Equity in poker can be viewed from two sides. The absolute power of equity is the power of the hand with preflop all-in. Sustainability of equity is a graph of the average change in the equity potential during the post-flop draw. This article will focus on the other side of equity – sustainability.
1. Hand preflop options
All options for hand preflop can be divided into categories:
Hands with very high absolute equity
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With these hands, everything is clear. They are simply the height of our power.
Hands with high absolute equity but poor stability
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These are also strong hands, but it is important to play them correctly, since unstable equity can be easily overlooked due to draw errors. For example, the top pair T-Q or the ready-made pocket pair 88-TT can be easily dragged over the card or squeeze us out of the game with a bluff over the card. For this reason, it is better to play these hands aggressively with raise and 3-bet, and passive play with them is quite difficult. They very rarely call in 3-bet pot and a little more often, but also rarely cold knock in a razed pot.
Hands with average absolute equity but good stability
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These hands, although they have less absolute equity, due to greater susceptibility to domination, but, due to their one-sidedness and connectivity, they have a more stable equity in the post-flop draw. Since having a straight or flush draw on your hands, your equity will not change much depending on which hand your opponent has, an ordinary pair, dopper or even a set. In poker, this is often referred to as “hands with nut potential.” Therefore, we like to play these hands with both 3-bet and cold stake, depending on the stack depth.
Hands with poor absolute equity but good stability
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and suited are worse.
All suited hands can be attributed to this group of hands, just by a certain exponential their absolute equity falls and their stability falls, but, in general, the very fact of monotony still gives some stability in the draw. For this reason, some of these hands are suitable for bluff 3-bets in large stacks larger than 40BB, since in large stacks it is important to have equity stability, otherwise post-flop in 3-bet banks will be heavy and often unprofitable. Also, this group of hands is almost always protected by a cold circle on the BB, because good stability of equity also gives a high equity realization coefficient. Our equity is more difficult to knock out as a bluff lines.
Hands with poor absolute equity and poor stability
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and the rest of the offsuited hands are worse.
This category of hands is suitable for drawing only in selected situations, as they are weak in all respects. Sometimes they are used in terms of blocker factors for exploiting bluff-3bets and are also protected on BB stake because of good chances - but on average, with these hands there is a heavy post-flop, and you need to understand very well when and how to play them.
In this distribution, I did not take the hands 22-77 anywhere, since on the one hand they have a fairly stable equity, but its stability is usually that if there is a set - it is difficult to move, and if there is no set, then the stability of equity lies in a very small number of outs (chances) for moving the opponent's older hand suckout. That is, steadily low equity. Also, these hands themselves have an average absolute equity, which is not bad, but you can implement it normally only if you get into the set or put it in preflop olyne. These hands can be considered unique, as their equity is very difficult to assign to any category.
2. Conclusion
Understanding what equity stability is helps to better understand the principles of constructing preflop ranges of cold circle and 3bet in different stacks. And understanding the principles allows you to memorize Rangi more quickly and efficiently. Of course, this article does not give full-fledged answers to the preflop ranges of the draw - for this it is better to buy a full-fledged course "Optimal preflop range". But, as a theoretical basis for understanding this fascinating game, it is mandatory.
