Superturbos and shallow stack play

chesslw · Superturbos and shallow stack play

I’ve been addicted to superturbos lately- and so have thought a lot about the game below 25bb. I apologise in advance for tl:dr and bolded most of the important statements.

Here are some of my thoughts on shallow stack HU play. I might be boring you with stuff you already know (or maybe stuff that’s plain wrong)- but I’ll post anyway. Please chip in with your suggestions, and especially point out any mistakes. Bear in mind that I don’t have a subscription for husng.com or any other training site…

We all know that at roughly 10bb or below, the optimal (unexploitable) play is to follow Nash. Also- I’ve found that a lot of seemingly good players (and bad ones) don’t have a bb flatting range from 12bb to 20bb (i.e. only 3bet or folds). This is exploitable (especially the deeper the stack depth).

One point we can make quickly (first got this from reading 2+2). If villain is 3bet shoving less than 50%, then we can profitably minraise atc, and call the 3bet with a decent +EV range. If villain is 3bet shoving more than 50%, then we maximally exploit villain by stealing much less preflop- and minraise/calling with our entire range (notice the sudden change in optimal strategy at the range of 50% 3bet shove).

What if the villain is a random, and we don’t know his 3bet%? Well, once we have established that villain doesn’t have a flatting range, it is already good enough to exploit him. Nash is +EV for the button when stacks are shallower than 8bb, so we can use this fact to be able to turn the tables when the stacks are deeper than 16bb against such an opponent by minraising every button, and calling off using Nash calling range for “8bb” effective stacks (or a better range, given some reads).

This is of course not the most optimal option if villain is shoving >50% (which he is when using Nash). We can definitely improve by folding out the bottom of our range- although it is still at least good to know that we get a definite edge by minraising 100% (I cba to work out the exact maths). Calculating such profitable ranges shouldn’t be too difficult if you’ve read Red-dog’s “is your shove profitable” post, or you can just stick with a small edge by reading Nash charts.

3bet shoving or folding exploits a lot of people at high blinds. Particularly those who raise higher than 2x. This is because the general population normally open very wide (continuing from the beginning of the match- over 75%), and only calls the top 20% of hands to a jam (probably less than that). So to be unexploitable ourselves on the button, we need to call shoves much wider. It is important to know that this still means we are gaining in the long run- since we gain whether villain 3bet jams too wide or too narrow- the nature of playing unexploitably.

Another thing- since bb has to have a calling range at shallow stacksizes to not be exploited, imo it is essential that he has a donking range and doesn’t auto check any flop. This is the same story as not having a flatting range preflop. Poker is like most things, if you take the easy way out (i.e. following a 3bet/fold chart at high blinds), then it is almost never the best/optimal way. Donking is especially powerful here, since if the button raised us, he would almost have to commit to the pot- making bluff-raising unprofitable (the same reason that naked bluff-checkraising is unprofitable). Shallow stack poker is basically a 60% preflop and 40% flop game- and auto checking oop massively reduces our options, and gives us 0 fold equity on the flop. Check folding missed flops is very expensive- and you are actually better off 3bet/folding if you end up doing this.

Of course if button cbets 100%, then donking isn’t necessarily at all, but the button shouldn’t blindly cbet 100% anyway (if he does, then e.g. it becomes highly profitable to flat AA, KK preflop then checkraise any flop, especially at such stack depths, and checkraise bluffs are always +EV as button connects over 1/3 of the time, and we get good pot odds by checkraise bluffing with any 2).

One idea for donking is that we can bet/bet/bet with draws or some overcards with some backdoor draw to fold out hands like 2nd pair or bottom pair (and of course air) which would rarely raise a donk on the flop. This is especially good if the board has some obvious draws, since villain’s range would be capped if he flats as he doesn’t have a strong enough made hand to protect against draws (taking from Borg’s post about triple barrelling). If we checkraise instead, then 2nd pairs or worse would have a decent chance of getting it in on many flops with the dead money in the pot(since if not button would be too exploitable to checkraise bluffs, and shouldn’t cbet the hand if he is cbet folding 2nd pair)...

I haven't mentioned limping at all- since I'm very unfamiliar with it at any stack depth tbh. We can note though, that if villain allows us to limp, then we can exploit him even further- since by limping, we reduce the stack to pot ratio, and increase our implied odds, thus increasing our postflop edge. Not just saying we are better than villain postflop, but positional advantage is increased as well.

Obviously postflop is too hard to talk about in a vacuum at any stack depth, but poker isn’t solved, and most of our edge comes from postflop play, even at shallow stack depth. With the correct adjustments, and hopefully by this stage a plethora of reads, we can outplay our opponent. Very Happy

chesslw

I forgot to mention:

It might be possible that button is supposed to get and edge against the big blind that is as big as it is when big blind 3bet/folds, but I highly doubt it. The reason is that it might be unprofitable to 3bet shove a hand like 98o, but it is almost certainly better than -1bb to just flat it oop.

BetMagicMoney

ok im adding a whole bunch of notes on stuff you said because i disagree with some of it (not trying to hate just trying to help)

chesslw

Hi bmm- glad someone replied to my post Smile

(don't worry about offending me at all btw).

