[Surf]

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if our bb doesnt get raised often enough by the button or sb then we can clearly be much tighter when we hold the button ourselves because our hand will get to see the flop (and therefore recognize most of its equity) for free too much from the bb.

if the button or sb steals too much when we are in the big blind, we can make a profitable counteradjustment by defending the bb normally, but raising more often on the button - essentially moving some of our blind defense money into steal money and playing that money from position instead of from out of position.


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Guru,

This line of thinking doesn't make much sense to me. It doesn't cost .5sbs / hand to play each of the 3 positions...if it did, we'd have a different strategy. When we are on the button, our only goal is to maximize the EV of that position(when it costs us nothing to see our cards) - the fact that the blind is 1 hand away or 4 hands away doesn't make a difference.

In your example the player to our left doesn't steal enough when it is our BB - this is great, since as you said we get more free flops and thus our earn in the BB is going to be higher - and may actually be positive in certain lineups since the SB position tends to do the worst 3handed.

Villain here is making a mistake when it is his button - we gain from it when we are in the BB. Our "optimal" play when it is our button is completely irrelevant WRT how he plays when it is his...if the BB when we have the button folds too much, it's open-season and we should be raising a huge range...we will profit separately both when it is our button, and when it is our BB - not by some mystical transfer-of-profit, but because our opponents are making mistakes in both situations.


DD:

It's kind of like playing a maniac. If the guy on our left (6handed) is 3betting us with the top 30-40% of his hands, we don't open-raise stuff like Q9s, right?
That would be foolish - we'd be forced to yield to his postflop aggression since we won't have enough hand to catch him most flops.
Now, if we only raised AT+ and 66+ we'd be able to snap him off nearly every time, he's making massive mistakes by reraising garbage against us, since he doesn't know we have completely blunted his bluff.

The principle is the same, we just moderate it because there is a point of diminishing returns w/ blind steals...any ace is far too strong, especially against players who are 3betting J-hi and T-hi hands from the SB, and against BBs who call a huge range...but the spread of profitable hands will be smaller, though we'll make more with the best portion of our range.

Surf