Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

So I'm taking a day off from playing and was bored this morning so I went back to read some HPFAP and found some things a little strange. I thought I'd ask about it...

On page 46 they advise stealing from the SB with any 2, when opening, if the BB will fold as low as 30%. I think this fits most players folding tendencies, especially if you follow S&M's own defense recommendations. So should we be raising any 2 in the SB when opening? I am not a fan of playing total trash out of position, so I usually show some restraint in the SB when opening. But like I said, I think most BB's will fold over 30% here, so maybe I need to open up my game in this spot?

Then on page 47, concerning the BB, they go on to repeat that the SB will most likely show an automatic profit if you fold your BB fold's even 30% here. So what does that leave you calling with, 80% or 90% of your hands? Doesn't seem like there is much room for error, so shouldn't we just call with basically everything since we have position and most players are so, so bad HU?

So far no problems, until we get to the shorthanded section on page 185, in which they contradict their earlier advice, and suggest 50% as the minimum number at which you must call with in a HU match. Maybe the BB being out of position is the reason for the discrepancy, but I don't see how position changes the mathematics behind the SB showing an automatic profit from the BB folding too much pre-flop. And, to confuse things even further, 2 pages later on page 187, they steer away from that 50% number and now suggest you defend at least 40% (so folding 60% is ok???) and then give a hand range totalling 39%. All this after they have just told us that folding even 50% (or is it 30%?) will give the SB an automatic profit. What gives?

Lastly, on page 44, concerning SB defense from a steal, they suggest you might want to reraise groups 1-6!!! Since ASB's of well over 40% are now all the rage, we can basically consider any CO or button raise a "steal attempt", and therefore S&M are suggesting we 3 bet hands group 6 hands like 75s out of the small blind? By that logic, if you are going to play 75s, or J8s, for 3 bets OOP from the small blind, what hands shouldn't you 3 bet *with position* on the button when the CO open raises??? Might as well 3 bet with 1/2 the deck!

If I made changes to my game to be consistent with the above advice (assuming I can determine what they are actually advising), my SB/BB defense would go from 85/50 to probably 60/30 and my overall VPIP would probably go up 15%. Were S&M hitting the pipe when they wrote this stuff? This can't be right. Maybe I'm just being an idiot and missing what they are trying to say, but can someone explain this to me so it makes sense, or is there a reason I don't pick this book up much anymore?

Cheers,

Nigel

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

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On page 46 they advise stealing from the SB with any 2, when opening, if the BB will fold as low as 30%. I think this fits most players folding tendencies

[/ QUOTE ]

i contend that most 10/20 and 5/10 regulars call nearly 100% in the after a sb raise.

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

nice work summarizing this stuff nigel - it's insanely important I think, and poorly understood - one of the last "frontiers" of theory that seems to be missing a lot.

There are two ways to approach this problem, I think one is to find a general guideline, which HPFAP has done somewhat (I think the advice is actually pretty good overall, and hits on the major points, but is definitely inconsistent). The second way to to isolate specific ranges and determine what ranges to play versus "that".

This stuff is so difficult because even if I gave you a relatively specific range for some players (and with large databases we can approach that), it is still debateable what the correct play is even for pre-flop, forget about post-flop.

Let's say a typical SH player open raises 50% from the SB, what should your calling, folding and 3 betting ranges be in the BB?

How about if you are in the SB and know that the BB defends with the "optimal" 70% of the time, what should your folding/limping/raises standards be?

further, to what extent should blind structure change the ranges?

someone really really good could come close to filling a book worth of material on this stuff, anyone who could without getting lost or contradicting themselves is a genius.

questions answered with more questions. sorry.

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
On page 46 they advise stealing from the SB with any 2, when opening, if the BB will fold as low as 30%. I think this fits most players folding tendencies

[/ QUOTE ]

i contend that most 10/20 and 5/10 regulars call nearly 100% in the after a sb raise.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, so I actually went and checked. It's about 25% at 30/60 and higher for me. When I played 10/20, the BB folded a little closer to 30%.

That would bring you pretty close to wanting to steal with any 2 if their 30% calling requirement is correct, which is what one of the key things I'm questioning in their advice.

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

ok. it seems to me there is a large class of players that defend any 2 there. however, there are clearly some tighter players that fold as high as 50%. hell, i am one of them.

