As an exercise in working with ranges, I've decided to address an issue that I've had for forever: what the hell hands we're supposed to play preflop, heads up. Based on the "optimal 3/4/5 bet" series, originally from donkr (https://tipsterfutbol.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/optimal-3-bet4-bet5-bet-strategies-in-nlhe-6-max-part-1/) I have put together what I think is the beginnings of a decent 4/5 bet strategy pair (it could be bad as well, let me know if my ranges seems way too wide). However, when I go to construct my 3bet ranges, I start to feel less confident, as if there's no way the BB should be defending as wide as I have concluded. My basic concept is:

BB defend = (3 into 5bet range + 3bet fold range + call range), a polarized range.

I have already got my 5 bet range (AA-44, suited Aces, KQs, AKo-AJo). This is constructed with all hands that have >50% equity against BU's 4bet-call jam range (appr. top 13% of hands), and then adding bluffs until the worst of these 4bet-call hands break even.

I proceeded to try to construct my call range. As it is heads up, the BB would only need to call 1.5bb against a 2.5x raise, thus getting 1.5/(1.5+3.5) = appr. 30% equity needed to call a raise based on pot odds alone. I decided to up this to 40% equity necessary to call based on being out of position. (This is where I think I'm going wrong, I currently think I should be even more selective based on how disconnected many of these hands will be and how hard it will be to realize their equity.) I went into equilab and selected all hands with >40% equity against a BU 85% opening range.

After that, I selected around 230 3 bet bluff combinations (hands just too weak to call) to balance my 154 5 bet combinations, in accordance with the article.

However, when I combined these three ranges, I am defending almost 70% (!!!) of hands from the BB. Is this correct? I can't think of a reason it would be exploitable, as our value to bluff 3 bet ratio is properly balanced and all of our calls have the proper equity, but it just seems so high to someone that isn't very good at HU. I compared it to the 25% of hands that BU should be 4betting in order to prevent BB from profitably 3bet bluffing ATC (30% of an 85% opening range) and it seemed absurd. Now that I think about it, I am ignoring hands that BU could call with, so I suppose that the BU defense against a 3bet could be much wider than I currently think.

I apologize for the essay, but if you've made it this far, thoughts? Is 70% BB defense just a fine frequency against a raise heads up? If not, where is my logic flawed? I appreciate the help!