Matthew Hunt

Hey Sam,

Great video, loving this series. You mention splitting ranges on the river in the 65s hand - what kind of factors might make you want to split instead of going with one sizing? If both strategies are valid and we have a range that could support either one, what criteria can push us to the point where we think a more complex strategy might have higher EV? Thanks!

Really outstanding video, the Yerkes-Dodson Law is such a simple but effective concept. Thanks!

I've long believed that lacking a consistent process for practice is one of the things holding back a ton of players. Thanks for a great video!

Yeah, that's fair enough. Probably a little ambitious even if HRC does like it.

Your original comment wasn't exactly phrased in a helpful way. But thanks, I didn't mean to rant about it.

Well, leaving aside any unnecessary comments on whether I understand game theory on a decent level, of course there are some spots where a solver would use that strategy, but if you're telling me it's possible to correctly execute a strategy where a solver tells you to limp hand X 43% of the time and raise it 57% of the time, then you're wrong. The essence of remaining less exploitable is to simplify our strategy to the point where we can actually successfully execute a pseudo-GTO strategy, rather than failing to execute an unnecessarily complex one. That's why I reduced this spot to a limp-or-raise scenario.

Just for kicks, I ran this through a solver to test your theory and it turns out that HRC suggests a limping range of 53.2% here (which does include A5o with 100% frequency) and a somewhat polar 8.3% 2.25x raising range (which doesn't include A5o at all obviously). There is literally no hand that is in the raising range with 100% frequency, so it doesn't seem like it's feasible to execute that strategy in-game.

Our EV with a mixed strategy is +0.124% of chips in play; with raise-only it's +0.086%, with limp-only it's +0.113%. So if we're talking GTO lines, limping seems better than raising.

That's definitely true that it would be useful, but you can replicate those 3-handed late position spots by going to advanced hand, clicking 'next', and then just clicking 'Player XXXX folds' until you get to the player who's acting first in the hand you're looking at. Then you leave their action undefined, and it'll run the spot with the full pot size calculated but assuming that all the previous players fold. You're welcome. :)

So you're saying to use a mixed strategy of some limping, some raising? That feels pretty exploitable. I suppose it might be fairly easy to execute though.

Great idea. I think experimenting with HUNL or 3-handed as a blueprint is great since it gives you an idea of how to play in BTN vs SB vs BB spots, which are super important when ranges are so much wider.

KTcc does have a BDFD and BDSD though - maybe I misread your point?

What sizing would you recommend on flop? Are you just going like 200 with your whole range?

Equity realisation all depends on the strength of the range overall, usually. If you run a postflop GTO solution then generally what will happen is that a stronger range will usually be able to realise pretty close to 100% of its equity even OOP, while a weaker range will struggle in position and really suffer when OOP. The profitability of any given hand is only a function of the range of which it forms a part.

It would certainly be very cool if HRC allowed that but I don't think it's realistic - not to mention that it would have to cater for the differences in equity realisation between, say, 44 and QJs and A7s. I think the easiest way to do things is to look at the ranges HRC gives us and make an approximate adjustment based on what we know about our ability to realise equity with certain hands. There are plenty of spots where you can lock your own preflop flatting range and let the program decide your 3-betting range, for example.

That's pretty much what you need to do to get your opening ranges, yeah. Although you'll want to disable open-limping, and you can disable things that don't really happen much (like over-flatting 3-bets, flatting 4-bets and flatting 5-bets) if you want to speed up the calculation. If you don't define any ranges for anyone then HRC will simply give you the Nash equilibrium for the spot given the parameters you set. Hope that helps!

I don't think there's any way that 3-betting range is accurate for villain. Bare minimum, you need to add in some variable frequencies to almost all the hands - to assume villain is 3-betting all those hands with 100% frequency also assumes they have basically no flatting range on the BTN here, which is a bit of a weird assumption to make from only a 30 hand sample.

I think the likelihood of a random villain 3-betting hands like 66 or A5o here with no read on you (remember that you're probably a random to him as well) when you open UTG is close to zero. I don't play on Bovada but the games would have to be insane for that to be true.

That said, that doesn't necessarily mean this isn't a good 4-bet. The problem is that you've put hands like AJs and TT in their 5-bet jamming range, and then ended up folding to the jam getting pretty decent odds! If you think they're jamming that wide, this is probably a call.

However, I disagree with the logic of "villain might be a bit tighter with his 3-bets here, so we're going to try to account for that by widening his 5-bet shoving range" - this does account for lowering his folding to 4-bet frequency so it does help us calculate the bluff success % in a vacuum, but it doesn't tell us what our actual bluffing frequency should be here, and it also is probably going to end up putting us in spots where we should actually be 4-bet/calling hands like 88 and AJ if villain is 3-betting wide and folding a ton to 4-bets, because if he's folding enough to the 4-bet then it becomes profitable even if we sometimes price ourselves into a marginal call vs his 5-bet.

