steveg12

What is a standard percentage in this spot? Has anybody looked closely at these spots in Pio to see if its exploitative? It makes sense that he doesn't defend anywhere near 1-alpha I think because his check back range is mostly weak and middling hands. So in order to exploit him his opponents have to go back to the previous street and check more hands in an attempt to put him in this spot more often. But since his opponents are betting lots of flops themselves, and then he's betting 75% when checked to himself that isn't really possible. My explanation is probably too simplistic and possibly not really right IDK. I'm very interested by thread and would love to know if he is folding way more than the pool.

interesting, thanks.

Yeah I get what you are saying that these spots aren't super fun but it's just part of how the game works. I guess my question is more how much tighter we should be value betting the river in these types of situations. I've played around with crev, and I get that if he's going to balanced he's not allowed to just go crazy check raising us or else we can just exploit him by clicking call every time. I feel like maybe I'm giving up too much value checking back when my opponent does have the nutted hands in his range and I don't.

I'd like some more discussion on this as well. I'm a live player now but I go back and forth with my strategy really deep OOP. I think the only problem with a really narrow value range is that if you are only three betting the very top of your range, we aren't gonna have all that many bluffs, and will still probably be susceptible on a lot of boards. If we only three bet say QQ-AA and AK, and then add some suited connectors, that cant give us enough board coverage across all possible flops?

Agree with everything else you have said in this thread, but isn't our hand a little too strong on this flop to not either lead or check call a bet?  I realize there are very few good turns but just seems sort of weak to be check folding no?

I don't think you are really talking about the same thing tho.  He was just saying that he's going to give button a liberal value betting range, so he's also assuming button wont chicken out with his bluffs on the river.  Memo was bringing up the point that if button has 16 bluff combos OTR, then that means in theory he should have had roughly 35 on the turn, lots more on the flop etc.  I think for the sake of time, Daniel just assumed that villain should have all the bluffs he listen in his range when we got to the river, and would be checking back and giving up with other bluffs along the way.  If thats not the case, then the bb should just fold his AA to the flop bet, because the button will be able to continue on every turn, and we will basically have just burned the money we put in on the flop.

You have managed to confuse me as well!  For sure you are right if button only has 16 bluff combos when he makes the first bet on the flop, he's either extremely value heavy by the time he gets to the river, or he never checks back the flop or turn, and bb should just fold all his bluffcatchers on the early streets.  I'm not sure if Daniel assumes that the button has other one and done bluffs on the flop and turn, or that since we actually did face the betting part of buttons range on every street, that we just assume that all those bluffs are still in the river range.

Enjoyed this as usual.  I'm sure this wont add a ton to the discussion, but as a online nl player who has transitioned to live at these stakes, I would beg to differ that the everyday "good" live regular is gonna be shoving that river with all those bluff combos.  I come to that crossroads a lot where from a combos perspective I have an easy call, but all but the very best players tend to not be balanced when a lot of money goes in on the river in general in my experience.  None the less it was a good analysis of an interesting spot.

wow great post Sant.

It does make sense, thanks for the response.  Your videos are by far my favorite on the site, please keep the theory related stuff coming.

Great video, really looking forward to the later parts.  One question as far as your river assumptions that villain will always check both his trips and his air on the river.  If we are up against an opponent who we suspect will lead the river with his trips, and balance appropriately with his bluffs, that is going to give us more incentive to bet the turn in these types of situations correct?  You talked a little bit about how you thought the river play should influence our decision in the beginning but it wasn't super clear to me.  If he bets all his trip aces, and balances appropriately with bluffs, it shouldn't matter what our plan is because we will have a zero EV spot every time he bets.  So do we in a sense gain something by betting the turn to avoid being put into that zero EV river scenario VS a balanced player?  I understand its going to depend a ton on how often he checkraises, but I just want to make sure I'm thinking along the right lines since this type of thing comes up all the time, even when ranges aren't so polar.

I think its good you started this thread because it will probably bring forth some good discussion, but fwiw a lot of this was already talked about quite a bit here...

http://www.runitonce.com/nlhe/theory-question-in-three-bet-pots/

Id love to hear more responses regarding this spot, it comes up all the time and I certainly don't have a great answer for it.  My intuition would be to check back kk here vs tough balanced opponents, and have a small c betting range of trips and some air with backdoors.  I think we basically want to take whatever line is gonna allow us to fast forward to showdown without putting a lot of money in.  Your point about people defending small PP's is valid, but we can still delayed c bet the turn, even though we might be slightly less likely to get value on that street.

