Re: just shoot me now
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This has to be wrong because consider this: let's say you could make a deal with your opponents, they will never fold preflop and you will never fold preflop on the button. This would be a great deal because you are guaranteed to be in a breakeven situation except for the fact that you have the best position every hand. It's possible you might do better by finding some hands to fold on the button but then they might not live up to their end of the deal (adjusting to you) and then you might find yourself in a worse situation where they play more correctly preflop against you because they realize you are playing tighter than they are so they change that.
Also, what if the SB always folded and the BB always called (this is more realistic than the other example) now you are playing a breakeven situation against the BB except you have position AND a dead SB in the pot.
-DeathDonkey
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That point doesn't really hold water because the bottom whatever % of the hands you'd be raising on the button in that situation would be unprofitable. We're trying to figure out where the borderline should be in a 3 handed game.
If you're playing against two blinds who are playing a strategy that they will never fold preflop to your button raise, then our best hands gain a lot of value. We expect to make a lot more money with our premium hands, which is great. however, with our marginal hands, we definitely lose value, because our opponents will rarely be making FTOP mistakes by calling with trash when we have a hand like Q6s ourselves.
Let me compare two situations. You are in a 6 handed game and it's folded to you on the button, and the SB has a FSBtS of 80, and the big blind has a FBBtS of 40. We win the blinds without a fight in this scenario 32% of the time. It becomes pretty hard to find hands that aren't profitable given those assumptions.
Now imagine your 3 handed game where this time the SB folds 50% and the BB folds just 20%. Now we win the blinds only 10%, and it becomes much harder to turn a profit with our marginal hands. The strategy adjustment we need to make is folding more hands on the button than in the previous example.
Sorry this post is long and redundant and ignores metagame considerations.
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