[Nigel]

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.

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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.


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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".

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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.


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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.

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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.


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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?

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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.

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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.


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questions answered with more questions. sorry.

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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