So someone invited me to start a post on this, I'm not sure it's a good idea LOL, but what the hell. The whole point of this exercise is to get people to think a little more, instead of just taking too much for granted. I've never done that, and I found it's helped me a lot.So lst's start out with this. Given that we know that most players will defend their BB with about half the range as the button is raising, all other things being equal, meaning if the hands were just shown down from here, we know that the BB will win more hands than lose. This isn't a matter of dispute, we know this for sure. Now what tends to happen though is that the player in position tends to win more hands that see the flop onward, this is less clear to people but typically this is the case. So the question is, what went wrong? Now we're talking winning percentage here, not necessarily net profit, that's an entirely separate topic and a considerably more complex one, but you can't say well the IP player has more pot control and can win more with his good hands and so on, at this point we're just talking winning or losing hands. So what the hell is going on here to cause this? The answer is fairly obvious actually and it may lead to us plugging some leaks in our game, however only when we figure out what's going on here. So what is going on?
The BB plays too weak postflop/SB plays aggressively. Too many "board misses both players" boards are won by the SB.I think a decent reason for that would be the positional advantage as well. The SB can put more pressure on the BB postflop on average, all other things being equal. So I think it does come back to positional advantage, though it does touch on some other topics.
SB has the absolute control on whether BB has to pay for next card/showdown or not. Same thing applies to BB, but he does not control the final price (except for 4betting, which only happens with strong hands/drasws/rarely). Big exception is checkraising, but it forces to give SB the option of checking back weighing this up a little.
Well of course this is due to the OOP player folding more, there are many pots where neither player improves and the IP player ends up taking those down more often at some point in the hand through "putting pressure" on the OOP player. In other words the IP player takes the initiative more. So at this point we need to ask a couple of questions, why is it that the IP is taking the initative so much and why is it that the OOP is playing so weak tight here? So with the first question we need to ask what the differences are really with a player taking initiative OOP versus IP. To the second, why initiative in itself should be effective if the opponent to act is playing properly.To Mr G - it takes two to tango, the IP player only has this control if the OOP player checks, regardless though this doesn't effect why the IP player wins more often, this can effect the amount of bb won per hand though, we can talk about that but I went to leave that for a bit later as it's better to try to sort out why the IP player wins more often and there's a few things to look into yet :)
OK well this thread seems to have died LOL, let's get back to initiative. I remember reading years ago about the power of initiative and the first player in the pot often wins it, I think the discussion was from Sklansky if I'm not mistaken, it made sense though, funny thing is you don't see this concept discussed much but it's one that should be. So in our discussion the dynamic is that the OOP player has first crack at the initiative and the IP player can take it when the OOP player passes on it. Whomever takes the initiative more will win more hands, we're not talking money here at this point we're talking just hands, and this is for an obvious reason, you can't play every hand and you'll be folding your weaker hands here and continuing with your stronger ones. So given the fact that OOP players typically pass on the initiative and check a lot, then they will win less hands of course. So what we're wondering is when doing this becomes a leak. Well for starters it's always a bad idea to have a default play, if it's to check every time then we have to be giving up something here, there are a lot of situations where leading is going to be better, for instance if the opponent will fold too much here, or if he tends to be more disposed to putting money in the pot when he's led to versus checked to. That's a situation you always want to be on the lookout for, the opposite is often true and you can induce light betting when you check, but some players are disposed to the opposite, and will either call light or raise light too much due to an overestimation of their positional advantage here. What's really strange is that the standard thinking that drives a lot of this is that the person who has the lead so to speak pre-flop is given some sort of special consideration, a presumption of the better hand, which is totally faulty. Once again, it takes a stronger hand to call a bet or raise then to make it, this isn't just a presumption it's absolute fact, unless you're calling or raising every time that is, if you fold at all this is true, and the more you fold the more true it is. For instance, say the SB is raising 2/3 of hands preflop and the BB is calling 1/3 of the time, the BB is playing a significantly stronger range here and will win more often if the hands are just dealt out. So we know who has the advantage here, that's why it's so interesting that we see the opposite happen most of the time in practice. So to say that the raiser has the advantage here is foolish, if he's in position then there are some advantages that flow from that, all of which should have to do with pot control, and not winning percentage per se, unless the OOP player is playing tighter than optimal. In fact, if initiative is used properly, given the OOP player is the favorite to win based upon ranges, we would expect that if both players were playing optimally the OOP player would win more hands here. Now when the OOP 3 bets and gets called, then he feels entitled to lead most of the time, which is even stranger, given that the IP player now is the favorite to win, given a tighter 3 bet calling range than the 3 bettor. It doesn't really matter that there's an expectation of a c-bet, that actually makes it worse since this is like telling your opponent that you'll lead out lighter here based upon the preflop 3 bet, so the opponent has both position here and the advantage of a probable better hand to start, which is the worst time to be leading out in fact, not that you don't want to consider it, but you need to be more careful here versus leading out when you just flat their preflop raise. As always, a lot of this is going to be read dependent, however in typical HUSNG matches players don't lead enough to even have a good read here, so unless you've played an opponent several times you're in the dark a lot. However the danger of leading out too much isn't the bet itself, it's the danger you'll make mistakes by putting more money in bad, and if you have that problem or are too uncertain of what an opponent's calling or raising frequencies mean then playing more passively might be the better way, at least until you improve enough. In our game, the time to work these things out is when the blinds are small, to at least get a feel for what an opponent's style is when led into, you also want to start out more conservative as well, and tend to give your opponent credit when it seems it's due until you decide otherwise. You also of course want to balance your ranges here when leading, donkeys will lead their good hands and check their weak ones, we don't want to even come close to doing that, in fact depending on the opponent it's often correct to do the opposite more often than not.In the end what you want to do is at least consider that one of the big reasons why it's difficult to play OOP is that you've conditioned yourself to react so much, it's always more difficult to react than to act, sure you're subject to being raised but that's true any time you put money in the pot, so while it's better to be in position in a hand it perhaps need not be so bad to be out of position as you're making it.