I have a question for the mersenneary videos in the masters pack. First want to say really great videos.
There was one point I wanted to ask a question about, (I am still fairly new to HU hypers and still studying and learning them, so I appologies if this question is basic).
In the first video, you make a great point about defending a wide range of hands from the bb. However in the 2nd or 3rd video there was a hand where you say we shouldnt be contensting oop with no equity when villain cbet AJ8 flop. My question is, if we are not going to be contesting without equity and still defend a wide range preflop from bb, then will we not be c/f way too much and make our defending unprofitable.
For example, a lot of the unconnected hands you advocate we defend from bb will often flop no, or very little equity. If we are going to c/f everytime this is the case, is this not really bad? Or is this ok? (or is it flop dependant, what boards we contest with no equity, as aj8 obviously pretty wet flop.)
Thanks
This is a good question.
To tell you a bit of a secret (well, not a secret to anybody who ever played me extensively) - I was never particularly creative from the big blind after defending. I did a lot of check/folding. My contest percentage was almost definitely too low against competently aggressive players. Still, my database shows I was very profitable with these expanded hands, even if you account for stuff like of course you're going to have better expectation against fish. I feel pretty strongly as a result of that evidence that you don't need to be a hero from the big blind to do better than -1bb. Obviously it doesn't quite work like this - but when you call off that extra big blind, it's only 25% of the pot.
The small blind has systematic advantages and there are some flops it's OK to fold on with a ton of your range. When the flop comes A22 20bb deep - your opponent has every ace and even plenty of 2s in his range, and you have almost none of those things - perhaps some random 2x suited hands. You can float with Kx/two broadway hands because you're ahead often enough, but you represent close to nothing when you check/raise. You can do it anyway because pretty much everybody is terrible at poker - but the position is against you. And on AJ8 boards, because of that dynamic where you don't have aces in your range, you can really only check/raise a somewhat small percentage. At that point, it only makes sense to do it with hands you have some kind of equity with, in the same way that you would 3-bet bluff the top of your folding range instead of 23o.
A lot of the boards where we've whiffed are much more conducive to check/raising - something like J72 with a suit. You can have a jack, the suit, and that's plenty to cover a lot of bluff check/raises given that your opponent very often doesn't have a hand. So even if you have something like 68 which really is "no equity", you can be much more comfortable in check/raising. If you look at the boards where you have no equity and little to no contestability based on your wider range, it's not that big a portion of the overall flops.
So I wouldn't worry too much about feeling like you're bleeding chips from the big blind by playing a wider range and check/folding a lot - for one, losing -1bb/hand by folding is another way to bleed that people for some reason feel more cool with, but also, you'll get enough situations to make it worth your while. There's no need to force it.