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GTO vs exploitative play

by contact@sixplusholdem.com Strategy
 
If you have been around poker for a while, you have heard of the term ‘’GTO’’. It´s actually not a new term. It´s based on the Nash Equilibrium, and was formulated in 1950 by mathematician John Nash. If you are interested in the math and history, there is a great movie about John Nash, called A Beautiful Mind with Russel Crowe. Nash equilibrium can be used to create unexploitable strategies for many different games. 
 
In recent years there´s been more and more advanced software developed, which can create solved GTO solutions for poker, and it has become an integral part of any serious poker player to understand GTO strategy.
 
Game Theory Optimal, in poker, is an umbrella term players use to describe the holy grail of no-limit holdem playing strategy, by which you become unexploited to your opponents and improve your winrate. It essentially solves the game. No longer do you have to think what to do, when you are in a limped pot vs button and flop comes AK6r. GTO tells you to bet, so you bet. It even tells you the exact sizing to use. Apply this to all spots and now you don’t even have to think. All the spots are solved like Tic Tac Toe.
 
As a player who studies with solvers and runs a GTO study group, I can confirm that studying GTO is important, but it is at the same time misunderstood and overrated. In this article I will try to explain how to study and apply GTO.
 

There are two main problems with GTO

  1. You can’t really learn it and apply to all situations, since the combinations, pot sizes, number of people is way too much. The human mind can memorize all the correct moves in Tic Tac Toe but cannot possibly learn even 10% of all GTO spots in 6+.
  2. GTO means a balanced, unexploitable play. It’s not the most profitable strategy. You can’t win versus GTO. But if you are playing at a 6-max table with four fish and one GTO bot, you will have a higher win rate vs fish, if you play exploitative.
 
Let me give an easy example. You have a player 100a deep open shoving every single hand. GTO doesn’t know that this guy is drunk and open shoves everything, so GTO charts tell us to call AQo and JJ+. But since you, as a player know his range is any two cards, you can easily call KTo and it’s a very profitable call, while GTO would consider calling KTo a huge mistake.
This is an easy example, but let me give you a slightly more complicated one. Say you are playing 6-max, everyone is 100a deep. everyone folds to HJ, he limps and CO limps and you are on the button. This is what we are supposed to do preflop.
 

GTO Charts (click here to read more about the GTO charts):

As you can see, we are never raising NON all-in with QJs, KQs. We jam KT, QTs and JTs. That is because, GTO doesn’t want to ISO and then fold to an all-in with playable hands like QJs. And GTO as HJ and CO has plenty of limp/shoves. This is what HJ is jamming vs CO limp and BTN 9x ISO (in red, picture below).
 
In real life, random players don’t jam near that much. Probably only AQo and better. So the correct play here is an exploitative one, non-allin ISO your suited KQ and play a pot with a good hand in position.
 
So naturally, the correct strategy is to mix GTO and exploitative strategy. This of course you knew already, so what is the point of writing all this stuff just to get to an obvious answer. Everyone knows the best strategy is mixed and adjusted. But here we will try to understand, in which spots you should go exploitative and in which spots you should stick with GTO, despite playing versus fish.
 

Improve your win rate with GTO

 
Let’s say you want to achieve the highest evBB possible in 6+. If you only want a nicer looking graph, there are a few small ‘’cheats’’ you can do, such as only learning one strategy (50a 6-max) and only playing that, and leaving the table as soon as it’s 5-max or as soon as you have 60+ ante. This way your bbEV will be high, but this is not the best strategy for making money, because you shouldn’t leave the table if your bbEV drops from 40 to 30, since 30bbEV is still better than your 0 winrate you have if you stop playing. So, for this scenario, let’s see how to achieve the highest bbEV on any table you decide to play.
 
Number one is, you should learn as much GTO as possible, for every spot, on all boards. But you shouldn’t follow it blindly. After learning GTO, when you are in a spot and thinking ‘’should I bet or check here’’, you should remember what GTO does. But then you should think further ‘’ok, GTO bets here, I remember. But why?’’. Then you have to remember the reasoning for the GTO play.
 
For instance, on a board of T96, turn 6, UTG vs BTN, GTO usually doesn’t double barrel as UTG when called by BTN. That is because BTN calls all 6x on the flop, and BTN has all 6x hands, while UTG doesn’t have almost any 6. So this 6 on the turn helps BTNs range. So in this spot you should remember that GTO checks, because that 6 helps BTN more.
 
