ITH Poker Forum

[Bullajami]

NL holdem. Blinds 5/10, 2k chip stacks. You are always big blind. Your opponent shoves preflop every hand. With what range of hands do you call with X number of chips left in your stack?

[nsidestrate]

Will the other player reload over and over or will he leave once you stack him?

[ciaran]

If we know he's shoving ATC, and we're properly rolled, we call with anything with a hair less than 50% equity vs a random hand (I don't have pokerstove at the moment to check exactly). Blinds aren't grossly important given stacks, but would start effecting things as stacks got smaller.

How many hands you want to take to decide he's shoving ATC or what kind of edge you want to build in to allow for the possibility he's not is kind of out of the realm of the definite math, I think.

[ciaran]

In relation to nside's question, I guess there might be some function to take into account maximizing your profit based on what point he'll leave when you stack him/he stacks you x number of times, but that makes the question a lot more complex.

[Bugsbunny]

If he's pushing with every hand then you're playing against a random hand. You can play any hand that gives you 50% or more equity against a random hand. These are in order. The last hand (J5s) is exactly 50% Q3s is 51%. Q4s is 51.9% You can go up slightly from the 50% mark to increase edge, reduce variance, but if you have the bankroll I wouldn't bother.

You could, actually, play hands lower than the 50% mark since your average edge would still be greater than 50% - but now you're giving up total edge and increasing variance at the same time. If you play J5s or higher you're playing 90 of the 169 possible hands. If the blinds were bigger relative to stack size then you should play lower than 50%, but at 5/10 blinds with 2k stacks you can ignore the blinds for practical purposes.

The below works out to:
all pairs (22+)
A2s+
A2+
K2s+
K2+
Q2s+
Q5+
J5s+
J8+
T7s+
T9
98s
----------------------------------------
AA
KK
QQ
JJ
TT
99
88
AKs
77
AQs
AJs
AKo
ATs
AQo
AJo
KQs
66
A9s
ATo
KJs
A8s
KTs
KQo
A7s
A9o
KJo
55
QJs
K9s
A5s
A6s
A8o
KTo
QTs
A4s
A7o
K8s
A3s
QJo
K9o
A5o
Q9s
A6o
K7s
JTs
A2s
QTo
44
A4o
K6s
K8o
Q8s
K5s
A3o
J9s
Q9o
K7o
JTo
A2o
K4s
Q7s
K6o
K3s
T9s
J8s
33
Q8o
Q6s
K5o
J9o
K2s
Q5s
T8s
K4o
J7s
Q4s
Q7o
T9o
J8o
K3o
Q6o
Q3s
98s
T7s
J6s
K2o
22
Q2s
Q5o
J5s