matlittle

So you would advocate for using exploitative reasoning to pick which bet size to use for each hand on the river in most scenarios?

You explored lots of the downsides to the norms that we tend to strive for in this list:

I completely agree that those exist and hinder our poker performance and lives. My question is whether you think these norms have upsides too? Take masculinity for example - it may drive us to be more aggressive, not be pushed about and fight for more pots. A certain level of 'aggression' is required in poker, and could potentially be beneficial to some players in this respect. Would you aim for a controlled version of masculinity when playing? Or would you seek to remove it altogether from your game and instead aim for a neutral mentality that makes plays solely based on strategic decisions and is in no way swayed by the desire to assert masculinity into that decision process?

Hey Sam, this was a very interesting debut. I can really relate to the misguided thoughts for enacting violence. Is this something you will bring up again and explore further in a future video? Would be good to hear your thoughts on how to correct these types of thought processes.

Yes it's a good exploit which works against recs, but also weaker regs. Any scenario where you believe your opponent will call too many pocket pairs on the flop is usually a great spot for a 2 barrel bluff given that these hands improve so infrequently on turn and have to fold.

I checked because, he's supposed to fold 22-77 no spade pure on this board and my experience has been that non-solver based players tend to overcall here, because the folds are unintuitive.

Yes that's a good point. I think the data shows that people (especially recs) will call too many of this exact hand type on the flop, you are right. What the MDA red-line wizards recommend here as an exploit vs recs is to 2-barrel bluff these scenarios, given that most players will XF the turn way too often due to this exact region of hands not being able to continue on most turns (anything that isn't between 9 and 5).

It's a somewhat complex puzzle to solve, but I think I have all the pieces now, much appreciated! The devaluing of MP's over-pairs is something I had not given enough weight to in this. Presumably this is also one of the reasons for MP checking more on two-tone boards as compared to rainbow? MP's over-pairs get devalued more frequently on two-tone boards compared to rainbow boards, so MP is forced to check more often on the flop.
(Other reasons being: BTN's slight advantage in suited combos, and MP being out of position on a dynamic board).

Hello Alexandra, enjoyed the analysis, hopefully we will see you back here soon with more videos!

For these multiway limped pots, could you give me a rough idea of how you approach them in terms of your betting range on the flop? Which boards are good/bad for the SB? Do you go with small bet on the flop, or just bet according to your hand strength given that there will be a rec in the pot as it is a limped pot?

This hand class seems like it should be a pure cbet? You can cbet around 65% of the time overall, so you have the bluff allowance for all hands in this hand class that have backdoors but can't XC.

If we again assume that BB is passive, and nodelock a lower flop raise frequency, then we can bump the flop cbet frequency up to almost a range bet too.

This is a spot I hate facing. Feels like at midstakes, when you cbet the flop in a 3BP, check the turn, and your opponent bets more than 1/2 pot then you're in trouble. My suspicion has long been that this line is way too strong, and you will face a river shove way too often too. I can understand your desire to fold here!

Have you ever done any MDA for this scenario? It's on my to-do list, so I'm curious if you have any data insights for this line?

For the river, your hand is right on the border of value bet and checking back river at equilibrium.

If we nodelock a reduced XR bluff frequency for CO then your hand of course becomes a clear value bet.

In your analysis, you decided this player was unlikely to call you often on the river with worse hands. If I add a reduced bluff-catch frequency for CO to the nodelock, then AJ again tends towards being indifferent between value betting and checking again.

Looking back, do you think you would still check back this hand?

For this hand at 22.50, you were playing against a player that previously checked down QT UTG vs BB on A43. You noted that this player was likely passive and missing bluffs. I would have thought that this would lead you to be a bit more aggressive vs them in this T84t hand. At equilibrium, your hand pure cbets flop. If we nodelock a lower XR frequency on the flop for the CO then you can range bet the flop.

This hand was pretty wild! My sim has it at around a 0.3BB mistake to 3bet the turn here, so it seems like a fairly large deviation here. Do you think it was an attempt to exploit Davy based on some HUD stats or something like that? Or do you think that FourSixFour is just going a bit overboard with continuing draws here that can't call and need to raise in order to continue?

Do you have any tips on how to execute this in game? What sort of accuracy do you aim for as compared to a solver? Do you bucket hands into bet sizes rather than split them like a solver would?

For the KJ883 hand, you went through a few variations of how to split your range on the river based on the runout and our corresponding value regions, with one bet size assigned to each value region. I find the right bet size fairly easy to establish with value hands. The part that is way more complicated though is arranging my bluffs across 3 bet sizes.
I remember that you taught me that hands with better blockers more often go into the large bet sizes, so that is clear to me too. It's very difficult to work out our overall bluff allowance for the river across 3 sizes, finding the cutoff point for which hands can be bluffed, and then sorting the hands into the 3 betsizes.

This spot I found fairly interesting. I did not feel as though this particular turn would garner a large donking range from BB given that they have a disadvantage in AX and 3X given the action in the hand. Sure, they have less of the junk, but on AA33 this is mainly offset by the SB's advantage in boat+ hands. Your sim has just a ~10% donking range. My questions are:
1. Would you bother to find a 10% donking range here?
2. Do you think your opponent likely over estimated the donk frequency here?
3. Alternatively, do you think there is an element of exploitation attempted by donking here - given that many people will fail to reach the appropriate raise frequency as SB? SB is supposed to raise ~35% of the time vs a donk, if I nodelock that to a lower percentage then BB naturally gets to donk way more in response.

I hope this helps. I expect this is a little hard to digest over a text comment.

You explained the patterns very well!

I was a little surprised that a few combos here and there could have such a big impact on cbet frequency, but I guess that the BTN calling range is narrow enough that a few extra nut combos can have a big difference.