Then the last step is to think ‘’Ok, I know what GTO does and why. Does this apply to this current hand?’’. So let’s say in this T96 – 6 turn scenario we have KQ, and we know that GTO tells us to check (I haven’t actually run this scenario in GTO, just using this to illustrate an example). We should analyze our opponent. Is he a regular who has studied GTO a lot and pretty much plays as he should? Then check, sure. But let’s say we are playing a nitty player that we know well. We know that he would fold J6, Q6, K6 and A6 on the flop because he doesn’t consider those hands good. And he will fold his draws (J8, etc.) on the turn, because he doesn’t want to chase draws on a paired board. Versus this player, we should realize that GTO analysis doesn’t really apply, because he doesn’t play close to GTO. That’s why checking KQ here and saying ‘’it’s literally GTO bro’’ is bad. We are losing a lot of EV when we decide not to double barrel vs this player.
 
So in each hand, you should go over these steps
 
  1. What does GTO do here?
  2. Why?
  3. Does this apply here?
 
There is a reason why regulars have 30-40a winrates vs fish, while GTO has 20aEV vs fish. It is because we are able to pick up more information than GTO – is this player ever capable of bluffing?, is he angry?, is he drunk?, timing tells etc.. Information that computers don’t know. The best regs know when to use all weapons.
 
 

GTO play on A-A-7 (free multiway solve)

by Juan Strategy

Here’s a look at how GTO (Game Theory Optimal) approaches this scenario on a board of A-A-7 rainbow. It was solved with our private multiway solver by our GTO coaches and we are happy to share this free solve with you. It was created for the students of the study group and if you like to learn a more GTO based playing style for 6+, you may check out our ➜ GTO Multi-way Solves Videos

So let’s jump right into the action. We are looking at a 5 way spot, 50Antes UTG vs MP vs BTN (CO & HJ folded pre).

First thing, we can notice is that UTG on this board bets quite a bit (65.5%) and the reason for that is because here UTG actually has a range advantage.

We can see that UTG has more pure Ax hands in its range as MP already starts to jam most of them preflop.

Second thing is that solver wants to use solely 33% sizing and the reason for that is, because UTG’s range hits so well on this board that it basically can go range betting almost whole range (Solver is not because then bluff frequency will be too high and MP’s response for that will be to start x/raising tons of hands but in real-games we can range-bet 80%+ of our range, in particular, with 2 backdoor hands where we can barrel a lot on turns until people figure it out and adjust.

In real games people won’t be defending enough, in particular, hands like KQ, KJo, KTo and maybe even not pocket pairs like 66, 88, 99. For what it’s worth we definitely should call against this sizing all pocket pairs even against biggest nits who we know always has Ax there because of pure pot odds.

It’s true that in real-games people might not be jamming preflop as wide also, so argument could be made that MP will still have tons of Ax hands in its range but then in-game we can check MP’s VPIP frequencies and chances are that MP is overlimping as well, hands like Q9, K9, J9, J8s, Q8s etc. Also, even against more Ax saturated range 33% bet from UTG is very profitable bet and doesn’t need to go through so often to make it a profitable play.

This is BTN’s calling range and I think it’s very close to what people would call in real games – Ax, pocket pairs and flushdraws.

If we take a look at MP’s and BTN’s raising ranges then for both they are very similar – always 77 and then for MP its 98ss, 97ss and for BTN A7 and then Solver adds some bluff-raises with blockers for balance.

In real-games I don’t think we have to balance this as people wont be able to make a note of this and if we hold 77 and there are bets in front of us, there is no way that people will fold Ax here after we raise.

To make it more interesting – both players (MP & BTN) calls UTG’s flop bet and we go to turn. There is a pattern on two different turn classes: on high card turns without spade (A, Q, K,) UTG continues barreling on turn because it has nut advantage on these high card turns and also very likely that UTG’s AQ and AJ are still good.

Whereas on low card or/and spade turns UTG now checks its range because it was betting flop pretty wide and once called by 2 players it wants to slow down as on turn it has wider range versus 2 narrower calling ranges where it doesn’t have nut advantage.

now versus bets UTG just pretty much calls some flushdraws (mostly combo draws) and Ax hands.

On high card turn its a bit more interesting though, this is what UTG continues barreling with, important note with bluffs like QTo, JQo, JTo is that we want to do this without a spade so there is a bigger chance that villain has a flushdraw instead of Ax hands.

This is UTG’s jamming range on river.