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

against a weaktight BB i openraise pretty much any 2 at 15/30 with its 2/3 structure.

if the BB is a tag i give him the $10 when im holding some low unsuited crap.

if the BB is high vpip/low pfr i complete with any 2 and bet almost any flop if hes not the chasing type.

against a SB openraise from a guy with 8+PFR i call with 67o/68o and almost any 2 suited.

are any of these guidelines leaks i dont know, let me know if you do.

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

TStone - Those guidelines are pretty similar to my standards, almost the same actually.Your guess is as good as mine as to how "correct" this is, but personally think I give up too much not defending or stealing quite enough. It's why I decided to break out the books and hit up a little Google today, to see if I could revamp my stealing and defense strategies.

Stox - give me a few as I want to write out a longer reply to your post. I'm glad you posted in this thread because you probably have as good a grasp as anyone on this.

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

[ QUOTE ]
nice work summarizing this stuff nigel - it's insanely important I think, and poorly understood - one of the last "frontiers" of theory that seems to be missing a lot.

There are two ways to approach this problem, I think one is to find a general guideline, which HPFAP has done somewhat (I think the advice is actually pretty good overall, and hits on the major points, but is definitely inconsistent). The second way to to isolate specific ranges and determine what ranges to play versus "that".

This stuff is so difficult because even if I gave you a relatively specific range for some players (and with large databases we can approach that), it is still debateable what the correct play is even for pre-flop, forget about post-flop.

Let's say a typical SH player open raises 50% from the SB, what should your calling, folding and 3 betting ranges be in the BB?

How about if you are in the SB and know that the BB defends with the "optimal" 70% of the time, what should your folding/limping/raises standards be?

further, to what extent should blind structure change the ranges?

someone really really good could come close to filling a book worth of material on this stuff, anyone who could without getting lost or contradicting themselves is a genius.

questions answered with more questions. sorry.

[/ QUOTE ]

Great post.

I have actually been in the process for the last month of trying do just this. I didn't intend to write a book, but I have so much Excel data spreads and word documents I might.

It is very complex, and one of the most difficult parts is coming to a conlusion about how post flop works in isolation with ev of one hand vs a range. I have read some good post from Peter_rus, and even wrote some queries myself to get an idea of positional advantage modifers, and this is actually working out well.

It is really computational and time consuming, but I think I will be able to draw some good conclusions soon.

This actually makes preflop more clear cut from every position, including the blinds.

The bad part is, as I start adjusting for more players per pot and just the overall more complex situations, the math becomes even more tedious.

If anyone wants to join in and help, let me know.

-blake

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

Andrew Prock already knows all this stuff exactly, I guarantee it.

Edit - no, he isn't going to help you. E.g. here and here and here.

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

Hey Stox,

You know, you are one person I was really hoping would respond here. In fact, I was thinking of crossposting this at your site, or PMing you similar questions, because I imagine this is an area you shine.


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it's insanely important I think, and poorly understood - one of the last "frontiers" of theory that seems to be missing a lot.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree completely. Far too little literature for something that probably holds the key to truly world class high stakes limit play. I think it pretty much defines your win/loss rate.


[ QUOTE ]
There are two ways to approach this problem, I think one is to find a general guideline, which HPFAP has done somewhat (I think the advice is actually pretty good overall, and hits on the major points, but is definitely inconsistent). The second way to to isolate specific ranges and determine what ranges to play versus "that".

[/ QUOTE ]

We do have some nice general guidelines, like S&M's stuff and Abdul's work, to name a couple. However, I get concerned that I might be "losing the race before it even starts", so to speak, if I am failing to cover all my bases mathematically, which is why I was so interested in the inconsistencies that Sklansky puts forth as "must defend" and "must steal" percentages. Anyway, I just ran some numbers over my last 50k hands at 30/60 and was pretty scared as to what I discovered. I don't want to say too much more about it yet, but I think I can significantly improve my earn.


[ QUOTE ]
This stuff is so difficult because even if I gave you a relatively specific range for some players (and with large databases we can approach that), it is still debateable what the correct play is even for pre-flop, forget about post-flop.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's overwhelming, especially since potential post-flop mistakes (which, I imagine are made in abundance for those who aren't true HU specialists) can dictate so much about how we might want to aproach pre-flop strategy. However, looking at pre-flop from just a strict numbers point of view, I think I'm coming up short. Basically, I aspire to be more where you are - your SB VPIP is slightly higher than mine, and you defend your SB and BB slightly more than I do. I think small improvements in these areas can make massive differences in one's earn, both short-handed and full, so I am focused 100% on making adjustments over large sample sizes to see what unfolds. Unfortunately, as we all know, there is more to this than just mimicking stats.


