The ShortStack Song....

Here is our little opus to our loyal shortstackers, and a little hello to our haters as well......ENJOY!!!

A very special thanks to Taylor Mayd for recording and mixing the song for us. Look for his first album out in November.....

Tinkering With The Nash Equilibrium, Pt. II- Beyond Unexploitable Shoving

In the last post, we took a look at quite a few hands that were profitable to shove when heads up in the small blind.  I had also shown the hands with which it were profitable to defend against this play.  This time around, however, we will take a different tack and assume that we know that the big blind will be defending with the proper range against the unexploitable shove range.  Once again, we will use my favorite hypothetical example of a $2/4 game with 20BB stacks and a 5% rake and a defending hand range of 44+, A7o+, A3s+, KJo+, KTs+, QJs.  The simulation was run Monte Carlo style 10000k times.

Now here is what we can push:

The rabbit hole keeps getting deeper....  Notice that even after running the simulation 10 million times, there is still a tiny sampling error with 93s and assumedly the 53s as well, as neither J3s nor T3s are profitable and the 53s shows a minuscule $.01 profit, respectively.  Our unexploitable range has now grown from 38.4% of hands to an incredible 54.7%.

But why stop here?  Most players I play against simply refuse to make calls with hands like KTs, A3s, and QJs...even guys who I play against every day.  Let's run the simulation one more time with a more "typical" calling range of 55+, A8o+, A7s+, KJo+, KJs+.

86.4% of all hands are now playable.  In other words, all but the biggest of turds.  Oh?  What is that you say?  86.4% is not enough?  Ok then, let's toss a dead small blind into the pot and run it again and see what happens.

Happy now?  Yes, it's true.  With a typical calling range aided by the compensation of a dead small blind, you can now shove every single hand.  Naturally, logic dictates that you shouldn't be doing this.  While it would work a few times, it would quickly backfire and cause otherwise nitty players to begin playing more correctly against you and would thwart future attempts with a tighter shove range.  Besides, it's hardly optimal.  Rather, this was just an intellectual primer for the third and final installment of this series, where we finally combine all this knowledge to make you the ultimate motherfuckin' shortstack Houdini.