Scenario:

Fish limps UTG or MP and a reg iso's to 4x or 5x

You are on the BTN

Which group of hands do you prefer to flat with?

Suited Connectors
Suited Broadways
Suited Ax
Small to Medium PPs


Assume the players in the blinds aren't likely to squeeze.

D: None of the above

You shouldn't have a calling range vs 5x. You barely have one vs 3x.

Okay, say they make it 4x

For the love of god don't play a solver strategy when one of the players involved is a fish and the other guy has a range that's 3 times wider than GTO

Where are you getting the second part from?

MDA and knowledge of the metagame

I was going off a 28% open from CO.

Are iso's closer to BTN range?

Will have to look into this some more

GTO would iso this like 9% of the time, a human would do like 20-25%, but the main thing is there's a fish which will make you more money than anyone else at the table. I'm not saying do or don't have a flatting range, I'm just saying completely ignore what a solver tells you on this spot because it's irrelevant.

The fish makes it impossible to quantify but we can learn from solvers that if we are against a 25% iso range and it is 4x-5x. We almost never want to call.

I also think there is a very clear answer from all those hands and don't think it is close.

Still wouldn't call but if I did. Small-mid pocket pairs would destroy the rest of those hand classes by at least 1BB in EV.

The solver doesn't know that if you call and fish calls behind you automatically print, I think this is a pretty big deal.

Reading EVs off of a solver for this spot is just a misunderstanding of what solver is doing

You can make an argument that calling from the bb is ok and I agree with that, but from the button is a no-no imo. If you get squeezed thats -400 or -500bb/100, no whale is going to offset that loss.

bb/100 aside, going 3-way means a lot of checking and checking fundamentally favors wider ranges. You're going to be in tough spot between overpaying the reg or letting the widerange fish see the runouts for free.

If a majority of our EV comes from fish, it doesn't make much sense to me to have no flatting range whatsoever here. Having position on a reg in a 3bp is a great spot, but playing a multiway srp with a fish while having absolute position seems even better to me

We're operating under the assumption that the blinds are passive

What games are you guys playing where the blinds are relentlessly squeezing versus 5x isos

I call pretty much all Axs, middling pocet pairs and solid suited connections. I like 3b BW more then calling. It also depends a lot how bad fish is and is he limp/folding a lot.

Vs 5x, probably need to call much tighter. Odds are pretty bad, fish will fold more and isto range is stronger.

They still get aces, if both of the blinds cumulatively end up squeezing you 5% of the time, well that's -25bb/100. Even if they don't squeeze, they can still call and you'd be going to a flop 4 or 5 way. The regs' uncapped range and blinds' set mining range means you aren't going to be able to "value bet" the fish when you hit, especially with your weak range. You're going to check back and let the fish hit his second pair outs with his 72o.

based on nothing but intuition i think we call a lot more vs 3x than i think doodoo is suggesting and a lot less vs 5x than i think anero is suggesting.

Yeah this.

Way too many assumptions going on.

First off, what happens if the SB/BB calls? That will decrease your EV again.

And like Boomer said, SB/BB will still squeeze collectively at least 5% of the time. And we just assume the fish always comes along for the 5xBB ISO? That's another huge assumption.

vs a 5x iso you should just be 3bet/folding at 100bb stacks. vs a 3x it becomes closer but still mostly 3bet/folding.

Okay just got information on iso ranges. It's not as wide as 20-25% as Anero said - it is around 18%. That makes flatting again worse.

The iso ranges are very high card heavy. So think way more Axs/suited broadways and less suited connectors.

Another interesting note is that small PP's/weak off suit Aces lose money ISOing here as CO (assuming CO iso's vs UTG/MP limp).

SB/BB calling doesn't effect our EV that much, we have position with hand that has lot of nut equity, so we will realize pretty good in that scenario.

If fish folds that's not the end of the world either, because he provided extra big blind to the pot. Let's say fish always folds then vs 4BB iso we have almost exactly same odds as vs 2.5bb open(without initial limper) and 5BB is same as facing 3BB open raise.

That's a good way of looking at it.

The main problem I have is that we are up against an 18% range + 5x open. That is similar to an UTG range except we are getting worse odds. Now the fish will counteract that somewhat but we also have to deal with the SB/BB and the fish has to call (for it to be profitable).

If the fish doesn't call it becomes a big losing play very quickly. So let's say the fish calls 75% of the time. We automatically have a negative EV play 25% of the time. Now 5% of the time the Blinds squeeze - so now it is 30% of the time we are guaranteed to be losing.

If fish dose not call its still profitable. Its only -EV when sb/bb 3bs.

This is BU calling/3b range vs UTG 2.5BB(same odds like vs 4x iso)

In this case SB and BB should 3b around 14% and this is how BB should play

In practice you will see less 3b and more calling (both factors increase call ev) and fish is huge EV booster. Then all of mixed combos become +ev.

Vs 5x we definitely need to be much tighter, but still fine to have some calls imo.

We aren't losing if fish folds. It's the same secenario as calling an UTG RFI which is +EV with plethora of hands.

And yes, I agree we should be not calling too wide vs a 5x iso, but some hands will be making It in there.

Using a solver here just doesn't work. I know It feels good to have a seemingly unexploitable strategy, but just give that up already and start making money from fish

Saying we cannot call anything because blinds will squeeze sometimes is only partly true. Yes we put money in preflop sometimes without seeing a flop. We also openraise A9s UTG but fold to a 3bet almost always. That doesn't mean the openraise itself is -ev. If you're afraid to be exploited by getting squeezed with a wide range simply trap or call squeeze with a wider range.

For those in the "don't flat anything" camp. What if the situation were a little different?

UTG/MP raises to 4BB, and fish in MP/CO calls

Are you still playing 3b/fold from the BTN?