Don't put words in his mouth. But I'd GLADLY do this. GLADLY.

Expand 27o to bottom 20% and deal.

you're already making .5 bb for every bottom 20% hand you raise and you want ANOTHER .5? whoa man, you're getting ****ing greedy. my offer will remain open indefinitely buddy. you know where to find me.

So what you're saying is you make an offer that's too good to accept?

sorry im not being clear - your stakes have nothing to do with it - it's my mistake. so here goes:

problem though is where you're drawing the line and where im drawing the line. if you wouldn't make anything with 72o, but i make .5bb - well, what other hands is this happening with as well? bottom 20? 30? more? they add up, and again, even if it's .5bb 20% of the time, that is a HUGE edge.

why sell yourself short though?

no, the bb advantage is inherent preflop IGNORING postflop. you could be the worst postflop player in the world, only put money in with the nuts, never bluff catch, and ON THE BASIS OF PREFLOP ALONE, YOU WILL PROFIT. This isn't even debatable!

Alright, I tried my piece, people should play as they want and as they are comfortable.

Well, people should listen to themselves, blindly listening to me, xorbie, or anyone else is pretty dumb and they wont get better.

Do I play much HU? Sadly I haven't been playing much poker at all. I probably put in more hands then TC, but I don't know. I do enjoy HU though. However, this really isn't relevant though in terms of understanding theory. You either know it, don't know it, or are somewhere in the middle of knowing. Playing 1000 hours incorrectly wont help someone understand. Playing 0 hours correctly means you still have the capacity to play those 1000 hours correctly.

MDMA

i'm not talking about game theoretical optimal strategy. i am saying optimal as in most desirable, most profitable strategy. and i think it's pretty clear that most everyone has decided that the most profitable strategy is to not raise 100% of buttons. now, xorbie seems to vehemently disagree despite the fact that numerous players who are much better than him and I have offered opinions that would lead one to believe that raising 100% of bns is not the most profitable strategy.

im still a bit in awe of xorbie's arrogance...and ill play you HU whenever youd like but i'm sure with your undefeatable bn strategy you won't need any sort of refund. im on my shtty little mac in the florida keys on spring break, so dont have pt with me, but i am pretty sure that i am breakeven or slightly + from the BB over all my hands from this year fwiw

People need to learn to separate preflop and postflop. they are two entirely different phases.

ni han

"i am pretty sure that i am breakeven or slightly + from the BB over all my hands from this year fwiw"

you are either playing ******s, running like god, or somewhere in the middle. that simple.

this is just spouting off bs. you honestly don't think that a ton of extremely successful players have not experimented with playing different styles? you don't think that they have tried and implemented different strategies and found one that is the most nearly profitable for them? and yet you both are trying to lecture and condescend to a ton of players who are more successful than you? (i am not grouping myself in that category fwiw im just baffled by the way both of you are being in this thread)

i do game select well and i like to think i run slightly below average, which seems to be standard and perfectly fine to me. perhaps if you actually played 100k hands of HU instead of touting unpublished articles of yours you might be able to apply all of your theory to actual situations.

wow snipes, wow. I am not being condescending here. I am not saying:
1. I am the best player in the world
2. My strategy is the best and the only one that works
3. If you don't play like me you have no chance

I am saying:
"Hey guys, this is a useful tactic, because it inherently adds to your winrate."

So, you should be thanking me, not insulting me. Why I even post strat to add to a douchebag's earn is anyone's guess, but I think I used to love this board so it's a weird sense of loyalty.

If someone doesn't want to do this, they don't have to. I don't even raise 100%. I start with it, for sure, but my overall stats don't reflect this. Is that even important? I don't think so.

I don't think I'm saying (and in my haste to post on this thread, perhaps I have been shortsighted and truly have been condescending, as you say) that players who are obviously very strong HU players are not strong because they don't agree with me.

What I am saying though is that disagreeing with a fundamental truth of HU poker - in this case in a vacuum opening any two is profitable - shows a lack of complete understanding, which again, is not even an argument. Can someone win without understanding everything about poker? Obviously. Do I understand everything about poker? Obviously not.