On river UTG bluff catches with weaker Ax, in particular, with ones not holding a spade and jams for value better Ax hands such as AJ and AQ. Bluffs mostly with 66 as it unblocks MP’s folding range as MP doesn’t have any FDs missed having a 6 in them (K6s, Q6s etc folds preflop).

Exploitatively I like going really small on the river with bluffs (like 12Ante) just to fold out missed flush draws but of course its not solver approved play, because if we do not merge our sizings we open ourselves up for being exploited.

Interesting and cool thing about UTG’s range advantage is that if UTG decides to check OTF and MP bets then UTG goes for raise 41.2%

Then if it gets called by MP it proceeds with very similar strategy and pattern as we discussed previously – barrels more on high, non-spade turn cards and checks a lot on spade and/or low turn cards.

Happy if you made it this far! 🙂 This was, as mentioned, a free multiway solve (either text + images or in form of a video) from the GTO study group and if you like to learn more, feel free join our Discord channel if you have a question regarding GTO or anything  6+ related.

Thanks for tuning in and good luck on the tables. 🍀

Note taking when playing without a HUD

by contact@sixplusholdem.com Strategy

One of the best sites to play 6+ / Short Deck is GG poker. There is plenty of action and rakeback is good, compared to the nearly zero percent PokerStars offers you. The one disadvantage is that you can’t use a HUD when playing, so you are missing a lot of information, especially if you are playing 3+ tables. So note taking and using player tags is extremely important if you want to have a great win-rate.

A lot of regs just tag someone a fish because they made a non-GTO play, which is dangerous, because there are many categories of recreational players, and tagging someone a ‘’fish’’ will not tell you how to take advantage of his lack of 6+ knowledge. Note taking is a skill in itself, so I will show you how to make good notes and how to classify players.

If I had to choose the most important thing taking notes about, it would be preflop raising: from which positions do people raise preflop and what sizing do they choose.

Example:

5-handed, everyone has 100A. UTG folds and UTG+1 makes it 8x preflop. It goes to showdown and he flips over KK.

In this situation I would make a note which would look like this:

‘’utg1 8x KK 100a 5h’’

That means raised under the gun 8x with KK 5handed while 100a deep.

It just allows us to read the note quicker, while we have to make decisions on other tables.

Why is this so important?

Just this one hand tells us that:

1) This player is probably unbalanced when it comes to his preflop range. He is probably raising good hands and limping bad hands, which means he is probably not a regular.

2) Since he is raising big with good hands, his limps are much weaker so we can attack them.

3) We can easily put him on a range when he raises and play hands that can crack QQ+ (98s, T9s etc), while folding hands preflop that do badly against a strong preflop range (QJo, KQo, AJo etc)

Let say one orbit later the same player is on UTG+1 again and now opens 3x from UTG+1 again with you on the BTN. Everyone calls his preflop raise. What would you do in this situation with ATs? AJo? KQs A9s? Fold since he is raising again?

The answer is no. You can go allin with all of these hands. Because we know that his standard opening sizing was 8x with KK, 3x is almost always going to be a weaker hand and since everyone else just called, there is about 20 antes of dead money in the middle. The 3x raiser will almost always fold and so will everyone behind them. The chance that CO called that 3x raise with a strong hand like AK is pretty much 0%, so we can pick up 20 antes for free.

Of course, we are generalizing. It’s possible he just opens random sizings and might raise 8x with KK in one hand and 3x on the next one. It’s still a profitable play, since we will be right most of the time, and in case we were wrong and he flips over KK, our A9s still has 44%. That’s the good thing about being agressive in 6+, you always have a decent equity if you get caught preflop.

All of this was possible, because we paid attention and made a note about a player’s sizings.

The second most importand thing to figure out is a recreational player’s VPIP. It’s very easy to play against someone who has a 75% vpip, you just have to notice when someone plays too many hands.

Say you are in the hand. Villain limps UTG. Three other players limp also. Nothing happens till the river, everyone shows their hand and that’s the end of this small pot, but you notice that villain limped J7o from UTG. This is very far from a normal UTG limping range, so I will make a note

‘’L utg 100a J7o 5h’’

That means ‘’Limped J7 offsuit under the gun five handed 100 antes deep’’.

Okay, so he limps a little too loose, how can we take advantage of that?

