Defending the BB HU

In reading HoH, he mentions that even a terrible hand, like 23o has a roughly a 30% shot against a non-pair hand. HoH is NL tourney, but the concept got me to thinking.

If you assume you play at least as well post flop as the person raising your BB, why is it wrong to defend with any 2? You're getting 3:1, maybe 3.5:1 on your money (3.5:1 if the button raises and the SB folds. A 30% equity easily would indicate a call.

You've got odds to call any non-overpair. Given someone has a pair fairly rarely relative to non-pair hands, and if we know we're a better post flop player, why aren't we defending any 2 from the BB?

However, ToP has us only defending something like the top 40% heads up. Is it just a matter of the bad hands are too difficult to play post flop? If you could see your opponents cards would defending any 2 be a no brainer?

I'm not looking to defend with 23o /images/graemlins/smile.gif, but I am puzzled why we don't defend more than we do. Defending with ToP's 40% of the time vs a theoretical 100% of the time is a big gap. What makes that 60% unplayable? Even if we defend 60% of the time, what makes the other 40% unplayable?

[winky51]

I'll take a shot at this...

#1 Because the real junk hands can put you to a difficult decision. You might flop a pair with a crap kicker and your opponent shares you hand. If you call with low crap cards the board will pretty much come with overcards. You flop a 2 with your 23o, how confident do you feel about that pair? About your kicker?

#2 Also you don't make as many hands on the flop with junk. What makes more hands 76s or J6o. J6o is technically better HU. The 76s gives you a greater chance to hit some piece of the flop.

But I can see your point. If I knew what the other guy had I would call with any 2 cards considering his raise was reasonable and I knew he DIDNT have a medium to high pair hand. 2/3 of the time he is missing.

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#1 Because the real junk hands can put you to a difficult decision.

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I think this is the main, if not sole, reason for not calling any 2. If you were all-in by calling the raise, you'd call it 100% of the time because your odds of winning justify it. We see this all the time in NL tournies where people are pot committed preflop.

The fact we're not all-in means it's post-flop that's causes the hand to be -EV enough to avoid calling any 2. Which brings me back to part of my original question. If we think we're better postflop, are these bad hands really so difficult to play than our post flop skill is more than negated by the cards?

I suppose the answer has to be yes, otherwise we'd play any two against the typical poor playing fish. It's just something that's interesting on a theoretical level (thus posted in the Theory forum).

[Niediam]

1) You don't play poker hot/cold.

2) You are out of position.

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2) You are out of position.

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Not always. You might be defending an SB steal.