schifty1

I like the method of comparing chip ev and icm sims for perspective. the icm sims are counterintuitive to me, so def appreciate this content

yeah I think K7ss is an overbluff. villain has worse hands in his range and hands w/out these removal problems.

these are some of the best mtt videos ever produced imo. I feel lucky to have seen these

Your game seems to be predicated on deception, but fundamentally when you're forcing money into the pot you don't want that range of hands to have low equity and to be highly susceptible to floating and bluff-raising- especially betting into 3 people.

And from an exploitative standpoint- like you mentioned- it doesn't look bluffy at all to put no money in on the flop and then try to put a ton in later.
So you often get the worst of both worlds where your small bet range is defenseless and your trap range doesn't get paid enough.

And in this spot as the utg limper he probably has the range w the most equity, but this isn't necessarily because he has a ton of Qx. its cause his range is condensed and generally strong. Small betting w a lot of different hands (bd fl draws, trips, pp) makes sense to me.

If it isn't a spot where you want to bet everything I think its fine/good to mix in some Qx checks- I might do it w the ones w the weakest kickers and no bd fl draw,
but in this spot Linus has all the offsuit Qx we beat. I think at spr 5 we're trying to force money into the pot. Hecklen also has a ton of weaker suited Qx and some offsuit Qx we beat. We're playing at spr 3 w btn, so I think our hand is clearly strong enough to force the money in against him as well.

u the man. Your videos have shaped the way I approach the flop oop as pfr

agreed w you a lot this video :)

I'm wondering about hand selection when you're talking about 3b frozzy cause he's opening wide. I think its natural to assume that someone opening so wide is gonna overfold at some point in the game tree and probably at multiple decision points. The tricky part, I think, is trying to be somewhat precise in hand selecting for your 3b ranges. I mean, I think we can try to estimate what we think he's opening and try to come up w a freq/composition built for that situation that would never really include a hand like 57o as a bluff.

Say we assume he's opening 75%+. We decide we want to 3b 25% and since we're expecting bluffs to benefit the most we're building our range such that we're like 2:1 bluff to value or smth like that whereas typically when 3b oop we have more of a linear range where we're like 2:1 value : "bluff".

Anyway, my point is that you can make an exploitative adjustment to 3b more, and* I think we can try to select our bluffs to have more playability by generating immediate folds and/or having suitedness for additional playability when called.

when u make the nuts w AQ otr w less than a psb I think shove. why can't u turn stuff into bluffs? are u gonna do an exploit where ur always bluffing by shoving and always using a small size to vb? not in love w that. would just shove this and most of the stuff w rel little showdown value and 2 relevant cards as a bluff

also I try to use stuff like K2o/Q2o to "bluff"raise over limps. Doesn't seem like too much hand to fold to l/rr and you accomplish some things w the blocker like immediate fold equity by reducing l/c and l/rr, have more eq realization by reducing l/rr and have additional eq against l/c.

my 2 cents. thanks for the vid and any arguments/criticism wr to my approach

flop i'd still mix bet w AQotf favoring combos that block bd fl draws
turn once you've checked back flop i'd raise turn for sure. this isn't the only hand in my flop check back range that improves on this turn. I'd size sig bigger ott. what are your bluffs? These need to outperform flatting so I'd tend to size up sig ott.

pay this man

So much good info. i'm a fan. thanks!

thought of you when i saw this :)

43:50 w 77 interesting hand. I ran smthg in pio and I don't think its betting this turn after flop check back w too many semibluffs or bluffs that don't appear to be natural. It likes AT/AJ w a heart, some J8s/T8s if you ever flat that? and some flush draws. Given that you did get to the river that way, it does bluff your combo on hearts which is cool. You have any advice for how you might deviate from pio in this specific situation or more general tips for deviating from pio given icm implications or stacksize dynamics?

good stuff. As a cash player who likes to watch mtt vids a few months a year in preparation for tournaments I like when you do the HRC stuff, but I understand how some people might find this stuff to be too basic cause they've done so many of them.

I think the bvb hand w A8o is interesting. My intuition is to rarely raise this board when I have 0 sets/2p and a reduced number of straights, especially when my hand doesn't have any nutty equity. On the other hand I think this could be a cool exploit if you think your opponent is raising most of that stuff preflop rather than going for l/rr or you think he rarely 3b the flop and you get to decide by and large how much money goes in on future streets. I suspect he is planning to bluff a decent amount of runouts, but I think your flop raise looks so much like gs+bdfd that I'd also be hesitant to turn his hand into a bluff even after recognizing that its likely the bottom of his range.

