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Originally Posted by Thomas Bakker
If we make a four-bet to $240, the button will be getting around 3:1 odds and he will have position. Considering the range we assigned to him, it seems completely unreasonable to assume that he will fold many stronger hands. Considering that he has position, we are not happy when he calls our four-bet with slightly weaker hands either. Thus four-betting that small would simply be giving away money.
If he was three-betting a much wider range, then a small four-bet (still bigger than this 24bb, though) might have some merit, but it is a dangerous habit to get used to; in many cases, you'll just be building a huge pot while out of position while giving your opponent the choice when to play.
Hey man, thanks for replying to my criticisms about your book. My point about the 4 betting was that making a 4 bet to 36 bb's isn't a good strategy because your opponent is going to know you're not bluffing because you would have to expect to fold out 2/3 of his range to show a profit on a bluff. So, he can feel comfortable just folding his hands that are weaker than AQs. I didn't say that 24 bb is optimal sizing, I said somewhere in the range of 24-30 bb's. I think the typically recommended strategies that I've seen are 4betting to 2.4-2.5x the 3bet size with a range of bluffs and value hands. I could see how you might argue that your strategy would involve 4betting small with monster hands and bluffs with blockers, and argue for 4betting allin with hands like AK or AQs; but, that's not what the book talks about.
That being said, even if we did 4 bet to 24 bbs, there would be 49.5 bbs in the pot with 86 bb effective stacks, so the SPR would be 1.7. I fail to see how position is going to even be much of a factor with a SPR this small, unless you are just planning to check fold any missed flop. You only need to have 38.6% equity to jam the flop profitably. I would argue that if your 4 bet gets flatted, you are going to have way more than 38.6% equity preflop, and that means on the average flop you are going to have more than 38.6% equity against your opponents range as well. Position is valuable for two main reasons: seeing what your opponent does before you have to act, and controlling the size of the pot. If you plan to just bet/call almost every flop, the fact that he is in position doesn't even matter. In addition, your opponent needs to be worrying that you have AA, KK, or any other hand that is dominating his; so even if he pairs on the flop or hits an overpair his hand might not be good. That's why it's not that bad to give them 3-1 odds; in addition, your reverse implied odds are low.
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First of all, I have short-stacked for around two months back in 2008 to study short-stacked play. In the situation you mention, where you are effectively short-stacked in the small blind in an unopened pot, the difference between the EV of opening with a raise and open-shoving depends greatly on the stack size. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think the crossover was somewhere between 15 and 20 big blinds. It is true that for high stack sizes, close to 20 big blinds, it would technically be better to open with a raise.
Professional short-stackers can do this, they can spend a lot of time studying and memorizing this situation. However, playing optimally with such an open-raising strategy would be much more complicated than the single chart we use for our open-shoving strategy. For most regular players it is much more convenient to use only this simple strategy and give up a little bit in EV when our opponent has a full 20bb stack. This section is not meant as a guide for short-stackers to play optimally, but for poker players to deal with short-stackers effectively.
I believe that you know how to play a short stack strategy well, and I believe that you know how to play a full stack well also. But, I'm talking about the content of the book. The example in the book is talking explicitly about 20 bb stacks. As I mentioned, you claim that going allin and making a small raise are similar in equity is completely false. If you follow the equilibrium strategy of jamming preflop, you show a EV of losing 2/5 of your small blind. If you make a small raise and call allin with hands that have a Skalansky Chubokov rating of more than 20, you win a quarter of your opponents big blind on average. This is a difference of .9 sbs each time this situation comes up. Obviously that is a huge difference.
As this is a book for advanced players, I was really excited for this section so I could optimize my game because I play against professional short stackers every day. To be able to compete against them effectively, you need to understand the strategy just as well as them for playing 20 bb stacks and nothing less. That's why I was so disappointed by the strategy in this section. It's not even good advice for the .5/1 games I play, much less 5/10 games.