matlittle

Well I've learned a lot from your videos so it was about time I started chipping in a bit!

As a fellow recovering results-checking-addict I can certainly relate to all of this and appreciate the good advice! I used to have winrate in BB/100 on the top line of my HUD stats. Thought it was useful for analysing other players at a glance, but it would make me constantly aware of whether I was winning or losing in a session and would have an effect on my play. I've since removed it but still find myself checking every now and then, especially when losing.

I like this idea of the long term graph available to look at! I do a similar thing in looking at long term stats if I'm on a downswing. Will get the graph open/minimised for next session and see if it helps.

One thing I would note is that the player pool c-r against 3/4 pot, the global average is 8%, so the range is likely going to be missing some combos.

I ran an aggregate report for SB vs BB SRP and the xr frequency vs a 75% stab is almost exactly 8%, so I think population will probably stumble upon a decent frequency here. I think population will still lack folding hands on this river though as they won't have as many weak draws or overpairs as a solver would.

Do you ever play jam with your type of hand on the turn? GS + 1 over doesn't really have much equity to call a 75% barrel, so becomes more of a raise or fold spot?

Like Tyler Forrester said it's not the right hand class - the shoving range for BB is mainly nutted hands, combo-draws with low SDV, the occasional naked FD, and interestingly some 8x with hearts.
This happens in other low SPR spots too like 3bet pots where pair plus flush draw can shove turn - in part I think because the pair has poor visibility if the draw bricks, yet we still have good equity if we get it in on the turn. The pair gives us great equity against SB combo-draws like T6hh, K5hh, A5hh which call the shove, and also blocks 88 and 87.

PIO is playing xr then bet turn with JJ through 99 when it doesn't cbet those hands. I have a 15% xr frequency in my sim so it is in fact quite high. My perception of how people play this board is that they will cbet more frequently than equilibrium with draws, and hence their check-raising range is stronger than equilibrium.

On the river, I'm not shipping, because it's the easiest trap spot in poker with the value range (who checks back T9?) and I lose to virtually no semi-bluffs and his value range should be mainly flushes, full-houses and straights.

This is a good point! Certainly vs weaker players who check-raise too strong both in terms of made hands and draw strength. Vs a good player I would be more likely to bluff and vs a weak player I think your check is very good as bluffing is probably very -EV. If we are assuming the river range is too strong to bluff our hand though, then the turn range is probably too strong to call against with A5 too I would think.

8.00 - Ah5 on 874hh
Think the turn peel is a little too loose. PIO has it losing 1BB in my sim. On the river PIO is also bluffing some 8X with a heart, as only other bluffs are a handful of T9 combos, so I think this Ah5 combo should have been bluffed on the river if it gets there.

IP is not supposed to block right because the thin value is not worth reopening the action?

I don't know of any situations where PIO bets less than 50% on the river IP as less than that is not enough value to warrant reopening the action.
In my experience it's rare/never happens - the only case I can potentially think of it being the right bet sizing would be in a large pot with very tight ranges and with a 1 card nut hand that regularly chops. For example Ax that makes the nuts with a 1 card broadway. A situation whereby betting 50% feels like it would be -EV due to my opponent having the nuts frequently enough to make it so, and whereby betting any bigger than 1/3 would make it hard to get value due to chopping too often. Also must have very few bluffs left in my range. Still not sure this is a correct play but it's the only time I ever think a sizing less than 50% is warranted.

8.30 - KJ6JK
This is an interesting river in fact - I would have also assumed that K was bad for BB and force him to check often, but K gives the BB his highest river betting frequency at around 50% with the 1/3 sizing. He still has Jx and lower suited Kx. BTN calling all Q hi and A hi except for A6 and Q6 which block BB river bluffing range, so plenty of value still to be had for Jx.

I have Q9o as a fold preflop vs 3bet for the BTN, although my ranges are somewhat basic - do you have it as a call ever or just pure fold in your ranges?

Enjoyed the format a lot - it's good to watch the best in the world play and your commentary helped a lot to put it all into context! I watch parts of these matches sometimes, but as I am not a HU player sometimes some of the nuances are lost on me - having an expert HU player explain it really makes it much more interesting! Would definitely be interested in more content like this video. Perhaps just one PIO hand at the end of the most interesting spot in the video if an interesting spot/concept/play arises?

