Cant find a question...

I dont know the exact tipping point.


What I know: the 20 or 25 rule is somewhat outdated. It only works if villains range is super nitty (super super nitty like TT+ AQ+). There are some problems with setmining:

- set over set situations
- you often fold the best hand vs. cbet
- dont get paid off (obv if villains range is wider than 10%)

Stack to pot ratio and effective stacks are important for speculative hands. But there are also some problems. With deeper stacks (not sure, 300bb?) the value of speculative hands can decrease if you want to get stacks in with flushes and sets.

Openraising with suited gapper, or low suited connectors in games without antes from EP and MP is waste of money btw, regardless how deep stacks are. Mabye profitable with weak players in the blinds.

The question is how short of a stack do villians need to have before we seriously consider not even open raising or calling raises from those short stacks? To me it seems like OR and calling would be different as well. With OR, you maybe have one short stack behind and the rest full stacks, so it may make sense to still OR, as you don't really know if the short stack will call. However, with calling, in most ranges I see, there is a decent amount of SC's that make up calling ranges, so I assume just folding and moving on is the best play in most cases when up against a short stack.and getting involved in a 3bet pot with SC's with a short stacker seems like it would be a big mistake. More than likely you will end up all in by the flop or turn and lose any positional advantage you might have as well as being behind in most cases and having to draw to the best hand, but I don't know.

From what I understand with speculative hands you want there to be a fair amount of money behind so that those times you do hit with the speculative hand you have at least the chance to get paid. So is there a way to calculate the amount of big blinds someone needs to have behind to make up for all those times you either don't make your hand and just have to fold and all the times that you do make a hand and don't get paid? I know nothing in poker is set in stone and it is all opponent and situation dependent, but at what point to you really consider not even bothering: 90bb, 75bb, 50bb, or even less than

So that now brings another question as well: Is stealing the blinds from later positions (CO and BTN) still acceptable against a short stacker. I assume it is since we often talk about vilian's FTS and if high enough you can literally open ATC.

@eroticjesus I don't really open low SC's from EP. I think the lowest I go is about 87s, but have heard 98s is better. I don't open any 1 gappers from EP. I do however start to open a few of them from MP, so that is something I will have to look at. I never actually designed my own ranges. I found them and they worked pretty decent for me and it turns out that they are very similar ranges to the ones that are in the book that you recommended to me. Doing a lot of preflop range work is something that I really want to do and learn so that I can understand why I would be opening XY over AB and vice versa, rather than just memorizing something I found on the internet or something someone gave to me. In addition, being able to understand what hands work best in a given situation will make my game stronger, as I can change my ranges as tables and opponents and situations change.

Okay.

The question is how short of a stack do villians need to have before we seriously consider not even open raising or calling raises from those short stacks?

Openraising and calling are obv different. If you openraise you have the chance to win immediately. The position of the shortstack ist also important.

I use some roughly (old) rule of thumbs against unknown shortstackers. If he has position, I'll openraise fewer suited low hands but some more offsuit high hands which perform better against shortstacks. If he is OOP I just openraise my range. If the shortstacker is passive and/or weak, I openraise my range in and oop + more offsuit highcardhands, suited kings and suited queens.

Don't forget to openraise a smaller amount against all shortstacker!

So is there a way to calculate the amount of big blinds someone needs to have behind to make up for all those times you either don't make your hand and just have to fold and all the times that you do make a hand and don't get paid?

Mh, good question, I dont know. But I can use a model to show you the right direction. Imagine you are in a heads up match, villain has 10bb left, you cover his stack. Villain plays shove or fold. You know he is standard "tightish" but he know that he has to be active because of his stack and the HU situation. He shoves, what to do? Well you have to calculate pot odds and look for hands with enough equity against his range. You'll see that low suited connectors are insta mucks even if villain has those hands in his range. The next step is to consider which hands or group of hands are the weakest in villains range, your goal should be to make these hands indifferent between shoving or folding because if he has an easy shove with his weakest hands in his range, he can start shoving more (or all) hands and has immidiate profit. If he has an easy fold because you are defending to much, his range gets stronger and your weakest hands become bad calls. Okay bad example it is good if he starts folding a lot, because you get the SB, thats why his goal should be that your weakest hands which want to defend should be indifferent between calling or folding too.

But nothing else happens when a shortstacker opens from positon X and you are in position Y or you openraise and he 3bets. Calling suited connectors against 3bets because of stacksize sucks? Right, start adding highcard hands for calls or just 4bet more and fold more. Calling against 100bb with suited low stuff is good against 100bb stack in the bb, but not on the BU. Keep it as simple as possible. If low suited connectors/gappers are only good in calling the bb or 3betting IP against 100bb mabye it is okaish to call against shorties as well. It only depends on raise sizing preflop. If a full stack make it 3bb you can easy call the BB with marginal low suited hands because it is better than folding (Higher SPR ---> more options to bluff postflop ---> EV increase). If a shortstack do that you cant call, you have to defend more by 3betting and fold suited low stuff instead, but if he makes it 2bb you can call a lot of suited stuff, simply because of the better pot odds, you have to realize more equity postflop with bad pot odds preflop and don't have to realize much equity postflop with very good pot odds preflop.

Had to read the second half of that twice but thanks very much for the clarifications. From what I remember on my snowie trial and other stuff I have seen, I guess this is why you see a hand like 65s as a 3bet so often. I am guessing because of this that maybe 65s is where the line in the sand is drawn between low SC's and others

This is a great thread, surprised there isn't more discussion in here. SC are hands that look very pretty and tempting to play when we really should be folding. I used to always raise these types of hands from any position and soon realized I was chucking money away! You really have to hit the flop hard, especially when out of position, to make any profit on it