A Technical Question Regarding Blind Stealing

[skillzilla]

DS are you all working through the stox book before SSNL or are you working on the limit book and mason on the Nl book

[johnnyrocket]

I would tend to think that yes more hands become playable again. If the play is a poor postflop calling station and you connect you can gain back with these hands. Also, if he folds postflop if he doesnt connect then bluffs work well and some more hands may be profitable. If he is a strong postflop player then his looseness probably wont allow you to get off with playing more hands profitably.

[creedofhubris]

Take one extreme case, the jam/fold game. Let's say the big blind has announced that if you go allin, he will call without looking at his cards. Obviously, he is being way too loose. The "optimal" raising system goes out the window, and you rely solely on EV calculations, looking at which hands are +EV vs. any two cards, given the blinds.

Where ordinarily you might raise with suited connectors, now you must throw them away; and whereas, if blinds were deep enough, you might muck A2, now you raise with it. So it's a mix of both; some hands go out the window and some hands are added.

[BrianaB]

I'm assuming both players are of equal ability post flop. ie. best hand pre flop wins. (obviously sometimes a player will fold the best hand post flop, but this will even out because both players are equal post flop).

If BB folds 100% of the time you would obviously raise every single time.
If he calls 100% of the time (never re-raises) you should raise whenever ahead, according to the fundamental theorem. The button should therefore raise 49.9% of all hands. (is this correct?)
If there is no point where you add hands, this implies that you should never, against any opponent, raise less than 50% of the time, regardless of his preflop play (and still assuming equal ability post flop). Is this correct?

[jackaaron]

Is there a way to mathematically express situations where what you lose in fold equity you gain in pot equity, or no?

[starbird]

[ QUOTE ]
Now in order for the SB to switch to raising, the increased equity from playing *postflop* against the widened distribution has to exceed the difference between the equity of playing out X, a marginal hand against the hands that the BB would fold.

This is virtually impossible because of the nemesis restriction on the postflop play. The SB can't make enough value from playing his weakest hand against an expanded postflop distribution to offset the +1 units he was getting from those hands that the BB was folding.


[/ QUOTE ]

To do better than folding out the BB, playing X has to give the button an average pot equity (vs. Z) of over 3 small bets in the 4 bet pot that results after BB calls. This is indeed a lot to ask.

It's a little more complicated than that, because of shania considerations -- adding X to his raising range makes all of SB's other raising hands play better, because his hand becomes a little harder to read. But SB's range is already pretty wide, so he doesn't gain a lot this way. By the same token, X is a fairly lousy hand, and I agree that it won't do well enough against Z, a collection of terrible hands.