hi,

HU sb raises vs bb call. pot is 60.

board is A63

sb bets 70% of range for 25% pot; 15 into 60.



according to the minimum defence frequency formula, the bb should be defending 1/1+0.25 = 80% of hands, yet the piosolver folds 27% of hands.

why does it fold 7% more than the MDF?



thanks

telling us what this magical "minimum defence formula" is would help. stopping worrying about being exploited when you are a beginner and concentrating on exploiting others would also help.

He did tell us.

It's pot size / (pot size + bet size) which for his example is 1 / (1 + 0.25) as stated by him.

To answer the question: Because we assume villain bets 70% of his range. Minimum defense frequency is used to determine what we have to do to prevent villain from betting any two profitably. That's not the case if we know that he checks 30% of his range.

For you A63 example, imagine we assume villain bets the flop with AA and not a single other hand. If we know that, we obviously don't have to defend 80% against a 25% pot bet.

Just wow at that, it seems terrible

70,000 posts, 16 years on this forum, and you've never heard of MDF? That's actually impressive.

MDF asks the question, how wide do I need to defend to stop them from profitably bluffing any two? But sometimes, gaining 1%EV from a bluff just isn't worth it if they could have checked back with like 30%EV.

Fundamentally, It calls hands that are profitable to call with, simple as that. MDF is a rough guideline, based on villain having 0-equity bluffs that have no value when checked back.

how do you play from 2005 and you dont know what MDF is

MDF is kind of a scam and isn't very useful in most spots, except maybe some select river spots. There are plenty of spots in poker where a bettor is allowed to have autoprofit bets with atc and our range is just too weak to do anything about it.

Pio isn't concerned with denying profitable bluffs necessarily, but maximizing the ev of our entire range vs villain's entire range.

Kind of impressive that from a meta standpoint over the past, say, 5 years or so, MDF has both come into and fallen out of vogue and sixfour despite near daily posting has never even heard of the concept lol. Maybe shows what happens when you plug your fingers into your ears every time someone starts using scary 3 letter acronyms.

I think 10 years ago when a lot of regulars still had fold to 3bet or fold to cbet numbers in the 70%+ range and got exploited by 100% cbet, MDF held a lot of value. I agree that’s not the case anymore today.

But it’s still one of those very easy to do calculations that help people gain a better understanding of the basics. Back in the day I also used MDF a lot to show that something might be wrong with our range if we find ourselves in a spot where we it’s very hard to find enough hands to defend with. In today’s world that would be extremely oversimplified.

I wouldn't define it a scam lol, just heavily misapplied.

MDF does exactly what it's supposed to do: prevent villain from profiting by betting/raising 0 equity hands. The problem is that bluffs often should be allowed to be profitable when they can profitably take another action, such as checking back. If bluffs were 0 EV then they would just always check instead of bluff them as long as there is any chance of a +EV outcome through checking.

Also, remember that it's the "minimum" defense frequency. It doesn't say you need to defend exactly that frequency, but that you need to defend at least at that frequency.

For an example of where it works, in theory MDF should usually apply when you have already bet and are facing a raise. The reason being that villain has many bluffing candidates which can't continue profitably as a call, so if you don't meet MDF, he will never fold and your own bluffs won't be profitable. Even in that scenario I would say it's a pretty poor approach to trying to make money in practice. You should just think about which hands are going to be profitable to continue with against villain's range. It's a very common exploit to over-fold against players who are overly passive.