New entry
I've recently thought that discussion of separate hands doesn't give much for improving and understanding of the game. We spend time thinking about whether to call or to fold in a particular hand, but if the decision is close we wouldn't lose or gain much in EV taking either action.

A more interesting point is the 'image' which comprises the hands that we play in different positions, the frequency with which we make CB, etc. IMO that's what differentiates best players from the average ones.

That was a brief intoduction.

I would like to try to start a discussion concernging the hand ranges, trying to find the best strategy in some particular situations.

Problem:

Assume that UTG TAG raises to 4BB, we are OTB.
Suppose we know his PF range: (that's the range of BigJim from 2+2, see a discussion on preflop ranges)
{22+, A7s+, KTs+, QJs, JTs, T9s, AQo, AJo, KQo}
78 pairs, 52 suited, 48 offsuit broaway. (178)

I want to go through several situations, trying to find the best +EV play against this range. We'll start with preflop.

Question:

What are the most +EV calling and reraising ranges?


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That depends is not an answer . If you are unsure about his postflop play, make some reasonable assumptions, i.e. he CB quite often 60%+, etc.


It seems quite evident to me that a call with the same range will be +EV, as we have the value of position. I also think that we even can add some weaker hands which would still be +EV, assuming that we play well postflop and can apply pressure with our draws. Each weak hands that is marginally +EV will add value to our whole range, i.e. our stronger hands will also gain EV by broadening our range. I am not sure, though, which would be the worst hand that would still be +EV to add to our calling range. BTW I am more inclined to add suited middle gapers, rather than offsuit big cards like QJo.

BTW, some authors do not agree about calling with the same range. See 'gap concept' notion. They suggest calling with a stronger (smaller) range.

Our reraising range is less evident. Here we need to think about our whole gameplan. If we reraise with our strong hands we will weaken our calling range and give away a lot of info, would it be compensated by the EV we gain in reraised pots?


Ok, that's the problem and some of my thoughts. I hope for some input. May be I would repost in NL section if appropriate.

P.S. I plan to continue this UTG vs Button discussion. Choosing some typical flops (turns) and deciding what would be the best action with our calling/reraising range vs his range.

How about re-raising with TT+ and AK, who all beat his range (so it is a raise for value), and adding the best hands you can't profitably call a raise with like T7s (which would be a semi bluff) in order to broaden the hand range and not give away information.

A ratio could probably be to have TT+ and AK 75% of the time and be semibluffing with the not-quite-good-enough-to-call the other 25% of the time. And to further muddy the water you should probably only be raising with TT+ and AK 80% of the time and flat call the rest, and raise instead of call with the calling hands a small amount of the time as well, like 10%.

So this would mean...

If you re-raise, you'll have TT+ and AK most of the time (~75%) but the rest of the time either a "calling hand" or a somwhat trashy hand. If you flat call you will have a "calling hand" most of the time but sometimes a "monster" like QQ.

This should be an extremely hard counter-tactic to counter, giving you value on your premium hands and adding enough deception to be close enough to optimal bluffing frequency to make it really tough on him to play correctly.

This strategy also sets up the post flop play allowing you to maximise use of your position.

Stone, considering postflop play, let's assume that we tell UTG our reraising and calling range, so that he could play his best. (After all we know his preflop raising range )

I think that for 'developing' near optimal play this is quite reasonable assumption, that our opponent knows our range as well. (See 'Math. of poker' for clarification.) May be for someone it seems a bit far-fetched, but IMO we can understand a lot about the strategy discussing such range vs range problems.

And I liked the idea of making the reraisng range of the very best hand and the hands that are not good enough to call, though I don't agree about percentages. 80% seems to high, it means that we almost never have AA when we call. % of premium hands in our reraising range would be very high, while % of premium hands in out callling range would be low.

This should be an interesting discussion, but as already evident, it is complex and I think there are already too many considerations on the table. I'll just make a few suggestions here and Zmej and others can decide what to do with them. I'll participate whichever way people want.