This is a bunch of stuff I was thinking about last night basically. And I agree- that 12bb is a bit too low to have a flatting range- we can't do too wrong with shoving a bit wider than Nash calling range for 12bb I think (cba to work out the maths- but fwiw I'm writing a program to solve the following game at various stack depths:

button minraises/folds, bb 3bet shoves/folds, then button calls or folds).

The thing is I did some back of envelope maths and if we don't have a flatting range for 15bb or higher, button definitely has an edge. I guess from what you said (or mersennary w/e)- 15bb is the cuttoff for a flatting range (this is probably right imo given the maths)- but maybe button is supposed to get an edge.

I also agree that we shoudn't donk all our strong hands and check our weak hands- that is obviously exploitable. But also for the same reason- checking back 100% of our range imo is exploitable- I never advocated donking draws + tp hands etc- just saying we should donk some range.

Obviously cbetting 100% is exploitable- and at these stacksizes is exploited by checkraise ai bluffing 100%- and obviously as you said button can readjust by not cbetting 100%- so I don't think we disagree here.

To me, in terms of optimal play- it just intuitively feels like checking back flop 100% is not good- we allow button to check back and take a free card- i.e. button has the option of playing the same game with flop dealing 4 cards, and with 1 more river card to come- and that doesn't seem optimal imo.

chesslw

If we incorporate limping- then it is altogether a different story... which I know little about I'm afraid- please enlighten me Smile

Also- about calling how wide- we can easily work out the maths for various stackdepth unexploitably (I just cba to put it all in my long post).

BetMagicMoney

yer but you can't have a calling range chart for each stack unless you go for a nash equilibrium call chart Vs 3bet shoving and if you do that congrates and best your break even :/

what is your donking range then? does it change Vs villian? Yes i agree that if a vilian id check back alot then leading is fine, but your more likely to find people Cbetting still.

chesslw

Yeah- obviously donking range is villain dependent- against those who cbet>90% I'm going to go out on a limp and say that a donking range is unecessary/mathematically useless...

Also what is wrong with working out the Nash equilibrium for the minraise- call shove/fold to shove game? Imo the Nash push/fold charts are very useful themselves- and it doesn't hurt us to know of the Nash equilibrium strategy in the 3bet/fold game either. We will only be break even if and only if villain is adopting the same strategy- and we would gain otherwise...

Of course- similar to Nash push/fold- we can increase our edge by adjusting to villain's ranges. In this case, we may gain much more- since 3bet shoving ranges are more likely to be varied than push ranges under 10bb imo.

I felt the game is much more complicated than this- hence I felt a flatting range being necessary... But if we follow the above Nash strategy, it seems that sb has an edge fro 0-8bb, then bb has an edge from 8-15bb, and sb has the edge back from 15bb or higher.

chesslw

I don't want to sound like I'm stating the obvious- but generally I would donk a more bluff/draw heavy range vs nittier villains- and hands that would check/call 2 streets but are not good enough to checkraise with on the flop.

I would only checkraise strong made hands imo if their cbetting range is low.

Sometimes idk donking with strong hands against agro villains is better than checkraising- as they are more likely to bluffraise especially when they cbet a high %.

U Cook Socks

12bb is to shallow to limp, versus any player with a brain.

As stacks get shallower though, limping hands that you don't want to call a shove with, against a constant 3bettor, is a pretty good way of going about things.

chesslw

Idk if people are interested- but I pretty much solved this game.

Basically bb should be 3bet jamming around 50% to be unexploitable to the minraise steals. I won't give all the exact ranges- but it's very intuitive- basically at shallower stacksizes, you want to be shoving hands like K2o (high card v alue), and as stacksizes increase you want to be shoving hands like 74s (since sb's range is smaller- and K2o is worse against a high card heavy range compared to 74s).

Similarly, button should be minraise/calling with an increasingly narrower range as stacksizes increase (pretty intuitive). As a general guide- you should be minraise/calling with just below 50% of hands at 12bb.

All this happens until around 26-27bb. Now if bb is only 3bet jamming or foldiing (a massive leak), you should be minraising 100%, and calling with Nash calling range for effective stacks (change 2bb to 1bb).

chesslw

Oh- I also forgot to mention-

It is +EV to minraise/fold hands good blocker hands that are not good enough to minraise call for button- since we will get 3bet less than 50% by the big blind. Note that if bb is pushing wide enough such that this doesn't happen (except maybe with AA- blocking A LOT of the 3bet shove range- but we are not minraise folding AA, or indeed any A anyway), we are exploiting him by virtue of the fact that our calling range does better.

There are some rather interesting phenomena- minraise/folding 89o is +EV since it blocks the most combos of 89s (89s however is minraise call for shallower stacksizes and openfold(!) for higher stacksizes). If you play around with Stove- you will notice there really aren't many of these hands to make a huge difference- but the idea is still interesting.

i hope this post gives some people ideas about shallowstack play. And if it is widely accepted that having a calling range below 15bb is bad (as BMM/Mersennary points out)- then you guys should definitely at least think about my post on how to play such stacksizes unexploitably.

Also note that it is definitely true at least from higher than 12bb- that minraise/calling does better than just using Nash jam/fold. So if you are follwing Nash charts for that- you might as well follow my strategy which does better.