On my sim the 98ss is mixing call/fold if we check-raise and get shoved on. So yes you are right that it doesn't like getting 3bet on the flop. Also, as Max Lacerda said it makes for a good shoving hand on a spade turn, so can realise it's equity more easily on the turn than the hands without a backdoor flush draw.

Also MP opening a pretty tight range preflop too of course, and a higher propensity to cbet middling/weak AX with the backdoor flush draw as these have higher EV vs check-raise.

15.30 -
Good breakdown of the turn cards after check raising - I think lots of BB's value range are 2 pairs which are devalued by high cards that improve MP to better 2 pair? I am also making the mistake of betting big on 2-tone turn cards thinking that I need more "protection" against flush draws when there are 2 types of flush draw now available. I assume the 2-tone turns (spades in this case) reduce the equity of BB's nut hands as more rivers will complete a flush?
Think my previous ideas about "protection" are still a bit off - on turns that are more dynamic and connecting I'm starting to realise that strong but vulnerable hands can sometimes want to put less money in rather than more - especially with money behind on the river. Betting big when our current strong hands can face many unpleasant river cards with lots of money behind puts us in rough river spots with massive pots very often.

Happy new year!
Surprising to see AT be folded so early in the hand - I'm definitely making mistakes here as are most people I would imagine. I guess it's a product of betting the flop somewhat polarised with a substantial checking range so our average defending hand vs check-raise is stronger? Think I need to pay more attention to the strength of my cbetting range when facing a check-raise rather than getting too distracted by absolute hand strength. Interesting hand for sure!

22.00 - A99 with KQo
You played check and reviewed it and KQo is indeed checking sometimes, but would it not be easier to play a range cbet here, rather than try to carve out a 14% checking range? Seems close enough to range bet that we should just simplify our strategy here in my opinion.
If not, then what would be your threshold at which you would go to cbet range?

Keep up the hard work and I'm sure you'll get there, GL for 2022!

Think of bluff candidates as a hierarchy - the better a board runs out for our range the further down the hierarchy we are able to reach for bluffs.
Also - both KJo and KTo are large parts of BB calling range vs non-all-in river bets - pure calls vs 75% and ~50% mix vs 150% - so the J and T are good in that respect too. KTo is of course preferred vs the shove as it blocks the nuts whereas KJo doesn't.

Great find with the JTdd bluff - a hand I would almost always miss on the river as a bluff too. As Luke Johnson said the river connects with BTN's range and BTN can bet river ~65% of the time. This is in part due to BTN having more sets/2 pairs (the BB didn't raise any street thus capping him), and T9 getting there on the river exclusively for BTN, giving BTN a decent shoving percentage - thus increasing our bluff allowance. Therefore we can use some non-premium bluff in our allowance (those with diamonds). KTo is also a big chunk of BB calling range vs all river betsizes including all-in so Td is still an ok blocker despite having the diamond.

20.50 - J7 on 733rQT
Here you say that you don't think that recreationals will find a 3 barrel bluff often enough - is that based on your feel of how recreationals play in gerenal, how you expect recreationals to play on this type of runout with finding appropriate bluffs, or do you have some kind of macro stats that show recreationals don't 3 barrel bluff enough? Thanks!

I watched part of this stream so it was fun to go through some of the big hands. Surprised to see the AQ hand is a check on the river - I usually feel like checking is too nitty then get punished! Will keep my eyes open for more tight range spots like this where checking is the best play despite it looking way too nitty to start with!

In terms of format, I think this is a great way to make a video and with the right amount of detail for learning. I think the Becoming a boss format is my favourite as I like to know how to approach a spot overall, but this format is also great!

27.20 - 62 on Q988A
I am definitely guilty of betting bottom of range hands like 62 here sometimes. This was an important concept to learn re: only bluffing with best blockers, so thanks!
In bad river spots where we have a limited number of bluffs we can put in our range - do we always go with best blocker hands irrespective of showdown value? Would this change at all if we were in position rather than out of position?

RunItTw1ce not long until you are top of all time list... Big celebration planned?

Enjoyed this format, think I will do a similar thing to some of my play in future to review my play, thinking etc and compare to PIO. I think a few more clips of PIO sprinkled in to see what the rest of your range is doing would improve the video a little in my opinion.
19.39 - Ranges in your sim are kinda hard to figure out without ticking Square size proportional to weight. Took me a while to figure out what was going on! Just a small note for future videos. You clicked it eventually but we went through quite a few nodes before that.

I also have a theory re:Q8s bluff:

98s and 86s are a decent chunk of IP's call turn/fold river range.

