Small Stakes Super Star

We’re not going to make a lot of money getting in 55 for 100 bb in NLHE games preflop… or are we? 5-betting goes way up in value in situations in NLHE where we have good fold equity versus our opponents. If our opponent makes a 4-bet to 20 bb versus us and we have 100 bb stacks, if we have 1/3 equity we only have to risk 34 bb minus our investment to win the likely 28 bb in the pot. That means our opponent would have to be bluffing 55% of the time on his 4 bet for our bet to be breakeven. This doesn’t sound likely, but what about situations where a player has a very wide opening range and a tight 4-betting value range? Over the next couple articles I am going to mathematically analyze 5-bet situations in NLHE.

The first step in my analysis is determining an unexploitable 3-bet shoving range to shove 100 bb over our opponent’s open without them having a good way to defend against it. If it is unexploitable for us to shove, then it must also be true that 3-betting planning to 5-bet with the hand will always show a profit, and our opponent’s bluff percentage is the profit. This is only going to apply to opponents who like to 4-bet or fold to a 3-bet.

I created a spreadsheet at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArqDMNP8uKTSdElKVFJ3bEgzUE9YUEtDQzlkMk16cEE to solve this problem. Feel free to take a look at it and make your own adaptations of it. I’m going to list the discoveries I made for the opening ranges your opponent must have for you to show a profit by open shoving. To simplify the problem I did not take into account card removal. I also set the maximum calling range for our opponent to be 88-AA, AK, and AQ.  This particular example is BB vs BTN

TT- 3x: 24.5% 2.5x: 27% 2x: 31%
99- 3x: 32% 2.5x: 36% 2x: 40%
88- 3x:46% 2.5x: 51% 2x: 58%
22- 3x: 48% 2.5x:53% 2x: 60%
AQ- 3x: 32% 2.5x:35% 2x:40%
AQs- 3x: 27% 2.5x: 30% 2x: 33%
AJs- 3x: 42% 2.5x: 47% 2x: 52%
KQo- 3x: 51% 2.5x: 57% 2x: 64%
A5s- 3x: 50% 2.5x: 56% 3x: 63%

I wouldn’t recommend ever over shoving over an opponents 2-3x open, but these numbers provide a decent basis for us to formulate a 3-bet 5-bet strategy versus an opponent who frequently 4-bets. Next week I am going to look into how often an opponent needs to be bluffing for you to show a profit with 5 betting. With a combination of these two analyses I hope to come up with a great plan to defend against 4bets.