Are You Cheating Preflop?

could it be, and I’m going out on a limb here… but… could it be, that the profit made from the positions that are profitable (button), and the loss induced by opening with junk from EP/MP are derived of the same function?

put another way: “advertising”. if a player is known to open with junk OOP, will he not get more customers with quality hands IP, hence increasing his profit?

in your example, would not the player who is capable of analyzing his play with PT play with stats and be able to recognize tendencies by other players to “play back” and adjust his play accordingly?

regards,
2weiX

@2weiX

I have a pretty good idea of what Ed is talking about. He’s talking about lagging it up on the button, being successful and thinking you can lag it up everywhere. People just aren’t paying enough attention to discern where you’re lagging it up in most small stakes games. Once you stack then once with Q2o from the button, they’ll never give you credit again from any position. Also, once you open up your button and CO range, your vpip really doesn’t need a lot of help to advertise. There just isn’t a lot of upside to playing junky hands oop.

Against tougher opponents, there is an argument that it’s important to show up with some non-premium hands once in a while. Things like baby pairs and smaller suited connectors UTG. The thinking is that you don’t want villains to be able to attack low boards with impunity. There’s another argument that you just have to be willing to play chicken and not blink to defend some of the low boards oop.

In any case, Ed convinced me a while back not to play junky hands oop. I’ve quit for the most part. I think it’s been good for my game.

Wow, just ran this on my DB. Opening junk from the button is earning me 7.7 Big Blinds per 100 hands while doing so from the CO is loosing me 21.8 BB/100 hands.

I’m only doing this from the CO 1/4 of the time as from the button so I’m still ahead but I am definitely spewing cash from the CO opening junk.

You say, “In a typical small stakes 6-max game, you can open nearly any hand on the button and do so profitably.”

Why the limitation to 6-max?

@dfan

I don’t think that it is limited to 6-max. It just happens more there. In FR, it just doesn’t fold around to the button all that often. It’s a pretty rare full ring table where you can’t open 100% on the button. Those tables tend to be full of uber-nit multi-tables who are auto-folding pretty much every non-premium hand.

Typical heads up strategies involve opening between 80 and 100% of you buttons.