Example:

Villain limps UTG. Everyone folds. Regular on the CO limps as well and we are on the BTN with QJo. Normally this would be an easy check, since we want to play this hand in position and we don’t want anyone to limp / shove, especially since we are playing against an UTG range, which is the tightest. But because we know UTG limps too wide, we can ISO-raise very wide in this spot. We are not risking getting limp / shoved from UTG and from CO (since regs don’t trap on CO). QJo becomes a great ISO-raise hand in this case. Either we get two folds and we pick up 7 antes for free,, or someone calls our ISO-raise and we are in position with a very playable hand and range advantage.

These are two examples where we can win pots just by paying attention, finding a weakness and taking advantage of that. In both examples, this aggression will work because other regulars will overfold when you are showing strength by reraising allin and in the other example, attacking an UTG limp, since you are showing aggression against a strong range, people will think you are strong too. The truth is you just paid more attention and saw that villain was weak due to note taking.

Article by „coixdog“. If u want more tips on note taking or other topics, you can book coaching lessons  with our coach coixdog on Discord or contact us at contact@sixplusholdem.com

natural8-shortdeck-promo

Flush Jackpot on the GoodGame Network

by contact@sixplusholdem.com Strategy

One unique feature of Short Deck on the GG Network is the Flush Jackpot. The Flush Jackpot is won every time a player hits a flush or better using both their holecards. That means only a suited hand or a pocket pair (four of a kind) qualifies for it.

You need to have at least 15 antes invested in the pot before hitting your Jackpot hand. You can even win the Jackpot if you fold your hand after you hit the flush, just as long as you’ve invested more than 15a. 

This could be relevant in the situation where you hit a low flush on the turn and river comes four to a flush. This rarely happens, but if your opponents bets big on the river in such a situation, they usually have the nut or second nut-flush.

The Flush Jackpot will be a noteworthy part of your winnings, so it’s important to adjust accordingly when playing suited hands and when you have a flush draw.

Here are some frequently asked questions about the Flush Jackpot with detailed explanations.    

How much can you win?

It’s a progressive jackpot that gets bigger the more time goes by. However, it’s only 10% of the progressive jackpot that you win. On average, a Jackpot won will be 50-70 antes. This is a significant amount of money, so be sure that you qualify for the Jackpot by investing more than 15a, before hitting it.

Additional Rules:

Something that many players are not aware of; you can still hit the Jackpot after making your flush or quads, when you haven’t invested 15 antes yet. You will have to commit the remaining antes that amount to 15a+ and additionally improve your hand on the next street, while using both of your holecards. This might sound confusing, so here is an example:

Hero: J♥ 8♥

Flop: T♥ 9♥ 6♦

Turn: 6♥ (<15a invested)

River: K♥ ( >15a invested)

Hero didn’t invest 15a by the turn, and is therefore not qualified for the Jackpot. However, by the river, the amount invested is more than 15a and the hand improved to a higher flush. This means that Hero does qualify for the Jackpot by the river. It’s fairly rare that you improve your Jackpot hand after making it, but it’s still important to know this rule.

This rule also counts for the four of a kind Jackpot. E.g. the pot wasn’t big enough to qualify on the turn, but the river makes a higher kicker to your four of a kind.  

Can I hit the Jackpot when I run it more than once?

Yes. If you run it more than once, the first run-out will be the one that counts towards the Jackpot. A flush hit on the second run-out does not qualify. So you don’t have to worry about running it multiple times, if you like to decrease some variance.

How often do you hit a Jackpot when all-in preflop?

Few people probably know the exact odds for hitting a flush with a suited hand. E.g. if you are all-in preflop with a suited hand, what is the chance that you hit a flush? The answer is 4.6% of the time. If we assume a Jackpot of 60a on average that means that, you have 2.76a of added value when all-in with a suited hand.

For instance, let’s say someone raised to 8a and you went all-in for 50a with TJs and raiser called with AA. Normally your equity here would be 36.8% in a pot of 105a, which equals 38.6a. With the added value of the Jackpot your actual equity would be 39.4%. This equates to 2.6% added to your equity. As you can see this adds value to suited hands in all-in preflop situations.

With a pocket pair, you’ll hit four of a kind 1.8% of the time when all-in preflop. This adds 1a in extra value.

How should I play a flush draw on the flop? 

Whenever you have a flush draw on the flop there’s a 30% chance to hit your flush by the river. Hitting it on the river from the turn is 16%. With a Jackpot of 60a, that’s 18 antes of added value, when all-in on the flop. 

Imagine a situation where you check-raise all-in with Th9h on Ah Js 6h and your opponent called with AA. Final pot size is 105a. Your equity here would be 37.5%, but with the Jackpot, it equates to 54.5% equity. So you are basically a favorite against the nuts.

