You are viewing a single comment's thread from:

RE: Poker Tip Man Armen-Chris Ferguson Poker lesson

in #poker8 years ago (edited)

Chris is completely wrong here, but at least he gives a justification and theory for why he thinks this is true. He also mentions that you should do the same thing with each hand in your range, not just focusing on what you do with aces which is what your article did earlier. But I'll focus this post on why Chris is wrong with his assertion.

Chris basically asserts that because you have a stronger range in early position you should raise small cause you don't need to charge people to call and a weaker range in late position you should raise large to charge the blinds more.

His advice is outdated though, and relies on the big blind not defending enough. Nowadays, big blinds call almost anything vs a minraise, and if someone calls in mid to late position it likely goes 3-4 way which is exactly what you don't want.

His advice about raising large from the button because you have a weaker range is egregious. Not only do you want to risk less with this weaker range, but you want to keep the relative stack depth deeper when you have position.

Consider it this way: if you make it 2.4x from the button with a 45% range, then you risk 2.4 to win 1.5.

When the blinds call you realize more than 100% of your equity due to position, but when they 3bet you have to fold your weakest hands. Let's say the sb only reraises to 8.5x or folds with 15% of hands and the bb calls 50% of hands and 3bets 12% of hands.

Then we are reraised 25.2% of the time (1-.88 * .85) and called 42.5% of the time. When we have the worst hand in our range, we are folding 25.2% to a 3bet, getting called 42.5% of the time, and winning the blinds 32.3%. Let's say your EV vs the calling range is 50% of the pot with the worst hand in your range, as you have a disadvantage vs his range but you have a positional advantage which makes up for it.

So your total EV is (.323 * 1.5 - .252 * 2.4 + .5 * .25). The last part is because you get your equity put in back and split up the small blinds money. The total of this is .0047, or barely profitable, showing that 2.4x with about 45% of hands is a correct strategy.

Now let's look at 3.5x with 45% of hands.

The small blind knows your range is unchanged and will still only reraise and his 3bet range is unchanged. He will make it 11x with 15% of hands (note he is risking 10.5 to win 5 here and was risking 8 to win 3.9 before, roughly same risk reward ratio vs the same range), and the bb will call with 40% of hands and 3bet 10%. Now we get 3bet 23.5% of the time, get called 34% of the time, and get folds 42.5% of the time. But now your worst hand is slightly worse against the big blind, so you only get back 47.5% of the pot postflop.

EV = (-3.5 * .235 + 1.5 * .425 + (.475 * 7.5 - 3.5)) = -.1225

Now, even though the big blind is folding far more frequently now than he was vs a 2.4x raise, the worst hand in your range loses money so you have to fold more frequently whereas before it was a marginal winner. So you cannot play nearly as many hands from the button using his strategy.

His strategy is the complete opposite of what you should do. You should raise bigger in early position and smaller in late position.