The pio sims you showed for the 77x 2t board where you defend the bb are eye-opening. I wouldn't get anywhere near the appropriate response of x/r like 30+%. I liked when you showed the % of combos in each range that contain a 7. def a useful/memorable way to think about these situations in the future.

awesome stuff

I dig the insights in this video, but I think just reading over pio outputs is a waste of footage. I think y'all should give us a chance to pause and look it over (most of us are familiar w/ pio). And then focus on whatever you think is worthwhile like counter-intuitive plays and places where you don't think people are playing like the machine and how you think that affects play in practice. I find going over all of the hands and saying what they do is a little tedious. just my two cents- Thanks!

this is something that's been on my mind recently. I've been experimenting using larger flop cbet sizes after watching a few videos from KRab and Ben. There's a HU battle KRab plays against Zyzz (or smthg like that) where Zyzz is using big cbet sizes in some spots and is able to take a player of even Kevin's caliber into some uncharted waters. Ben has a spot in a 6 max video where he faces an ep opponent using overbet sizing otf.
I find this size compelling for a few reasons. 1) you can put even some really good players in a spot that they haven't studied (thus more likely to make a mistake). 2) you get into the check lines more frequently with a range that they might misread (cause they don't know you're using a giant flop cbet size). 3) it's fun to bet big.
What I'm learning is how to identify the critical sizes through simulation. Playing with betsizes in pio teaches you about the sizes that make certain hand classes indifferent in whatever situation. There's a lot of value in exploring non-standard sizes imo because you learn what sizes make sense from an indifference standpoint. glgl

i'm also surprised oop is checkraising flop ~10% in the first hand. ip's range is more condensed, contains all the sets, and he's in position. But I guess oop having all of the sets/top 2 and all of the hands that make the nuts on the straightening cards makes checkraising a reasonable way to fight back against ip's high freq cb. I guess ip's not doing a ton of 3b otf either- esp in practice.

wrt hand selection on the turn in the first hand from the perspective of ip- I think 67 doesn't have compelling removal effects on bb's defending range ott, it has poor equity, and in the line where ip checks back turn and is checked to on the river it makes a better river bluff than the other straight draws.

yeah, this seems loose to me.
We have not so great eq v reasonable squeezing ranges in the first place (maybe 33% against the squeezer? less? ~24%? in the multiway scenario) and we block some lighter 3bs that I think some people will choose. disc- i don't play tournaments really and don't know this player or have a firm grasp of how the average tournament reg designs his range.
our relative position has to really impede our eq realization postflop when ip peels. Like, what do we do if ip calls and we face a cb from the squeezer on K94 rb? Q85?

I mean, heart. more I work on my game the more I get from your videos.
-urpokercrush

@14:30 top left you remark that you're checking your whole range on the A turn? That makes very little sense to me. Seems like AQo/AJo/Axdd/A6-A8s fold pretty often otf to our cbet. And if you're betting your whole range otf you have a ton of Ax in this spot. This seems like one of the best turns in the deck for our range v his range.

i ran some sims in pio. In the first one I gave us 11% 3b mixing a bunch of suited big cards, suited connectors, suited Ax and mixing 3b w the med pairs. I don't know if you play a flatting range here or exactly what you 3b sb v btn.
I have him calling all the pocket pairs, suited Ax, suited paint, a bunch of suited connectors and ATo+, KJo. I have him 4b AK always and JJ+ always, mixing 4b w AQs and TT. And I have him mixing call w QJo, the weakest suited connectors, K7s type stuff. And never calling w A2o-A9o.

In this sim we're betting the ace turn like 2/3 of the time. Its our highest freq double barrel. We bet like 35% of our range on 9-Q. And like 50% of our range on 2-8. Looks like our sizing for the turn bet is usually on the smaller side- like 40% pot- across the board.

I ran some more sims w him trapping AK/KK/AA pf- the most favorable range for him. In this sim our cb freq drops to like 50% otf and that betting range continues betting ~77% of the time on the A turn. Then I node-locked a 100% cb for us against this range. Its still betting the ace turn over 70% of the time.
I don't think this one is realistic- its just meant to be an example of an extreme situation that indicates how the A turn is favorable for our range in most of these scenarios.

what up? looks like you don't have a raise size for ip to 3b when you x/r 57ss on 883 dd. that's probably why it's x/r like 30% or whatever. in practice i don't think people 3b here much at all, but it seems worth noting before people go x/r 30% like, "pio says i can..."

also your river bet size on the last hand seems kinda weird. in my experience solvers typically prefer a shove sizing that would incorporate flushes and if you pick another size for like sets or whatever this seems maybe a little large at equilibrium? idk. i should probably just plug it in before i go spouting off, but...

i'm not trying to be overly critical. i watched until the end. i like your thought process.

love it. i think guessing before looking at the outputs significantly improves my recall.

I'd be interested in a video like this that looks at the checkraise lines. In spots where pio checkraises way more than the average reg, what should we defend against a high freq checkraise on different boards? how does the checkraiser proceed on different turns when his flop x/r is called (high freq turn check or bet big)?

i like a lot of coaches on this site. even though my main game is 6max i want to say your content and clarity put you at the top of my list. i always think I'm getting my $s worth watching your videos.

