Back in my LHE crusher days, I would often help other players out with their stats. A common issue that I saw among slightly winning regs was a low BB winrate. The culprit almost always seemed to be that they were simply folding too much in the BB pre-flop. Once they started defending significantly wider, their BB winrate shot up as did their overall winrate.

Fast forward to my current experience in the NL 50 Zone pool. My BB winrate is a craptastic -37.5 EV/100 in my 520k hand database, though it does seem to be improving lately. I have noticed that many players with big winrates can get their BB EV/100 down to -25 EV/100 or even lower.

I have been mostly just using solver ranges to defend in the BB. I usually play the mixed hands, but I almost never play any looser than the solver ranges. But I have noticed that strong RIO coaches such as Ben Sulsky and Tyler Forrester defend significantly wider than the solver ranges and claim to be printing with these extra hands.

Fwiw, the bottom of my BB defense range seems to be performing quite well in my 520k hand database even though lolsamplesize.

I am obviously not going to play as well postflop as Sulsky and Forrester, but could I significantly improve my BB winrate simply by defending significantly more hands than the solver charts recommend?

Looking forward to hearing what you think!

I think you only boost your win rate significantly if you play very good postflop poker, fighting hard in the right situations for pots and outplaying opponents, which is why I’m sure guys like Sulsky and Forresrer are printing with these extra hands. Add some hands and see how it goes. You can always just revert back to your old strategy.

no idea about lhe tbh but i suspect back then people defended a lot less than they could have, nothing like today.


wouldn't care about the ev/bb stats cause it's so unlikely u'll ever get a meaningful sample, tho maybe u wouldn't have created this thread if u were losing with ur marginal hands?


think in theory marginal hands lose and good hands gain if villain is more aggressive than they should and eventho most regs in probably all pools cbet more than a solver would it's possible to steal more than ur share with marginal hands as long as ur able to hand read well and spot/manipulate the inbalances in their ranges.


maybe a good starting point is to think what u would defend against a clone of urself and only go wider (or tighter) with a good reason and to remember to stay meaningful of not vpip'ing just out of spite.


no doubt sauce and gogol get to defend wider than the population but i think the bulk of their ev comes from being better at navigating through the nodes with their "standard" hands and not from vpip'ing those extra hands that end up being like 10% (and have the least ev obv) or whatever of their hands

Higher stakes players defend more because rake is lower

If you have a postflop edge which at 50nl should be realistic if you put the time, you can definitely defend wider, against some players i would defend 72o if they open late positions

-37 is mediocre but not abysmally terrible, -25 is so good that you shouldn't be playing that stake anymore

there u have it, not seen on tv. a bit extreme tho, move up asap?


obviously don't care against someone u get to do something like that against but i sometimes wonder how big of an idiot i'm being when i partially justify bluffing cause i prefer villain not to see my hand

No i think bluffing so the other guy doesnt see your hand is valid, just don't do it when its ****

When you guys are talking about overdefending from the BB, or defending more than gto recommends, are you talking about 3 betting more or flatting more?

If you are flatting more, how will you handle different flops (anticipating that ip villain will cbet). Donk, check-raise and lead turn, check-call down?
--missed flop.
--marginal made hand.
--strong draw.
--top pair-weak kick.

If you are 3 betting more, are you leading for 2 barrels almost no matter what? Or something different?

Giving it a try! If nothing else, it should be fun.

Thank you for the well thought out reply! I wish I knew what LHE solver ranges look like just out of curiosity. They are far less accessible than NL ranges.

I didn't actually notice that I was doing so well with the bottom of my BB defense range until I had already started writing this thread and got curious. Since I am still fairly new to NL, I spent over a year just grinding the "standard" solver ranges in the BB and trying to play them better and better. But I have long been wondering if I am missing out on a lot of EV by sticking to solver ranges. In other positions, I seem to have performed a lot better by deviating from solver ranges... for example, opening much wider BvB since people overuse the "fold now" button and don't 3bet much in my games.

