SPR and 2+2 dogma

[iheartponeez]

So this is something of a vague question, since it doesn't involve hand histories, but I was wondering how the standard 2+2 recommendation of 4BB+1 per limper PFR jives with the stuff about SPR in Professional No-Limit Hold 'Em.

In the book, they recommend things like limp-3betting big PP's, limping with big hands since raising to anything reasonable would put your SPR in a bad spot, and other seemingly counter-intuitive strategies.

Had anyone on here committed to using their methodology? How did it work? Is it somehow compatible with what most people on here recommend?

[corsakh]

Supply and demand I suppose /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Fishies love limping big pairs. Poker players love fishies limping big pairs. Both parties are happy, authors make some moneys.

[Kasane]

I haven't read it yet, but they're talking live and/or full ring and higher stake stuff, aren't they?

I don't see any reason to correct the dogma for micro 6max.

[Ranma4703]

SPR is useful if your opponents are putting you to difficult decisions often. They don't do that at micro stakes, so it isn't very useful.

[Khaos4k]

At micros people like to limp far too much. Far too often a limp-re-raise will end up in you seeing a small pot in a multi-way pot, which is exactly what you don't want with your big PP. It is also an amazingly transparent line to regulars, ie the people that are raising pre-flop.

[Soultwister]

I commented a bit about in in my replies in this thread:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...=1#Post12591994 (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=12591994&an=0&page=1#Pos t12591994)
Though the posted hand itself was one I misplayed quite badly.

Anyways, I've experimented with it for the last two days and the results were quite good, being about 9 buyins up, and getting lots of value in small pots.

It does seem to work, as generally you will often be helped by a nice villain who 3-bets you pot sized to the planned target SPR, and if villains do not oblige, you just have to carefully play a small pot where you will hardly ever commit.

But another reason it may have worked well the last two days is simply because of focusing on the other important concepts in PNLH, like keeping a pot small with 1 pair hands when the pot stayed small preflop relative to stack sizes, and also, trying to get more mediocre holdings to a showdown instead of ending the hands with relentless aggression before the river.

[ICMoney]

I pfr with just about my entire range.

I will never open limp.

If I'm going to raise limpers with 87s I want to do it with QQ too.

[Profish2285]

Yea I NEVER open limp, I also raise with my entire range if I am opening, and if I see anyone open limping they are a fish. Once I realize what part of the range they are open limping with, theyre an easy to read fish.

[KingOtter]

OP brought up the SPR ratio and the fact the book says sometimes you might want to limp-3-bet, but there's a lot more to it in the book as to the reasons why.

Basically the reasons why are pot-control, who you have behind you, and whether or not you want to commit to the hand post-flop.

What the book says about limp-3-betting is that if the table isn't loose enough to call a big enough raise pre-flop to get you to the desired pot-size post-flop, then one way to do it is limp-3-betting. It never said, "You should limp 3-bet". It would have to be a fairly tight, deep-stack table in order to have to do that.

I haven't seen the need to do actions like that with 100BB stacks online, especially since the majority of the time your commitment threshold is determined by the shorter stacks you're playing against, rather than your own 100BB+ stack.

One situation I might do it online is if I have a TAG on my right who limped and a maniac on my left.

[Antinome]

I think the authors of PNL are quite aware of the tension between the desire to create good SPRs and the need to create fold equity, get heads-up/isolate with top pair type hands, and disguise our hands.

Unfortunately, they didn't really explain how to resolve that conflict very well. Maybe in Vol II.

[Chris_ca]

I've been using it with good success.

Adhearing to rigid statements like, never open limp, never min raise is silly. Guys that open raise with their entire playing range are so abusable when you have position on them. I personnaly hate the word 'standard' in poker discussions.

[Profish2285]

Why exactly is someone who raises their entire range abusable? You cannot put them on a hand because they raise everything the same. So when you 3 bet them you are playing a guessing game whether or not your hand is better than theirs. In fact, I feel like people who DONT raise their entire range are much easier to play as depending on their pf action, I could make a much more accurate range for what they are holding.

[KingOtter]

[ QUOTE ]
Why exactly is someone who raises their entire range abusable? You cannot put them on a hand because they raise everything the same. So when you 3 bet them you are playing a guessing game whether or not your hand is better than theirs. In fact, I feel like people who DONT raise their entire range are much easier to play as depending on their pf action, I could make a much more accurate range for what they are holding.

