Some Betting Exercises vs. Short Stacks
Part of my current viewpoint on poker is that understanding the betting decisions is key. Being good at putting your opponents on ranges is fairly useless if you can't make the right decision based on that decision. Here are a few exercises where I'll give you Villain's range in a situation and you decide what you think the best line is.
I've decided to make all of these exercises have to do with short-stacks since that's always a fun topic.
You will get the most out of these exercises if you complete them in three steps. The first step is to work out what you think the right play is without any tools or writing anything down. The second step is to work it out on pen/paper using whatever tools you deem necessary and try to figure out if the decision you came to in the first step was correct or not. The last step is to post all of your findings for each exercise here and let myself and others comment on your analysis.
Exercise 1: Preflop, it folds to the small blind who had 15bb before he posted the blind and you have him covered. He open shoves {22+, K2+, A2+, QT+, JT}. What hands can you call with profitably in the big blind?
Exercise 2: Preflop, a 20bb stack opens for 5x with {AQ+, 99+} UTG. You call on the button with A:c: K:h: and you have him covered. The flop pot is 11bb after the rake and you have 15bb behind. The flop comes AQTr. Villain open shoves 100% of his range. Can you call profitably?
Exercise 3: Preflop, it folds to you on the button. Both blinds had 20bb stacks before posting the blinds and you have them covered. You open raise to 4x, the SB shoves {AT+, 22+}, then the BB shoves {AQ+, 88}. What is your profitable calling range?
I look forward to your answers.
Re: Some Betting Exercises vs. Short Stacks
Preflop, it folds to the small blind who had 15bb before he posted the blind and you have him covered. He open shoves {22+, K2+, A2+, QT+, JT}. What hands can you call with profitably in the big blind?
We would need to call with hands that have close to 50% equity against this range, though its closer to like 45% due to the money already in the pot. So before stoving it, an initial guess would be 66+, KT+, A6+ which i think would be the upper half of his range.
The actual equity we need to be profitable i determined to be
EV=pw*gain - pl*loss
EV=pw*15-(1-pw)*13
EV=pw*28-13
if we expect to break even then this becomes
0=pw28 - 13, and then pw = 46.4%
So hands that have > 46.4% equity against villains range would be profitable to call with.
The results were somewhat surprising to me, 22 had 46.7% equity against villains range. I assumed that since it had only a slight edge vs the unpaired cards and a huge disadvantage vs the paired hands that this would be further behind. The reason for this is likely the shear magnitude of unpaired hands for villain (56) while there are only 13 paired hands. Thus, out of 69 hands, our ev with 22 is equal to 56/69* 55% + 13/69*20% =48%.
Then, 22+ is profitable. Similarly, i found that my KT guess was almost right on, KTo has 48% equity, but K9s has 47.6%. The A6 guess was off, A3o has 46.9% equity and A2s has 49% so the profitable calling range would then be
[22+, A2s+, A3o+, K9s+, KTo+]
Did some other hands quickly to make sure i didnt miss some, QJs only has 45% equity which makes sense since it isnt really a favorite over any hand but is only a huge underdog to the higher pairs. Things like T9s had about 40% equity as well. If the stack was smaller, these hands would probably merit a call
Preflop, a 20bb stack opens for 5x with {AQ+, 99+} UTG. You call on the button with A:c: K:h: and you have him covered. The flop pot is 11bb after the rake and you have 15bb behind. The flop comes AQTr. Villain open shoves 100% of his range. Can you call profitably?
My gut says eww here. We're only ahead of KK, JJ, and 99 while horribly behind AA, QQ, TT, AQ, and only tying with AK. Although, combination wise, its more likely he has kK, JJ or 99, then given the size of the pot and what we have behind, i think we can call profitably.
So, lets do a EV thing
EVcall = pw*gain - (1-pw)loss
Evcall= pw*26-(1-pw)*15
assume breakeven again
0=pw*41 - 15
so pw = 36.5%
So if AK is >36.5% to win, we should call.
Pokerstoving again, i get a shocking 55.4% equity. I was expecting around 40% or so, but i neglected our straight outs and i likely underestimated the combinations.
KK(3), JJ (6), 99 (6), = 15
AA(1), QQ(3), TT(3), AQ (6)=13
Since we are then huge favorites over the hands we're ahead of, and huge underdogs to AA,QQ,TT but have outs against AQ it makes sense to me that we would have an edge against this distribution.
Preflop, it folds to you on the button. Both blinds had 20bb stacks before posting the blinds and you have them covered. You open raise to 4x, the SB shoves {AT+, 22+}, then the BB shoves {AQ+, 88}. What is your profitable calling range?
Fuck, my guess would be to ignore the SB completely and just think about the BB's range, since we need to beat him to win and his range is way ahead of the SB's range.
