I've watched skates' first two videos and they're really great. In the second one, he talks about NASH. He says that you should forget about SAGE. Why is that? Is there anything wrong with SAGE? I looked up the NASH charts on HoldemResources.net and it seems really loose to me. Is this gonna be +EV to use it at low/micro stakes ($ 5.15)? I was surprised to see shoving hands like 54s for 20 BB. Also at what effective stacks can I begin to start push/folding? 10BB? 12 BB?
Hey,
At low/micro stakes, jamming the Nash Eq. ranges will be very +EV. However, most people won't call wide enough, so you should actually jam even wider than the equilibrium tells you to. As for calling ranges, you will have to tighten up vs most because most low stakes villains do not jam wide enough themselves.
In general, you should start playing jam/fold at 10BB. Vs. some villains (say, those who know the equilibriums), you might want to minraise at >8BB. If your villain calls alot but doesn't 3bet all in ever PF, you should think about their frequencies; Will they call wide enough if you jam? How do they play post flop?. If your villain is super tight, you need to weigh which strategy will have more equity; minraising, raising larger, jamming, or limping. Realistically, you need to adapt your endgame strategy to your opponents tendencies. If you ever watch my games at $345/$570/$1130, you might see me limping on one table with 10BB, minraising on another with 12BB, and jamming on yet a third with 15BB. It all depends on the villain.
However! If you feel you are outclassed or that you don't know how to handle your villain (say, someone who 3bets a ton, but also calls PF), you can always default to playing jam/fold. It is a +EV strategy at <8BB, and only slightly -EV up through 15BB or so, and it's only that way if your opponent plays perfectly too!
As for SAGE.... SAGE is just a method that gives a way to memorize something close to the Nash equilibrium ranges. You will do better to memorize the actual equilibriums (or do what I do, and just keep a picture of them up all the time while playing).
Thank you very much for quick and very insightful response. :)
Also, I like your PS theme. Where did you get it from?
It is actually just the "Hyper Simple" theme, albeit doctored by me :). I took the background file (blue) and the negative file and used Paintbrush (the mac equivalent of MS Paint) and just filled it in with black. Works well enough for me!
Sorry I'm working my way from the oldest post to the newest, so I may bring up some old posts, sorry for that. I am going to post some random ideas, hopefully someone can correct me on them.
From your post skates, it seems that the optimal strategy is to use Nash when needed. So if I'm 12BB's effective and still winning pots with minraises or limps, then keep doing that until 8BB's right? I mean shoving K4o at 12BB's might be unexploitable, but it might be a bad idea if he was almost always folding to a minraise and only calling shoves/minraises with a stronger range? However, if you are getting called a bit, and not winning all the pots postflop because of donk leads, check raises or turn donks, then we CAN shove K4o for 12BB's? We have an unexploitable backup strategy at around the 8-15BB mark. Is this somewhere close to the truth?
Also apart from the fact the low stakes need the calling ranges tightened up, how do these ranges fare against raises. Like if I shove over a minraise, do I need to tighten my range quite a bit, or does it stay fairly close to the chart. And if someone reshoves my minraise, and can do so fairly widely (like say I get the feeling they understand Nash), will my range tighten down more than if they just open shoved? I guess these two questions go hand in hand.
And thanks Skates, insightful post.
HU SNG noob