[/ QUOTE ]

How do you react to re-raises? I bet what you end up doing is folding your worse hands, calling with pocket-pair hands and broadway connectors, and 3-betting premium hands.

What happens if you do something different? If you call with your worse hands, you're putting much more money in then you can make with them... bad RIO since you may end up calling a lot more to chase your draws hoping to make the money up. If you 3-bet with your high-pair hands you're going to get committed with a TP hand, which can be bad. If you're calling with your premium hands you're losing equity and increase the risk of multi-way hands post-flop.

Once someone gets an idea of your range, and he thinks he may be ahead of it all he has to do is re-raise you for you to define your hand.

[Profish2285]

I am going to assume you mean 4 betting and not 3 betting, as the original statement implies that he would be 3 betting someone who raises their entire range. When I am 3 bet I do fold my worse hands. I do call with pp's, broadways, and premiums. I almost never 4 bet because it just does not fit into my style. The only hands I really fold to 3 bets are ones that are easily dominated or hands that are hard to play oop. I love to call 3 bets and take flops away from people because it works alot. As far as calling with premium hands and losing equity, I feel that is false. Again, I ALMOST never 4 bet pf. Now, if I feel that I will get paid off if I 4 bet, then of course I will. But, I lose no equity by flat calling 3 bets with premiums when I also flat with sc's and pp's. You tell me how you would get a good idea of my range when I call your 3 bets with a wide range in position, and a slightly tighter one oop.

[Soultwister]

[ QUOTE ]
If you 3-bet with your high-pair hands you're going to get committed with a TP hand

[/ QUOTE ]

You mean if you get 3-bet, or if stacks are deep enough to 4-bet. When you hold a hand like AK/AQ even AA/KK you want to get a certain amount of money in preflop. Since you can't open up to like 10BB UTG, you generally need to get some help. Which is quite easy in 6-max, since any TAG/LAG will be 3-betting a huge range here.

Why is creating a larger preflop pot important when 100BB deep? Imagine you open up to 4BB EP with AK/AK, get called in LP, and the pot on the flop will be 9,5BB. Remaining stacks are 96BB. You bet 6,5BB on A high flop, and get smooth called. Pot at start of turn is 22,5BB. So what can happen now? You bet and get raised, do you want to commit? Continueing hand will generally put you all-in on river, but the pot is still relatively small. You can check and face a pot sized bet. Again, do you want to commit?

SPR takes care of this. You make moves like minraising and get 3-bet by a relatively light 3-better and it will be easier. Assume you get 3-bet to 9BB's and smoothcall, there will be 19,5BB's in the pot when you see the flop, around 1-5th of the remaining stacks. This makes commitment decisions easier since after any bet the pot will be very substantial and you can hardly get bluffed here.

This means the preflop pot will be larger, and it will be easier to commit with top pair hands.

Yes, committing IS the plan here if the preflop plan succeeds.

And light 3-betters are easy to abuse aswell, even out of position. I open min-raise to 2bb, they 3-bet to 9BB. I Open up to 3BB, they make it 12BB. And when deep stacked, I can just open up to standard 4BB's since I'll still get a favorable high SPR when 200+BB's deep (since you don't want to play a 400BB pot OOP anyways and are aiming for a small pot).

I also used to raise my entire range, and my 3-bet range was also very light, meaning that if I played any pocket pair, suited connectors, high ace etc in position of someone with a relatively wide opening range, I'd 3-bet, but SPR based preflop play sure seems to be a viable strategy.

[Profish2285]

I am still missing how light 3 betters are easy to abuse.

[KingOtter]

[ QUOTE ]
I am going to assume you mean 4 betting and not 3 betting, as the original statement implies that he would be 3 betting someone who raises their entire range. When I am 3 bet I do fold my worse hands. I do call with pp's, broadways, and premiums. I almost never 4 bet because it just does not fit into my style. The only hands I really fold to 3 bets are ones that are easily dominated or hands that are hard to play oop. I love to call 3 bets and take flops away from people because it works alot. As far as calling with premium hands and losing equity, I feel that is false. Again, I ALMOST never 4 bet pf. Now, if I feel that I will get paid off if I 4 bet, then of course I will. But, I lose no equity by flat calling 3 bets with premiums when I also flat with sc's and pp's. You tell me how you would get a good idea of my range when I call your 3 bets with a wide range in position, and a slightly tighter one oop.

