Alright so this might seem like a silly/embarrassing thread, but if I've learned anything over the years it's that no question really is too silly ask if you want to learn.

I've been doing some 3-bet shove related work with HRC quite a bit lately, and as we all know we can shove shockingly wide with standard resteal stacks from the BB vs loose LP opening ranges. However it seems fairly obvious that it's not very smart to push all the small edges, as flatting most of the hands you can 3-bet shove also shows a clear positive EV and many hands play better as flats than shoves.

However this led me to think of something. I realize this isn't something you can actually quantify exactly, but just generally what kind of of EV numbers do we think that flatting certain hands from the BB vs BTN open ranges would show?

I'll use an example that kinda looks extreme at first but when you look into it, isn't even very far from the tendencies of a standard plebstakes reg playing the button. So this is 500/1000/120 ante, 8handed. BTN, SB and our Hero in the BB all have 20BB.

Let's say the BTN opens with this range, it's pretty much exactly 50% total but I took off a few semi-random hands to represent openshoves (I think some people just jam A8/JTs or whatever). It doesn't really affect the calc ~at all even if we assume he instead raise/calls the few hands so don't get hung up on the few hands I took off. We can give him almost any 40-60% raising range and remove or add any halfway reasonable shoving hands and the results will barely change.



And now let's assume that his raise/calling range is A8s+,A9o+, KJo/KJ+, QJs, 66+. Again doesn't really matter if we change things up slightly. He's now opening 45% and calling 14% of hands. We can 3bet shove 100%:





I like to run these sims a lot, and if I've learned anything we can basically always shove SUPER wide from the BB as long as the button is opening a non-nitty range. This is simply because there's no players left to act and since people aren't raise/calling cEV optimal for their tournament life (and they shouldn't in most cases imo), we simply win the pot too many times by 3bet shoving for loose shoves not to be profitable.

I think when you look at the above chart some of the shoves are really ridiculous and I by no means advocate shoving 92o or anything like that.

But this brings us to my actual question. Say that BTN is some 20ABI winning pleb reg. The kind of guy who'll have some leaks but isn't terrible by any means. We are 20BB eff facing a button minraise. We think he's opening something like 40-60% and raise/calling a somewhat standard range. What kind of EV in big blinds are we expecting ourselves to make by flatting

a) QTs
b) K3s
c) 85s
d) J9o

?


Obviously I'm not asking whether we can flat these hands, but I'm just curious about what your best guess about the EV of those flats is in a standard situation. .5BB? 1BB? 2BB? These spots come up a million times every day -- some guy opens 50% or whatever on the button and we are in the BB with a resteal stack, and it would be really neat to compare our options regarding specific hands but I'm not sure if my guesses about those flat EVs are waaay off. So what do you guys think?

The way I've solved/played these spots is to roughly be aware what we can clearly shove (say 0.5BB+ edge) vs even standard opening&raise/call ranges and then when I see numbers even higher than that I go for the exploit and just shove wide on them, but I always skip many of the +EV shoves because of the edge not being so big and variance, and thinking about all those spots is what led into me making this thread. Obviously just generally splitting hands into "hands that play well post"-> flat and "hands that don't play well post but have good blocker value and/or do ok vs calling ranges" -> shove is what I guess we all do subconsciously even if we never run these spots with HRC, and it's a spot that's pretty hard to really mess up, as you can both flat and shove most reasonable hands without making a mistake. But it would be really neat to have an educated guess about some flatting EVs to help with the 3bet-shove calcs, as I suspect there are some hands we usually flat that would actually print h€€€€€€aps better as shoves, and vice versa.

(edit: Let's just ignore board coverage/range balancing issues for now)

Your future is inclear right rn?
Why spamming us w/ this bs?

After 10+ years in poker you finally did some HRC resteal math.
Sick man, so sick... )

Eh

I've been doing HRC work before you created your 2p2 account

I have no idea how any of that could possibly have come across as a weird brag or something? That was like my least hate-inducing post of all time so you sir really must have quite a lot of hate in your soul

Also really unsure which part of that was "spam" or "bs" but feel free to enlighten me...

You shouldn't take it so srsly like a fckn teenager. )
You know I love you...

Not sure what the question.
You said all the right things, still EVdiff depends on his postflop tendencies, quality of your reads, your image and table dynamics.
Thus vs diff opps ev of flat would show diff numbers, some people judt cant fold btn vs your BB what makes your decision easier.

You can explore your DB and check ev of flatting.

Flat these alot but mostly to lower variance and EV depends on post flop edge.

I like thinking about these types of scenarios a lot but I think the way you've posed the question doesn't really make sense.

Preflop play is much more consistent among the general population than it is postflop where strategies and ability diverge rapidly (in general the later the street the worse people play). The EV of flatting versus shoving really depends a lot on how good you are postflop and how you think about and attack ranges with respect to board texture. The mindless button clickers that just x/f anytime they miss are obviously much better off just ripping it preflop to realize their equity while the top thinking players will do much better incorporating a larger calling range to take advantage of the mistakes their opponents will inevitably make on later streets.

Short answer, the better you are postflop the larger your calling range should be (and vice versa).