Bet sizing to break even when stealing from the btn

rowhousepd

rowhousepd

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I know that as a general rule of thumb the tighter your two villains in the blinds are, the more widely you should steal from the button. What I'm a bit confused about is how to calculate the sizes of the raises in order to break even when behind facing two tight players.

For simplicity sake, let's assume both SB & BB fold to steals 80% from their respective position. How do you do the math to figure out the size of your steal that's just high enough to break even? Is there a way to figure this out?

(Also fyi, my btn steals are usually 2.5 to 3bb, but that's pretty unscientific.)
 
DrazaFFT

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Ill take a stab at this
For example you steal 3bb so you are investing 3 to win 4,5bb
3/4.5=.66 so when stealing with 3bb both of the blinds need to fold 66% of the time to break even, since we need both of the blinds to have a high enough fold to steal to get 66% from both combined its square root of 66 sqrt(.66) = .81 so we need both of the blinds to have 81+ fold to steal so that our 3bb steal from btn is profitable...

we can do the same math for 2bb and 2,5 bb, ill post it too but after the Partizan Steaua game :D
 
DrazaFFT

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So game is over, Partizan won thanks for asking :D

Here is the calc for 2,5bb steal
we are investing 2.5 to win 4, 1.5bb that's already in and 2,5 that we are putting in, 2.5/4 =.625 which is 62.5% total folds, sqrt(.625)=.79 so we need bit less of 80% fold to steal for each blind to break even, or in other words 80% or more to profit...
 
rowhousepd

rowhousepd

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Hmmm. So is the question I should be asking in-game more like "how often do I need villains to fold for an Xbb raise" rather than "the villains fold X% so I'll steal with Y"? I guess I was thinking it was the second of the two.

Either way, I think I get the calculation you're doing there. Thanks.

(Go Partizan!) ;)
 
DrazaFFT

DrazaFFT

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Well basically yes, i would go that way when it comes to stealing rather than changing the bet sizing, maybe with 3 bet and c-bet you can go the direction you went but with stealing there is not much difference as you saw with 3bb and 2,5bb open its like ~2% difference for each blind.

For example i have a complete line in my hud that i color coded, it is steal and fold to steal, here we are interested only in fold to steal, i coded it this way, since i steal with 2.5 bb from BTN i need each blind to fold 80 and more, i set that stat to be green =>80, i set the 62,5 to 80 to be orange, what that mean, it means when im at BTn and i see 2 green coded fold to steal stats i can basically steal with any 2, the orange color is when im at sb and the bb have orange color i can also steal with any 2 cuz i only have him to fold and i only need him to fold 62.5% of the time...
 
rowhousepd

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Hey Drazza, or anyone else listening -- one follow up about raising break even points.

Let's say we look at this from the BB's perspective in dealing with a steal attempt from the Btn with the SB folding. How do we figure out the break even point when we're facing a bet (or a raise, or 3bet, etc.) and considering coming over the top? Assuming we have a ton of hands for villain's fold to resteal %, and assuming we always lose when they call, do we basically simply plug in the numbers to the same formula above?
 
DrazaFFT

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well, if i got what you mean right then the formula is pretty much the same, tho im not 100% sure here but just in this case that we dont get additional feedback, let say that he opens 3bb and we are 3 betting with 3x of his open

we have 4,5bb already in the pot we are investing 8bb additionally to raise to 9bb total, 8/12.5=.64 so he need to fold to resteal or fold to 3bet more than a 64% of the time to make this move profitable, that of course meaning that we have 0 equity if he calls, but we never actually have 0 equity preflop...

thus being said, the lower our 3bet or resteal is the lower his fold % needs to be, and vice versa the bigger your resteal is the higher his f3b or fold to resteal need to be in order to profit...


again, im saying im not 100% sure here
 
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