Recently, I found an interesting concept in poker where you can lower your opponent’s EV while keeping your EV the same and gain more money on your rakeback. This idea is especially good against opponents who don’t adjust correctly or against massive volume grinders who won’t notice that your frequencies are higher than they should be.
This is also not easy to notice, as once you see something happening, it’s hard to tell if it’s happening correctly, more or less than it should.
On sites where there are no HUDs allowed, this is almost impossible to notice without looking at a specific player and his stats in the tracker after you export your hands. On most trackers, hands from some popular “No-HUD” sites will be coded, and you won’t be able to see which exact player is doing that, since the player name will be coded.
How the Exploit Works
This concept is connected to the rake, and there is a strategy where you can call 100% of the time in spots where your hand will be mixed call/fold. Your hand will have the same EV, but your opponent’s hand will lose EV as some of the EV is generated by getting folds, which are now going to happen less often.
Since all solvers include rake in their EV calculations, but they don’t include rakeback, this would mean that all 0 EV hands make money as they generate rakeback. So if we could find a perfect strategy where we would call more, we would lower our opponent’s EV, and make more money through rakeback.
The main issue with this is that this strategy would be hard to implement, as it is very hard to know which hands would be 0 EV in the real world, as our opponents are not using perfect GTO ranges.
Even if they are following charts and using their right hands, they might not be using the randomizer and having the correct frequencies.
The most straightforward way to benefit from this strategy is to defend our BB vs BTN and BB vs SB against opponents who have too wide ranges. That way, our 0 EV hands may become +EV hands while also lowering our opponents’ EV and getting more rakeback.
If you are looking for a poker site that offers a great rakeback deal, you can check Champion Poker by clicking here.
This might also discourage wide opens from an opponent if he notices that you are defending wide enough, and he might tighten up, meaning you can go back to GTO ranges (defend tighter) and gain EV while lowering his EV since you are one step ahead with adjustments as once you widen your range, you are keeping an sharp eye and waiting for him to adjust.
Big Blind Defense
BB defense is really important, and it’s crucial to have the right frequencies to avoid being exploited and prevent leaking money from this sensitive spot.
If you don’t have the right BB defense frequencies, your opponent would be incentivized to open more hands, and he could be winning 10bb/100 opening any two cards, depending on how much off you are with the BB defense.
BB defense is really sensitive, and missing just a few 3-bets and/or calls could cost you a lot of money. It is really important to 3-bet the right amount of mixed hands, and to call wide enough.
We will go more in-depth about big blind defense in future articles. You can also read more about the types of mistakes in poker to build good fundamentals.