@13:35. I don't understand the thinking of betting bigger ott to set up river shove. I think using 2/3 sizing ott seems fine if you're including some pair+fl draw type stuff in your betting range and the fact that if u actually have the nuts he's often drawing dead.

so river is an overbet shove. is that really terrible? seems like it allows us to bluff more often in theory. and i also think 2/3 turn, overbet shove river is likely a better sizing plan to get river folds if that's our goal in a vacuum.

going bigger on the turn seems like it will get more turn folds and encourage ip to play more of a raise/fold game ott. I don't think that's what we want to accomplish with our range.

there are a few reasons why I never lead this spot.

1) when we're defending bb getting this price our range getting to the flop is extremely wide. Even if we have a few nutted combos like A2/22 and some AJ, we have a ton of other hands as well. If we start separating the nutted combos (or even just tp combos) too early then the rest of our range is left unprotected. This means if we develop a betting range (or checkraise range) that includes our best hands and draws then our checking range becomes extremely vulnerable and a target for successful barrels.

2) The opener has all combos of AA/JJ/AJ. I would have almost no AA or JJ here as the bb defender. That's a range asymmetry (hands in his range that are not in ours) that would lead me not to overplay my big hands too early in this spot. You're betting into 1 completely uncapped range and cold call range that probably contains some AJ and possibly some AA. BB has the most capped range.

3) there's a flushdraw on board and we don't have any of that suit. That means ip will have more hands that float as well as hands that raise as a bluff. This would dissuade me from leading.

4) the board is dynamic. Any broadway card, flush card, or jack significantly changes the texture. I generally try to avoid building pots out of position in these scenarios on the flop with a range that will have trouble figuring out what to do on multiple turn cards.

glgl

mostly what i mean is that I have no technical understanding of how to adjust on the money bubble. I think everything i did probably makes chips provided i don't fold the river.

how much is my 70k stack worth on the bubble in terms of dollars? what about a 260k stack?
can a tourney expert please explain how they adjust on the bubble?

plz and thx

so i try to live by the 1/n rule in these spots. I estimate my shoving ranges w a 10 bb stack from each position at a frequency of 1/n where n is the number of players left to act. As your stacksize increases your shoving freq decreases.

So its not as easy as this (cause people can shove or just open), but if you can estimate their freq then you can also est a def freq.

in the hypothetical where a 10 bb stack shoves w 4 left to act, i often est his shoving range to be the top 25% of hands. So if I'm in the co and trying to decide what freq I defend I try to generalize w a 40% rule (I can get it in w 40% of the range I est for the shover cause there are players left to act who can wake up w a hand, so I can't just stick in the same range as him and expect to make money).
But if it folded to you in the bb in this hypothetical then you could call nearly what he's shoving and expect to make chips given the sb+antes in the pot and the fact that nobody behind can wake up w a hand.

These aren't just made up frequencies. I got the 1/n idea a long time ago on 2+2 from mtt poster masque who seems to know wtf he's talking about.
And the 40% defense idea after watching some mtt videos on this site that go over these spots with icmizer or whatever tool to estimate gii ranges.

These are just guidelines that I find help me analyze spots quickly in game and I can adjust from there given what I think about the opponent and the dynamic at the table given stack sizes and where we are in the tournament.

I think the cold caller in this spot means we should get it in tighter rather than lighter.

For your hand specifically I wouldn't be getting it in lighter than ~7% of hands- so like 88+, AJo+ and ATs+.

I'm def not a tourney expert, but I think restealing too light is a rampant mistake in MTTs unless you're doing it as an exploit.

i ran a few more. when u have all the suited 2x pf pio is xr flop like 17.5% - which seems odd to me given that ip is only cb like 1/2 his hands for this size otf.

its checkraising the majority of 2x combos, some A8/K8, some weak 8x esp w bd fl draw, some double backdoors and strangely hands like ATo and AJo that didn't 3b pf.

the 2 turn is the lowest freq bet for the checkraiser at less than 4%. If the turn is 6/7/8 the checkraiser bets like 20-25% of the time. Less on the other cards.

it mixes between bet and xr with K2 on most turns. And your line of bet turn planning to shove some rivers is implemented on a bunch of runouts. Looks like it generally prefers a normal size to an overbet on most turns. And a normal size again even on clean runouts with weaker 2x on many rivers in the triple barrel line.

I'm curious about the xr w K2ss @17:09 ott. I see pio checking a lot of turns after the checkraise gets called in a bunch of spots. I ran a sim for this spot esp cause i don't play HU. I'm not sure what the ranges should be. I included Q2o in both ranges and J2o in neither?

anyway, my pio sim has us checking this turn basically always rarely planning to checkraise. I was wondering what you think about this- do you think I'm missing something in my sims? do you think this just fails as a practical strategy?