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mersenneary's picture
Leak Plugging: Do you call too tight OOP?

One thing we've talked a lot about this month is flatting ranges OOP, and how many of you I believe don't play enough hands. First hand in a super turbo, readless, I think it's generally best to play about 55-60% of hands against a minraise, something like this: You can tinker with this and argue for a few more calls and/or a few more folds. However, what I'm mostly concerned about is the general sense of the borderline. In a lot of people's threads, I see them saying that they'd fold Q7o to a minraise, or K5o, or 74s, or Q4s, or J7o, or 95s. I think these are all significant mistakes.However, there's no need to make this a "it's better to call!"/"No, it's better to fold!" back and forth argument with no substance. Luckily, I think it's better to call, and I have done so over a fairly big sample of hands. These are my results 20-25bb deep, calling a raise with the hands listed in the picture:Negative $24,000 in equity! Yikes! Remember, though, that we're always comparing against the next best option - if we don't play these hands, that means we're folding them. The expectation from folding is to be -1bb from the start of the hand, every time this happens. That's the same thing as -100bb per 100 hands. And as we can see from the stats, by expectation from calling is far, far better than this, at around -59bb per 100 hands. Thus, in general, folding one of these hands is about 0.41bb worse than calling, and that's over 2079 hands. If I had folded all of them, I'd be about 850 big blinds poorer! That's about 38 buy-ins in equity, thrown away because of not wanting to play pots out of position with marginal holdings.Holding nothing back (as usual), I include all of my stats. I show EV-adjusted numbers, so you know it's not influenced by all-in luck. More importantly, though, I show other stats that look rather tame. There is a myth that if you play thse sorts of hands, you have to be Mr. All-Star post/flop, check/raise bluffing a ton and making your opponent fold the best hand. In reality, my flop play was rather pedestrian: Check/folding over half the time with a fairly low check/raise percentage, only winning the pot postflop around 31% of the time. That means most of the time we're calling and losing postflop. It sure can really feel like we're just bleeding chips, and should stick to stronger holdings preflop.The problem is, the math on that doesn't really add up. It's OK that we're losing these pots a lot. It's OK that we only go to showdown a little over a quarter of the time, and win the pot just a little over half the time there. Finding good spots to bluff turn when the flop is checked through and other reasonable contest situations, along with the equity from when we hit, is enough with these hands.That's not to say you shouldn't check/raise bluff or put your opponents in tough situations - I think you can improve on my expectation by playing better postflop than my tame 5-tabling auto-pilot that likely characterizes a lot of these hands. My point is that the belief that you need to be an all-star postflop to play 60% of hands is misguided.This isn't just an endgame thing. First hand in a turbo or a reg speed against a minraise, you shouldn't be playing less than 50% of hands. Here are my numbers with this same range, this time expanded for 20-48bb deep:It's more of the same, and actually even more pronounced that we should be playing these hands. Again, the story isn't phenomenal postflop play - my stats look thoroughly boring and like I should be getting run over. Again, though , while I am down -$62,000 in equity from these situations, I'd be down almost another $60,000 by NOT playing these hands. In summary, if it feels like you're bleeding money when you call wider OOP, maybe you are - but bleeding money by folding too much is generally a hell of a lot worse.One final note: Throughout, I've said that we should be playing these hands - that doesn't necessarily mean we should be simply calling them (although that's going to be our most frequent play). Many of these hands, and the hands just a little bit worse than them, are really good 3bet bluff hands, particularly 84s, J5s, 96o, etc. My expectation from 3betting this range is actually much better than calling, but my sample size is a bit too small to make too much of it.

mersenneary's picture
I encourage all of you to

I encourage all of you to start playing more hands and get closer to 60% of hands OOP. When you get into tricky postflop spots, post them, and let's talk about them. It will help you get more comfortable playing these hands.By the way, we always have to take into account our opponent's tendencies - if he's only raising the button 35%, then a hand like K5o needs to hit the muck. Our strategy is still adaptive based on frequencies, but I think this is a much better starting point.

mersenneary's picture
It's worth noting, that

It's worth noting, that Serkules, by results the best superturbo player in the world with an insane ROI over an insane sample, is characterized by playing a much higher % of hands from the big blind than most regs.Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the kid runs very good. But he's also doing a lot right, too.

pagergo's picture
Great article, many thanks

Great article, many thanks for it!!Two questions:- The results you posted are filtered to 20-25 BB deep situations, or smaller eff. stack sizes are included in the stats, too?- You filtered the results to the situation when we are faced to a minraise, or villian's limp is included, too?Thanks again!