Tyler Forrester and Ben Sulsky really go bonkers in their videos with light BB defense... Sulky more than Forrester. I think I remember seeing Tyler Forrester say in a coaching video that the hero had torched almost half a blind by not defending J3s against a CO open, for example.

They definitely go well beyond solver ranges even taking the higher stakes into account. It's quite fun to watch!

I really want to get to where I am crushing 50 Zone for 7ish EV/100 before I play 200 Zone regularly. That might be a bit nitty as far as bankroll, but I hate losing and do expect a pretty big jump up in skill. I wish 100 Zone existed and ran regularly.

I am definitely going to give "overdefending" my BB a try.

I am talking about calling hands in the BB that are clear folds in solverland. I just plan to play everything pretty "normal". I worry that if I try to force things with the extra hands, I will likely just lose with them.

Are you intending to flat wider than gto-rec versus EP opens or only versus LP steal raises?

Whats an example of going well beyond?

GTO is already very wide calling from the BB versus a 2.5x BN raise. Some recs have us playing almost all suited hands anyway and 3 betting 10-12% and flatting 40-45% for a total defense range well over 50%. To play any wider you'd be playing hands like 92s and T5off. Those hands have almost no value in and of themselves and in fact can get you in trouble with reverse io when you make weak-pair-weak kick.

If you 3 bet a BN raiser then at least you have fold equity versus the BN raiser's very wide opening range and you have the initiative and can lead-c-bet the flop. Rather than flatting more, I actually think it may be better to just add some combos to your 3 betting range, above and beyond whatever GTO recommends. I assume we want to do this linearally, but I would be open to the idea that maybe adding 3 betting hands should be done in a polarized way. I think that would depend on villain type and anticipated response.

Overdefending by over-flatting pre, and then playing 'normal' ABC post-flop, is going to result in you folding an awful lot and then instead of paying 1bb per round, you are paying 2.5 or 3 bb per round and ytou establish a loose-passive table image. An observant opponent who concludes that you call too much and then fold on the flop too much should open his BN range even wider AND increase his open raise size AND c-bet 100%. Check-calling with weak made hands is not a great way to go. Aggressive opponents are going to make it difficult for you to go very far with these bottom pair-bad kicker type of hands.

The reason I ask about this is because I think it is one thing to overdefend against a BN steal raise with a 45% range, because he is playing a lot of trash also, but if the villain is UTG and has an 8-10% range then I don't know why we want to expand the number of worse hands that we are willing to play against him, at a disadvantage, out of position, as a cold-caller. That seems counter to so many basic poker principles.

I see now that you are meaning 6 max. I play FR so I was assigning 8-10% as a FR UTG range. Obviously 6 max UTG is wider than that, but the same thoughts apply, otherwise.

It's likely more about identifying the spots where you can profitably bluff with ~ATC in those spots. There are a lot of nodes in BB where you can just bet out after missed cbet or x/r or x/jam significantly wider than equilibrium (with bluffs) for quite a non-negligible EV gain.

I don't think anyone "prints" by defending wider than GTO. It's something to transform a +14.45 EV 3bet with AA to 17 because you're a strong player in a SRP BBvBU, it's something else to transform a -0.08 EV defense with 92s to a +EV move.

Everything is relative and edges are percentage based.

If you would succeed to get +0.02 EV by defending 92s instead of losing -0.08 you would gain 10bb/100 compared to GTO. That's giga huge. It means your hands KTs, AQo, T9s, etc would all be overperforming by gigantic 20-40bb/100 I would guess and your overall winrate would likely be in the +25/100 area.

I mean I may be wrong obviously, but it doesn't feel right based on my statistical background. I think changing 0EV defenses into +0.03 EV ones is already huge.

I guarantee vs some players you can make +50bb/100 with some shitty -0.08bb hand. 10bb/100 is pretty low for a hard exploit in these spots