As the example shows, there is a lot of merit to playing your flush draws aggressively on the flop. Either by raising all-in on the flop or betting to qualify for the Jackpot. Calling is obviously also an option, but if the bet isn’t large enough to qualify if you hit on the turn raising might be the best option.

If you have a limped pot of 10a on the flop and you want to bet, the best option would be to choose a bet size that makes you have 15a invested to qualify. In a limped pot the one ante posted and the one ante called (limped) both count towards this, so an over-bet of 13a would work in this spot. If you choose to over-bet these spots, make sure that you balance in strong hands too, so you’re not predictable.

What is the chance another player has a flush draw?

Flushes are much rarer in 6+ than regular Hold’em, but most people are not aware what the likelihood is of another player having a flush draw. It naturally depends on our opponent’s range, so for simplicity let’s say the opponent has a range of 50% of hands with most of the suited hands included. Suited hands like K6s, Q7s, J7s,T6s, 97s and 86s are excluded. That adds up to 79 combos, so 17% of all possible hands are suited.      

If we imagine a situation where we saw a flop with Ts8s on Ks 6s Qh, the chances that at least one opponent has a flush draw are:

Against one player: 2.6%

Against two players: 5.4%

Against three players: 8.2%

Against four players: 11.2%

It should be obvious that you rarely face another flush draw, when you have a flush draw on the flop. The reason is that with the reduced deck there are only nine cards of each suit. With two spades in our hand and another two on the flop, there are only five spades left in the deck. Of the suited hands in our opponent’s range there is only 7 combos they can possibly have: 

AQs, AJs, A9s, A7s, QJs, Q9s and J9s

Against that range, Ts9s actually has 18% equity, so even when against a flush draw we are not totally behind in this case.  

Conclusion: 

  • You can win 50-70a by hitting the Jackpot on your given stake.

  • Play flush draws aggressively. You need to be sure that you build the pot if it’s small.

  • Invest at least 15a before hitting a Jackpot hand (if not possible, invest 15a until turn or river is dealt, so you might qualify when improving your hand)

  • Balance your range when overbetting with a flush draw. Mix in some strong hands when you overbet on flop or turn.

  • When being all-in pre-flop, your pocket pairs and suited hands gain in value due to the Jackpot Promo.

 

If you are one of a few that hasn’t given the GGNetwork games a try, you should definitely do so. It’s a great site to add to your grind, especially for Short Deck players. We offer some great deals with added rakeback. Read more on Where To Play.

all-in-pokerstars-cashout

PokerStars – ­Exploring the All­-In Cash Out Feature For 6+ Hold’em

by contact@sixplusholdem.com Strategy

So this article is about why paying more rake is better!

I’m joking. Please don’t hurt me. 

Or am I?

At face value, all-­in cash out is an additional way for PokerStars to generate extra rake from the variance averse players. If that’s all you use it for and you use it all the time without questioning why, that’s what will happen. However, I am here to tell you that under certain circumstances this feature can be helpful, especially in the context of Short Deck/ 6+. Why I can hear you ask?

Compared to regular No-Limit Texas Hold’em:

  • Equities run very close.
  • The game plays much more shallow than it appears.
  • Players are all­-in much more often, both preflop and on the flop.

Now I know what you’re thinking: „All this means is that the game has higher variance! We’re using all­-in cash out to reduce variance and paying more rake! More rake is bad so all­-in cash out is bad!“

Sighs.

If that’s how you think I doubt I’ll be able to change your mind. If I’ve made you curious enough by telling you it’s not that simple, read on.

All­-In Cash Out: Surprisingly Simple

See what I did there? 

I wasn’t lying though. It’s just that the all­-in cash out feature by itself is actually pretty simple. All I’m going to do here is use the PokerStars page on cash out and make it a bit easier to understand. First off, you and at least one other player must be all-­in. Your hand must have at least 1% equity. This means that if you’re drawing dead or on the river this feature cannot be activated even if you are all­-in.

Once those conditions are met and hands are revealed, PokerStars will ask you if you want to use the all-­in cash out feature. This will only happen if you do not have the option disabled in the PokerStars lobby settings.

„That’s great but you still haven’t told me what it actually does.“

Getting there. Don’t worry.

Put bluntly, it lets you cash out your equity in the hand immediately. After rake of course.

