30% raiser and 30% caller seems like a very common squeeze play spot to me. It's usually about what you look for or looser, but it's hard to find too much looser of that type of action. At least somewhere between 20% and 30% is common. Whenever a raiser is loose, good players tend to call him or raise in position lighter. The reasons someone might just call instead of 3bet is as an exploitative move. If the hand has a lot of strength vs opener's range but not a lot of strength vs the range that the player will continue with given a raise, the call may be better. Also, another reason to just call is if the opponent is exploitable after the flop, but raising will create a bloated pot which is far more likely to result in an all in, where just calling may be a better spot to gradually accumulate chips without all in showdown.
until the squeeze play is made often enough to cause either one or both of the players to adjust.
This will be very interesting to see how light opponent has to call to prevent squeeze from working with any two and how often he should call.
30% of hands represents a range such as:
22+,A3+,KT+,QT+,JT+,A2s+,K9s+,Q8s+,J8s+,T8s+,97s+,87s
Some people may prefer suited connectors over suited aces and suited K9,Q8 and such, but either way you're looking at not too much needing to change to represent a fairly normal raise range and positional caller maybe calling frequently because of position and the antes.
HALF this range is
33+,AT+,KQ,A7s+,K9s+,Q9s+,J9s+,T9s
or perhaps something like
22+,A9+,KQ,A6s+,KTs+,QJs,
With more hands it becomes less clear which hands opponents should call with and as you change the calling range, the pushing range chnges which changes the calling range until you go around in circles without getting anywhere, or you end up with a strategy that requires occasionally pushing with some hands but not always and occasionally calling with some hands but not always.
We will ignore this and instead just assume opponent calls with
33+,A9+,KQ,A6s+,KTs+,QJs
Profitable to shove with:
44+,A2+,K8+,Q9+,J8+,T8+,K4s+,Q6s+,J7s+,T6s+,97s+,86s+,76s. That's 39.97% of hands.
You can shove with any two if opponent plays slightly tighter than 10% of hands.
So vs hand ranges around 66+,AT+,KQ,A9s+,KJs+, you can shove with almost any two profitably.
Now you can widen or tighten the initial calling range slightly and then shove all hands profitable vs that range to see if you can get the shoving strategy to be less profitable. If so, the initial strategy is farther away from "optimal" or "equilibrium" play than the new strategy. We are looking for the most optimal play we can find within a reasonable amount of time. I'm lazy so I'm only going to look at a few possible alternatives and not check everything between.
Let's try a tighter range first. 55+,AT+,A9s+,KQs That's 132 combinations out of 1326 total or about 9.95% of hands.Now we can push with A2+,K2+,Q2+,J3+ and we can already tell without doing any more work that opponents are making it too easy for us by tightening up and we will be able to make more from what has to be a more exploitative strategy. Equilibrium in a given situation should attempt to minimize the maximum possible profit of the advantaged side. In this case, it's an advantage to the shover.
What if we loosen up? Assume opponent calls with 22+,A8+,KJ+,A4s+,K9s+QTs+,JTs+ That's 242 out of the initial 394 opponent played or 61.42% of the hands in the range. You're much less likely to get a fold, so your hand has to have more value when you do shove. 36.5% equity needed. Although the shover can no longer shove with any two, the advantage of this for the shover is more hands have value vs the calling range.
You can shove: 33+,A4+,K9+,QT+,JT,A2s+,K5s+,Q8s+,J9s+,T8s+,97s+.
So now what's better, shoving 33+,A4+,K9+,QT+,JT,A2s+,K5s+,Q8s+,J9s+,T8s+,97s+
VS 22+,A8+,KJ+,A4s+,K9s+QTs+,JTs+?
Or shoving 44+,A2+,K8+,Q9+,J8+,T8+,K4s+,Q6s+,J7s+,T6s+,97s+,86s+,76s
vs calling 33+,A9+,KQ,A6s+,KTs+,QJs
First let's calculate equity per shove and then multiply it by the percentage of hands we shove.
Shoving 33+,A4+,K9+,QT+,JT,A2s+,K5s+,Q8s+,J9s+,T8s+,97s+ yields
0.14660517x pot per situation or 1.1bb. You do this by plugging in expected value when called vs fold equity. Some time I might go into a more detailed explination of how this is solved.
Shoving 44+,A2+,K8+,Q9+,J8+,T8+,K4s+,Q6s+,J7s+,T6s+,97s+,86s+,76s yields .1354s pot per situation or 1.016x BBs
Since the goal is to identify where neither side can improve their strategy, we must recognize the calling range where we make less profits to be closer to optimal as opponent has more effectively neutralized our edge and we must respond by adjusting the optimal shoving strategy vs that range.
Conclusion:
For a 2x pot squeeze play:
44+,A2+,K8+,Q9+,J8+,T8+,K4s+,Q6s+,J7s+,T6s+,97s+,86s+,76s is the approximate shoving equilibrium vs 30% raiser and caller (22+,A3+,KT+,QT+,JT+,A2s+,K9s+,Q8s+,J8s+,T8s+,97s+,87s)
and all in calling range of 33+,A9+,KQ,A6s+,KTs+,QJs
Nearly any two is profitable if 2 opponents playing 30% of hands plays tighter than
66+,AT+,KQ,A9s+,KJs+
Again, we have more evidence that opponent calling with about half the range of hands is close enough to equilibrium vs a 2x shover that moving forward we can make this assumption for 40% and 50% hand ranges, and solve for the optimal shoving strategy vs that calling range.
This squeeze assumes an even distribution of the hand range. Since folds are information that folder is less likely to have folded an ace or king, this is probably not true. The lower kicker ace-x and king-x hands and pairs become weaker while the higher kicker ace-x and king-x becomes stronger. Although almost all hands but those that are more likely to dominate opponent's hands drop in vale, their is more relative value to hands that are less likely to be dominated like queen-x and jack-x than the weak ace.
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