fwiw almost all of these are +EV when he is only min-raising as well, not even 3xing, or close to it, If anybody has seen my "HU SNG From Scratch: Advanced Concepts (Part 1/2)" I talk about how wide you can shove at 25/50, especially if people are raising anything 50% or greater of their buttons, and then it obv becomes a meta battle to see how they narrow their opening frequency or widen their calling frequency. This post was really well written and shows what I found to be a major leak in a ton of peoples 25/50s game, even when I was coming across it for the first time there was almost no other reg that I knew of who played 25/50 even close to this way, so good info Steve, good job


edit: hope this didnt come across wrong, what I was trying to say that this is super-valuable information, and did a great job in presenting it and showing simple ways of applying it vs diff. scenarios of opponents without having to crunch numbers in your head, very good post

Quality post Steve!! Thanks a lot

Maybe I misread it, but I thought Steve showed how in fact a lot of them are NOT profitable against a minraise.

most the calcs I did were all for 20bb, where vs alot of people you can literally shove ATC vs a min-raise, 25bb shouldnt change it that much but lemme check

Well I definitely think I could be exploited in that way (not sure I ever have been, though).

I'd probably start limping though.

25bb


raise 67% of the time, we hold 49s
(1250 eff stacks, 25/50)


they call 66+, A7s+, A8o+, QKs, QKo (12.8%)


they call (.128 / .67) % of the time, or 19.1% of the time


(.809 * 150) + [ ( (.191) * (.31 * 1300) + (.69 * -1200) ) ]

121.35 + [ (.191)* ( 403 - 828 ) ]

121.35 + ( -81.175 )


40.175 +cEV




94s only has 31% equity vs his calling range, not many hands are going to do a whole lot worse unless it's like the literal BOTTOM of your range, the equation is all right there tho so you can fool around w/raising and calling ranges to see who what is +EV and where ur BE points are, etc. , but alot of this is def. still +EV vs a min-raise, which is MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH more common than a 3x at any stakes >$110




edit: for those unfamiliar w/a similar equation, it's setup like this:


%fold * $wonF + [ %called * %W * $wonC + %L * $lostC ]
(.809 * 150) + [ ( (.191) * (.31 * 1300) + (.69 * -1200) ) ]


terms: $wonF = Money Won when they Fold
%called = Percentage called
%W = Percentage your hand wins vs their range (or the equity your hand has vs their range)
%L = 1-%W (or the equity their range has vs your hand)
$wonC = Money won when called and you win
$lostC = Money lost when called and you lose

and ofc thats what most people do, but if they aren't willing to re-shove light as well, they get run over in their BB, and then dont win much in their SB, and also they will keep raising some %, so you need to get familiar w/what you can shove profitably if they only are raising say... 20% of their hands, and calling 14 or 15% , cause they are going to call a 'bitttt' wider, and now you need to be able to adjust and v-own them, it becomes a big meta war, people will obv adjust in alot of diff. ways, but the more of this math / spots that you know the better off you will be obviously, it's similar to ICM in STTs, the guy who has the most spots memorized will be the most +EV player, w/o question


skates also put it very well when he says people are re-shoving super wide like this are also very exploitable, then the ideal solution is to simply min-raise 100% and call a perfect range, and he will gain a huge edge over anybody like that (assuming we're able to call a perfect range before they adjust their re-shoving ranges, so obv like if you know I reshoved super wide, first hand w/0 meta at <30bb he could own me like this), however it's important to note, that 99.5% of players we play have no clue what a perfect range is, and wont even think to adapt this way, or do it correctly, so we're looking not to be unexploitable, but to be optimal, and generally this will be optimal vs alot of players, and if someone is exploiting us (cause we leave ourself open to being exploited) we need to be able to adapt to that



sigh, long post lol, hope it was clear /ramble

Wicked post.
Thank you, thank you, thank you

Hah - I've been working on a post exactly like this. Well done and I expect to see it in the Sticky.

Edit: Although my location has given this away for quite some time

OP,

good post, as you can imagine guys like me who are math geeks have tons of charts where one variable is the call % and the other is the raise % and most of what you post here is already a part of my game.

What i'd be interested in is an analysis of 30bbs deep because i havent done it yet. Say if the guy is 3x-ing and min-raising....The other day Hokie disagreed me for saying that a guy should ship it 29bbs deep with A6o but against most its profitable.

30bbs is less understood as far as shipping a guy goes since the stacks are not to shallow to flat a lot as well.

Indy

you could have just said this once sentence:

"99.5% of players we play have no clue what a perfect range is, and wont even think to adapt this way, or do it correctly, so we're looking not to be unexploitable, but to be optimal"

I think thats the key....we're not talking about playing livb here man, because he can get around our math. most guys will just get crushed by using str8 math against them.

ok i did an approximation....at 30bbs if you have a standard opponent that raises 50-55% of hands pre and calls somewhere around 15% A6o is right at the cut off of zero EV......so yah hokie you had a point


So that's a good benchmark approximation for this thread....A7o is gonna be good enough to ship 30bbs to a minraise against "most opponents".....and its going to be solid EV against guys that are raising more than 50% of btns.........which is a fair number of ppl.

Great, you're going to lower the **** out of expectation now. Lose, lose for anybody playing another person who reads this

Most 2+2er's, perhaps. Not everyone raises half their hands to 3x from the button at 25/50 BB.

