Button play in full ring games

I need a quick primer that may imply this post belongs in the stats thread, but please bear with me. I'm not going to ask about stats, thus I'm thinking it's ok to appear here. If I'm wrong, feel free to close this out.

Quick setup: During my weekly review of my PT statistics, I've noticed that my button VPIP & PFR are a little lower than in the cut-off. As conventional wisdom implies, one should loosen up the most & steal the most from the button. Thus, these statistics should be a little higher than in the cut-off. To test if I am missing opportunities, I tested the % of times I folded/raised when facing a raise while in the CO or on the button (and again when facing limpers or no action). Interesting results (at least to me):

Over 30k+ hands, when facing a raise, limpers, or no action on the button, I play on (usually raising) a larger percentage of the time than in the cut-off. However, the sheer increase in the number of times I am facing a raise on the button is causing the VPIP & PFR statistics to be lower than in the cut-off. That is, on any given hand where I face a raise pre-flop, I tend to raise more when I'm on the button than when I'm in the cut-off. However, I face a raise on the button much more than I do in the cut-off. As I play proportionally less hands when facing a raise than not, from either position, I believe this is tipping the statistics.

Longer set-up than I had hoped .. sorry.

The question is:
Barring any reads of the PFR'er (I already know when I like to isolate with reads), what hands do you like to re-raise with pre-flop, on the button <u>as your standard play against unknowns?</u> (If you'd play differently depending on the # of limpers, maybe separate into 0-2 limpers in front and 3+ limpers in front). The goal is for us to do similar investigations with our own data to make sure we aren't missing isolation opportunities, or if we're trying to exploit too many (i.e. reraising UTG may/should be less profitable than reraising the cut-off). Over a bazillion hands the stats will of course be higher on the button, but convergence will inevitably take longer to show this pattern. I'm much more interested in hearing the hands rather than a "they are higher for me" comment.

Thanks!

[bozlax]

DavidC: you sending this guy a nit-enrollment form?

OP: you seem to have a very good and thorough handle on things. So my question, in response to your question, is why you want a starting-hand chart from people? If you have 30K hands, you should be well beyond the kind of ABC preflop your post is asking for.

[lautzutao]

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DavidC: you sending this guy a nit-enrollment form?


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Nice

[mack848]

It's very difficult to give a default range of hands to re-raise from the Button. Clearly, the position of the raiser and reads on that raiser determine this.

In my games, I would re-raise an early position raise by an unknown with AA-TT, AK and occasionally AQs.

Against the same (unknown) player raising first in from Hijack or CO I might re-raise AA-88, AK-AJ &amp; KQ?

[ QUOTE ]
DavidC: you sending this guy a nit-enrollment form?

OP: you seem to have a very good and thorough handle on things. So my question, in response to your question, is why you want a starting-hand chart from people? If you have 30K hands, you should be well beyond the kind of ABC preflop your post is asking for.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, so your answer is to use the generally accepted SSH chart (or close to it). That's cool. That's what I do, and what I expect to be the most popular answer. However, I'm not sure that many (dare I say most?) of the posters/responders in the stats thread really understand how difficult it is to have VPIP &amp; PFR be the highest on the button <u>while maintaining a sound pre-flop strategy.</u> Of course, this is only my speculation, which caused me to ask the group.

I don't need/want charts. I was moreso hoping to receive deviations from the charts from the most advanced of the bunch (i.e. those that win at 1/2 and up for more than 6BB/100 ... and yes, they exist &amp; those rates <u>are</u> sustainable). I don't need to talk about winrates though.

Thanks for your response!

[bozlax]

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Ok, so your answer is to use the generally accepted SSH chart (or close to it).

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I said no such thing. I said, given the number of hands you've played, you shouldn't be needing a chart, anymore.

[ QUOTE ]
I don't need/want charts. I was moreso hoping to receive deviations from the charts from the most advanced of the bunch (i.e. those that win at 1/2 and up for more than 6BB/100 ... and yes, they exist &amp; those rates <u>are</u> sustainable). I don't need to talk about winrates though.

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One: Ok, so you are looking for a specific list of hands to play in specific situations, tho? Even if it's "deviations" from the SSH chart (or whatever) it's still a chart.

