$50/$100 HUNL vs. Kanu7 Session Review (part 3) + Detailed Hand Range Analysis
Posted by Phil Galfond
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About the KQs-hand; If you dont wanna play this in a vacuum, wouldnt it also make sense to check hands that have a positive card-removal-effect for us? Meaning, dont we wanna jam hands like this (blocking some QJ,KQ etc) and check call hands like AT (blocking Ax and not removing any J-K)?
This is also something that would have been (/might from now on be) interesting to include in a calculation like that.
It's cool to see how you show that while the math itself (and frequencies) is important, it's the assumptions and player tendencies that really dictate how we should play. This is probably because the player tendencies vary so much from player to player, but also for a single player between different situations.
This may also be why so many forum threads get so long and windy ;-)
Can't wait to see you do the same thing for PLO hands!
Thanks, jonna!
I have always been very focused on player tendencies, as many of you probably know. It's a huge part of my game (and the success I've had). However, it's probably been a crutch for me in a sense, since I've (more than) gotten by for so long without truly understanding the math involved in many basic spots. I'm hoping that I'll strengthen my math fundamentals as I play around with PPT and make more videos for you guys.
The sick thing is that you always seem to get it right intuitively, even without knowing the exact math for every spot. I'd actually be surprised if learning the math better has any strong impact on your decisions at the tables. It may well have some other desirable effects though so there's certainly value in learning.
At the end of the day, the math matters but player tendencies matters more at the tables. I figure knowing rough frequencies and equities for all/most types of board textures and SPR/#players situations is a lot better than knowing a few close spots very precisely. (I guess this applies a little more to PLO than it does to NLHE)
On the river Kanu is able to defend enough hands to deny you profit with bluffs.
Even if his ranges are wide on flop and turn he might fold most 9x.
He doesn't need very thin value bets to cover his bluffs, esp if he wants to SD A8.
Also KhQh blocks a ton of his dubble floats, you could easily find better x-c hands.
I prefer to see HU NLH from f.e Lefort and more of your PLO or mixed games videos.
Also one high stakes heads-up holdem specialist would be great addition to Runitonce.
Hey Alkemik,
A few quotes:
"On the river Kanu is able to defend enough hands to deny you profit with bluffs. Even if his ranges are wide on flop and turn he might fold most 9x. "
-I'm not sure I understand what you're concluding from this. The fact that he would fold most 9x means that the value of betting is decreased, therefore increasing the (relative) value of my trap play.
"He doesn't need very thin value bets to cover his bluffs, esp if he wants to SD A8. Also KhQh blocks a ton of his dubble floats, you could easily find better x-c hands. "
-These points are both true and both excellent points, especially the fact that he will have so few bluffs that he shouldn't value jam super wide, assuming he wants a balanced GTO strategy.
"I prefer to see HU NLH from f.e Lefort and more of your PLO or mixed games videos. Also one high stakes heads-up holdem specialist would be great addition to Runitonce. "
-We are always actively looking for more coaches. Believe me, I've contacted every high stakes NL player that I could think of. If any of you are watching/reading, please feel free to contact me :). The overall demand for NL videos from me is still pretty high, but I agree that there is more value in my PLO content. For this reason, I have been releasing PLO videos at least once every single week, and NL videos much less frequently (and not at the cost of a PLO video).
I don't believe you'll find any high stakes pro on any training site making videos at the rate I do (and maybe not even at half the rate I do), but feel free to point someone out to me if I'm wrong.
Thank you very much, RJ. That means a lot!
Thanks, bachfan!
If my checking range is very weak, and mostly capped, Kanu should (by this I mean it'd be near his best strategy, at least) shove all of his value hands and his air unless he has so little air in his range that he needs to lower his bet-size to make my decision closer (while potentially protecting him from plays like mine).
If my range is face up as a bluff-catcher or air, I don't believe he can do better than shoving with every hand he wants to bet.
I agree with Ben here that KhQh is one of the worst hands to checkk and that a hand like 99 is much better. I would even think that TT is the best hand to check since you block most of his Tx bluffcatching hands.
Most of Alexanders floats are going to include overs/gutshots/flushdraws, so having a value hand with 2/3 Jh-Kh blockers in your checking range is bad for your range. Following Phils analysis, Alexander has a weak range on the river and he has to fold more than 55% to a shove. Thus the first thing Phil should do is bet wide for value and bluff a lot.
