Passing small edges l Strategy with Barry

Edge passing is the practice of folding hands that are marginally profitable because more profitable scenarios are likely to materialise.

Imagine you're a good professional poker player, and it's the first hand of the World Series of Poker Main Event. Your opponent shoves, and you are very confident they have AK. You look down at QQ. You are a marginal favourite in this hand, but if you have a significant edge over the table, this should be a fold. You don't want to take a high-variance spot when there will be many more opportunities to take your opponent's chips.

When it comes to edge passing, there is a very useful piece of advice that I believe originated from recent WSOP Millionaire Maker champion Bencb. He suggested that if a hand typically makes 5% of what AA makes, you can comfortably pass it because the edge isn't that great. If, however, it makes 10% or more of what AA makes, you should never pass it. This is too good a hand to fold.

How close is your hand to AA?

Let's look at an example to see what I'm talking about. Imagine the stacks are 40bbs effective. You open the BTN, and the SB shoves for 40bbs.

This is the GTO calling range using GTO Strategy, which conveniently has the EV of every single hand that calls. As you can see, AA makes 31.8 bbs on average.

Imagine you are at a soft table, do you really want to call with 55 here, which only makes 0.58 bb? You are essentially flipping in this spot. This hand is way less than 5% of what AA makes, and using Ben's heuristic, this is an easy fold at a soft table.

What about AJs? That is making 4.97bbs, which is more than 10% of what AA makes. According to Ben's suggestion, you can't fold this hand.

I think the heuristic works very well here. Intuitively, those ranges make sense to me. Obviously, this is not something we would ever be able to do in game, so it's much more about guesstimating. There is another piece of advice that Dara O'Kearney has shared with me, which I think helps in these spots.

He suggests that if you have a close decision with a hand, let's say ATs, think about what you would do with the hand that is one pip above and one pip below your hand. If A9s is a snap fold, obviously ATs is close, and you can justify folding. If AJs is a snap call, you have a tough decision, but if AJs is close too, it makes ATs an easier fold.

Edge passing is not an exact science. It's more about using your experience to identify if the spot you're currently in is profitable and, crucially, what your future prospects look like after this hand.