0 EV hands vs strong/weak players
Posted by Gino Song
Posted by
Gino Song
posted in
Low Stakes
0 EV hands vs strong/weak players
Snowie thinks raising a hand like 44 in MP for a min raise is 0 ev against a table full of strong players, which is understandable since everyone will be 3betting and defending close to optimally.
But does the EV of this hand go up on a table full of weak players at 2nl/5nl?
- Well since its 0 EV vs good players, it has to be +ev vs weak players right?
Not sure if this is always correct, since weaker players will be flatting hands like 75s and K8s vs this sizing, where good players will be 3betting a lot with Ax and suited connectors while avoiding calls with the same hands that weaker players would call with. So a hand like 44's EV, would it change? Then you have to consider that if weaker players call 75s and K8s, we should be opening hands like KTo in MP for a min raise as well.
- Weaker players will flat stronger hands, which counteracts preflop loose openings?
This is something I always think about in softer games. Yes we can open more hands than usual since people are passive and not 3betting enough, but the trade off is that they will have stronger hands postflop than average. Is the tradeoff of realizing the equity of the lowest part of our RFI range worth playing vs a stronger range postflop?
I'd like to know what you guys think - the big here is do we exploit softer games by playing tight or loose. Traditional thought is to play tight, but I suspect that playing very loose pre and realizing your equity with 0 ev hands, then adjusting postflop accordingly, might be better.
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would imagine it is a function of how high the rake is, how often you will be oop, will you be oop often in mwp, also how often the pot goes multi way in general, etc...best case its probably slightly higher than 0 ev but it could be slightly negative if rake is high and you end up in a bunch of mwp
I think you are quite right that if you would merely loosen up your opening standard in a soft game, your improved ability to realize your equity (owing to the passivity of your opponents pre- and post-flop) may not compensate for the strengthening of their ranges postflop, especially when you are likely to end up playing out of position against some of them. However, I can think of two mitigating factors, one general and the other one specific.
The general mitigating factor is that although your opponents' ranges will be strengthened by strong hands that ought to have 3-bet preflop, it also contains lots of junk that ought to have folded preflop as well as some hands that could rather have 3-bet as the lower part of a polarized 3-betting range (such as JTs or A5s). So, if you have KJ in MP, you will indeed run sometimes into stronger hands but, even more often, into junk and dominated hands.
As for the specific case, I'm thinking of implied odds hands like suited aces and small pocket pairs (like your 44). When you play those against a soft player pool, you are actually very happy that they may have very strong hands like QQ+ and AK since your plan just is to stack them or give up.
Just wanted to add: while some hands like KJ that make strong top pairs perform well in soft games where players call too much with dominated hands; hands like suited aces perform well due to implied odds when lower flushes often run into them; and finally, hands like 44 also have great implied odds when the villains have uncapped calling ranges, nevertheless there are hands that we shouldn't add to our MP range when loosening up in soft games. Those are medium to low suited connectors and gappers. Such hands seldom hit flops hard and they are very much reliant on realizing their equity slowly (on the turn and river) and they profit from fold equity when they are part of a suitably balanced range (which makes it possible to bluff profitably on the river when their draws miss). In soft games, reduced fold equity on all streets makes them much less profitable.
I would say yes because they don’t stop making mistakes post-flop. Suited aces and pocket pairs are doing well here provided you play well postflop. Crap like JTo not so much.
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