Furthermore, if Alexander can valuebet K9 on the river against a check, then he should not shove since his range is quite weak. Overbetting second pair is unlikely to happen, especially if Phils checking range is polarized and he bets all his AT+.
Lastly the assumption that Alexander would bet all his air, this would leave him with way too much air. Whilst this might be good as an exploitive strategy, this is not something that we should expect from a player that is described as a passive, strong mathematical player.
My conclusion would be that Phils assumptions are way too friendly for a check, and even if it has higher EV against Alexander he should still construct his range better. Checking Ah3h or 6h7h or TT would be much better for your overall range.
@halv, Ben, GT-
I completely agree that KQhh is one of the worst "trap" hands here. I was looking to analyze the EV of my play in a vacuum, but I admit that I should have realized and pointed out how other hands would be much better for checking to induce.
Thank you for pointing that out.
For the sake of discussion:
If this play is +EV in a vacuum, I don't think that the fact that there are better hands in my range for it proves that I can't check those hands and KQhh too as part of an overall river strategy (not that I'm implying I believe that's likely the best strategy).
If we still have plenty of hands to VB and bluff at a good ratio, and we keep enough weak hands in our checking range such that he should be value shoving wide and bluffing nearly whenever he has no SD value, it could still be good to check most KQhh, 99, AA, Axhh, low hh. Do you agree with this?
I'd need to see how strong this actually makes our checking range. I assume adding enough hands to the point that KQhh is a good part of that range would weaken our value range and strengthen our checking range a bit too much.
I just wanted to point out to RIO members that when we say, "there are better hands for this," it shouldn't be taken as justification by itself.
When used correctly, it's actually an abbreviation for "there are enough better hands for this in our range that including all of them up to this hand will make our overall strategy weaker."
If this play is +EV in a vacuum, I don't think that the fact that there are better hands in my range for it proves that I can't check those hands and KQhh too as part of an overall river strategy (not that I'm implying I believe that's likely the best strategy).
I feel like you are kind of digging your own grave here, or at least the grave for your own argument. While I don't agree that checking KhQh here to induce will have higher value than betting here since I expect Alexander to play very balanced here (not shoving all his air and K9+), lets for the sake of argument agree that it is.
Then since you are playing exploitative against Alexander in this specific spot. And we both agree that difference in EV between checking and betting for hands like A*hh, 7h6h, TT is even higher than for KhQh, consequently you should check every single one of them!
Would you really go as far as checking (almost) all your nutted hands in this spot as an exploitative strategy?
Clearly this would be very bad for your range if Alexander finds out. But you are playing exploitative, if a similar spot arises next time, both of you can make new assumptions on eachothers ranges and try to exploit these ranges.
This gives two extra arguments against checking KhQh:
1. To make it as tough as possible for Alexander to exploit your ranges in the next spot, you need to construct your ranges in an optimal fashion, that means betting KhQh as part of your overall river strategy.
2. Since KhQh is one of the worst "trap" hands in this spot, and Alexander can only observe one hand from your range, he would be much more inclined to assume you are trapping a wide part of your range if he sees you checking KhQh than when he sees you checking TsTc!
GT- Thank you for challenging me. NLHE and GTO play are not my strong suits (used to be better at the former, and am working on getting better at the latter). That said, I still disagree with some of your points (though I think your conclusion that KQhh is a bad check is likely true)
Shoving all of his air and K9+ will actually leave him pretty darn balanced, making me need to barely fold all of my bluff-catchers (off the top of my head). Making me indifferent with my bluff-catchers is his goal with his river betting range.
His strategy needs to change once I start including more than the occasional trap, I agree.
However, if I check a range that is 60% bluff-catchers, 30% air, and 10% nuts - the math I've done in my head tells me he is still correct in shoving K9+ and All K-high or worse (given the range I assigned him for getting to the river). I actually believe this is near his optimal strategy, and if you and others disagree, perhaps this could be the topic for a concept video.
Next, to quote myself this time:
This is the main point I want to hammer home. When you are making statements like...
...I don't necessarily disagree that this is true, but I certainly disagree that you've done anything to prove the legitimacy of the claim that betting KQhh is required to maintain optimal ranges.
