Apatosaurus

Ah right. So I'll try not to focus too much on this stat for now as long as all my calling hands seem to be doing well. Thanks!

Hi belrio. Thanks for your detailed comment, it is very much appreciated.

I'm still pretty confused by the idea of maximizing the win rate of our calling range v a 3bet. In your comment you state:

Suppose, you have only one objective: to maximize winrate in 3-bet call spots. To do this, you add in more and more marginal hands.

But doesn't the AQs/86s example I gave above show that adding in marginal hands decreases the win rate of the calling range (assuming I worked it out correctly)? For example, my win rate calling 3bets BTN v SB is -98bb/100. If I add in more marginal (but +EV) hands, I would expect my win rate when calling to go more negative, but my overall BTN win rate to increase?

Maybe an analogous situation is defending the BB? A very tight player who only calls strong hands would increase their overall win rate from the BB by calling more marginal hands; but this would likely result in the win rate of their calling range decreasing. Isn't defending our open when we RFI on the BTN a bit like defending the BB?

The point I'm trying to get at is, is it even really worthwhile to look too much at the overall win rate when I call a 3bet in a certain spot (provided it isn't extremely low) since it isn't really giving a the full picture of what's going on? Is is better to just try to maximize the win rate of every hand in my calling range, but be pretty happy if I look and see that the worst hands in my calling range are about breakeven since I can be somewhat confident I'm not folding hands that are profitable calls?

Thanks again for your time :)

That makes sense. Thanks Tyler!! I'm a big fan of yours :)

So what's the best course of action for analysing our call v 3bet range given the samples needed for a particular spot are so huge? Maybe if our calls seem to be doing well, slowly defend a little wider and then see how we are doing after a big sample? I still can't get my head around how adding in more slightly winning calls won't reduce the win rate of the calling range.

For example, if I 2.5x the BTN and my call v 3bet range v SB is exclusively AQs, which has a win rate of -50bb/100, then the bb/100 of my calling range would be -50bb/100.

If I then add in 86s, which has a win rate of -200bb/100, and I only call these two hands, the win rate of the new calling range would be -125bb/100. This is worse than the bb/100 of the previous calling range, but calling 86s is clearly a profitable play.

Before, when facing a 3bet with these two hands and only calling AQs, the bb/100 would have been -150bb/100 I think. Now, it is -125bb/100. But I can also imagine a situation where us defending more versus 3bets results in us getting 3bet less, in which case, the win rate gains would show in our BTN RFI bb/100? Is that how it would work?

Hope OP doesn't mind me rambling in his thread, but I was looking at this myself and despite playing a reasonable number of hands, I still feel pretty stumped when looking into these numbers in particular. The comments in this thread have been super useful though :)

Hi,

I put a filter for when I call a 3bet BTN v SB and my overall winrate is -98 EV bb/100. When I look at the different hand classes in my calling range, basically everything is better than folding apart from 22-55 (which might be a small sample or me making some mistakes). At present, I'm mixing fold and call with what I thought was the more marginal stuff, but doesn't this mean I should keep calling the more marginal hands until their bb/100 is just better than folding?

Would this then mean that my winrate when calling a 3bet will go down, but my winrate when facing a 3bet will go up?