That’s it? Sadly…No! For giving you the privilege of immediately taking your money out of the hand, PokerStars will keep 1% of that money as a fee.

Let me give you a step by step, easy to understand example:

  • You and another player are all­-in. You both have exactly 50% equity in the pot.
  • Pot is 100$ and the rake is 3$.
  • We remove the rake from the pot: 100$ ­ 3$ = 97$.
  • We multiply the pot by our equity in the pot: 97$ * 50% = 48.50$.
  • We remove the 1% fee for using all­-in cash out: 48.50$ * 99% = 48.02$.
  • We immediately receive 48.02$ and our involvement in the hand is over.

If you want the quick and dirty formula: 

  • Cash out value = (Pot ­Rake) * Equity * 99%

Easy as pie right?

What happens to the other player? If they also used the cash out feature, same result. If they didn’t use the feature, then the hand goes on as usual. If they have the best hand once all cards are dealt, they win the pot. If we have the best hand the money goes directly to PokerStars and is taken off the table.

Now you know how the all­-in cash out feature works! 

Armed with this newfound knowledge, let’s take a deeper look at how this actually affects variance and winrates.

Variance: Card Distribution, EV Winrate, Standard Deviation And Risk Of Ruin

Now this part is a bit more of a primer on how variance works normally and what changes when using all-­in cash out.

I’m going to keep this article as simple and easy to understand as I can. As such, I’m not going to bore you with dry mathematical definitions. You don’t need to know the mathematical definition of variance to understand how it works.

What you do need to understand though is that variance is affected by many things. 

What is card distribution?

The first one we need to look at is card distribution. If you’ve asked another player how many hands you need to play before you even look at your winrate and got an absurd answer: this bad boy here is a big part of the reason why. There are skill factors as well but here that’s not what we’re interested in.

What’s important here is that card distribution variance will never go away. The all-­in cash out feature has no effect on this type of variance. This means that even if you used cash out every time you would still be at the mercy of card distribution.

Besides skill, card distribution is going to have the biggest impact on your EV winrate. You should note that card distribution variance is not just the hands you are dealt. It also includes the cards your opponents are dealt as well as the cards dealt on the board.

Now once we have a big enough sample we can start talking about our EV winrate. I’m going to be blunt: Your EV winrate means nothing below at least 50,000 hands. Even then 100,000 hands as a base is preferred.

What is EV winrate?

Your EV winrate is your winnings in ante if you won exactly the amount of equity your hands have when all-in at any point in the hand or at showdown. Hands that you win without showdown are also included in this.

What’s the difference between your EV winrate and regular winrate?

The EV winrate takes luck factors that aren’t card distribution related out of it. Example:

  • You and another player are all-­in. You both have exactly 50% equity in the pot.
  • Pot is 100a. You have 50a invested in the pot. No rake.
  • Your regular winrate will go up or down by 50a.
  • Your EV winrate will not change after this hand.
  • Your opponent’s winrate will go up or down by 50a.
  • Your opponent’s EV winrate will not change after this hand.

Another example but this time with different equities:

  • You and another player are all-­in. You have 80% equity and your opponent has 20% equity.
  • Pot is 100a. You have 50a invested in the pot. No rake.
  • Your regular winrate will go up or down by 50a.
  • Your EV winrate will go up by 30a.
  • Your opponent’s winrate will go up or down by 50a. 
  • Your opponent’s EV winrate will go down by 30a after this hand. 

Quick and dirty formula:

  • Change to EV winrate after a hand = Pot * Equity ­Player Investment

As you can see, your regular winrate will change by the same amount in both cases. Your regular winrate doesn’t take your equity into account when all­-in.

Know what does though? Your EV winrate. 

Your EV winrate in the first example doesn’t change. You win or lose 50a 50% of the time.

  • 50% * 50a + 50% * ­50a = 0a

In the second example, you will win your opponent’s 50a more often than you will lose yours. Your EV winrate goes up by 30a.

  • 80% * 50a + 20% * ­50a = 30a

In short, EV winrate is what you get if you could use the cash out feature without paying PokerStars their 1% fee.

When talking about EV winrate we typically convert to ante per 100 hands (a/100). If we played 99 other hands after the two examples above and didn’t win or lose a single EV chip, then we would say our winrates are as follow:

  • Example 1 would have an EV winrate of 0a/100.
  • Example 2 would have an EV winrate of 30a/100.

This is very important to know. It is also VERY IMPORTANT to know your EV winrate before thinking of applying some of the concepts described later in this article.