I suspect this is true, and I suspect betting is best too, so I'm not trying to defend the actual play. I just want to point out that the arguments/facts presented thus far don't prove the last two statements I quoted.
I wish we were disagreeing over a hand that I felt I was right about, so I could present better arguments to challenge your approach, but as I said, I assume checking KQhh isn't best as part of an overall gameplan.
My main goal here is that I want RIO members to think in a logically sound way.
Concerning NLH instructors my vote is for our own "gametheory". In just a few weeks he's posted an outstanding amount of awesome posts with superb quality. I'm pretty sure he could produce quality videos with a weighting towards gametheory. Exactly what at least I'm interested in atm.
Suggestion noted :), thank you.
We have and will continue to contact anyone on our forums that we see potential in and explore the possibility of them making videos for RIO.
As I'm sure many have noticed, "5carab", one of my favorite PLO posters in our forums is now "Tom Coldwell" - RunItOnce Pro.
+1 for GT as an instructor.
Aren´t you checking fairly frequently on the flop or turn with medium strenght hands? I´m wondering which hands you get to the river with that you aren´t value-betting, giving up with or trapping that lose to K9, but beat A8?
Also, if Kanu bets river more than he calls, you should check all value hands exploitively, so I doubt he is doing that? Does that mean he should call his value range, plus the same amount of bluff catchers, as the amount of bluffs he would bet if checked to, if he wanted to be balanced or am I missing something?
For someone who claims to be 'bad' at NLHE you played far too well in the All-Star Showdown, you don't fool me!
First off, it is never his goal with his river betting range to make you indifferent with your bluffcatchers!
Is it his goal to maximize his expectation!
When I tried to mimic your ranges in PPT, I noticed that some hands you put in his range like J7 are not counted since they fall outside the PPT 36% range, so I corrected this:
This leaves Alexander with 106 value combos out of 215 total. 44 combos are bluff.
And if he shoves his entire betting range on the river, you need little over 33% equity against his combined range to call. Which means you need at least A9 in order to be able to call:
Now here is a very big reason why it cannot be an optimal strategy pair for you to call the {A9+} part of your checking range and for Alexander to bet all his air and K9+ for value:
Against your conjectured calling range, K9 has 0% equity, he never folds out worse and he always gets called by better. Alexander can unilaterally improve his expectation by checking behind K9 and other hands from the bottom of his range and save $9300 against your calling range.
This is the direct result of the goal to make you indifferent with your bluffcatcher, rather than to maximize expectation, it costs money. The worst value hand must be ahead of your calling range, or fold out better hands.
Ok I will do this now:
We seem to agree that against any reasonable calling range and betting range that Alexander could employ on the river, the difference in expectation between checking and betting KhQh is smaller than for hands that don't block Alexanders bluffing range (Ah*h, TT/99, AA).
For this reason, we can conclude the following: if we employ a river strategy where we check KhQh with a positive frequency and bet any of the "better trap hands" with a positive frequency, we can unilaterally improve our expectation by lowering our KhQh checking frequency to 0% and lowering our betting frequency with some of the "better trap hands", while maintaining the same overall checking and betting frequencies with our range as much as possible. This unilaterally improves our expectation, and hence checking KhQh cannot be a part of an optimal strategy. (Unless we never valuebet the river.)
I feel your pain, it is always hard to argue for a play that you don't fully believe in. I tried to argue the point that you seemed to be making.
The play you made by checking KhQh can only be justified as an exploitative play, not as an optimal play. For your play to be correct, Alexander himself should be employing a (highly) exploitable strategy on the river. If you believe that this was the case, then your correct adjustment should have been to not only check KhQh, but all your nutted hands!
GT- Excellent post.
I'm busy tonight, tomorrow, and likely Monday, so I won't get you the response you deserve this weekend.
What I will say is that I am positive you'd need an estimated range for me (3bet, bet, bet, check) to come to any worthwhile conclusions about his best river strategy.
Your post seems to indicate that he needs to tighten his value range up to, let's say, AT, and bluff with fewer than 100% of his bluff combos.
