nit

People defending very wide in today's games (at least good regs, a bunch of fish have always done this) is more a question of getting rid of a previously common leak. I mean, at least to me, my perception is usually "ah this guy is defending correctly". Definitely agree it means we have to consider some of our holding as stronger than we have in the past and also pressure harder than we used to on certain runouts. Also means low card boards are not as awesome as they used to be as people flat way more 4xs combos. Still I feel like all these things are just us playing correctly vs someone who is playing correctly (contrary to before when everyone was crazy nitty in BB).

A thought I've been having recently which is way less sexy than postflop adaptation though... if people are getting used to what they should be flatting vs a minraise or 2,2x raise, do they defend correctly vs 2,5x? I mean sure this makes our steals considerably more expensive, but given dead money in the middle it's more incremental than it seems and if their calling range drasticly drops we should probably just be doing this. At some stack depths it also makes 3bets more awkward for villains because they're giving us a good 4bAI spot. I mean, preflop sizing is an area where we can take people out of their comfort zones and if the whole tiny steal strategy just isn't working like it used to, maybe it's just because it was always partly incorrect and exploiting BB. Sure playing a bunch of spots in position is good for us but maybe giving > 4:1 odds to BB isn't optimal in no limit.

For instance, often we'll have option A which is raise our usual 2-2,25x sizing but our hand flats poorly and BB is flatting wide or option B which is shove say 20bb because it's a +EV shove. It's not wild to imagine a villain whose flatting range vs 2,5x drops enough to make us happy while his reshipping range is tight enough to warrant a fold. Possibly rare-ish scenario. Just as a general rule though, there's a bunch of ways I think actually raising bigger than the field post antes into good regs or just (correctly) loose competition can work out in good ways for us.

I'd love to continue optimizing preflop risk/rewards as much as the next guy, but if we're butting heads with the competition to a degree where we are let down by this strategy more often than not, maybe the time is coming to worsen EV when a steal goes through in order to improve how often it actually does.

Thoughts?