Now we finally get to the meat of the matter. The kind of variance that using all­-in cash out does affect: Standard deviation.

What is standard deviation?

Again, I won’t go into the dry mathematical definitions. I’ll give you a brief description of what they are, what they do, and what affects them.

In this context, standard deviation is how much your regular winrate will deviate from your EV winrate on a given sample of hands.

If you played 100,000 hands with an EV winrate of 10a/100 you will almost never make exactly 10a/100 after those 100,000 hands. You could have a regular winrate of 12a/100 or 8a/100 after those 100,000 hands. If we use a poker variance calculator and we know our standard deviation, we can calculate how likely it is that our regular winrate stays within a certain margin of our EV winrate.

Standard deviation gets affected by a few things. This includes the format of poker you’re playing as well as your playstyle.

The more high variance the format of poker you’re playing, the higher the standard deviation is as a baseline. For comparison, Short Deck/6+ Hold’em has a higher expected standard deviation than PLO overall. Short Deck/6+ has equities that run as close if not closer, plays relatively shallow, and is no limit.

In terms of your playstyle, standard deviation is affected by how tight or loose you are playing as well. Playing too loose will increase your standard deviation thus how often you can expect your regular winrate to deviate from your EV winrate. The same can be said from playing too tight. It is a balancing act that you have to figure out for the games you are playing.

What is risk of ruin?

Now we get into how standard deviation overlaps with bankroll management (BRM).

I’ll be honest. I hate this statistic for poker.

Risk of ruin is the likelihood you will go bust given a certain EV winrate, standard deviation, and bankroll size when not considering card distribution. Card distribution is NEVER taken into account because statistically it is already included in your EV winrate.

The flaw of this stat is that it is only relevant if you refuse to move down in stakes.

Respect your bankroll management strategy, move down in stakes when necessary, and this stat becomes useless to you. 

What you should account for when making a bankroll management strategy:

  1. Your EV winrate.
  2. How bad is short term card distribution variance in your chosen format.
  3. How high you expect standard deviation to be in your chosen format.

Here are the reasons risk of ruin is only relevant if you choose to go bust at the limit you are playing at:

  1. As you go down in stakes you reset the amount of buy-ins you have according to your planned BRM strategy. Example: you use a 100 buy­-ins BRM strategy and move down as soon as you hit 100 buy­-ins remaining of the next lowest stake.
  2. As you go down in stakes the games become softer and your EV winrate goes up, further altering the likelihood of ruin.
  3. If you are a winning player you will eventually drop back down to a stake where you have a high enough EV winrate that the risk of ruin becomes insignificant.

„Okay! Okay! That’s all well and good but what does standard deviation and risk of ruin have to do with all­-in cash out?!“

Well I’m glad you asked!

It negates both of them. Entirely.

If you used the all-­in cash out feature all the time your regular winrate would be equal to your EV winrate minus the 1% fee that PokerStars keeps. No more standard deviation thus risk of ruin is no more applicable as a statistic. The only variance we are now subject to is card distribution.

Let’s go through both of our previous examples and see what it looks like when we use all­-in cash out.

Example 1:

  • You and another player are all-­in. You both have exactly 50% equity in the pot.
  • Pot is 100a. You have 50a invested in the pot. No rake.
  • You use the all-­in cash out feature when prompted.
  • Your regular winrate will go down by 0.5a.
  • Your EV winrate will not change after this hand.
  • Your opponent’s winrate will go up or down by 50a.
  • Your opponent’s EV winrate will not change after this hand. 

Example 2:

  • You and another player are all-­in. You have 80% equity and your opponent has 20% equity.
  • Pot is 100a. You have 50a invested in the pot. No rake.
  • You use the all­-in cash out feature when prompted. 
  • Your regular winrate will go up by 29.2a.
  • Your EV winrate will go up by 30a.
  • Your opponent’s winrate will go up or down by 50a. 
  • Your opponent’s EV winrate will go down by 30a after this hand. 

Now, I’m not going to lie to you, the 1% fee that PokerStars keeps is actually a lot higher than it sounds when used in practice. The problem with it is that it’s not really easy to calculate just how much it affects your winrate without an all­-in cash out only sample. What I’m going to do though is make some assumptions to show you how to roughly calculate it. 

The True Cost Of Using All­-In Cash Out

Now that we know how to calculate EV winrate and how all-­in cash out takes it’s fee, it’s time to see how expensive that 1% is.