[ QUOTE ]
Let's say a typical SH player open raises 50% from the SB, what should your calling, folding and 3 betting ranges be in the BB?

How about if you are in the SB and know that the BB defends with the "optimal" 70% of the time, what should your folding/limping/raises standards be?

further, to what extent should blind structure change the ranges?

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, this is where what happens post-flop becomes very interesting because, from what I can see, and as I alluded to earlier, there are probably fundamental, post-flop, mathematical errors being made by many players in these HU situations, especially multi-tablers playing very fit or fold. I would think these errors, if they are indeed being made to the degree I suspect they are, could potentially negate differences between pre-flop blind structures and lean towards a never limp strategy from the SB (or the button, for those into that sort of thing) when trying to formulate pre-flop guidelines. As for defense, it becomes quite complicated because, if we are not careful, it becomes very easy to fall victim to the same things we might want to exploit as the stealer.


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someone really really good could come close to filling a book worth of material on this stuff, anyone who could without getting lost or contradicting themselves is a genius.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, if Wall Street ever gets old, maybe you have your calling [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] Seriously though, the best part is (well, maybe not for the author) that nobody would probably read it. Surprisingly, there just doesn't seem to be a huge interest amongst players to try and get to the meat of this stuff - maybe it's just too complex to try and tackle. Who knows.


[ QUOTE ]
questions answered with more questions. sorry.

[/ QUOTE ]

No apologies. At least your questions lead to more questions, whereas I just ramble. Also, I know you play under your screenname, so it's understandable you might want to be guarded with how much information you reveal, but what you do share is appreciated. I hope you'll have more comments to make.

Cheers,

Nigel

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

[ QUOTE ]
Andrew Prock already knows all this stuff exactly, I guarantee it.

Edit - no, he isn't going to help you. E.g. here and here and here.

[/ QUOTE ]

Trying to solve this is less complex than trying to figure out what Andrew is ever saying. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

When's his book coming out?

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

Hi Nigel,

Great post.

First off some data:

In 130k hands of 5-10 (6 max), the BB folded to my open-raise in the SB 25.6% of the time.

In 40k hands of 10-20 (6 max), it was 22%.

Work that people are doing on developing optimal open-raising ranges in the SB in, say, a 1-2 blind structure game will have to take BB looseness as a parameter (as has already been stated) to be useful. Against a BB that never folds (which hopefully happens a lot if your game selection is good), raising any two would clearly be bad.

My ideal way to tackle this problem would be to look through a 20 million hand composite DB of very successful players and actually see how the various hands did, then form rough guidelines of what hands to open raise with. However, this will assume an average looseness for the BB as you can't filter for tight or loosely defending big blinds. It will at least be a good start that we can modify incrementally to suit the particular oppoenent.

Using a mathematical or simulation approach to derive optimal raising standards may have the benefit of incorporating assumptions of the big blind in the model, but it suffers from not being a 'real world model', i.e. making assumptions that add inaccuracies that dwarf the numbers you end up getting for your result.

Ditto for defending in the big blind against a SB raise.

My own story is that I came to the same "realiziation" months ago that proper play in the blinds requires aggressive stealing and aggressive defending. Since implementing changes in my play, my blinds stats have taken a nosedive. The problem is, I could be running bad.

Someone may come out with a "theoretical guideline" for what raising and defending standards should be, but until it's been tested over millions of hands, we won't be sure that the assumptions they made were or weren't valid.

Sorry for not making a very constructive post. My contribution will be to suggest that maybe we can form a composite database of heads up blind hands, and maybe we can analyze this data and come to some meaningful conclusion.

-v

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

Hey buddy, you mentioned "Abdul's work" could you point me toward that?


-blake

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

[ QUOTE ]
Hey buddy, you mentioned "Abdul's work" could you point me toward that?


-blake

[/ QUOTE ]

Blake for most of his writings you have to sort through the hell that is rgp. You'll want to search groups by author:abdul author:jalib for his stuff, then add additional parameters.

For archives of his posev site, go to:

here

Nigel

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

this post made me realize i [censored] suck at blind defense. thank you.

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

Nigel youve really done an excellent job of inspiring me to work on my blind defense in HU situations. Unfortunately, I don't know where to start.