[/ QUOTE ]

The idea is that if you pot-control pre-flop rather than trying to be unreadable by raising the exact same amount every time, then you can put yourself in better situations post-flop.

If you're calling a 3-bet with sc's and pp's you're probably putting in more than the hand will pay in implied odds.

And if you're rarely 4-betting with the premiums then you have a higher chance of getting multi-way post flop with huge pots, where you're easily going to be pot committed with less equity, since you can't bet enough to fold draws.

Mostly the 'bad' thing about treating all your hands exactly the same is that some hands want small pots, and some hands want big pots. For your suited connectors and even small to mid pairs you want a small pot. Against aggro opponents if you hit you can make the small pot bigger through raises and re-raises, but typically if you're going to be drawing after the hand you want a small pot. You want the stacks to be much larger than the pot to give you the right implied odds to draw.

For top-pair hands you want a larger post-flop pot, so that when you bet the 2/3rds pot, or pot-sized bet it is big enough to make the drawing hands lose their drawing odds so if you get a lot of push-back you know where you are and can fold.

By treating all hands the same you lose the post-flop pot-control, and you're putting a lot of money in pre-flop calling 3-bets and making large HU pots for post-flop where it is hard to get the right odds to call for drawing hands.

Anyway, I'm not a poker expert, and I'm only expressing how I understand the SPR thing since I read the PNL book, and I'm not trying to tell you you're playing wrong. It was a very strange concept to me at the time because I always did 4+1, too, and I'm probably not giving the reasons to do it justice.

[Profish2285]

I understand where you are coming from with this, I really do. My point tho, which I think is missing from the argument, is that people do fold to 3 bets a decent amount also. All those times people fold to 3 bets have to add up enough to make 3-betting +ev. Also, I very rarely run into people who 4 bet, so I am able to dictate the action regardless of their holding. I do not c-bet every flop that I 3 bet, I can decently judge what to do based on the board texture. I also almost only 3 bet when the opening raise comes from late position, as people are willing to do this with much larger ranges. This has two benefits, one that I can take the pot down alot pre flop like I already stated, and two, if I am 3-betting big cards, I am also ahead of their range usually. Its not like someone raises utg and I 3-bet 57s, I think I pick my spots fairly well.

[Matt Flynn]

this stuff will be much more clear once volume 2 comes out.

in a nutshell, you plan hands around a hybrid of stealing, making the best hand and playing a small pot, and making the best hand and playing a big pot. SPR is what you focus on when playing to make a hand and play a big pot is the primary strategy. it works best with short stacks in any game or in loose games with small or medium stacks.

if you play primarily around stealing, SPR matters much less. most tougher online games that aren't shortstacked play around stealing and smaller pots, so SPR techniques don't matter as much.

no matter what your strategy, the SPR can help you play the hand preflop and postflop.

[Profish2285]

Matt, so honestly, you think my that strategy is overall a losing one because I 3 bet such a wide range? Just to clarify btw, I run at about 24/20, so I dont want people to think I just love clicking the bet pot button no matter my cards. Sorry, I do not know what SPR even is, I have not read the book.

[slush420]

Profish the book is a very useful one and truly explains why we are put to tough decisions with top pair and overpair type hands VS certain players. While in these uNL forums you hear a lot of "standard" and "4BB+1 per limper", this is because stealing in uNL is very easy to do because of TAGs that play too weak-tight post-flop and LAGs who have no concept of exercising pot control. However if you plan on moving up to the low-mid limit stakes poker, you have to understand these concepts and why they are important or else you will be either building too big of a pot postflop with top pair hands or building too big of a pot preflop with small PP's and SC's.

[Profish2285]

TBH, I feel the opposite is true slush. I think the higher games stealing with a wider range is even more important than it is in smaller games. Better opponents means you have to play a trickier game.

[matrix]

as I understand it - and so far I've read PNL (/images/graemlins/heart.gif the book Matt/Sunny but I need vol.2) but no had the time to study it yet...