How do people get better? They question things. They question what is known. They question what is unknown. If you're happy just continuing playing the way you play, clearly you're a winning player, that's fine. But if you strive to get better, you should question everything - including the obvious.

I don't know if I'm supposed to interpret this as a dig or not, I am not sure. But I do implement theory into practice. I have played many hands of HU. I am a big winner.

I don't put in countless hours playing poker every month because poker is very boring. It's fun and exciting when I keep it in check, but if I was to sit on my computer and play every day, I would start to hate it. One of the joys of being a professional poker player is I can work as hard or be as lazy as I want. I'm not sure if you're a student, pro, or somewhere in between, but I'd assume this is the same for you.

As for unpublished article, it didn't get turned down because it wasn't qualified. I've pulled all my articles down because I don't want people to read them. I suppose that is ego.

i really love playing math guys HU. let me say that in defense of one thing you said, i would agree that most competent ppl having the button every hand but having stipulation of raising every hand most would probably beat durrr. position is important. however, the fact that you can win raising every single hand doesnt mean its the best method.. i dont really see how this is even debatable. i would love for you to show me how much you win HU with the bottom 20% of your range from the button.

i mean, i can win against anyone if i had button every hand but had to limp every hand, does that mean its the best way to play? no. this is like the best level in history by xorbie in which case nh sir, or hes just incredibly closed minded.

Said better than I could have.

this is pretty much how i imagine MDMA and bobbofittos writing every single post of theirs

lol, this is actually pretty awesome, well done sir

"i would love for you to show me how much you win HU with the bottom 20% of your range from the button."

I want to correct something as well. Most people assume when you say "its +EV to play ATC" means that each hand will show profit by playing it over not playing it. 72o is a loser when you get dealt it. However, if you fold, it's not recorded in PT as 0 BB, or what we all feel is a zero sum play. Rather, it's recorded as a -10$ loss (the SB) which to us is a sunk cost. Rather, the correct assertion is that we lose LESS with 72o when we're dealt it AND raise it then when he get dealt it AND fold it. Does that pacify some people?

That's not the point though, the point is whether the SB would win more with 80% (or whatever) VPIP.

first: me too, sometimes i imagine someone diong something over and over and going "fk, on paper this was ++++ EVVVVVV" and getting really angry that i started adjusting or something crazy!

second: this thread, about math and raising and heads up play and experience, it needs more nycballer!

I don't disagree at all. Clearly the fact that position is important doesn't inherently make me right. However, I've used numbers that come to me from experience. The numbers I posted, people continuing 40-50% of their hand range OOP, was from when I've been minraising every button HU, which should theoretically mean that making it 3bb you will get them even below that. The math in my OP seems to indicate that if someone only continues with that range, REGARDLESS OF HOW THEY PLAY IT, you will win. I'm just asking, which of my assumptions are wrong? The argument is not.

Of course that isn't what I'm saying. All I can really say at this point is I've made my point, I'll be playing more HU in the future and we'll just wait and see. I think there's a fundamentally flawed assumption some of you have that having 27o is somehow bad for your range in some fashion. There's never anything "bad" about having 27o at any point in time, this demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of game theory. You can talk about psychology and whatever all you like, it's possible that there are some complete droolers against which there is some image reason not to be raising, but against someone competent, you should be raising.

xorbie,
You make a solid argument. The problem is that by raising any two OTB pre, your range on the flop isn't as strong as you'd like it to be, which costs you money in the form of getting your c-bets called and raised more frequently.

It's absolutely possible for a play to be +EV against anyone and still not be part of a perfect strategy.

Results for 72o over 100k hands of HU on my laptop- I'm losing when I'm folding it, maybe I'll start winning if I raise it!

FWIW I never played a pot bigger than 100 dollars with it either, despite 10k of these hands at 25-50 and 25k or something at 10-20.

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

2,097,572,400 games 0.016 secs 131,098,275,000 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 34.584% 31.71% 02.87% 665146081 60270960.00 { 7c2d }
Hand 1: 65.416% 62.54% 02.87% 1311884399 60270960.00 { random }





wrong