You can run these spots on HRC fairly straightforwardly - I think this is one where it can probably tell you with more accuracy than we can what your ranges should be here.

I think running 'advanced hand' scenarios on HRC is a pretty good way to improve. HRC assumes that everyone realises 100% of their equity postflop which seems like it would complicate things a little, but when it comes to opening ranges I think it's reasonable to assume that a stronger player is likely to realise at least 100% of their equity in most situations, particularly in position or against weaker players.

If you run scenarios with all of the flat-calling options enabled and allow HRC to tell you your appropriate opening ranges, you'll find you get a good blueprint for GTO play. I find it useful to construct fictitious scenarios and test what our range should be in each spot - this can be even more useful than using real hands in some instances.

Re: above comments, thanks man, that's helpful. Appreciate the insight.

Okay, cool. So let's say we're UTG 9-handed, we're okay with a super-exploitative strategy of raising top 10% or so, open-limping like the next 20% below that, and then folding the rest? Are we mixing at all and occasionally limping hands we might want to limp-3-bet?

Your Jc blocker is interesting here. Villain is definitely repping super thin because he can't really have A5 or 55. It's basically a few combos of JT (if he doesn't raise flop), a few combos of 22 (if he doesn't raise flop), or maybe like, 4h3h? Any ideas about how wide he peels pre/how wide he 3-bets? A lot depends on his preflop tendencies here.

Wow, interesting hand. I figure he assumes that his range for peeling a 4-bet OOP here is so heavy on strong Aces that this board is pretty strong for him, making it good for him to have some kind of a leading range.

If that's the case, KxQh is one of the better bluffing hands in his range since it blocks KK and AK plus blocking the nut flush, but it isn't strong versus villain's range for betting this flop for more than one street, and he won't get paid often if turn comes a heart.

He mentions his other bluffs are QQ and JJ with a heart - I imagine his value range is some % of his QhJh/JhTh, 88, some % AK, and some % AA/KK. I actually like his line once he peels the 4-bet.

Great video! Going to be playing a lot of live cash this summer and I never thought about any of these ideas before.

Question: do you think there's an argument for using a limp-only strategy in early/middle position at extremely passive $1/2 tables where most pots are limped multi-way? I'm thinking about those tables where everyone plays with a 50% VPIP and 5% PFR.

I was thinking that we might be able to open-limp something like 30-35% of hands profitably in a lot of spots given we're so rarely going to be isolated, and that might be better versus a table of bad players than raising a range of 15% and getting called in 3-4 spots every time anyway. It also minimises pot size to keep us from getting raked too much, and minimises preflop variance to an extent also.

Okay, thanks, felt pretty okay about this one in the end. I'm curious how far we go with our bluffcatching range, though - would we call a hand like 66? That unblocks all of their bluffs, but also all their value (except 76hh if they have it). Interesting.

I actually disagree that the K is a better card for his range. I don't expect him to check back many King highs at all, so really the only occasions where he hits the K are when he slowplays KK or has AK, maybe he occasionally checks back KQ on the flop too. I, on the other hand, am defending a huge number of combos of Kx. It seems like the K improves me more than it improves him.

I can get on board with not necessarily value-betting any pair, but if we're not, then what's our value-betting threshold on the turn?

I agree about river. He's unlikely to bluff it much so there's no real incentive to check-call, you're right about that.

Well, 'reasonably straightforwardly' doesn't mean 'never bluffing this river'. My main question was about the frequency with which we should expect him to either play his bluffs differently by betting the turn, or widen his value range on the river to include 9x hands. If I knew the answer, I wouldn't have posted.

You're probably the only one in the hand who can still have Qx after it checks around on flop, so I think leading turn with the plan to shove most rivers is pretty sound. I don't particularly like leading turn and giving up on river because I think you give up the opportunity to put either one of these guys to a tough decision with a hand like AJ which is very close to the top of either of their ranges.

Check-shoving is okay too, but my concern is that most of the hands that these guys might consider betting on this turn are reasonably unlikely to fold. The kinds of hands you want to be able to get to fold, like 88 or JTs, are much more likely to check back turn, but if you lead turn and river they will fold on a high number of rivers.

The likely equilibrium on this hand is to check back KQ on the 80th percentile.

Can you elaborate on your process for estimating this, please? I'm not disputing it at all, just curious about how you got to the point of being able to be so specific about the equilibrium here.

Have you just turned yourself into a GTO cyborg by spending hundreds of hours running equilibrium calculations? :)