However some extreme examples of my range clearly would make that strategy very poor:
1) I have air (worse than his air) 85% of the time and the nuts 15% - He should never bet river
2) I have air 40% of the time and bluffcatchers (up to Q9) 60% of the time - He should shove all hands > Q9 and all of his bluffs (since he has enough value to outweigh his bluffs sufficiently)... this means he wins 100% of pots (I need to fold my entire range)
Here is my practical but over-simplified example from my previous post:
3) I have air 30%, nuts 10%, and bluffcatchers 60% - My estimation is that he should still shove all air and all K9+, though math may indicate a slightly smaller bet-size is better.
I assume you agree with 1 & 2. Do you strongly disagree with 3?
Could you (and anyone else) come up with a few reasonable ranges for me to be playing this way?
Phil I think you are confusing two algorithms for finding an optimal strategy on the river.
The first one is exploitation of Alexanders conjectured strategy. You make assumptions about his range and how he plays his range. Subsequently for each hand in your range you look at all possible strategic options (check/call, check/fold, check/raise, bet $5400/fold, bet $5400/call, bet all-in, ...) you have for that hand and picking the strategic option with the highest expected value.
Checking KhQh might be part of this best response strategy, however if checking KhQh has highest expected value against Alexanders conjectured strategy then it is likely that all other nutted hands are checked as well. The key point here is that only if Alexanders (conjectured) strategy deviates strongly from GTO, your best response will also be far from GTO. It is very clear that checking all your nutted hands is not GTO.
When playing best response there should be no fear that Alexander can adjust to your strategy before the hand is over, since he will never observe your actual hand before the hand is over. Also he can maximally observe one hand, therefore his ability to figure out your complete strategy is limited. And I've argued that checking KhQh gives away more from your strategy than checking TcTd.
The second one is constructing balanced ranges or even optimal ranges. For this you need to start with your (3-bet, bet, bet) range and Alexanders (raise/call, call, call) range. To do this we need to know both ranges.
Or he should bluff more combos. It is not easy to make these kind of statements without knowing both ranges.
This implies that you don't bluff the river with your worst air, and bet the entire middle part of your range, hence your own strategy is unlikely to be optimal. While his best response is indeed to never bet the river, this does not directly prove that the value that you give up by playing your range in this fashion is smaller than the loss Alexander makes by betting.
If Alexander shoves his entire range when checked to, then you should check all your nutted hands. Hence this cannot be an optimal strategy for either of you.
This is not entirely excluded, and you will need to call with enough bluffcatchers to make K9 ahead of your calling range. Out of all examples this one seems the least far away from an actual balanced strategy.
No, I don't agree with 1 and 2. I certainly disagree that you've done anything to prove the legitimacy of the claim that betting a tighter range of around AT+ for value can be exploited by any of your overall river strategies. Your checking range and betting range are highly correlated, it is not a fair argumentative strategy to look at the value of a certain strategy against just the checking range and draw conclusions about the entire river range.
And I don't disagree strongly with 3), I could conceive that you arrive to the river with a range that makes this optimal.However, I would be surprised if that was the case.
GT - I fear we're not speaking the same language here, which may be due to me having little technical knowledge in game theory.
This is the main thing we agree on. I still feel strongly about some of the assertions I've made, but I believe you've read them differently than I intended them. It looks like we'll need to give me a range for getting to the river before arguing on the same page as each other.Agree to agree on that? :)
Yes, in order to make good estimates for how all betting and checking ranges on the river will look like we need to know both ranges.
But I still think that you make a couples of logical mistakes that are independent of your actual river range, which may be due to you having little technical knowledge in game theory.
1. Do you think checking KhQh has the highest EV of all options in a vacuum?
2. Do you think that for all better hands than KhQh checking has the highest EV of all options in a vacuum?
3. Do you think that Alexander will know your checking range in a vacuum after you check?
4. Do you think that Alexander will shove K9+ for value in a vacuum after a check?
5. Do you agree that if Alexander plays a strategy that is close to optimal on the river, and you deviate far from optimal with your checking range, and against your checking range Alexanders betting range is incorrect. That this on itself does not show that there is anything wrong with his betting range, as long as his overall strategy makes more against your checking range plus betting range.
6. The last point is very similar to 30bb HU NL, suppose you minraise 90-100% on the button, and Alexander shoves a range of {QQ-AA} and you call TT. Did Alexander exploit your calling range, or did he lose value by shoving too tight?