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

vkh,

Thanks for the reply. A couple of quick things:

Interesting stats, you are getting called a little more than I am, but I imagine that has to do with changes in the 5/10 and 10/20 over time, or perhaps just sample size. Oddly enough, in all my databases, it seems that the BB is MOST likely to fold with position to the SB raise, then the CO, and lastly the button as I am seeing some crazy numbers when looking at my button raises - I am being called near 85%. Seems odd.

Going back to this approximately 25% number we are seeing for the BB in response to an SB open-raise, we are flirting quite closely with the 30% number that Sklanksy postulates (correctly or incorrectly?) allows us to raise any 2 cards for a profit. If we can raise any 2 from the SB against this opponent, how about from the CO or button with position?

Anyway, it's interesting that since you have made these adjustments, your stats have headed in the wrong direction. Let's hope it's just bad luck and not bad theory. If not, I may soon start to suffer the same fate.

I need to set-up Postgres and build one huge PT database as I imagine I alone have several million hands total stored. As you suggest, there is a lot of work to be done.

Nigel

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

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Maybe the BB being out of position is the reason for the discrepancy, but I don't see how position changes the mathematics behind the SB showing an automatic profit from the BB folding too much pre-flop.

[/ QUOTE ]
It is unquestionably true. If you fold the BB very often it becomes profitable for the SB to raise any two cards. He should never fold.

What is far from theoretically obvious is whether there is anything wrong with that. Even if you know that his raise represents any two cards it may be true that defending with a trash hand is -EV due to implied odds. In that case you need to fold regardless of how much money SB may be making.

Indeed, worrying about whether SB is making an automatic profit by raising any two cards is irrational. Whether he is making an automatic profit depends heavily on the size of his blind payment because it determines his pot odds. But once I tell you that he is definitely raising any two cards the size of his blind payment cannot matter to you. It does not affect your EV. The EV of his raise for him is not your problem. Only your EV should matter to you.

If the BB has position postflop it is reasonable to believe almost any hand will play well enough against two random cards that it should be +EV to call. Position is a big advantage and even the worst hands have a lot of pot equity preflop versus a random hand.

Heads up the SB has the button and that changes everything. If you play a bad hand against a good player you are going to lose a lot of money postflop. Simply cannot be avoided when your opponent has both position and better average cards. The only question is whether the money in the preflop pot will compensate you for this.

This is not an easy question to answer which is why people disagree about correct blind defense strategy. But the "automatic profit" argument is not a valid shortcut for solving the problem. It assumes that SB is not entitled to make a profit by raising any two cards and there is no obvious reason to assume that when he has the button.

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

This sounds reasonble to me, although I have very little experience with 2/3 blinds and it is all in lives games where I usually chop.

About this part:
[ QUOTE ]
against a SB openraise from a guy with 8+PFR i call with 67o/68o and almost any 2 suited.

[/ QUOTE ]
What are your thoughts on calling with offsuit hands with one high card like K3o and Q6o? I tend to like the HPFAP advice to avoid hands with 2's and 3's, but I would call with maybe K5o and Q7o. Is that reasonable?

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

Nigel,

Thank you for replying.

When I get home I will look at HPFAP and see what information is given on the derivation for the '30%' number.

For now, some thoughts...

When the SB open-raises in a 1-2 blind structure, he is investing .75 BB to win .75 BB. Thus, if the big blind folded over 50% of his hands on average, the SB would show an automatic profit by raising any two cards; let's take 32o as a representative hand for 'any two cards.'

Since we will win some of the times we get called, even with 32o, we don't need the BB to fold 50% of the time. We can accept a lower number. Sklansky says 30%. It seems like the real world fold % we are seeing in our DBs is close enough to 30% that it's not obvious if raising any two is correct. What if Sklansky's 30% is really 25%? Maybe it's 35%. It also depends on the skill level difference between you and the BB. If the big blind plays much worse than you post-flop, you may only need him to fold 25% of his hands to show a profit raising 32o, whereas against a great post-flop player, you may need him to fold 35% of his hands for 32o to show a profit. So we can talk about an 'average fold %' for the 'typical' opponent.

I think with so much variability and so many different factors involved, the 'huge DB approach' is the most reliable way to answer the question of what hands to steal with.

Setting up one huge PT database would be great. I would be willing to send you my DB, and I can probably get at least one other DB of a friend who wins at 10-20 6 max. You can PM me if you need any help with this endeavor.

-v

Re: Weird HPFAP blind defense strategy inconsistencies
 

i call K3o and Q6o alike. i dont know if thats right or wrong, but its what ive been doing against a fairly aggressive SB.