SPR has more to do with manipulating your implied odds with a given hand.

in NL:TAP the authors first floated the idea about preflop raise sizing and that different hands and more importantly different situations require different sized preflop raises. the SPR theory expands on this and explains a little of the why doing this is a good plan.

to say "better oppostion means you have to play trickier" is half right - better opponents who by definition can read YOUR hands better mean you need to devote a little thought to disguising your hands - go read fimbulwinters "when should I move up" post from eons back and he states you're ready for xNL when you hold one hand and are playing another . i.e. "Once your opponents are x good then you need to deceive them frequently to be a winner"

Times change and the games are getting harder - there is a huge amount of good literature for noobs to read on this forum and others and in plenty of poker books from 2p2 and other sources. Cardrunners has had a HUGE impact on the quality of play at SSNL/MSNL levels. "2+2 dogma" as referenced by the OP I think is a little dated in some aspects and one of those is preflop raise sizing.

Good rules of thumb from 2 years ago that were relevant to 200NL are now becoming more relevant to 50NL and lower. When I started playing a preflop 3bet at a micro table was QQ+ AK end of argument - nowadays opponent depending it's a much wider range.

A good rule of thumb is to raise preflop 4BB+1 per limper - but there are better rules of thumb more pertinant to todays games and SPR theory is one way to get there.

I think to dismiss SPR because 2+2 dogma says something else is a little shortsighted - but every table you sit at plays differently and you need to weigh up each individual situation to determine the best plan of action.

I "grew up" always using 4BB+1/limper and now I think that like Matt et al advocate "always betting 2/3 pot is OK - but rarely the best option" so too always opening 4BB+1 is OK but not always best. So much depends on the effective stacksize and this is one thing that I think many uNL players (me included) used not to think about so much beyond "oh I have a pp and x has raised preflop - if I call this his stack is y so my implied odds are OK so I call" - because the games are harder now we should take stacks into account much more often - SPR is a technique we can use to achieve this.

There is a ton of stuff to nail down playing poker - at microstakes we want to build good foundations to move up, most of the monies are won or lost POSTflop. If you are a noob I say stick with 4BB+1 till you have a handle on postflop play as it's waaaaaay more important. Once you got the basics down then start to think about SPR. I find it hard to implement SPR based strategy if I am playing more than 2 tables - YMMV.

I guess what I am saying is "2+2 dogma" isn't "bad" but bear in mind the quality of the villains you are up against - some uNL tables play as badly as they did years ago - some tables are like stepping up to 200NL (I try and leave those tables quickly) if the villains you are playing can and will put you to tough decisions use whatever you can to make life easier for yourself.

[Soultwister]

[ QUOTE ]
Better opponents means you have to play a trickier game.

[/ QUOTE ]

I actually think playing tricky is the opposite to 3-betting relatively light Profish. If you look at the lower limits, the basic strategy seems like this:

There are a few solid TAG's who who 3-bet the decent players constantly in position, gain quite some EV from folding equity, and abuse the hell out of weaker players who fold too much. Also, most regulars at these limits use HUDS and 3-betting the opening villain who has a PFR of 16+ becomes standard. Further, even while the opener also knows the 3-better knows they have a wide opening range, they are still hard pressed because of being OOP.

Being tricky at these games as a solid postflop player would actually be to minraise, or, *gasp*, limp in EP or even LP.

Being tricky is not 3-betting AK on the CO/button, but cold-calling, evaluate the flop, float and stuff like that.

Multitabling 6-max seems to be the easiest at the lowest limits when it resorts around a very aggressive preflop game combined with the value of c-bets, and two-barrels vs the right opponents.

Now imagine instead everyone bought in with 1000BB? You would see a lot more showdowns and more interesting postflop actions that did not mainly resolve around the effectiveness of stealing to be +EV.

When you are 3-betting a player who plays like 32/12/1.2 at the current limits you ARE being tricky to them because the concepts you use are not something they understand well, but when you are 3-betting a 24/18/3, they know bloody well what you are doing.

I do not know if at the microlimits using the SPR concepts much is really that much more profitable (it's been for me in the last few days), but if you can get your hands on Professional No Limit Holdem I can definitely advice you to give it a try, since both the concepts about SPR, commitment and, well, planning your hand (which is what the book is all about) will make postflop play much more interesting and easier.

[Matt Flynn]

[ QUOTE ]
Matt, so honestly, you think my that strategy is overall a losing one because I 3 bet such a wide range? Just to clarify btw, I run at about 24/20, so I dont want people to think I just love clicking the bet pot button no matter my cards. Sorry, I do not know what SPR even is, I have not read the book.

[/ QUOTE ]


you might win doing that. at the same time, if you three-bet a wide range any player can hurt you by four-betting more often.