Neutral EV

Maybe this is just that my brain is wired very strangely and I'm the only one bothered by this concept but I never hear anything about neutral EV. I've never heard or read the concept mentioned anywhere.

I hate neutral EV.

What I'm talking about is balanced range vs balanced range pre-flop (even unbalanced ones, say I hold AK/QQ and get 5bet shoved on by a nit) or stacking light because of the SPR. Basically any time it's correct for both players to play for stacks. I don't care about the variance, I care about the rake. We're both losing money.

I guess I have more difficulty with this than most people because my entire strategy when OOP seems to involve setting myself up for a shove and in a low SPR mistakes are hard to make.

These situations are unavoidable once you get to them, but maybe I should avoid getting in these spots so often?

Not sure that much of this makes sense but it's something I've been attempting to translate into words for a few months and this is the nearest to coherent I can make it.

Wat? (This is a call for you to clarify your post)

I think he's talking about situations where it's supposedly a +EV play for both players to shove and stack off on a hand. I think.

I tend to agree with Bovinity. Think the OP is talking about spots where both players just want to get their chips in and are usually +EV...but because both players are running on the same wavelength their ranges essentially cancel and result in +0 EV. Thus the moves result in no net gain over time and yet cost lots and lots in rake every time (making them massively -EV).

I guess what I'm suggesting is making the game more complicated by keeping the SPR high more often.

Aggressive play pre-flop and on the flop is great, but it's at the cost of making post-flop play more simple and creating more situations where both players just have to shove or fold and the more hands that both players would play the same way in a raked game, the lower the possible winrate.

Idk, people do pretty funny things in 3 & 4 bet pots...

you're talking about a situation in which both players have structured the pot so that their actions are mathematically correct ?

Skaplun said:

you're talking about a situation in which both players have structured the pot so that their actions are mathematically correct ?

Click to expand...

When they've done that intentionally or otherwise, yeah.

My concern is that by betting/3betting so often pre-flop, which is incredibly standard, it lets opponents who're going to play badly post-flop make smaller mistakes.

Don't get me wrong, I still think playing aggressively is right. I'm just exploring ways to increase my winrate. So many of my hands go 3bet, cbet, shove/fold.

I think this is a subject that should be addressed by a thesis rather than a one liner. I'm a give it a week of thought

thepokerkid123 said:

When they've done that intentionally or otherwise, yeah.

My concern is that by betting/3betting so often pre-flop, which is incredibly standard, it lets opponents who're going to play badly post-flop make smaller mistakes.

Don't get me wrong, I still think playing aggressively is right. I'm just exploring ways to increase my winrate. So many of my hands go 3bet, cbet, shove/fold.

Click to expand...

Thats 100bb stacks for you.

If you want to increase post flop edge dont reduce preflop aggression, instead increase stack sizes.

200 - 400bb stacks should give you all the post flop manoeuvrability you could ever want.

Stu_Ungar said:

Thats 100bb stacks for you.

If you want to increase post flop edge dont reduce preflop aggression, instead increase stack sizes.

200 - 400bb stacks should give you all the post flop manoeuvrability you could ever want.

Click to expand...

What he said!.... You can operate much better here when you deep enough to play wihout having to shove and hope you win or fold and hope you were beat.