If IP stabs certain suits more often on the flop then they are less represented in the above line for IP.

Thus the BB bluffing with the 8x with the same suits that IP stabs more often on the flop will generate slightly more fold equity on the river as it will unblock more of the 98s and 86s that checked behind, called turn, and will fold river.

Funnily enough, in my sim IP was stabbing the hh combos more often on the flop and Q8hh made for a slightly better river bluff for BB. In game I would expect most players to stab more often with hands WITH the BDFD instead and so the blocker effect would be reversed. I think it's of course a marginal effect either way but still fun to try to work out what PIO is doing!

One thing I find helpful when setting poker goals is to focus less on specific goals and instead to focus on the required input that I think will be required to achieve those goals. So instead of saying "I want to make $X this year", work out how many hours of study and play you think will be required to get those results and say "I will study Y hours per week and play Z hours per week". You do not have full control over your results (due to variance etc), but you do have full control over your effort, work ethic, schedule etc. If you focus solely on results, you may make less than you target due to variance and feel bad, or you may run hot and not put in enough work to sustain those results. If your targets are based around your process and you meet them then eventually you will get what you want. Similarly it's better to target/analyse EV rather than profit when looking at results.

35.45 - 3c3 on AQ77
At first I was also confused as to why 3c would be a better barrelling hand. Then I had an idea as to why having 3c is better for barrelling turn in this spot, so I ran the board to check. I think near the end of the video you came to a similar conclusion. On the turn we WANT our opponent to have A3 and so want to UNBLOCK it, not vice versa. Why? Because the 7 is in fact good for our range as we stab lots of 7x, the board is also rainbow, and so we can now value bet almost any river with 7x, AK, and AQ. Our river betting frequency is around 60% on any card other than A, K, Q, 7. A3s for BB will call the turn always, and fold the river almost always (except 3 river). So with 3c3 we get to bet the turn always and the river almost always as it blocks less of the river folding region of A3s. Other combos of 33 give up on the river more often as they block the river folding region of A3s.

Also I saw some % of AQo in the BB flatting range vs BTN open and have seen this in other people's ranges playing 500nl. Is it simply that rake is lower as you ascend the stakes and so the incentives to 3bet and take down the pot rake free (at Stars) decreases, making this hand indifferent between 3bet and call? Or should it be included in the BB flatting range at lower stakes/higher raked sites too?

23.48 88 on KQ3hh5K
Interesting to see that 88 no heart makes for a way better bluffcatch than JJ-99 - makes perfect sense when we consider that his bluffing range contains lots of those cards and your opponent (at least in theory) shouldn't value bet JJ-99.

You mentioned that you don't expect to see many bluffs on the river - I think that people are getting better at checking back more frequently on the turn with high equity draws that hate getting check-shoved on, so I disagree with that. I would guess that the better your opponent is the more likely they are to be turning up with bluffs there.

You seem to have been printing money since adopting the mentality of the jungle!

12.40 AQ on AK8
You mention here that you will play 2 flop bet sizings on this board - how many board types do you do this on? Is it mostly Ace-Broadway-X boards, or do you do it on other types too?

38.57 A9ss on KT3ss8s
I get a little confused here too with which nut flushes to bet (in GTO based strategies - if we ignore our opponent likely being recreational here) - A9ss unblocks lots of other flushes with the lower kicker so it's easier to get value from worse flushes by betting, however this unblocking effect will also increase the IP betting frequency if we check. AQss blocks more opponent flushes (so I have been told to trap more often with this hand type by other video makers), but it also blocks some of IP's betting hands too (Q flushes). I have seen PIO betting more often with the AQ flushes in some spots I think, contrary to what I've been told. I assume whether we are IP or OOP, and the SPR will also have effects on which combos are best for trapping?

Thanks for the detailed response, much appreciated. Kinda confirms what I was thinking about GTO Wizard - very convenient at the cost of customisation. Also I think having multiple bet sizes in every spot can occasionally affect the strategy further along the tree if you compare to what would happen if you were to play 1 sizing on flop and 1 sizing on turn (as most people do).

PIO v2 now has a drilling feature called GTO Trainer. It's a bit crude and doesn't offer as much feedback as other trainers but still a good tool. It also requires you to create batches of sims of each spot beforehand of course.

I'll get the free trial like you suggest and see what I think, thanks. Also keen to see their preflop ranges - they seem to differ slightly from mine and perhaps slightly better.