So, to call,
0=pw*g - (1-pw)*l
0=pw*40 -(1-pw)*20
pw*60-20=0, so pw= 33%
The BB is tighter than that in example 1, but we need less equity to call profitably. Im thinking AQ+, 99+. AJ is only 25% to AQ, as are other aces and they are underdogs to 88+ so we need at least AQ. so that the effect of the pairs doesnt push our equity below 33%. Since there are alot of combos of AQ and AK, but less than that of 88+, im thinking we need a pair that is slightly better than 88 to be 33% ahead...but i wouldnt be suprised if it turned out to be less than this.
Stoving, and fuck. AJs is 35%, AQo is 37%, so AJs+, AQo+
99 was around 40%, 88 is 35.8%, but 77 is too low, so we get
[88+, AQo+, AJs+]. I think that i may have neglected some other broadways though, so im going to stove them to see what i get.
QJs is 35%, so i missed those too...QJo and KQo are like 31% though.
QJs, QTs, JTs, Kts, KJs, KQs, are all like 34%, with their unsuited counterparts being like 31%, ZOMG THEIR SOOTED AND IT MATTERS!
Things like 98s are like 31 too though, so an adjusted range is
[88+, AQo+, AJs+, QTs, QJs, JTs, KTs-KQs]
Im unsure if my assumption is valid though, is this the way you're supposed to do this spoon? Can i really just ignore the sb's range all together?
Re: Some Betting Exercises vs. Short Stacks
Quote:
Originally Posted by JKDS
Can i really just ignore the sb's range all together?
Nope. Sorry but you can't.
Hint: If you call, you're risking x to win SB stack + BB stack + your original raise.
Re: Some Betting Exercises vs. Short Stacks
Quote:
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
Hint: If you call, you're risking x to win SB stack + BB stack + your original raise.
shoot, forgot about our bet, then our equity would be
0=pw*g - (1-pw)*l
0=pw*40 -(1-pw)*16
pw*56-16=0, so pw= 28.5%
that 5% difference just blew my range to shit, lots of suited connectors and other hands just got included, ill redo my analysis as soon as i give the sb's distribution some more thought
Re: Some Betting Exercises vs. Short Stacks
I have not read any other replys, since I wanted to think through this first. Let's see how I do.
Quote:
Exercise 1: Preflop, it folds to the small blind who had 15bb before he posted the blind and you have him covered. He open shoves {22+, K2+, A2+, QT+, JT}. What hands can you call with profitably in the big blind?
With such a wide range, we could call with 22+, Ax, Kxs and it be profitable. Add in Kxo, and we're just better than a coin flip.
Quote:
Exercise 2: Preflop, a 20bb stack opens for 5x with {AQ+, 99+} UTG. You call on the button with A:c: K:h: and you have him covered. The flop pot is 11bb after the rake and you have 15bb behind. The flop comes AQTr. Villain open shoves 100% of his range. Can you call profitably?
We have 55% equity against his range on this flop with TPTK. We're calling 15bb into a 26bb pot, which is giving us pot odds of 57%. We still have outs on the turn/river with any K. We can call profitably here.
Quote:
Exercise 3: Preflop, it folds to you on the button. Both blinds had 20bb stacks before posting the blinds and you have them covered. You open raise to 4x, the SB shoves {AT+, 22+}, then the BB shoves {AQ+, 88}. What is your profitable calling range?
We have a nitty op2, but we can have a wider range and be profitable here since it's three way. Let's say 35% will get the job done. 55+, AJ+ should be profitable here.
Re: Some Betting Exercises vs. Short Stacks
Quote:
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
Exercise 1: Preflop, it folds to the small blind who had 15bb before he posted the blind and you have him covered. He open shoves {22+, K2+, A2+, QT+, JT}. What hands can you call with profitably in the big blind?
My calling here is range is A8+ 66+ .
There is too many combinations I'll have to comeback to this one.
78 combos for PP
130 approx for Ax of which I beat about half
130 approx for Kx of which I beat
and I think 48 for QJ, QT AND JT.
I think there's room to open up my range in this situation
Re: Some Betting Exercises vs. Short Stacks
Quote:
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
Exercise 2: Preflop, a 20bb stack opens for 5x with {AQ+, 99+} UTG. You call on the button with A:c: K:h: and you have him covered. The flop pot is 11bb after the rake and you have 15bb behind. The flop comes AQTr. Villain open shoves 100% of his range. Can you call profitably?
I think this is a fold. only 12 combintations you can beat. and tie with 6.
Re: Some Betting Exercises vs. Short Stacks
Quote:
Originally Posted by spoonitnow
Exercise 3: Preflop, it folds to you on the button. Both blinds had 20bb stacks before posting the blinds and you have them covered. You open raise to 4x, the SB shoves {AT+, 22+}, then the BB shoves {AQ+, 88}. What is your profitable calling range?
I look forward to your answers.
AA, KK, QQ, AK. I may even fold AK or QQ... not always though.
I think the BB has about a total of about 74 possible combinations. With the top 4 hands I will beat about 32ish of those combinations. These are just my ballparks I did in my head. Also there's the added equity from the SB
