Couldn't sleep, more poker.

As I'm sure everyone interested in Poker has heard, we may be getting our Full Tilt money back.  Hopefully the U.S. will soon host online poker too.  And when the hoards of fish come, I'll be ready.  :)

My cat was sick last night, and I ended up not sleeping much.  Instead I worked on poker in my head.  Came up with a few things...

1)  The first person to tighten their range (ex: pre-flop would be a good spot) has the advantage if the other person doesn't adjust, since they'll be behind throughout the rest of the hand.  There are 4 good scenarios to show what happens.  Take for example the SB open-raising tighter (say 60% instead of 90% suddenly).

a)  BB is behind on higher made hands vs. SB made hands.

b)  BB is ahead on lower made hands vs. SB air.

c)  BB is unable to bluff on lower flops vs. SB air.

d)  BB must fold more often vs. SB bets.

Recourse #I:

i)  BB should VBet made hands more on the lower flops.
ii)  BB should bluff less (both on high flops because SB has a hand more often, and on low flops because SB will be calling with HC more)
iii)  BB should fold more/not call down as readily with bluff-catchers (high & low flops, because SB more often has even better HC hands than your bluff-catchers).

Recourse #II:   My preference

The BB (in the above example) can avoid having to worry about any of these adaptations if they simply contract their pre-flop calling range to match the SB open-raising range (if the SB folds when they don't raise).  You can always 'match' the folding frequency of the SB, and lose very little in the process.  Example: opponent folds bottom 10%, you gain their 0.25 big bets = +0.025 bb.  You fold 10% of the remaining 90% and lose your 0.5 bb blind = - 0.045 bb.  That's a net of 0.025 - 0.045 = - 0.02 bb.

The pattern, at 50%, wil be EV = 0.  You gain 0.25 the 50% they fold = + 0.125 bb.  You lose 0.5 bb 50% of the time you fold to their 50% open-raise = - 0.125 bb, so EV = 0.

After that you'd be ahead, except that by that point your opponent shows an immediate profit by open-raising and could decide at that point to not ever continue, and they'd always be ahead in EV.  It would be very odd to see an opponent open-raise less than 50% from the SB, and if you did, you could certainly find ways to exploit that.

So your EV is somewhere between 0.02 bb and 0 if you match their pre-flop folding % when you're in the BB.  In my opinion, this is worth it so as to not have to severely adjust my post-flop approach.

Your post-flop hands, then, will be able to be played 'normally' as you would if your opponent simply raised 100% pre-flop and you called 100%.  To explain: your VBet range will, on average, match your opponents on the flop.  This will give your bluffs credibility (i.e. it's balanced), and will allow you to call down with HC hands on lower flops still because your opponents won't on average have better HC hands than you.

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Quick update to my 'notes' post (scanned notes).  VBet range should be 75% made, 25% draws (roughly) so that vs. a raise, by the river I can drop the 25% draws, and then also 25% points of the made, and still have 50% of the made hands range.