this month's heads up magazin article NLCASH

[daveT]

Opinions?

Too much math for me.

I think that the main premise is that I should always call a pot-sized 3-bet when I raise out of the SB.

I do, in fact, make these folds (surprised?): am I wrong?

Or is this discounting HUSNGs? Is cash really this different?

Please post thoughts and reviews here.

[frede89]

Link to article?

[daveT]

http://twoplustwo.com/magazine/issue35/bush1107.html

[HokieGreg]

Don't have time to read it right now, but there are definitely some differences between HUcash and HUsngs.

Just briefly looking at this article he is saying that minraising is a mistake preflop out of the sb. This is not true in husng's, but would definitely be a mistake in most HUcash situations.

There are numerous situations that minraising preflop from the sb is fine in husng's given certain stack sizes and blind levels. I almost always minraise in the 3rd blind (25/50) level until me or opponent has 12 bb or less. You are still accomplishing your goal of making opponent play raised pots oop, while leaving yourself some room to work postflop. Sure, you are giving him good odds to see the flop, but your cbet will take it down often enough on the flop to be profitable. Most people play horrible oop.

[MasterLJ]

Meh,

It reminds a lot of "Theorycrafting" back in the days of World of Warcraft. People would spend endless days calculating the best gear for their characters, only to see that their calculations didn't work the way they thought they would in practice.

One thing that I did find eerie is that 59% raise from SB is the magic number and I'm surprisingly close at 57.55%.

I don't really believe that the dynamics of HU make it so the BB should be folding LESS than 5/8ths of their hands (as suggested by the article). Being OOP is such a huge huge huge disadvantage, that despite the proper EV math, you simply aren't going to be able to play profitably by playing that much OOP.

The single biggest factor in all of poker are your opponent's tendencies. I'd say this is problem the biggest factor in HU. There's some people I limp nearly ever button (and I believe it's correct) and others that I only 3bet with premium hands (if they are calling nearly all of your 3bets, why play so much OOP when you can wait for large hands?).

[creedofhubris]

[ QUOTE ]

I don't really believe that the dynamics of HU make it so the BB should be folding LESS than 5/8ths of their hands (as suggested by the article). Being OOP is such a huge huge huge disadvantage, that despite the proper EV math, you simply aren't going to be able to play profitably by playing that much OOP.


[/ QUOTE ]

While in general I agree with this sentiment, I should point out that if your opponent is folding more than 5/8 of the time, then, mathematically, you are better off raising 100% of the time than you are folding your small blind.

Even if you turbomuck every time you get called preflop, you end up doing better than folding.

I do make the point in the article that you're forced to defend with what look like -EV hands to get to 3/8 defense. As a result I think a "correct in theory" game with two strong players would feature 100% button raises, a lot of big blind folds, and a substantial amount of preflop 3-betting.

However, most strong players seem to enter into a "gentleman's agreement" with their opponents to muck a lot of hands preflop from the button, so that this situation rarely comes up.

[creedofhubris]

[ QUOTE ]
Opinions?

Too much math for me.

I think that the main premise is that I should always call a pot-sized 3-bet when I raise out of the SB.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, you only need to call more than 1/3 of the time, and of course if your opponent is only reraising top hands then you can fold to his 3bets almost every time and still do fine. I think vs. a very frequent reraiser, you'd want to call ~half the time or so.

The real point of that part of the discussion was that hammering someone with preflop reraises, if they fold frequently, can be a powerful move.

[Landonfan]

[ QUOTE ]
Or is this discounting HUSNGs? Is cash really this different?

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't have time to read the article right now, but I can answer yes to this. In cash, effective stacks are usually 100+ bbs deep. In husngs, it's never more than 75 or 50bbs, depending on whether it's a turbo or not. Also, throw in the concept of tourney life and rising blinds, and calling every 3bet is definitely wrong.