General Strategy Question- Cold Calling a PreFlop Raise

[bogey1]

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The problem is that you don't KNOW you are flipping, and when you have 88-TT that means you get called sometimes by a lower pocket pair.

Also, when you only have, say, 15xBB left, and you call 3xBB off preflop and then fold, you're down to 12xBB. Now if you double up, you're only at 24xBB, as where if you had pushed with 15xBB and gotten called, you'd have been at 30xBB on the double. That's a pretty big difference.

If you know your opponent's exact hand, sure, you can play better. But against a reasonable opening range and calling range, usually pushing mid-high pairs I think is way better.


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FWIW, with 15BB I'm usually reshoving anyway as the pot has ~5BB in it at that point.

You can't know their cards, but if you reshove preflop what are we gaining fold equity against that we want to have fold? We don't want lower pairs folding. We won't get big pairs or big broadways (AJ-AK) to fold. So who are we folding out that's a win for us? KJ/QJ/JT? Those would be nice, but it's hardly the largest part of his range.

The only hands he's making a mistake calling with are small pairs. Can we get more mistakes from him post flop?

Against big pairs, not unless we hit trips.
Against small pairs, maybe, depends on how innocuous the flop is, he may shove with 55 on a 249 board.
Against overcards. Yes, here we can gain an advantage on the flop. We were 50/50 preflop, but we're either 75/25 or 10/90. There's a possibility to make a high equity decision.

Are we making more mistakes by floating? Against big pairs, no and we might even get away on a bad flop. Against small pairs, yes, he could flop trips on an innocous flop or push us off our hand on a KQ7 type flop. Against overcards? Probably not as seeing the flop gives us a better idea of our equity.

I'm somewhat playing devil's advocate just to explore things. You regularly hear "AK wants to see all 5 cards". Well, then pairs don't necessarily want to see all 5 cards, so maybe there's something to be said for floating?

Shoving certainly makes the most sense the smaller your stack. In that 15-20BB range (particularly 17-20) though, I'm not as sure.

[seke2]

You might get AJ to fold, maybe AT, A9. KQ sometimes. KJ, KT, QT, QJ -- all hands that crappy players may raise and would fold to a push.

I doubt you can get many more mistakes postflop given your remaining stacksize. You basically only have 1 move left post-flop, and that is all-in. The good part is that your opponent more or less should know that, and as where preflop you had multiple options...and you could use that to your advantage because maybe he's more likely to call because he KNOWS you have to move in regardless of what your hand is, but it limits your ability to creative and basically restricts you to making 1 decision about the flop texture and act accordingly.

I think we're probably quibbling over some very small differences here anyway, since we both basically agree than around 15-17xBB pushing is better, and as you get closer to 20-25xBB then maybe not pushing is better.

[seke2]

what the hell, lets do some maths. this is gonna get weird and require a lot of guestimation, but i can try, right?

hypothetical situation. 50/100 blinds, opponent is a random, say they open to 300 with 6000 total from MP3, Hero is BB with 2000 and has 99.

We'll say MP3 is opening 22+,A7s+,KTs+,QJs,A7o+,KTo+,QJo, roughly the top 20% of hands

If Hero pushes...
Let's say MP3 calls with 77+,AJs+,AJo+, which is about 1/3 of his raising range. Reasonable? Against that range, Hero has 46% equity.

So when Hero pushes, .67 of the time, Hero's new stack is 2350
.33 * .54 of the time, Hero's new stack is 0
.33 * .46 of the time, Hero's new stack is 4050
EV of stack after making this play = 1574.5 + 614.8 = 2189.28


Now we'll try and approximate the other scenario, calling.

Hero calls 300 preflop.

40% of the time, flop will be "unfavorable" (at least 1 Q-or higher overcard), and Hero will check/fold
40% of the time, flop will be "favorable" (all undercards or only 1 T or J) and Hero will be willing to go broke
12% of the time, Hero flops a set
8% of the time, flop is "mixed" and Hero is unsure.

40% of the time, Hero's new stack is 1700 (check/fold unfavorable flop)
40% of the time, Hero gets the rest of his chips in on open-pushing the flop. We'll say 50% of these times, opponent folds and Hero's new stack is 2350. 25% of the time, Hero gets called and wins, moving to 4050. 25% of the time, Hero is called and loses, falling to 0.

12% of the time, Hero flops a set. 40% of those times, Hero does not get further action and ends up with 2350. 45% of those times, Hero wins and moves to 4050, 5% of those times Hero loses and ends up with 0.

8% of the time Hero is unsure, and we'll say 50% Hero doubles, 50% Hero busts.

Put all that together...

(.4 * 1700) + ((.4 * ((.5 * 2350) + (.25 * 4050) + (.25 * 0))) + (.12 * ((.4 * 2350) + (.45 * 4050) * (.05 * 0))) + (.08 * ((.5 * 4050) + (.5 * 0)) =

680 + (.4 * 2187.5) + (.12 * 2762.5) + (.08 * 2025) =
680 + 875 + 331.5 + 162 = 2048.5

EV of the call/play postflop line approximate at 2048.5

Obviously there are a TON of assumptions for the line where we play poker, but with my guesstimates, I believe that pushing preflop is a little better. I think both lines are +EV plays, but I stand by my initial statement about pushing.

[bogey1]

Wow, nice work. The assumptions all look reasonable and starting with 20BB pretty safely ensures that < 20BB would be as good or better when shoving up front.

Thanks for cranking through the numbers!