1. We are somewhat probing in the dark here, with range over range as a loose methodology. The more hands we include in UTG's preflop raise range, the more complex things are going to get. I'm not opposed to current range, but it will be more intellectual work. If folks don't mind running through some things twice, then we could go first shot with a smaller range and second shot with the 13% range.

2. I think it would be best to start the analysis simple and just figure out which hands are ahead of the range, which behind, and optimal play for those groups of hands while also stipulating which hands villian is going to fold, call, or raise with. Percentages of each play (such as raise with AA 70% and call 30% and the like) are something that we can add on later, perhaps with game theory.

I'll live with whatever others decide, I just think this will make the analysis easier if we start simple then add on complexity; rather than heaping every consideration on at the start.

Thanks allfor the input. After thinking about all this I've got to an interesting conclusion about 3betting. Xpost in NL section.

Thoughts?
I think that we'll try to define a somewhat sensible calling range and won't bother about 3betting. I'll post my thoughts about playing some typical flops later.

To geiststaat:
We could start with a vary narrow range like excession QQ-TT, AQ, but it is easy to exploit this range IMO .While a wider range gives some problems.


And, yeah, the post on 3bets.

Some thoughts on 3-betting.

I post some thoughts on raising preflop and 3betting, correct me if I am wrong in some point.
Some points are quite evident, but I state them nevertheless to use later for deriving a usefull analogy.
One of the conclusions that I came to and that I am going to try for a big enough sample is the following:
‘In standard conditions (100BB stacks, somewhat competent opponents) 3bet preflop is best to do OOP, in position calling the raise with the whole range is close in EV to 3bet or may have a higher EV’.


1. Preflop raise.
What are the reasons for the preflop raise?

A. Putting pressure on blinds (limpers). We have a better hand than a random one and we want to win the blinds right now.
B. Playing bigger pot in position.
C. Isolating a weak player (limper in most cases).

What are the restrictions on the amount of the raise?

It should be big enough to put pressure on blinds, 2BB or more, IMO 2BB is a bit too low, but starting from 2,5BB it should do the job fine. On the other if our preflop raise too big 7BB or more we become exploitable by the players who are yet to act, if we raise to 7BB+ with a small range we are not going to get any action, while if we raise with a wide range they can reraise with a smaller range and make us fold after. The EV that we gain from putting pressure on blinds is not compensated by the EV that we lose due to the possible reraise.

Factoring stack sizes.

Everyone knows, that raising with a wide range against shortstacks is not a very good idea. Against big stacks we can get away with it, because we can use the position to our advantage and put some pressure postflop. While against shortstacks, the value of position diminishes as we will be AI on flop.

2. 3bet preflop.
After considering the reasons for preflop raise we can take some analogies to 3bet war and decide which factors are important when deciding to 3bet.

What are the reasons for 3bet?
A. Putting pressure to the preflop raiser. Is it a valid reason? We annonce that we have a better hand, but at the same time we narrow our hand range and we also narrow our calling range, as we 3bet the best hands. Splitting the percentages doesn’t help much, as it has the same effect on our range, with a bit more uncertainties. I would say that it’s not evident that EV that we gain by making preflop raiser fold compensates EV that we loose by giving away information about our range.

B. Playing a bigger pot. If we make a bigger pot preflop it makes the positional advantage less valid. Looking at the stack size relatively to the pot we play smaller stacks, and instead of 3 betting rounds (flop, turn, river) we will have only 2, so the value of position decreases. So we can make a conclusion that 3betting OOP is better than 3betting in position. If we change the stack sizes, this conclusion could become wrong. If we are somewhat deep we could choose to 3bet in position quite liberally to be able to play for stacks with normal betting (2/3 pot) on flop-turn-river. And vice versa OOP we could choose to just call instead of 3bet, because of deep stacks.

C. Isolating a weak player. Not very valid reason IMO, I’d rather play deeper with a weak player, so 3betting and playing with shallow stack is not a very good idea. May be minraising could do the job here.

What should be 3bet amount?

That’s somewhat harder to answer as it will depend a lot on the ranges of our opponent and out 3bet range.

