Poker Thought/Theory Post

While I'm on a poker streak, I decided that I'm going to write a bit about what I think I need to be doing in order to really step up my game for the next level. I'm getting pretty good at hand reading now, and I'm getting a much better feel of how people's perception of me changes, and I've been getting a lot better in realizing which opponents will stack off against me light with say TPGK, and which opponents only reraise me with at least two pairs or sets.

My next step though, which I have to admit that I'm very bad at right now, is figuring out my equity against my opponents CALLING range. I actually read a 2+2 questionnaire by SBrugby, and he talks about how he got immensely better when he figured this out.

So when me and my opponents tangle and he reraises me in a pot, I think about what he has. I think about what he thinks I have, and whether or not I think I can bluff him out of the pot. However, I need to start figuring out his range such that I can accurately put him on a range of hands, and not only figure out what my equity is against his range at that moment, but also what my equity is against his range if he CALLS a push from me. This is the reason why people semi-bluff very aggressively. It's the same reasoning as the case above, except for the fact that you don't really need to put your opponent on a range of hands. Against any range if you push a flush draw, because you can fold your opponent out a lot of the time, against your equity against his calling range is great. This is why fold equity is so great. Well, now I need to start doing this but not only with flush draws, but with over cards and even gutshots I think.

There are certain opponents where I know even though I have the worse hand, if I push, it's going to make it so hard for him to call. So with the fold equity, even if he does call, you're in great shape. One scenario that I've been thinking about, is lets say you're a little about 120bb deep against an opponent. And you're in the cutoff. You raise with AK or AQ, and you get three betted by a good aggressive player, you decide to call. Lets say the flop comes 492r. He fires a bet here. My play right now, in a 3bet pot most of the time is to usually flat call, to float hime, and maybe he's on an AQ type hand, or just fold it. But, I think I really need to start looking into shoving in this spot.

Lets just look at how much money is in the pot first of all. In a standard game 6max game, I will raise about 3.5bb, and the three bet is usually about, 12-13 bb. So with my call, the pot is about 26-28bb. The flop is 482r. He bets about 18-20bb as his continuation bet. So there's now about 44bb in the pot. Now lets look at this scenario from my opponents viewpoint if I shove over his cbet. I have a stack of about 110bb. So there's 150bbs in the pot, and he needs just under 90bbs to make this call. Now, he's getting over 2:1 to make this call, and he needs to be good over 60% of the times or so for this to be a good call.

Well, a large part of his range may be AQ, AJ, KQ, KJ type hands. So we have those hands crushed. And he's certainly almost never going to call a shove with those hands unless I have a maniacal image. Now lets look at all his PP hands under KK, and assuming he doesn't hit a set, which is most of the time. Against this range, I'm under a 3:1 dog. And most of the time he won't be able to make this call with 66,77,88, 55. And then a call with 10 10 and JJ if also quite hard to make here. So in Pokertracker, I gave him a calling range of TT+,88,66,44,22,T9s,87s. This is quite reasonable here I think I even put in a couple weak one pair type hands to take into account instances where he'll stack off light. Against this range I have 22% equity. Given that I have an AK, makes it less likely that he has some of those hands, like KK, and AA. But it's still included in the calculation. I think pokerstove includes all the Aces and Kings in their calculation of that equity. Regardless, lets say that he 3bets a cut off raiser with about 11% of his range. Pokerstove gives this to be 77+,A9s+,KTs+,QTs+,ATo+,KQo, which actually seems quite reasonable. You take out a couple q10 hands and K10s hands, and put in more 98s type hands, and I'd a typical loose aggressive good regular probably does 3bet a cut off raiser with a lot of those hands. Well given that the hands that he calls a shove with represents about 4.8% of his range, and that he 3bets about 12% of his range, we will fold him out roughly 60%. So for arguments sake, lets make this more conservative. Lets say he folds about half the times. And he calls about half the time. Lets calculate our equity. Equity = .5(46bb)+.5*(-110*.78+90*.22) = .5 (46bb)+ .5(-66) = -10bb. So with 120bbs stack, and where we fold out our opponents only 50% of the time, this is a losing play.

Now lets look at it when we have 100bbs. Notice that our main pot still stays the same. Just that now, we're risking less chips to win the chips in the middle.
Equite = .4(46bb) + .6*(-87*.78 + 67*.22) =.5(46bb) + .5(-53.12) = -3.5. So at 100bb, this play seems to be almost break even. Given that we balance this play with AA, KK, QQ, JJ and hands like that, I think in reality one might fold out more than 50% of his hands. If we used our analysis where he folded out 60% of his hands, this play actually becomes a slight +EV move at 100bbs, given our assumptions. Plus people might give me much much more action with my other big hands.

In real life though people play a lot more different. I'm going to have to think about this more and specifically what type of players I can target with this. Obviously it's going to have to be a regular, and one who repops enough from the blinds. He's also got to be the guy that cbets quite liberally. This cbet actually traps a lot of money in the pot. I never realized that. Our losing numbers is also quite off because pokerstove includes AA and KK for the calculation.

Though there actually might be a lot of merit to somebody who you know 3bets semitight from the blinds. A person who 3bets about 5% of his hands, has a range of about 88+, AJs+, AQo+, I think. Pokerstove put our included KQs, but not AQo for some reason. Lets change up the flop a little bit. Lets say it's Q28o. Then, his calling range actually significantly tightens. He can't really call with most of his pocket pairs, and even with a tight calling range of JJ+,AQs+,AKo,KQo we still have 27% equity. This quite confusing to me actually. I guess it's counting a lot of AKo and JJ type hands. But against that range, this is only 2.9% of hands. So, if a person is 3betting about 8% of his hands, then he's folding over 64% of his hands. I think I'm actually going to have to put a lot more thought into this. But against certain opponents, I can begin to see how this starts to get quite profitable.

Plus, here, I'm only talking about one instance of where we look at our equity against our perceived calling range.

I don't know who reads this, but good luck at the tables.