What is the explanation behind SPR importance?

Is it simply that you never ever really want to commit yourself unless you are all in? I have some other ideas im just wondering what people think.

I always thought it was to help prevent good players putting you in shitty spots and to help you as a good player put others in shitty spots in order to get them to do what you want them to do.

Oh, and also to stack fish.

Having said that there's probably something deeper to it.

I thought that it was to basically take away the ability to play marginal drawing hands, like smaller PP's and SC's profitably when you want to play TP type hands. Having SPR control from position allow us to decide what type of play style we are going to have or we will get out early. We can basically turn any hand into a 50BB style of play like the old Party days by making postflop become Push/fold or allow the game to play deeper stacked by making it tough to get the money in early while drawing to 6, 8 or 9 outs vs stations that we have no FE against on early streets. One thing I discovered as of late is attempting SPR control is almost useless OOP. Although the limp/RR with JJ+, AK type hands may allow us to limp more SC and such often enough against Laggy players that we can beat postflop.

SPR is all about generating post flop conditions that are favorable to the texture of your hand. Gut shots and small pairs love deep stacks, so when we're playing hands that typically make sets, or gapped connectors that will make weak draws, we want an overly large SPR to give us the best implied odds possible. When we have big top pair or overpair hands, deep stacks hurt us and we would much rather have the stacks shallow to deny implied odds to our opponents.

This is why an SPR of say 10 is good for marginal drawing hands, and an SPR of 4-7 is better for marginal to strong made hands. The idea is, the stronger your hand the smaller your target SPR should be, because the lower the SPR the easier it is to get all the money in with fewer and/or smaller bets in relation to the pot size. Hope that helps.

A good example is the 15:1 rule with sets pre-flop. This is a by-product of good SPR theory. You could come up with a similar rule about playing hands likely to make overpairs, along the lines of "Try not to make raises that give your opponents > 10:1 implied odds with overpair hands"

This also ties in to things like proper 3-betting size, 3-bet calling range, etc.

book is worth reading

SPR is HUGE in the $5/$10 $500 max game I regularly play in. So many players can't manipulate the pot size and it's SOOOO easy to build a big pot at will.

i think a lot of spr importance is based solely on the texture of the games you are playing in. To say a general statement like "spr of 13 is bad for top pair" would be wrong, since with aggressive history 13 is an amazing, optimal even, spr for top pair.

I don't even really see how you could discuss spr as a theory, its just something you should intrinsically keep in mind.

One thing related to spr that I've always found fascinating, but difficult to describe:

Poker strategy seems to involve lots of dualities, wax/wane dynamics. Few examples of these:

- You have a gutshot and an overcard first to act on the flop in a heads up pot, with x dollars in the pot, and effective stacks F(x). If F(x)=x its an easy shove. If F(x)=2x its an easy c/f, if F(x)=4x bet folding or c/rai can be correct. If F(x)=8x then you might bet 3-bet. Its basically a sine wave that decays as x approaches infinity.

-unbalanced range leveling. Basically whether you decide to bluff someone when its obvious their range is mostly bluffcatchers vs yours. You'll not bluff if you expect a call given your history, assuming your on that level, or you will decide to use that information as an excuse to bluff even. Your opponent will have to decide what your level F(x) will be. If he feels you're a str8forward player he'll set F(x)=1 and fold, but as he sets F(x) to higher and higher numbers his analysis will become basically useless and he'll simply assume you are bluffing a decent amount and end his analysis right there. Once again, decaying curve.


Anyways I guess when ppl are in quote/unquote "tough spots" that just means that they are not at one of the relative peaks/troughs of the sine wave, and are instead toward the equilibrium point.

This is why 4-bet bluffs are so tough to deal with with 75 and 150bb stacks, and so much easier by comparison to deal with when stacks are 100bb or 200bb deep.

anyways i haven't played poker in weeks so take that fwiw i guess

Very nice post Renton, never thought of that model of SPR as a sine wave.