Someone convince me that raising 27o is wrong.

Raise to 3xBB. Risking 2.5 to win 1.5, you need them to fold 60% to break even. Say someone calls 30% of their range and 3bets 20% of their range. At this point the EV of the raise with 27o is -.5BB + equity in the pot when villain calls (obv we muck to 3bet).

To continue with 50% of his range, villain must be playing something slightly tighter than: Pair, broadway, any suited, Ax, any connected. Maybe use Q9 or T8 instead of the weaker suited hands, but basically a very weak range that makes nothing a lot on the flop.

So let's say villain calls 30% of the time. 27o has about 30% showdown equity against a reasonable range here. This means our showdown equity is .3*.3*6 = .54BB. This means that the the raise is +EV by a very slight margin if we can just check it down vs. villain. It is of course possible that our "real equity" is actually worse than our showdown equity, but this is difficult to arrange because we can easily just check our hand down whenever we don't flop a pair (0EV) and we will often win a small pot when we do or a medium/big pot when we flop 2pr+ (rare but happens). Obv we lose sometimes as well, but since we should never be making -EV calls and we have position, we should be able to capitalize on our equity here.

That is with 50%. I think it's hard to get to significantly above this, because even against a random hand you can't really play Q6o OOP. Once you get to about 60% of your range calling, you don't even have much more than 50% equity, and since you are OOP it is going to be more or less impossible to actually make full use of your showdown equity. 40% of your range is something like any suited, broadway, pair, A8/A9o... which is pretty reasonable and is the break even point of a raise with any two cards. Many villains do not even defend this wide, even if you substitute some worse Ax and some K9/T9/89 hands for stuff like T5s.

In summary, it's possible that opening 27o is a small mistake against a very good opponent capable of defending a very wide range OOP, but against most people you are going to be making free money, and even against a bad villain you are going to get him to adjust in ways that get your best hands paid off more easily.

edit: Similar calculation can be done with minraising... villain can call about 65% of his hands which is reasonable (down to stuff like K8o and 64o) and we are still prob breaking even or better.

if you never fold your button, a good opponent will adjust his 3betting range to be much wider. i like to fold my button sometimes because i prefer my opponents to just call me rather than 3bet me OOP (unless they're 3betting way too much). since i'm going to fold some of the time, 27o seems like a great time to start.

sucks when you type a bunch of paragraphs and then a person comes in and says one thing then you are pissed off you typed all those paragraphs

the question i want answered is who says raising 27os is right?

I say it is.

Didn't read the details of your argument, but yeah, against plenty of players it will be +EV and against an optimal player it's probably not a big mistake.

Against an exploiting opponent it sucks.

There are tons of similar phenomena in NL, like 3-betting complete air on a drawless flop.

If there's really no draw and if it's ever correct to 3-bet bluff, then 3-betting air should be at least 0 EV and therefore would only take an opponent who folds slighty too much there to be +EV.

ditto

it's not only that good players will necessarily adjust just by 3-betting more. they can (and will) do that, but it also makes it much easier to play you OOP on the flop when they do just call you. if you know a guy is raising 90%+ of his hands, particularly if he is cbetting a very high number as well, you can be c/r flops profitably with air quite a bit, doing it with top/2nd pair for value, overs, any draw, etc., and it will make life really hard on you when you constantly are dealing with having hands that play horribly post flop.

if you are playing 5/10 and below against players that generally aren't that good HU, i'd def recommend raising as big of a percentage as you can get away with. against mediocre regs at MSNL i'd prob raise 80%+ all day.

tc

Rob if you almost or halfway convinced the great Dani that you were right, I wanna know exactly why- so tell me later.

its rly simple 2 7 shows profit in a vacuum, but you fold it to keep your overall range balanced

bobbo,

what opponents are you talking about playing when you are raising 27o (or the like)? I'm assuming if you are raising 27o, you are raising ~95%+ of your button range, is this an accurrate statement?

i would be shocked if you could play someone like, say, cts, and get away with doing this. although i guess i'd be shocked if you could play cts and do just about anything and get away with it.

my feeling is that this style is optimal against most opponents, but not the ones you will find beating games bigger than 5-10/10-20ish.

tc

im pretty sure 27o doesnt show profit vs me (or most other hsnl regs) in a vaccuum from a random name.

People adjust.

agree w/ this

I just read the first sentence and then was gonna write was duck wrote. your ranges and math is stupid because while it will work for the very first hand you start doing it, your opponent will adjust.

it's not just the good opponents that get sick of you opening every hand. trust me.

I guess it's more or less standard that BTN opens 60-85% and that BB defends 25-40%. If the BTN starts opening 100% and the BB does not adjust, 72o shows a profit (BTN can open it and take the blinds >60%; if BB calls or 3bets he does not put money in the pot unless he has the nuts). If the BB adjusts and 3bets and calls more to punish the BTN, it seems like opening 27o becomes a much more marginal or even -EV play.

People tend to forget, however, that BB's range will be weaker too. The result is that both players will have to fight for the pot with a weaker range; relative hand values are changing.

So wrt TC's post,

it also makes it much easier to play you OOP on the flop when they do just call you. if you know a guy is raising 90%+ of his hands, particularly if he is cbetting a very high number as well, you can be c/r flops profitably with air quite a bit, doing it with top/2nd pair for value, overs, any draw, etc., and it will make life really hard on you when you constantly are dealing with having hands that play horribly post flop.

this is only one way to look at it. Both players should be able to adjust because his opponent will never have anything. Also, if opponents will play back lighter at you, your nut hands will show more profit. Opening 100% could have a higher EV (for your whole range) than opening 70%, even if 72o is a losing hand to open in the first strategy.

dumb thread/question.

yes any 2 otb is profitable against some (terrible) opponents, but against most (even slightly competent) players it will not be. this can obviously be said for a ****load of poker concepts! c-betting 100%, playing 16 tables, 3betting any 2, 5 betting light, blah blah blah.

lol ya srsly this thread is so dumb...funny to see this ec

lol

i dont think dani would say i was right (and therefore he was wrong) but i did get him to say he'd open up even wider, so it was a small win, haha

you can fold AA too to get a "balanced" range, but why would you?