It does, nice post thanks.

Really enjoyed this, thanks.  Can we loosely apply this to the earlier streets?  Seems like on the flop for instance it gets fuzzier since ranges are less polar, and the betting range will usually be much stronger, so defending 1-alpha is probably incorrect on most boards?  At the same time we have to defend a little "extra" since all his bluffing hands before the river will have equity?  Hopefully part 5 coming soon.

Are you still planning to continue with the Toy Gaming series?

Yeah agree it can get confusing, particularly on streets leading up the river.  I still tend to think in terms of equity which be leading to problems.  Consider a spot where we have three bet preflop with KK and get 4 bet.  We call a flop bet, and on the turn, we are faced with a pot sized bet, and we think his range is 8 combos of AA and 8 combos of AK.  From the nuts air game assuming nobody improves, we know he should be betting 5/9 bluffs 4/9 value on the turn to make us indifferent.  So here, ignoring our implied odds when we river a K and his A outs when he has AK, we still need to fold even though we have 50% equity VS his range and we're getting 2:1 on a call, assuming he plays the river correctly.  This leads me to start thinking about how much "extra" equity I need than the price I'm being offered to call a bet when I have a bluffcatcher on a street before the river.  Is this line of thinking wrong or not often applicable, since in real poker one range will almost never be able to bet all three streets with its value hands?

Any plans to work something like this out across multiple streets in the future?  I think that would be really helpful for me personally.

Tyler,

On the turn when you look at our equity VS his range, we see we have 26%.  I'm not sure what bet size you are assuming, but you say its not enough to continue.  In this situation, if villain did face us with a bet size where our 26% equity gave us a break even or slightly profitable call on the turn in a vacuum, am I correct in assuming we would still have to fold given they way the river will play?  Meaning since he can bet a portion of his bluffs on the river in a balanced fashion, and "claim" the pot with his entire betting range, we need more equity on the turn than our immediate price suggests to make up for the bluff catching spot we will be in on the river?

It looks like we have about one "bluff" for every value bet we have on the flop.  I realize this isn't the best way to look at the situation since our bluffs have equity, just not sure how else to frame it.  How does this impact our barreling strategy on the turn and river?  Seems like we might not have a ton of bluffs left by the time we get to the river unless we continue a ton on the turn?

Thanks for that, its helpful.  Little confused by this sentence: 

 Read through the example, and you'll see a case where on the river an opponent DOESN'T need to call enough on the river (1-alpha) to keep his opponent from bluffing too much on the river because his opponent would not have enough value hands carried over from a previous street.

Do you mean opponents wont have enough bluffs since a large chunk of his semi bluffing hands got there when the flush card hits?  Don't see why the player betting the river would be short on value hands or how this would factor in.

Im not sure how well this relates to what you guys are really debating and is prob way over simplified, but assuming the 3 bettor is fairly polarized, wont his range be stronger than the callers?  He will have more QQ-AA and bluffs that play fairly well postflop, and the calling range will have more medium-strong type hands that will more often function as bluffcatchers?  Isn't this reason enough to possibly not defend enough to allow him to bluff ATC profitably on a lot of flops?  Intuitively I feel like I'm not defending as much in these situations but could be a mistake.

Hi Ben,

Enjoyed seeing your breakdown of how both ranges will/should get the the river.  Just a general question about your own thought process in game. How much are thinking in terms of where each hand falls in your own range and your strategy as a whole, VS just trying to maximize the value of that hand VS villains range in that given situation?  For whatever reason I feel like the more I become concerned about my own frequencies in game, I tend to lose a bit of my edge in a exploitative sense.

BigFiszh,

You said earlier in the thread that we should be able to bluff this flop more than 50% since we there are more streets to come, but when we don't position or the stronger range, can we really expect to get away with bluffing much more than 50%?  Does the fact that we can bluff future streets still give us enough reason to have more "bluff" combos than value, when we don't have a range advantage?  

I know you aren't advocating we bluff this flop too liberally, I'm just more curious how our ability to bluff future streets comes into play when we don't have position or any sort of range advantage. Thanks.