I started a thread in 2p2. Hope to have the same discussion here and hear more opinions.
When you watch any high stakes HU match, you'll see that the BB defends like 80%+ vs a SB min-raise (What i mean by defend is both calling and 3betting). Obviously they must be doing something right with all their math calculations.
I'm wondering how that applies to us at midstakes. Assume both players are equally skilled and fairly good mid-stakes players with good balance, and BU raises to 2BB. BU has really balanced frequencies, Flop Turn River Cbet are 65/50/50.
How wide should we defend vs a
1) 50% range
2) 60% range
3) 70% range
4) 80% range
Using the High Stakes HU match as an example, BB is defending approximately defending 80-85% of SB's opening range. So I'm wondering if we should use a similar "formula" to roughly dictate our defence range.
Traditional old school theory says that because we are OOP and without the initiative with a capped range, we should defend way tighter (maybe 50% of opening range?). But these days people just place so much more emphasis on folding less, and being committed pre-flop due to pot odds.
I tried defending more hands, calling like 40%-50% of hands in BB with a lot of crappy hands like Q2o. But I found that my Flop Fold to Cbet started increasing to 50% due to the really poor playability of many of those hands which basically meant that I was just burning money post-flop.
Thoughts?
