Flatting Raises From the Small Blind
APT advisers (in cash games) advocate frequent flat calling of hands such as weak broadways and small pocket pairs. The same broadway hands are folded on the BTN.
Most instructors today are against flatting from the small blind for at least a couple of reasons:
1. The Big Blind may squeeze, especially against steal positions.
2. Playing postflop OOP is relatively difficult. IP already has a huge advantage, but that advantage is compounded because IP play is much more straight-forward than from OOP.
In addition, with pocket pairs you are relying on implied odds. Especially with raises coming from CO and BTN, these implied odds often don't exist.
During subsequent play of these hands by the APT advisers, it seems we are nearly always folding these postflop. When we hit, we rarely win much of a pot.
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Comments
I'm not a fan of flatting raises either, especially not OOP. I recommend using the advisors as an opinion on how some people often play hands - they are not designed to be taken as the sure-thing best way to play the hand. The advice they give is what they would do, and that is designed to be like the style of the game you are playing. The strategy they play is definitely low risk, and it works against most typical opponents you see in live games. There are definitely better ways to play hands sometimes, and I only look at the advice when I'm not sure what to do and want to just get a second opinion on how some people would play the hand.
Two other things - First, I recommend never accepting the advice from the advisor. Always think about how YOU would play it first before looking at the advice and keep that play and just use the advisors as indicators of how many of your human opponents in a similar game would act in that situation. That way, the training plans you get will be based off of your game instead of the game played by the advisors. Second, one thing to remember about the advisors is that since they are designed to play like real humans, it is very difficult to get them to behave exactly like we want them to. Changing their behavior in one place changes behaviors in other places, which is reality with normal humans, and often when you tweak one thing, it adds bigger problems in other places. So that is the reason behind why sometimes you will see advice that seems less than ideal - it's because these are not GTO bots, they are designed to be more human.
I play with "fast fold" checked and I think I'm playing over 1,000 hands per hour with random hands. I play VERY quickly preflop, but slow down postflop (except for the very obvious folds).
I have the adviser programmed to pop up whenever it disagrees with my action. When this occurs, I read the adviser's remarks and (more importantly I think) I look at the summary of other advisers to see how many concur with the advice. At times, I want to be sure to able to view the adviser summary even if my current adviser may agree with my action; when this is the case, I consult the adviser before executing an action.
I consider the advice given and how it should affect my future plays; however, I always choose the action I was going to take. (Their are a couple of exceptions to this last statement: 1. Since I'm playing Fast Fold, sometimes I will accidentally fold a hand preflop that should be called; 2. MTTs [I've been playing only for fun; I don't know much about them] if I miss a blind increase and should shove a hand, I will consider whether or not I would have shoved it with the new information.)