mersenneary's picture
Right - 20-25bb deep

Right - 20-25bb deep situations was the first one, only when we are facing a raise and call preflop.

mersenneary's picture
Technical chat with

Technical chat with ChiRy:ChicagoRy:    and it's highly unlikely you just run super well with these samples right?    since we see such a gap versus simply folding these hands    like if it were -90bb/100 versus -100bb/100 it would be significantly differentMers:3:53 pm    yeah so there are definitely some details to get into    for example, some of the better hands in that range will have better than 60, and some of the worse hands will have worse than 603:54 pm    I also call when it is more correct to do so, obv, which skews the difference between readless and historical expectation    I think it's highly unlikely that it's do to super run-good, though, given that I'm using EV-adjusted numbers and when I raise the sample to include 20-48bb play, the effect just gets more pronounced    numbers for individual hands are not that outlandishAlso, one more note: I use 48bb instead of 50bb just to make sure I'm not getting many "first hand chops" in 4-mans in there, where I call pre and lead t777 on the flop against a buddy :)

RyPac13's picture
Some great value here. Very

Some great value here.Very well written high quality content.

Champaz's picture
Good shit.

So how much does this calling range change vs 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% open frequencys, and how does it change when blinds get to 15-20bb and 12-16bb?But if your results are so good flatting with all those marginal hands why stop there? As Rypac said it's -58bb/100 not -90bb/100 isn't it possible that even more hands than you suggest are good to flatt? Especially konsidering Serkules results.Another thing, do you ever 3b with stuff like 95s, 96o, Q3s readless?

magnanimity's picture
"By the way, we always have

"By the way, we always have to take into account our opponent's tendencies - if he's only raising the button 35%, then a hand like K5o needs to hit the muck. Our strategy is still adaptive based on frequencies, but I think this is a much better starting point." I have been playing slightly tighter then this.  What about just a range vs a standard villian, someone who opens 50% and isn't a maniac post, is this a person we should be aiming to play 60% of our hands against?  I figure that vs a 50% range we should be dropping the bottom of the range you describe.  So something like K5+,K2s+,Q6+,Q2s+,J7+,J5s+,T7,T6s+,97,96s+,85s+,75s+,65s,54s  and maybe go slightly wider if they are super passive, or slightly tighter if they seem to barrel.  I guess my question would be should I really be calling 96o vs someone who opens 50%?  My gut says no, but are you telling me yes?  Since your results would be vs the standard opponent I'm assuming that my gut might be wrong, but you said yourself that you are calling these hands when your reads merit it, so vs that 50% raiser are you throwing away 96o, J6o?

mersenneary's picture
"So how much does this

"So how much does this calling range change vs 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% open frequencys, and how does it change when blinds get to 15-20bb and 12-16bb?"Some complicated things here.Some hands, like 85s, while opening range matters, it's not THAT big of a deal. However, with K4o, the expectation is extremely sensitive to differences in opening range.12-20bb it gets more complicated as well due to changing opening ranges, playability at shorter stack sizes, and additional openshove options for the SB."But if your results are so good flatting with all those marginal hands why stop there? As Rypac said it's -58bb/100 not -90bb/100 isn't it possible that even more hands than you suggest are good to flatt?"A couple things here. One is that you can argue the results for the best hands in this range, like K4s, 86s, Q7o, are bringing up the average, and the more mediocre hands (84s, 96o, Q5o) are significantly worse than -58bb/100. Secondly, I just don't have the sample flatting too much wider than this, and have only recently started expanding my VPIP as much as I have, so it's hard to have evidence for the next conclusion.

mersenneary's picture
"I have been playing slightly

"I have been playing slightly tighter then this.  What about just a range vs a standard villian, someone who opens 50% and isn't a maniac post, is this a person we should be aiming to play 60% of our hands against?"I think 50% is around the average of what villains tend to be minraising, maybe a little closer to 60%. Your range looks very reasonable, again we can quibble about a few hands here or there on the end.

mersenneary's picture
"I guess my question would be

"I guess my question would be should I really be calling 96o vs someone who opens 50%?  My gut says no, but are you telling me yes?  Since your results would be vs the standard opponent I'm assuming that my gut might be wrong, but you said yourself that you are calling these hands when your reads merit it, so vs that 50% raiser are you throwing away 96o, J6o?"The initial range is around what I play completely readless. I'd probably play 96o vs a 50%er as well.