matlittle
2676 points
There is some argument to recs value betting AX too thin, but this is what I get when filtering this spot for A high boards. Small sample, but still statistically significant at the 95% confidence level under binomial distribution. Also, once you factor in the showdown bias for strong hands it is more significant.
March 26, 2024 | 6:25 p.m.
My H2N data for this spot (rec BB vs SB, bet/bet/bet 50%) shows quite a substantial over-bluff: 45% instead of the optimal 25% frequency. My default assumption for this line is that it is massively overbluffed by recs.
March 26, 2024 | 6:21 p.m.
Hello Callum, solid advice throughout as per usual. I'm curious as to what the result was in the first hand with the A5s that happened before the video. My suspicion here would be that your opponent would be likely to just 3bet shove the flop with a hand like TT after taking such a line. They don't really rep many VERY strong hands, so you are right that their line doesn't really make much sense, but my feeling would be that this is likely a rec wanting to shovel money into the pot now with a middling pocket pair so that they don't have to play future streets.
March 26, 2024 | 2:38 a.m.
At 16.30 was interesting to see you pot the turn on table 1 with J4 on 953t5. Can you talk me through the ideas here with this strategy?
March 24, 2024 | 3:29 p.m.
Hello Max, enjoy hearing your ideas as usual. At 1.30 you decided to pure 3bet the 97s vs a tighter player. Is the reasoning here that this player won't 4bet enough and won't defend postflop enough, so your EV will be increased? Would you pure 3bet this hand vs a really really tight player, e.g. playing 14 VPIP or less?
March 24, 2024 | 3:19 p.m.
You made a very good point about adjusting your raising strategy in the BB vs SBs who don't 3bet the flop enough. If I suspect my opponent won't 3bet the flop enough, what hand class(es) benefit most from being raised more often in the BB?
March 24, 2024 | 1:19 a.m.
When looking to open wider SB vs a recreational player in the BB, what are the characteristics you are looking for? Is it just a low 3bet %, or are you factoring in other stats/observations before opening wider?
March 22, 2024 | 9:56 p.m.
At ~10.00 on the AT79A I was interested to hear that you wouldn't consider bluff-catching here. Is that based off MDA research, or just your experience in seeing recreational players value bet too thin here? I completely agree that they are likely to value bet too thinly here, but I would have thought that the amount of junk in their range (and random nonsensical hands) would make it a somewhat close spot, especially with TX?
March 22, 2024 | 9:54 p.m.
Similar thing going on at 24.00 where you are supposed to shove A5s and not A4s - 55 is part of SB's bet-call range whereas 44 is not in SB's range. (Of course these are only minor effects)
March 20, 2024 | 4:08 p.m.
15.20 - 33 on 952r
I think the 44 stabs more than the 33 because it blocks more of the SB continuing range - i.e. there's more A4s than A3s in SB's range. SB will XR some of these A4s and A3s hands, which is of course not what you want when you stab these hands here.
March 19, 2024 | 3:56 p.m.
Hello Luke, I'm a little confused about the 77 hand. At ~9.00 you show that the A53rK will play more polar than the A53rJ when multiple sizings are used. So will you be using multiple turn sizings here, or just one? I would have thought that just 1 polar sizing would be enough for this situation. If that's the case, then 77 actually seems to bet more in my sims on the J turn because there's a higher frequency turn barrel on the J than the K.
March 19, 2024 | 3:41 p.m.
Thanks, I had not really considered the information we get and how it might influence us to check. Recs likely to have timing tells along with the bet-sizing tells you mentioned.
If they x back, they are probably quite weak and I can start barreling ott.
I would expect this to be especially true on middling/lower boards where flopped pairs want more protection and recs are likely to bet nearly all of them on the flop?
March 14, 2024 | 3:28 p.m.
It will make for a good follow up video for sure. Being OOP adds an extra dimension to it and a few more strategic options. Look forward to hearing your thoughts on it!
March 12, 2024 | 11:37 p.m.
The second MDA consideration is that they fold too much vs river barrels, which helps your idea of giving up less on rivers. This is partly due to having a substantial donking range which removes strong hands from their range, and also partly because they check-call plenty of no-showdown-value draws which simply can't call a river bet.
March 12, 2024 | 4:29 p.m.
There are 2 MDA considerations that I think will add some value to your current baseline strategy. Firstly recs will probe the turn way too often, so will put in too much money in that line. They will make plenty of large EV mistakes in that line and also will give off bet sizing tells which gives you even more EV. That leak will affect your cbetting strategy and make you more likely to check back the flop with a thin value hand.
So when it comes to cbetting the flop wider for value I think that it's a good in the following scenarios:
1. When your hand is vulnerable and requires some protection
2. Where you can go thinner for value on the flop AND are likely to be going 3 streets for value often
I think the AT4r is a poor example to cbet thinner for value on - hands like A9 or A8 are unlikely to go 3 streets, don't require much protection, and will gain EV from probing errors so will be higher EV as a check.
March 12, 2024 | 4:25 p.m.
Hello Steve, I like this idea of training vs wider ranges that we suspect recreational players will play. I have a few spots set up on the GTOWizard trainer like this. I think it's a good way to find a baseline of how to play vs recs and is a quick way to learn the differences in strategy vs a wider range. I like training the CO vs BTN SRP version of this as this is the most common (I think?) scenario where we face a substantially wider range, and its still hard to play OOP even vs a rec. Default vs a reg is often to range check on a lot of boards, but this doesn't hold true when you input a rec's range. If however, you nodelock the rec to stab the flop too often then we go back to a range check on many boards with plenty of check-raising.
March 12, 2024 | 4:17 p.m.