All opponents - good, bad, loose, tight, passive, aggressive, tilted, even-keeled whatever. it's just a built in technical advantage to play every button that just cannot be overwhelmed by any player type.

My overall HU stats are like 95/95 (+) otb thereabout, because there are times you SHOULD drop the bottom 20% of hands (when raising them for inherent value no longer shows profit) - this minor adjustment, when your opponent still reacts along the premise of you opening ATC but you're really just opening top 80% - is HUGE. and it's where good players get boned the most, I think.

yeah, against anyone you'd be able to get away with it. that said, no matter how well i play my button (AND I PLAY IT WELL BABY! ) cts will likely play his even better vs me and obviously/therefore he'll have an edge on me.

no, this doesn't make sense, if something works against player A it should work against player B, unless player B does something that allows a more optimal counter strategy - and my gut feeling is that this actually works better vs higher limit players because in general people understand they will NOT win money OOP HU, so even vs an expanded range they tend to give up (RIGHTLY SO) more often rather then the common reaction (which is wrong) of a. playing more hands oop and b. 3betting a larger range oop.

it's like this, durr; if someone got to play you HU, but they get the button everytime - but the stipulation is they must play ~95%-100% VPIP (doesn't mean call an all in, just either open limp or minraise or 3x or whatever) - do you think you can win? against bad players, sure. against someone solid? well, you're amazing, so maybe, but even then I dont think too many people think you'd win. (think of the recent prop that the live player wanted to make about giving up the button everytime)

Now, lets analyze a little deeper; since you know he's playing 100%, you can no longer give him the any two edge (this is a term I use in an article unpublished, but it's easy to grasp: Simply, someone doesn't defend the necessary amount to prevent you FROM raising ATC in a vacuum*) therefore your adjustments likely will box out 72o from showing profit in isolation, however if you're adjusting to box out 72o, T9o+ (or whatever) will show profit.. and overall you lose. note that at this point in a match is where i typically drop those 20% of hands or so, typically players arent good enough to pinpoint the %s of what is correct to defend against what is not even the correct range.

*if you're raising 3x, and this all hinges on your open, 2.5 to win 1.5 means if this works 60% of the time nothing else matters. what this means is if people dont vpip OOP 40%+, you should continue to exploit this. most people VPIP ~20 (very tight) to 40 (very loose) - personally im fairly loose but dont vpip more then 30 to 33% (I dont need to, bc my opponent isn't taking advantage of my "tightness"). Anycase, it's only when you prevent the unexploitable strategy does the any two edge no longer occur.

not quick or well enough though.

why the hate jay?

here's some more theory which is fun.

player a has 1bb stack and is the bb.

is player b correct in folding any two? (no)

at what stack depth does a sb fold become correct?

(Certainly someone would argue there reaches a stack depth where the positional advantage on later street make any two playable, right?)

so the answer - if so - is a C curve where at some point (SNG experts would know this best) your FE no longer trumps inherent hand value because the preflop weakness is too much to overcome, and at the point in which postflop is irrelevant. it's worth noting that there are many assumptions you'd need to make (restealing ranges, stacking ranges, etc.) that change DRASTICALLY

my gut tells me ~7bb to ~35bb.

can i prove this? yes, but it would take alot of work, which isn't really worth proving unless i got paid to prove it. :X

Exactly my toughts

I know maybe I focus too much on math and it's easy to just say "they will 3bet more", but can you guys give me an actual 3bet range and 3bet size that you will be using? The math in my OP assumes 20% 3bet and 30% call, which is a fairly wide range. I have played HU for a decent number of hands with people I know are certainly "better at poker" than I am and even though I raise 100% of my buttons, some people still fold >60%, and I think that raising 100% of the buttons has to be pretty obvious so it's not as if people wouldn't notice.

Fwiw, a range like: 77+, AT+, KJ+ is only 10% of your range. If you add a few suited hands and then a bunch of bluffs it is difficult to get to 20% without weakening your range significantly.

Obviously villain will be able to 3bet bluff a lot, because we will be folding a lot of our range. However, the telescoping nature of hand ranges due to bet size means that there is an upper bound on how often he can easily do it. Say villain 3bets to 10x (seems standard for many). He is risking 9 to win 4, meaning we need to fold >66% of the time. This means even if villain is 3betting as much as 40% of the time, we can simply call/4bet with the top 40% of our range and we've made it so that he is no longer +EV with ATC. That is, it is difficult for villain to 3bet a range that is tight enough that we can't simply continue with a wide range but which is also wide enough to take advantage of our opening 100% of our buttons. Moreover, the more villain 3bets, the more he either polarizes his range to include a lot of strong hands and a lot of air (makes it easier for us to play, particularly in position) or he is taking a lot of strong hands out of his calling range, making it much easier for us to win medium/small pots when he is just calling, because he ends up with so much air OOP. So even if villain 4bets 40% of his hands and calls maybe 25%, the same calculation as I did in my OP makes raising 27o has an immediate EV of -1.1BB and we end up with him calling 25% of the time and us having about 33% equity there in a situation where he has a very wide range with a lot of air and we have position. Overall, -.5BB, plus any metagame benefit (like, for instance, the fact that villain is 3betting 40% of his range OOP against us and sometimes we have AA instead of 27o).