Interesting spot here. Completely agree that most players stab the flop with all of their hands that would boat up on this runout. Perhaps at 2knl that's slightly less true than at lower stakes, but I agree that they are still going to be over doing it with stabs with strong hands here. My sim for this spot has 40% check frequency with 2pair+ which I doubt anyone is finding.

My feeling for this type of spot is that regs don't like to bluff raise in spots where they don't really rep many strong hands. Of course it's just a theory and I have no evidence or way to prove that, but I wondered if you would agree with it or not? On the other side of the coin, such spots dictate a low bluff allowance, so again, I can understand the call given that it could be easy to overdo it.

Hello Luke, I have been working on cbetting more OOP this week, so was good to hear your thoughts on the T98r near the start of the video in the SRP MP vs BTN.

I am struggling a little to differentiate between some of these boards though. In particular T76r and T87r being a range check for MP, whereas other similar boards have cbetting ranges is a little confusing. Is it just down to the specific suited connectors in each players range in your sim having a big overall affect on cbetting frequency due to combos of flopped straights/2 pairs for BTN?

This was the hand I was referring to; 3BP CO vs UTG T54 rainbow

My guess is that the elite reg is not factoring in the exact parameters that they faced but rather assumes that AJhh is close to 0EV at equilibrium and wants to exploit-call based on the assumption that BB is either cbetting too many hands on the flop, the river or both, and is substantially over bluffing.

I think the sims show that the EV of AJhh as a bluffcatcher is very temperamental and can change a lot depending on small differences in the play/sim. Looks like the EV at equilibrium of calling AJhh ranges from -5BB to ~break even depending on the exact parameters of the situation.

For the A2 vs AJ hand where your opponent called the river, do you think that they incorrectly thought that their hand was mixing calls at equilibrium, or do you think that this was a deliberate deviation and an attempt to exploit you? Given that it looks like a large deviation (sims showing it losing around 5-6BB as a call) your opponent must have thought you were way over bluffing if that were the case. I would image that many regs would cbet range on the flop though, then end up with a large scope to overbluff turn and then river, so there is definitely an argument for overcalling the river here against some players.

I was interested in this hand here too. Reminds me a little of 4bet pots when the board comes K high - the IP 4bettor bets range and the OOP caller is forced to over fold and (somewhat counter-intuitively) starts to check raise very frequently with the hands that it does continue.

Presumably in both scenarios the common themes are:
1. The PFR has a large advantage in hands strong enough to play for stacks across 3 streets, and can therefore barrel turn and river very frequently, lowering the equity realisation of any hand that is a bluffcatcher by the river.
2. The caller is OOP which makes equity realisation even more difficult.

The EV of calling mid strength hands for OOP therefore is low, hence why other options (fold/raise) become more common as a response.

That's my theory on what's going on on these boards, do you agree?

I originally thought that the BTN was too capped to raise the turn, despite the fact that they turn some trips, given that there's not a huge amount of suited 9x in BTN's range. I tested this theory with the 2s turn instead (which leaves BTN more capped), but there was a much larger frequency of raising on that turn than the 9s turn.

By looking at the number of trips combos in each players range on the turn, it looks like the 9 turn gives a trips advantage to OOP. Same is true of the suited 8 turn, which also has a lowish raise frequency too for BTN on the turn. Suited J turn gives a more even distribution of trips and BTN gets more of a raising range. Presumably then it's that?

We were both a little surprised to see almost no raising here from IP, despite IP having some suited 9X in their range. Presumably most players are making a mistake here with lots of their 9X as I think most people would raise A9s, K9s etc very often here. What do you think is the heuristic here we can use to determine similar spots where IP won't be allowed much of a raising range with their strong hands?

For this hand, one thing you missed was that 54s was mixing check and shove. It's essentially the same hand as your 65s but has tiny differences in blocker effects based on what your opponent uses for their 4bet bluffing range. Seeing that 54s mixes check, would you still consider it a technical error to mix checks with 65s too? Think that would be a little harsh on yourself!

With regards to the frequency argument, in an anonymous pool it would be a case of whether players are adjusting their 3bet ranges to a player pool's 4bet tendencies (rather than an individual's stats). This seems even less likely than the idea of midstakes players adding extra 3bets based on an individual player not 4betting you enough. So in both instances (anonymous or named games), I agree that its very likely that TT is higher EV as a call at midstakes.

When they’re in the BB sizing up is more important than when they aren’t imo, however if they’re playing super loose then sizing up all positions is good.

In this scenario (rec in BB) how do you balance the trade off between wanting to open wider preflop, with the desire to size up too? Are you still adding some of the extra preflop hands whilst raising the bigger sizing?

Finally, are you mainly sizing up for just whales, or do you still size up a little for any rec player who is behind you/still to act?

One thing I am interested to ask about is when to size up preflop. I am seeing it more and more these days that a reg will make a 3x or 3.5x open when there is a rec that has position on them. The logic being that you want to open tighter with a rec to your left, you want to charge more, and want to get heads up with the rec more often. Which sizing do you think works best, and would you change it much depending on the VPIP of the rec?

I think Callum also mentioned that we might be interested in sizing up when the rec is in the blinds too. Here I am a little less clear as to what is best. We are probably interested in opening a bit wider in this scenario, which might push us towards a smaller open. We are still charging the rec more with the bigger sizing though, which would push us towards a bigger open. Is there a big difference in the incentives to size up/down if the rec is in the SB rather than the BB (or vice versa). Does being on the BTN compared to UTG change things? Would be keen to hear some thoughts about this!

Think the format works well, would be keen to see more of these! If you guys are playing the same games regularly, then I think a 'most interesting hands of the month' video could make for good content too.