You mentioned here that you will never cbet this board OOP. Obvious against a standard BTN flatting range it's a range check. Against a rec though, the solver will start off with a ~25% frequency half pot cbet. If you then nodelock the BTN to stab too often it will again go back to range checking. Which of the 2 scenarios above were you thinking of to range check here? I have been toying with the idea of mainly checking but having a small cbetting range for hands like QJ, other gutters and draws I don't like check-raising too much; coupled with some of the more vulnerable value hands - what do you think to this alternative?
March 9, 2024 | 4:03 p.m.
At 6.00 where you open the Q9o in the CO, is that just because there is a recreational player in the small blind? How wide would your range be here? Also, if the rec was in the BB rather than in the SB would you go even wider (more likely to play vs them, less likely to get squeezed)?
March 9, 2024 | 3:50 p.m.
Thought that might be the case, would be cool for you to fire up the monotone sims at the end of a similar future video and go through a couple, would be interesting to hear your heuristics on those board types
March 5, 2024 | 4:57 p.m.
I wasn't aware we are supposed to use more 1/2 or 2/3 on double broadways as the PFC. Being we are at a set disadvantage I didn't think we would want to put in a lot of money.
The stack to pot ratio is not big enough in a 3BP 100bb deep for us to be too worried about nut disadvantage when picking our bet sizing. Also consider that our opponent will be able to get their stack in easily vs any stab sizing anyway across 3 streets.
March 5, 2024 | 4:55 p.m.
RunItTw1ce Most common stab size for this spot (by far) is small (25-33%). You can even hyper-simplify your game-plan and ONLY use one small sizing here across all boards without much loss of EV.
From there you can then add in a 50% sizing for more polarised boards. From my research the main boards that want this sizing are:
Ace-Broadway-X two-tone or rainbow
Broadway-Broadway-X two-tone
There are a few other uncommon ones you can find if you look hard enough:
322r that Luke found
Spots where OOP misses a range-bet that Luke mentioned
Some monotone boards like AXX, Broadway-Broadway-X but these are a mixture of 33% and 50% in preference, hence the EV across these board types is very close for each sizing, and not worth complicating your strategy to mix in 50% here and there.
March 5, 2024 | 4:45 p.m.
Also I'm curious as to why you skip all the monotone boards? Do you use other sims with different sizings on those boards? To me they are some of the trickiest boards to master with some of the biggest mistakes made on them, so studying those would be of high value.
March 2, 2024 | 4:12 p.m.
When stabbing the BTN vs a SB or BB check, are you mostly using the 1/3 sizing, then using the 1/2 sizing only on more polar boards? Are you ever using the 2/3 sizing? I know the 2-broadway boards tend to be more polar stabbing spots, are there any other board types that you would use a polar stabbing size on?
March 2, 2024 | 4:09 p.m.
Yeh I am not advocating against the range bet, just wanted to point out that the extremely low fold frequency in the sim is partly caused by the forced range bet. Given that people are likely folding way more than that vs the cbet, you are probably losing less EV than the sims would suggest too, which is another plus for the range cbet option.
Feb. 23, 2024 | 2:34 a.m.
FWIW my GTOWizard sim has all combos of AA shoving river for the OOP player. The EVs of betting/checking for each combo are equal in the PIO sim too if they are mixing check/bet. So it doesn't really matter too much, you should mainly just shove them, and other information in the hand is more likely to sway your decision to check or bet here, e.g. villain calls too much, bluffs too much etc.
Feb. 22, 2024 | 3:35 p.m.
I would think AhAx would check more often blocking NFD
NFD is part of IP's bluffing region on the river, so if you check with Ah, you get bluffed less often than if you check with AA with no h. If you have a value hand that blocks bluffs, it is way less likely to check the river OOP to trap, instead it just opts to bet and put the money in itself as when you check you face fewer bets on average than with other value hands.
Feb. 22, 2024 | 3:30 p.m.
You pointed out a few times that the solver is barely folding any hands vs cbets - e.g. when you range bet 50% on J85r in the 2nd hand. This is in part due to the forced range bet. The solver wants to cbet around 80% frequency on this board rather than 100% frequency. When you force the range bet the IP player calls almost anything because on the turn the OOP player is forced to check more often (due to having too many middling/weak hands that wanted to check the flop) and this increases IP's EV with almost all hands (especially the marginal hands that folded previously). IP's weak hands have more opportunity to realise their equity, steal the pot etc due to the increased turn checking frequency. In my sim for this spot the fold frequency on the flop goes from 23% to 13% when I force a range bet.
Feb. 22, 2024 | 3:19 p.m.
I found this hand pretty interesting and had a few questions about it.
It seems like the solver likes the min cbet here - I tried it with min bet, 25%, 33%, 50% and bigger and it opted for the min cbet. With the min cbet its still cbetting much less than half the time. What makes you think that your opponent is cbetting range here just because they chose the min bet sizing?
I tried nodelocking a rangebet for your opponent, and when I do that it doesn't really donk this turn that much, only a small frequency.
I understand the logic of the play, but I'm not sure it works out in this spot. Did you get a chance to review this hand? Would you still do the same again?
Feb. 21, 2024 | 1:08 a.m.
You mentioned at the very start that as stack depth gets lower, you are less likely to 3bet hands that fold out a lot of equity when they get 4bet jammed on. Does the 3betting range therefore get increasingly polar as the stack depth decreases? What sort of hand classes do we start to include in the 3betting range instead of hands like A8s?
In the first hand on J96t we saw that the BB does not cbet too often given the large sizing, and as such, many draws opt to check instead of betting. If you suspect your opponent will in fact cbet most of their draws here, what exploits would you use vs them?
March 26, 2024 | 10:20 p.m.