with after the blinds have been taken, right?

Prove it. I don't think it could be exploited by anyone when doing it with 9BBs for example. I just have a feeling that someone said "hmm let it be 7" b/c I have never seen any mathematical reasoning behind that. I know it works out but it seems a bit counterintuitive that a strategy which restricts itself to a binary decision when the decision space (or w/e) is much wider, cannot be exploited by one which involves using up all the possibilities. And I am not saying "hey lets start limp/folding at 5BBs" because I know this would be silly, but it would be interesting to look behind the math and not just blindly except these made up constants like the number 7.

Listen. Shove/fold is unexploitable at all stack sizes. This is because if you are the small blind, and you either shove or fold with your entire range, villain's only choice is to call. Then we have an equilibrium (or near-equilibrium) that can be attained.

People talk about it for 7-8BB or w/e because at higher blinds than that, shove/fold is no longer a strictly winning strategy. The expected values can be found online. No one ever, ever, ever said shove/fold is optimal.

Look at the "SB Edge" in the chart here:
http://www.cardplayer.com/magazine/article/15250

The chart can´t tell us exactly at what point it becomes exploitable, but it is better than nothing.

The chart raises a question. Is there an advantage of acting last? Say the BB wasn´t twice as big as the SB, but that the blinds were equally big. And say it was only allowed to push or fold. Would the player last to act have an advantage no matter how small R is (except at 0 or course)?

SB Edge starts to drop already after an R of 3. Could that mean that push/folding is exploitable already at that point? What else could explain the drop.

Skates,

a few questions from you:
1) How do you improve?
2) Let's say I'm using nash equilibrium when stacks are <=12 bb deep and I'm playing player A, who is a winner in 23s, but clearly sucks in push/fold stage and limps a lot of buttons and proceeds to betting min if it is checked to him. If he limps, which part of nash chart should I look, pusher or caller?
3) Is this standard line to take in 3 bet pot OOP against unknown early in the match:
PPoker Stars, $22 + $1 NL Hold'em Tournament, 10/20 Blinds, 2 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

SB: 1,520
Hero (BB): 1,480

Pre-Flop: (30) 8 8 dealt to Hero (BB)
SB raises to 60, Hero raises to 200, SB calls 140

Flop: (400) T 4 9 (2 Players)
Hero bets 240, SB raises to 560, Hero folds

Results: 880 Pot
SB mucked and WON 880 (+440 NET)

1) I apparently, don't improve, I get worse.
2) I actually don't want to say too much about this because people who limp vs. me throw away a lot of money and sadly, people have been figuring out who I am.
3) If you're going to 3bet that hand with those stacks it should be after you already know some things about villain. Since it's early on, it seems like calling is better than 3betting. If you do 3bet though, I like your 3bet size. On that flop, you should probably c/f.