Posting in the CO - a reply to a post in a now archived thread

[spamuell]

I remember a while back when I was pretty new to 6-max there was a thread about whether it's +EV to post in the Co. link . If you can't be bothered to read it, what basically happened is that most players said no it's -EV, just wait, then JR said he posts in the CO and everyone was up in arms about it, before he said that it's still +EV because you make more utg and in mp than you lose from posting in the CO. Then Kiddo posted the following:

If we post in CO instead of waiting for BB we will play both UTG+1 and UTG instead of waiting 3 games before arriving in BB. Thereotically we will then win 0.1BB UTG+1 and 0.1BB UTG.

But we also have a cost of posting in CO. A good player posting in BigBlind (which is as big as posting in CO, 0.5BB), will normally loose -0.15BB in big blind (he will win back 0.35 of those 0.5 he lost by being forced to post). Since CO is a better position we will, still theoretically, lose less in CO then in BB. Lets say we lose -0.1BB (we win back 0.4BB from this position).

Then we get:

Posting in CO= (-0.1)+0.1+0.1 = 0.1

Not posting (waiting for BB and not playing UTG+1 and UTG)
+-0

That is: Posting will win us 0.1BB

At the time, this persuaded me to post in the CO because I didn't examine these numbers closely enough. But, given Kiddo's assumptions that we win 0.1bb in each position and lose 0.15bb in the BB and assuming we lose 0.8bb in the sb, this works out to a win rate of (0.1 * 4) - (0.15 + 0.08) BBs per 6 hands (not hand where we post in the CO, a normal round), which is a win rate of 2.83BB/100 hands.

However, this assumes that we win the same amount UTG and MP as we do on the button, which is clearly not the case, and if one was to win significantly more from the button then this would make their overall win rate much higher than 2.83bb/100. For example, if a player won 0.1bb utg and in mp, 0.11bb in the CO and 0.13bb on the button, and lost the same amount in the the blinds as assumed above, they'd have a win rate of 3.5BB/100. It seems to me that kiddo's assumption that you win 0.2bb UTG and in MP is therefore too optimistic.

Of course, assuming that the assumption that we lose 0.1bb by posting in the CO is correct, we don't need to win 0.2bb in those positions, just any amount greater than 0.1. My PTDB doesn't have enough hands to have even close to accurate win rates by position in 6max, does anyone have any input on whether a good player's win rates are greater than 0.1bb in total in the first two positions and if so, how much by?