Thanks seeittwice!

Do you mean with your question, that how does the much higher rake in micros affect our defending frequency? I really dont have answer for this, havent had to worry about high rake issues in my online play... It might have small affect, but recommend you check out low stakes forums here and on 2+2, theres allways alot discussion about high rake issues in low/micro plo and someone might have done math regarding this type of situation.

This might be a false assumption. But if we assume that a avrage pot when defendinge BB vs utg-DB is 15bb then you would win 0.5 bb less on average when taking down a pot after defending your bb.

If that was the case, How do you think it would it affect you range when defending?

My guess is that if we say you can defend 80% with a profit at 25-50. Then you will "only" win 0-0.5 bb wit a big chunk of your range like maybe 25-50% of it given that your average opponent is either very competent or World class. So if you had to play the same opponents as you do now just at micro or small stakes instead. Then it would effect your range quit a bit. So when defending bb at lower stakes you need to judge your range more vs the player and his range, than just vs his range Atleast with the part of you range on average expects such low return that you need to have a small or big edge vs the player to make a profit.

seriously

Heh, thanks Jeans!

How can I make up my sins? Is it enough, if i fold my BB few extra times vs. your BTN steal? ;)

Thanks Ph33roX,

Part2 pretty much done, so its coming out at some point!

+1, whats a decent wr from sb and bb in 6max? stats noob speaking here

Hi guys,

Dont want to put out any win rates from my opponents,( even anonymous), feel it may be out of good tastes boundaries. +  winrates from villains in these spots are all over the place anyways, because of  limited sample.

I changed my bb defending game slowly and have been where i was aiming for like 2 months. So my own sample is limited as well. But so far its looking like that i am performing 25-50%  better now than i once was. But these numbers maybe biased for many reasons, so many other things besides limited sample have affect in here... And we can not just plainly stare at the defending numbers, other parts of ones game need also to be in shape for it to have positive affects. 

No worries about not posting other win rates, thanks for the reply, looking forward to part 2.

Thanks osiasgriffin,

Well laid out thoughts here. Shoving definately has its merits, but still feeling that calling turn might overall be just slightly better ;)

one year later I feel the same as you ;)

Thanks pacmang, glad you liked it!

Yeah, I agree with Zach on this, especially on the last sentence.  

Raw equity (hot and cold equity) is quite different from how much equity we can realise.  In general, the one who plays a polar range gets to realise more equity (or captures more of the pot) than he "deserves," whereas the one who plays a bluff catching range gets to realise/capture less.

Now, ranges in PLO aren't always well defined as "polar" or "bluff catching."  But when we defend from BB and IP player c-bets, it's fair to assume that he gets to play a somewhat polar range, and we a bluff catching one.  There are events that can flip this initiative, such as donk bet or check/raise, but those are relatively rare.  And because of that, the IP player tends to realise more equity than we do, and we generally would need more than what the preflop pot odds dictate in order to justify a call.

In reality, this "more" can mean many things.  For example, if BTN is a player who c-bets like 90% on flop but only 30% on turn, we don't really have to care about flopping well anymore; his frequencies are off, and we can attack them.  Also, in terms of hand value, hand "quality" comes into consideration besides their raw equity against his range.  Point is, hot and cold equity alone is not sufficient; as a preflop caller OOP, we would have to consider other things too, which can work towards or against us.

These minute details aside, it was an excellent video and I very much enjoyed it!  I'm definitely looking forward to the part 2, and it'd be great if there were more MW hands and hands where you actually folded as opposed to calling, although my guess is that they are gonna be pretty rare. :P

Thanks for chiming in to the discussion Zachary and midori, good posts!

Glad that this topic creates lots of discussion. 

Independent decisions: If we need to take into account the factors like the R and positional disadvantage (as we prolly should), those definately should be included as a part of our independent decisions here preflop. Didnt purely meant that we can just look our raw equity vs range we are facing, cant be that easy, right? Right pre flop price is prolly a combination of many different variables. Those factors (R and position) though seem to have been hugely overvalued in the past. How much those are actually worth? And how big value should we count for these while making a pre flop decision? So putting accurate estimates for R and position, is the super tricky part, yes. I think that this is where each players personal skill set steps into play, so those have different value for diffenrent player. Some players are just so much better at realizing the equity of their hand = playing correctly range vs range postflop. Also better skill set cuts down the positonal disadvantage. Because of these factors i think one can not just blindly look at top players defending numbers, and copy those, because you will prolly not have the correct skill set to play that range on flops and -> ... and might then end up leaking more postflop than you do preflop... 

Realizing the equity of our hand, isnt just our problem as a bb defender/ non pfr aggressor. It should be a similar problem to all plrs that are in the hand. But offcourse position plays a role in this aswell.

"Because some of that equity with Q952 will be when villain has 7755 and cbets on K92 where we fold"

  why its the opponent who's the one doing betting here? Does he have range advantage/disadvantage on this board? or is he just betting, because he took the initiative preflop and now thinks hes entitled to be cbetting , maybe even a bit too much? There are tons of questions to be answered and many adjustments to be made... and its our job also to not let our opponents to realize their equity.  I think everyone still have tons of improving to be made in flop and post flop play, and there are still so many stones that have not been turned...   Saying "check to the raiser" still prolly happens too often as a default in many spots. 

The fact that these things are so complicated and soooooo hard to solve is that what keeps the games going. And its what keeps our motivation high. Non poker people often ask me, that dont i get bored with the game after playing it so many years? So far i havent, and its because i feel like every single year I'm playing almost totally different game. My own and my opponents game changes and improves all the time. You never get ready with this, and thats why i am excited every time i sit at a table and play!

One thing i have learned during these years of playing is that, "dont give any definitive/written in stone answers". Theres always someone smarter who will prove you wrong at some point. And because of that i am at constant suspicion about my play/thoughts/sayings. These are thoughts of this moment which i think are best atm, and they were different 2 years ago and will be different 2 years after. Like said in vid, this was meant to bring some food for thought, and bring up a point that theres huge differences about how people (pros even) think about this situation, and what might be reasonging behind these so drasticly different numbers. 

"previous defending ranges were too tight" 

This is something i think everybody are starting to more or less agree on! The "new" numbers i got there are just to make an example, those dont take into a account that what size of a raise we are facing and so on, so they will be bit of in some cases.. but those are real numbers from top of the line poker minds, so theres definately something to look after. Also changes in my own game/results tells the same. 

Ok, will not go too far with this now, part2 still coming out at some point ;) 

good thoughts by all and I think you're all correct. 

The summary of the two thoughts would be that we must consider what R is when determining whether or not we should defend given our raw equity and the price we are being laid, but that in the past R has been vastly underestimated based on position (and potentially other factors).  The results of these thoughts are this video: we can defend a wider range that previously thought because we are going to be able to realize our equity more often than was typically estimated in the past.

great video and great discussion.

Thanks Adam! 

Hi DH0811, and sory for a very late response. Saw this while on move, and then forgot to answer.

Wanted to have very fresh hands from everyone, because its been something that many have been changing a bit lately, so had 1200-5500 from all plrs. 4-6handed games.(i get tons of 4-5h hands beacause of zoom). Its not much, but this type of stat normalizes very quickly and we get a pretty good direction allready from a very small sample.