7. Suppose that Alexander observes that you checked either KhQh or TcTd, do you think there will be any significant difference in how he plays similar spots in the future, causing your future EV to decrease?
Ben, you are correct that since I didn't base my arguments on Phils suggested range.
I was mostly commenting on the KhQh because I was curious about Phils thought process for checking this hand in relation to building a range.
And about the K9+ valuebet, that struck me as highly unusual. If it was optimal to valuebet K9, then all these CREV wizzards would be snapcalling AK on the river.
Running some very quick math, if Phil 3-bets a wide range, 20-30% PPT, then 37-39% of Phils preflop range has K9 beat by the river.
Assuming that Phil double barrels the top 50% of his preflop range, this implies that Phil has better than K9 around 75-78% on the river. This was why my intuition told me that K9 is not a valuebet on the river.
1) I don't know. This is what my analysis was attempting to figure out in this video, and I concluded it was probably slightly lower EV in a vacuum.
2) I don't know
3) No
4) I think possibly. I would certainly have taken 2:1 odds that he would.
5) I agree
6) He lost value by shoving too tight (though he should have another 3b sizing)
7) It should impact his play. The resulting change in EV depends on how I alter my strategy. If I predict and account for his adjustment, it would likely result in higher EV for me.
a) Giving me a PPT 20 or 30% preflop range and
b) assuming I double barrel the top 50%
doesn't lead to especially worthwhile information, as both of these things are far from my strategy (or anyone's). This also doesn't take into account my river play with any portion of this range.
I don't think my lack of technical Game Theory background is leading to me making any logical mistakes, because logic does not require game theory to back it up. My background is in logic.
Furthermore, I haven't made many statements in this thread without qualifying them first. You've been the one to make statements that are unsupported by proof or logic (not that they have necessarily been incorrect)
I have never claimed that betting K9 in Kanu's spot on the river is optimal, nor have I claimed that it isn't. I claimed that given the range I assigned him in the video, against a checking range consisting of "60% bluff-catchers, 30% air, and 10% nuts," shoving K9+ and all of his air is a strategy that is very close to balanced and near optimal within that sub-game.
In fact, I gave three examples above of river situations and ranges, with purely logical and math-based conclusions, and you managed to argue against them by saying that my premises weren't GTO. I never claimed they were... I was simply explaining that we need premises before making claims about his best strategy or mine, and that our conclusion can change drastically based on the premises.
Attacking my made up premises doesn't refute that my conclusions based on those premises were valid, which was the only thing I was asserting.
If you're attempting to argue with me that if Kanu had found and was playing a GTO strategy, I shouldn't check KQhh here, you are arguing something with no opposition. I have never made any claims about that.
I don't understand what you're disagreeing with me on otherwise.
I was wondering about your 3 bet calling ranges. It seems really wide and maybe that is correct idk. Someone would have to be going totally ape on me trying to exploit that I fold to much to 3 bets before I would play a hand like 98o or T6s. You seem to call those as your standard. It's been years since I broke it down myself but it seems like just calling Axs, Kxs, JTo+, 76s, ect to where K2s and like 75s would be the worst of my calling range. I believe that range along with some A4o type 4 bets makes it nearly impossible for someone to exploit a wide btn open range with 3 bets. Should I take another look at this part of my game?
Also on the KQs hand I liked the play. Yeah like everyone has said the play on that board would be the nuts with TT. That said I feel like the point was that 3 bet, bet, bet, check looks really weak to anyone reading hands, so mix in some strong hands to that lines range. To me it seems like focusing on the timing and the leveling wars would be more important then picking the perfect hand on the perfect board.
Overall I really enjoyed the video
Regarding calling of 3bets:
To defend against a very wide 3betting range without being opened up for heavy exploits, you do have to defend VERY wide by calling. If you 2x and someone makes it 7x, it might be part of a GTO strategy to call K2o (100 BB), though I regularly end up with a K4o - K7o threshold. Calling J2s in the 2 -> 7 case could easily be optimal.
very nice video. I love when you use propokertools in your vids. I think the check river is super sexy for all the reasons you specified. he is def capable of value betting thinly and he could turn a lot of hands into bluffs.
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