dif between Calling ranges and over the top push w/ large blinds NLTRN

[recondite7]

Hypothetical situation.

Situation #1. Blinds 100/200 each player has 3000 chips. Button only has the option of pushing or folding and chooses to push 40% of hands. A profitable calling range would be = to about 22% of hands.

Situation #2 The restriction on pushing or folding no longer exists and the button raises 3x the BB. For the sake of this situation assume that the player in the BB is only allowed to push over the top all in or fold. Is this over the top range smaller, equal to, or wider than the original calling range?

Argument for smaller range: More likely to bet this amount with a stronger hand than pushing range AND will not fold often.

Argument for equal: This is often essentially a push and the times the button folds are negated by the times the button is choosing to play a monster this way instead of pushing it.

Argument for wider: Fold equity exists in this situation and against many poor players that do not understand short stack heads up poker a wider range of hands is profitable to play here.

Thoughts?

[flo]

1. a pushing range is always wider than a calling range (if it's ai)
2. you have a specific read if betting a small amount instead of pushing is a sign of a strong hand
3. the restriction to be not able to call makes your situation kind of irrelevant
4. eff. 15BBs is not endgame-shortstack poker
5. you can do exact calculations for stuff like that using stove and icm

[recondite7]

[ QUOTE ]
1. a pushing range is always wider than a calling range (if it's ai)
2. you have a specific read if betting a small amount instead of pushing is a sign of a strong hand
3. the restriction to be not able to call makes your situation kind of irrelevant
4. eff. 15BBs is not endgame-shortstack poker
5. you can do exact calculations for stuff like that using stove and icm

[/ QUOTE ]

1. Not if you think a standard bet represents a different range than a push.
2. ok perhaps, but against an unknown low limit player does this often occur?
3. Disagree. Flat calling is rarely correct here so this model becomes relevant.
4. yes but when responding to a button raise it now becomes all in or fold poker. Even if you flat call your decision to get your chips in preflop or not usually occurs preflop when you are deciding how to respond to a button raise.
5. Yeah I know that's what I'm basing a lot of this discussion on.

I do not think this is too general of a question when 15bb or smaller sized stacks are involved. Although I think that the pushing range over the top is going to be wider I don't think the gap is very large at all against the majority of opponents. Is this oversimplifying the complex game that is HU poker?

[LordMushroom2]

I would say the BB´s pushing range is much wider unless there are specific reads. The reason for this is that the stacks are so big that SB needs a better hand to open-push than to make a standard raise.

Even if SB has the same hand-range for open-pushing and standard raising, the BB´s hand-range is wider when facing a standard raise as he has fold equity.

Let´s take the worst hand the BB can profitably call an open-push with. If the BB has that hand when facing a standard raise, the worst case scenario for pushing is that the SB calls with 100% of the hands he raised with, and it has already been established that the BB´s hand is good enough to make even such a worst case scenario marginally +EV since it could profitable call an open-push. Add that the SB might fold a few hands, and the BB can push a few more hands.

[creedofhubris]

Assuming that button continues to raise 40% of his hands, BB has to be tighter, because button can fold his hands that fare poorly vs. the top 22%.

[bluffbetter]

Situation 2) This range is wider because now you have some fold equity. But the thing is, if he's going to push 3k over a BB of 200 with a 40% range, then he may well call a push quite wide here. But for the average player in a low buy-in game, you would have alot of fold equity.

[APXG]

You are missing the key element - with what % of the top 40 is player 1 calling the shove? Given that for most player 1s this changes based on their perception of player 2, even so dynamically that it changes from hand to hand, the answer will always be different. A game theorist would say "assume player 1 calls 'perfectly'", but such an assumption is flawed and only useful when playing against super-rational computers, whose level of "thinking" can be predicted well.

A question would focus 90% of the discussion on dynamics - analyzing the relationship of each prior hand to the current one, with a discounted weight towards hands as they get less current, and more weight if the hand was "memorable" - i.e. bluff, suckout, string of 4 raises in a row, etc, some aspect that would make the hand stand out. Put all of this information together, take the range you would expect your opponent to use in a vacuum, and adjust it according to these dynamics. Even if you knew the unadjusted, vacuum range, it would do little good given that 90% of players deviate from it depending on their "feel", which is really just a construction of the information described above.

[soop]

There are two separate questions here.

1) Is a 3x raise stronger than a push at 15bb stacks?

For most people this is true (and not optimal), but it is very player/history dependent.

2) Given the SB raises the same 40% range 3x instead of pushing, should you push more than you would have called?

I feel like this has to be true b/c of fold equity, but I can't quite figure out what is wrong with creedofhubris's argument.

[creedofhubris]

[ QUOTE ]
There are two separate questions here.

1) Is a 3x raise stronger than a push at 15bb stacks?

For most people this is true (and not optimal), but it is very player/history dependent.

2) Given the SB raises the same 40% range 3x instead of pushing, should you push more than you would have called?

I feel like this has to be true b/c of fold equity, but I can't quite figure out what is wrong with creedofhubris's argument.

[/ QUOTE ]

At 15 BBs, button loses more money calling with certain hands than he does by just relinquishing the pot. But there's a lot of dead money in the pot, so he's only folding a few of his hands, not enough for significant fold equity.

At ~12 BBs, I think, the button calls 100% of the time because of pot odds, so the reraise range is exactly the same.

If you're interested in this sort of thing you should pick up a copy of The Mathematics of Poker.

[creedofhubris]

[ QUOTE ]

2) Given the SB raises the same 40% range 3x instead of pushing, should you push more than you would have called?

I feel like this has to be true b/c of fold equity, but I can't quite figure out what is wrong with creedofhubris's argument.

[/ QUOTE ]

This becomes more obvious at higher BBs.

Let's say you have 50 BBs. Perfect strategy, if all you can do is push or fold, is for the button to push about 25% of his hands, and for BB to call with hands as weak as AT and 66.

Now, let's say button is allowed to raise to 3 BBs, and he raises the same 25% of hands.

What do you think will happen if BB reraises allin with 66 and AT? Button will fold most of his hands, but the hands that remain will crush 66 and AT, and they are not going to make money in this scenario, because they will lose more from being called than they will make from the folds.