Two: The people you are asking your question of are the same people that say a 6BB/100 winrate ISN'T sustainable. If you're so sure on this one point, why would you want advice from people who are so clearly wrong about so fundamental a fact?

[bozlax]

A fun deviation from the standard "3-bet a possible steal preflop" strategy is to call the preflop bet, call a flop bet a then raise the turn. That one's super-fun against your preflop-aggro (or highly-prone-to-stealing), postflop-weak-tight opponents. I see a lot of these guys at the 1/2 games on the x-skins, these days.

Boz, I didn't mean to incite anything. Perhaps my observation/question was without merit. Nevermind!

For those that find my investigation interesting, I'd still like to hear your thoughts.

Thanks everyone.

[bozlax]

And I didn't mean to come off so harsh.

That said, think about what you're asking for. What response do you expect to get, excluding, "it depends"? You're far, far better off posting a couple of hands where it was raised to you on the Button and you weren't sure what to do, than asking this kind of open-ended question.

[ QUOTE ]
And I didn't mean to come off so harsh.

That said, think about what you're asking for. What response do you expect to get, excluding, "it depends"? You're far, far better off posting a couple of hands where it was raised to you on the Button and you weren't sure what to do, than asking this kind of open-ended question.

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You're probably right, I could post a few. However, hands here &amp; there are most likely not the culprit for lower button VPIP/PFR than CO. To cause such patterns over this many hands, I might need a more frequent driver.

Maybe instead of asking for chart deviations, I should ask if anyone else has identified the same patterns in their position statistics (which effectively bumps this into the stats thread ... sorry). Maybe over a minimum of 20k hands. Even better would be to know if any PT savvy players have investigated this phenomena already. While I intuitively understand that play should be loosest &amp; most aggressive from the button, I still conjecture that the opportunities to exploit are less frequent than they are in the CO and thus the PT stats *may* be misleading. In fact, one actually can be the loosest &amp; most aggressive on the button (as my investigation proved) while PT indicates otherwise. (I do yield even 30k isn't a giant sample with which to make position comparisons.)

Just curious. I could be off-base. Maybe this isn't interesting to anyone else, that's cool. You never know until you ask though!

[bozlax]

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You're probably right, I could post a few. However, hands here &amp; there are most likely not the culprit for lower button VPIP/PFR than CO. To cause such patterns over this many hands, I might need a more frequent driver.

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No, it actually is only hands here and there. Say your VPIP on the Button is 15, in CO it's 17. So, on the button, you're playing 15 times out of 100...to get it to 20, you need to play 1 more hand on the button every 20 orbits, which results in a .5 bump to your overall VPIP (1 more hand every 200).

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Maybe instead of asking for chart deviations, I should ask if anyone else has identified the same patterns in their position statistics (which effectively bumps this into the stats thread ... sorry).

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No, this is a strategy issue, not a stats issue...examination of the stats has led you to the strategy question, however, which is fine. Do a PT filter for exactly 0 positions off the button and "No Money In" (under Vol. Put $ In Pot), and then look at the top few of those hands. Figure out why you didn't put any money in.

The first one on my list for this month is ATs. It was a 6max game, that went raise, fold, 3-bet, Hero folds. That one's obvious.

The next line is 2 ATo hands. The first (full) went fold, call, fold, raise, folded to me...no-brainer fold. The second (full) went folded to MP3 (TAG) who called, CO folds, to me. Questionable fold, maybe...if I was 4-tabling (likely) then I probably didn't want to have to give it the attention it would've needed postflop against a TAG.

So, find some of those hands and put 'em up, if it's not obvious to you why you folded.

Yes, exactly. One more hand on the button in every 20 orbits. I wonder how often premium hands occur on the button in 20 orbits that I'm not already playing? Maybe there are enough missed hands to go from 15 to at least above 17 (to further your example).

My button stats are much larger than CO in my 6-max games. Just not in the full games. If you're not already tired of this thread, I wonder if you'd check to see if you full game stats show higher VPIP &amp; PFR on the button? Maybe how high? Knowing what the differences are between the two positions might help me figure out how many hands I'm missing, given I'm missing some. In any event, I plan to do what you did too.

You've convinced me enough to check further, so thanks!