How would this 3betting work against a villain who opens fold 20%/limp 40%/raise to 2.5BB 40%?

f I'm not mistaken three-bet shoving A6o or better against this is really bad since villain can call with a quarter of the hands they are open raising with (AA-66, A8s+, KTs+, AT+, KQ).

i actually learned something from this post :O

what about shoving a hand like Q4s, Kxs or w/e?

great post primo

at 25bb if they are opening 40% of their hands to 2.5x, and calling the range you describe, im almost positive shoving A6o will be +EV, but I gave the equation, so try it out and see what you come up with



@Jundleman: it depends on your opponents opening/calling ranges, use the equation I gave above to test it out, but usually if they are opening 50-60% of their hands this is totally fine



@nathan: Thanks , it's a concept I think is really important and i've done a ton of playing around with the idea over the last 2-3 months, i'm really glad to see other people applying it though, and I think Steve presented it in a really awsome way that I never even attempted to (not to mention he also came up with it on his own as im pretty sure he didn't get it from me)

Assuming you don't shove over the limp (which will cause villain to adjust), we can just do the math for the 40% that they open. I'm going to assume for now that you are 3bet shoving when you have A6o or better and folding when you have worse.

When you fold (77.4% of the time) you lose 1BB.

When you 3bet (22.6% of the time) you gain 0.90575BB:



0.774*-1 + 0.226*0.90575 = 0.5693005

So if you play 3bet/shove or fold against this villain's button raises, you lose ~0.57 BB every time.


The EV will obviously be different when you factor in how you call, but I'm not sure how to handle the complex calculations that come into play when you factor in calling and post-flop play. However, I find it likely that since you're never playing your top 22.6% and villain is raising with top 40%, not to mention playing OOP, you're going to be an underdog when you do call, so that -~0.57BB will not likely turn positive.

The 3bet shove itself is indeed profitable, but when that leaves you either folding or calling with a weak range the rest of the time, your strategy against button raises as a whole has a negative EV.

ur math is wrong, when villain folds you gain 2.5 + 1 bb (cause you had your blind it), use the equation I gave above to solve this.


Here:

%fold * $wonF + [ %called * %W * $wonC + %L * $lostC ]

let's say 25 bb deep is 1250 blinds at 25/50

% fold = .75
$wonF = $125 + 50 = 175

%called = .25

%W = .42246 (you gave above through pokerstove)
$wonC = 1300

%L = .57754 (again you gave above)
$lostC = -1200

so we get:

(.75 * 175) + [ 0.25 * ( (0.42246 * 1300) + (0.57754 * -1200) )]

131.25 + [ 0.25 * ( (549.198 - 693.048) ) ]

131.25 + [ 0.25 * ( -143.85 ) ]

131.25 + [ -35.9625 ]

+95.2875


which is +++++EV, SUPER SUPER +EV to shove here






edit: if you didn't see what you did wrong from above, it's this:

when he folds, you gain the pot (which is his bet + your blind) or 125 + 50 (3.5 bb)

when you are called when you shove, your blind is already in and doesnt matter, so you actually lose 24bb, not 25, your shoving 24 bb to win (25bb x 2) - 24bb, which means you either win 26bb or lose 24bb, so that was a big part of your problem

One thing this thread neglects is considering the relative profit from calling instead of shoving. I've done a lot of empirical analysis on this subject, and I think a lot of you would be surprised at how profitable a smooth-call with a lot of these "shoving" hands can be.

hands that play well post, absolutely, a hand like A6o... absolutely not


edit: also im def. not saying you should play these stages push/fold, but these are good calculations to know, and they are all +EV independently, and can be very useful in a ton of diff. situations, and understanding how wide you CAN push profitably, or if people apply it conversely, how light you CAN profitably call reshoves at 25/50 vs solid players

I've done both mathematical and empirical analysis of these situations, and yes they are really useful. However, I'm not really anxious to change the current paradigm, so I'd rather not be too specific. But just to throw it out there, I think your idea of what plays well postflop with 25bb is probably off. (And I don't say that casually, I've played you and I know you're an excellent player).

This is wrong. Your 1 BB does not stop becoming yours because it is posted. According to this logic, folding BB preflop would cost you no chips at all. Using this "math", you should simply fold every hand except super premiums since you lose no chips when you fold. You need to look at the EV of your action in the context of the entire hand, not just that one individual action.

When villain folds to your 3bet, the net effect of that hand was to increase your stack by +2.5 BB. Just like if button raises and BB folds, button is +1 BB, not +1.5 BB.

It is the EV of shoving relative to folding. Folding is 0EV because your big blind is a sunk cost, it is certainly not yours after you post it. This doesn't mean you could fold every hand and still be a winner, because posting future blinds are not sunk costs.

Regardless, the strategy provided by Primordial is not profitable if you take into account the entire hand rather than the 3bet action.

The point I'm making is similar to the one regarding continuation bets here. Even though the c-bet technically only needs to be successful 1/3 times to be profitable when you assume sunk costs, you will actually end up losing money if you only win 1/3 with your c-bets (c-betting is still profitable, however, because it provides cover for your value bets and reduces the -EV of simply giving up on the flop).

In order to properly analyze the profitability of a strategy, you need to look at it's profitability over the entire hand, not just the 3bet itself. Thus, when you 3bet and villain folds, you are only profitting by the amount villain raised.