Range advantage and nut advantage?
I have been hearing these terms a lot more since solvers came out and there's a few things I didn't understand. For example button raises and BB calls and board comes 35Jr they say BB has range advantage because his range should be wider and board should hit his range more. However, we know button is going to be raising with a wider range. So wouldn't the button have the range advantage? Also when I hear videos online explaining their thought process basically explaining all the combos they can have. To me this seems VERY VERY abstract. Like it's safe to assume that every seat at a 6m table can have Ax Kx or sets on many K or A boards.
I understand that we need to think about poker in terms of ranges and we are making decisions based on preflop play and bet size. Yet when we are in equilibrium which I know is rare but if we were and totally balanced then all these range assumptions become pointless because it's now possible that players are going to play their hands differently. I guess the only time I feel like I can effectively think of ranges is in 3bet pots as the number of combos played in 3 bet pots should be less. However, when we mix in using a polarized 3bet strategy that too is rendered obsolete. It's like all these decisions or thought processes become more and more abstract as we go up in stakes because as the players are more solver proficient and their actions become more randomized to where every explanation or thought process could also be explained and justified in the contrary because the more deceptive we play the more abstract the explanation becomes. I hope my rant makes sense to someone. Please help.
2 Replies
I 100% understand what you mean and i think some poker players fall into that trap, which includes me (im a beginner). I dont have an answer but i will try to explain some things to my best understanding.
Usually the preflop raiser has the range advantage (more equity), as the caller doesnt have the best hands - they should 3b with AA from any position (im assuming 6max cash 100bb deep here and further), so if they dont 3b they dont have aces, and the raiser might. I took normal BTN open BB call ranges from gto wizard and ran it in pokerstove. In your example, button actually has a slight range advantage - about 50.5% equity (which i think is close to the best the big blind is gonna get, so you can consider it good for bb). But what if they can have Ax and Kx, you say. If i add any ace and any king (including AA and KK) to big blind's range here, it gets slightly worse for BB - button has 50.8% equity. If exclude AA and KK, BTN has 51.5% equity, and another 0.3% more if i exclude AK from bb's range, even though the board doesnt connect to that. You can do that yourself - gto wizard preflop and pokerstove are free.
Of course, nobody plays an equilibrium strategy. Still, its useful to know it, so you can know how to deviate, if you know your opponents are playing poorly (important side note is that you cant lose ev even if you dont deviate and just play the equilibrium strategy - which you cant, but you can try to play an approximation of that - but you dont extract max ev either, which you do with exploiting). A simple example is that if you have a nit to your left whos not defending big blind with a wide enough range, hes leaking money vs an equilibrium strategy, but if you open wider from sb, you extract even more money from him. And to know what is "wider range", you need to know the equilibrium range. If you have a guy open to 5x, you know you need to tighten up your defending range, but if you know this guy is a fish and opens any two and will fold anything but top pair on the flop, you can open it up, etc.
We almost never know our opponent's range for sure, but we can usually have an approximation and use it to make decisions. You don't know if your opponent just decided to 3b preflop with 72o just for the hell of it, but based on your opponent, you can guess how likely it is. If you dont know anything about your opponent, you can use the "population average" (are we in a live 1/2 game where everyone is drunk? somewhat likely. are we in a game with all the pros? maybe not) or think what you would do to make a less precise guess. And sometimes you will guess wrong and its ok, take note about this specific opponent and use it in the future, but for the most part people play in a way that at least makes some sense to them.
Regarding being able to explain any action and sound smart to yourself about it - i have the same problem and no answer. I think my best advice is 1 - even if you have a reason for your action, dont just take it and compare it to the other actions and 2 - try to think a little bit ahead and think what the opponent would do, with what hands, and what would the action be on the next streets. Not just "i have top pair and a flush draw, so i have equity, so raise", but "if i raise, opponent will call with strong top pairs and better, which im not in a good shape against even with my equity, and fold hands that we could get more value from on the next streets if i just call, and if the river is a flush he will still bet his two pairs/sets/small flushes and i can xr". But honestly, i don't know and i struggle with that myself. Maybe someone better could enlighten us both (im typing this mostly to get corrected by someone smart haha)
So sad this forum has died since it has new owners.