Before we dive deep you should know that giving a flat accurate cost of the feature in a/100 isn’t easy. Some of the members on the 6+ discord channel theorized a while back that if you used it every time preflop the cost would be around 3 to 4 antes per 100. If used all the time that cost would climb to 7 or 8 antes per 100. 

That’s pretty expensive.

Now they didn’t show any of the math they used to get that those results but there’s a simple way to get an approximation. The tricky part is figuring out how often you go all-in per 100 hands and what your equity is when you do.

Here’s another quick and dirty formula:

  • Cash out fee = Pot * Equity * 1%

From knowing this we can figure out the cost of using cash out at certain equity points.

Let’s make this clearer with an example:

  • You and another player are all-­in.
  • You do not know how much equity in the pot you have.
  • Pot is 100a. You have 50a invested in the pot. No rake.
  • You use the all­-in cash out feature when prompted. 
  • What will be all­-in cash out fee be?

From the example above:

  • If you have 25% equity the all-­in cash out fee will be 0.25a.
  • If you have 50% equity the all-­in cash out fee will be 0.50a.
  • If you have 75% equity the all-­in cash out fee will be 0.75a. 

Let’s do this same example but with a different pot size:

  • You and another player are all-­in.
  • You do not know how much equity in the pot you have.
  • Pot is 200a. You have 100a invested in the pot. No rake.
  • You use the all-­in cash out feature when prompted. 
  • What will be all­-in cash out fee be?

Once again, from the example above:

  • If you have 25% equity the all-­in cash out fee will be 0.50a.
  • If you have 50% equity the all-­in cash out fee will be 1.00a.
  • If you have 75% equity the all-­in cash out fee will be 1.50a.

Noticing any interesting patterns?

The first very obvious one is as follows: the more likely you are to win the hand once all-­in, the higher the fee.

The implications of this are interesting but most of them will be explored later in the article.

The second interesting pattern is that the deeper the effective stacks, the higher the fee.

Does your winrate double from 50a effective to 100a effective? What about from 100a effective to 200a effective? We have to be careful and understand the implications of this if we are going to use all­-in cash out at deeper effective stacks. Funnily enough, I am confident this is the the reason why PokerStars doesn’t allow us to take chips off of the table for their version of Short Deck/ 6+.

There’s a few other interesting applications for cash out at deeper effective stacks that we’ll go over as well.

Lastly, but not really shown in the examples, the more players in the pot, the smaller the equities get, but the bigger the fees get.

So this one is tough and a bit counter intuitive. It acts as a bit of a consequence to the two prior patterns. We know that the less equity we have, the smaller the fee. The deeper the effective stacks, the higher the fee. Don’t be deceived by us having less equity. Since the pot is bigger, our fee is bigger.

Let’s take a look:

  • You and three other players are all­-in.
  • You do not know how much equity in the pot you have.
  • Pot is 400a. You have 100a invested in the pot. No rake.
  • You use the all­-in cash out feature when prompted. 
  • What will be all­-in cash out fee be?

One more time:

  • If you have 25% equity the all-­in cash out fee will be 1.00a.
  • If you have 33% equity the all­-in cash out fee will be 1.32a.
  • If you have 50% equity the all-­in cash out fee will be 2.00a.

So now you know that both the effective stacks and overall pot size affect how much we pay. Granted, the general increased fee on bigger pot size is offset by how much more money in the pot there is. 

„Okay but why do we need to know this?“

To illustrate that calculating a blank, one size fits all, ante per 100 cost for all­in cash out is hard. How many 50/50 flips will you have per 100 hands? How many at 75/25? 25/75? At what effective stacks? How big is the pot compared to your initial investment (how many players)?

If we flip 50/50 six times in 100 hands at 100a effective stacks, then the cost will be 6a/100 for using cash out. If we only do it 3 times then it will be 3a/100.

I think you get the idea.

I can’t do the math to tell you exactly how much it would cost you because I don’t know how often you’ll use it and where. Your play style itself might change how often you have to use it as well.

At least now you know how to find out how much it would cost you to use it.

Using Oranges 6Plus to improve your game: Part One

by contact@sixplusholdem.com Deals, Strategy

This article will show you how to use Oranges 6Plus Calculator to study the game of 6+ Hold’em / Short Deck. It’s currently the best and most advanced equity tool for the game, and comes at a price of $50. If you are familiar with tools like Flopzilla and Pro Poker Tools, you should have some understanding of how to use an equity calculator, but in this article we will start from the very basics and move on to more advanced features.

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