In position I can see reasons for minraising as a valid 3-bet amount, our range should be just wide enough for this. Moreover of we minraise-3bet we will be able to use our positional advantage on 3 streets, but still we would be effectively playing with smaller stacks and out positional advantage would be less pronounced than in a single raised pot.

OOP we want to 3bet at least a pot sized (x3 preflop raise amount or even bigger) this way we negate our positional disadvantage (100BB stacks) and put some pressure on preflop raiser trying to win the pot preflop.


Summary:
3bet preflop in position seems to be overvalued, EV that we gain by building bigger pot preflop with better hands is somewhat compensated by the EV loss due to narrowing of our calling range. The most important, IMO, is the loss of value of our position, i.e. effective stacks are smaller and we don’t use our positional advantage on 3streets. It seems to me that calling raises with our whole range in position could be better than reraising.

I hope it makes sense, but if you see some holes don’t hesitate to object. I am still a bit unsure about this conclusion, as it doesn’t follow the mainstream 3bet practice.

New entry: Flow of the game.

I want to continue with a journal, but it gets harder to find a good topic for a post as I am either getting stupid or I know-it-all already . Sorry for not continuing with the last post when I proposed to compute the ‘right’ ranges for playing against a preflop raiser. The main reason is that I believe it wouldn’t help much even if we know exactly what to do against a given range. If we know someone’s range it’s not hard to adapt. The main problem is to determine our opponents’ range and it relates to the post that I’ll try to make.

There is no new ideas and concepts in the following, for those who are from ‘tl;dr’ camp cliffnotes: I try to elaborate on how the dynamics relates to opponent hand range.

We see in some posts the talk about the dynamics of the game. Recently, when trying to reply to some posts I found that I think like: ’I could fold, call or raise depending on the dynamics’. (Save some standard hands when the right action is evident.)
Instead of trying to generalize I provide an example.

Sometimes after a good table selection I find myself with a table full of fish, they rarely raise preflop and they just call my raises. On such a table I very rarely 3bet, for obvious reasons. Postflop dynamics is also quite simple, I try to keep my opponents guessing, firing continuation bets, actively betting draws, but I don’t 3barrel them, rarely 2barrel, I wait for a hand to double up. Here we talking about calling station type opponents.

Now, imagine that a good TAG found my fish tank and joined the table. First I would just continue as normal, but often he doesn’t allow me to continue playing my game normally and starts to 3bet my raises, he also raises more often compared to the rest of the table. I don’t adapt instantly, as I don’t know in advance if he is a TAG and what are his stats, but as we play I would pick up the pattern and start to adapt by 3betting his preflop raises, tightening somewhat my raising range and making a play occasionally by 4betting him light. Postflop play changes too, now I am going to 2barrel him much more often than the rest of the table, etc.

You see my ranges for the same actions ( raise preflop, 3bet, continuation bets, etc) have changed significantly, and one can’t get these ranges just by looking at my stats. Yes, there is still some correlation, but a right decision to fold to my 3bet when the dynamics was ‘slow’ becomes a wrong decision when dynamics is ‘fast’ (aggresive), the same is true for postflop play too. There are a lot of possible situations, if one plays against adapting opposition and this all we simply call ‘dynamics’ or ‘flow of the game’.

If you figure what is the ‘dynamic’, i.e. what are your opponent range for his actions AT THE MOMENT, the rest is rather straightforward math problem. (For the beginners it could be tough too.) The problem that we face when replying to the posted hands, is that we can’t figure the dynamics from the provided information. We need to be at the table to do that. We can arrive at a reasonable approximation, though, if poster provides additional details about the previous action.

There are a lot of subtle details concerning the game dynamics, it's quite possible that someone is passive preflop but aggresive postflop or vice versa, it's not likely to happen as many people play the way that suits their personality (passive, aggresive) rather than a well though-out strategy, but with better players it is quite possible and it also creates a particular table dynamics which is not easy to grasp.

I don't know if anyone discussed dynamical hand ranges before, but it looks like the next step in developing one's game.