Just a quick question, I know this can vary, but just for a general guideline:
At what effective stack (how many big blinds) do you believe a heads up match should become shove / fold?
So basically when are the stacks too short pre, that a 'raise' becomes pointless and you might as well just shove or fold (unless ofcourse the raise is to enduce a shove or you choose to limp in instead). So I guess the question is around at what cut off point, or how many chips do you need to have committed for you to have no room to fold. Obv with an effective stack of 6bbs or less, after raising pre there is no point in folding to a 3bet...so where do you draw the line here?
Cheers
The best play depends on your opponent.
That said, for a given, effective stack S, we can solve to find the odds we end up being offered if our min raise gets jammed over:
Example @ S=12.0 BB, we get 42% pot odds when our opponent jams over our min raise:
S
12.0
SB
0.5
BB
1.0
P0
1.5
R
1.5
P1
3.0
J
11.0
P2
14.0
C
10.0
P3
24.0
O
42%
Repeating this for S = [12:4]:
S
O
12.0
42%
11.0
41%
10.0
40%
9.0
39%
8.0
38%
7.0
36%
6.0
33%
5.0
30%
4.0
25%
Given most holdem starting hands have at least 30-35% preflop equity, we can see that min raising below about 5.0-6.0 BB would be pot-committing.
It's probably not a large error to play jam/fold <= 8.0BB unless your villain is exceptionally exploitable.
Thanks for that, very insightful. I've been a winning player at $30 normal speed heads up on fulltilt with a 12% ROI without the faintest idea of these kind of concepts, I usually just take my best guess based on "Do i have enough chips to play with if i fold" as opposed to using any kind of maths. I feel like if I get my head around all of this I could improve my game out of sight....I'm looking to switch to turbos so I'm really going to need this.
Where is the best place to start to improve the math side of my game? I'm mainly talking about calculating odds and solving push / shove equations. Coffeeyay mathpack?
Coffeeyay's math in HUSNGs videos are an excellent starting point.
I can't speak for the pack because I've only watched his videos that were part of the HUSNG standard pack.
The titles of the additional videos do sound tantilising though ...
Thanks, how did you rate the standard pack?
Are there many good videos in the standard pack going over the mathematical side of things? I'm guessing i'll need to get a stats program too...poker tracker or something? never used any of that stuff either lol.
I started with the pokertracker + standard pack which was an absolute bargain for the amount of videos included on top of the software.
http://www.husng.com/content/buy-pokertracker-and-receive-standard-video-pack-free
^^ I should be working for commission lol.
The coverage of the math of poker is typically very light on in training videos.
This is probably a function of the mass market prefering to be given the answers rather than exploring the nuances of poker calculations (to each their own!).
Coffeeyay's math vids provide a really good foundation for thinking about HUSNGs analytically.
I'd definitely recommend picking up the standard pack + pokertracker deal if you don't have a tracking program and want good bang-for-buck on some videos.
If you're a spreadsheet nerd like me and you're looking to do some modelling, propokertools odds oracle is the absolute nuts.
cheers! I'm going to get that deal