Hey guys, had this spot come up the other day and decided it would be a good spot to do some analysis on.

500/1000 100 antes

Fold, Fold

Hero UTG + 2 (25bb) raises to 2.1bb AhJh

Fold,Fold,Fold,Fold

BB (8.5bb) calls 2.1bb

Flop (5.3bb) 2d9s6c

BB checks
Hero shoves (6.45bb effective stacks, pot is 5.3bb)

If we give villain a 40% defend range, and assume villain is going to stack off on flop with anything bottom pair or better or an OESD, this means villain is going to stack off just under 50% of the time, let's call it 50%.

50% of the time villain check/folds and we win 5,330:

0.5 * 5330 = 2,665

50% of the time villain calls and we have 21.5% Equity vs their range. The total pot in this case is 18,302

(18302 * .215) - (6486 * .785) = -1,157

-1,157 *0.50 = -588.5

So our equity on the jam is: 2665 - 588.5 = 2,076.5 ~= +2bb EV

so this play is +2bb EV and we only lose 6.5bb around 37% of the time. I can't imagine any strategy being better than just shoving this flop, what do you guys think?

• Also would like to point out that this 40% range is probably going to be too strong an assumption a lot of the time since lots of villains will just jam Ax hands and maybe also jam their premium holdings (88+,AT+, etc) since we can't really ever be raise folding to their stack size. When we remove these types of hands from the 40% range, villain hits flop a little less often and we also have better equity against their flop calling range too, so I think 2bb EV is close to the worst case. I guess it's possible there's a villain out there that will ONLY flat here with super premium hands and will jam just about anything else- against this hypothetical villain this play is a disaster but as soon as we learn this we can exploit this opponent very easily.

Would like to hear thoughts on this, I'm new to doing this type of detailed analysis and trying to get lots of reps in to get better at it. Sorry if this is a yawn boring spot and very obviously a Jam. Thanks for reading!

EDIT:

Would it be better to adjust our opening size to something like 3.25bb here to force bb into jam or fold mode with a hand like AJs? We're gonna pick up the blinds and antes often and vs bb's jamming range we probably are wayy ahead.