Very interesting :D

17:25 you say IP equity threshold for betting is lower - did you mean higher?

Good video. I like how you discuss a number of different hands on the river and question the bet sizes people are making/what you'd do vs the bigger or smaller bet sizes on earlier streets

why pio use bigger sizing on 9, T a J high boards?

Great vid. Like the analysis of OOP river decisions

Haha 99% equity with 95s there, turns the poker world on its head haha made me giggle. nice vid sam!!

At 17.40 you say that IP is less likely to go for thin value because it opens them up to be raised. Is this because when IP checks turn he is capped where as when OOP checks turn he can still have all the strong hands in his range because he was just playing in flow. Am i right in saying that?

Thanks Sam :)

Thank you!
I made analysis of my likely hand (Q9 on board KQ326). Yes, PIO says little bet on the river. And also it says IP should to raise this bet with Kx, Qx hands. And then it says OOP must call this raise. So is it blockbet we made on the river?

Ah yes that makes alot of sense, cheers sam.

v impressiv content

on the first hand being approx 45bb deep would u 3b QQ out of the BB preflop?

on the second hand with 59s, do you think this is good combo to 3b bluff out of BB?

At around 18 minutes you can see the a4dd combo should always be a check and the other combos should be a bet, I'm trying to wrap my head around this, I guess the diamond combo is bad to bet because it's more likely we can just show down against worse diamonds and win, where as the other non diamond a4 can bet and get nut flush draws to fold, is there anything else I'm missing? It just seems crazy to me a4dd is almost 100% check and other ones are 100% bet

Thats really sweet - "i shouldn't say HE...he or she"))
Great vid btw. I think i missed a lot of opportunities there. thanks!

Does PIO show a similar 60% equity threshold when IP on the turn facing a smaller blocking lead bet and deciding to raise or call?

Intuitively I would guess so, for similar reasons to the OOP on river logic: where by just calling the small bet on the turn IP, we let our opponent dictate the bet size on the river.

Here's an example: we raise AcKd in cutoff, and SB call, bb folds.
Flop KhQh3d, and sb donks 1/2 pot, we call.
Turn Qc....sb donks 1/3 pot...

I would think we're over 60% equity vs range, and calling let's opp draw for cheap, decide to continue to bluff on river or not, or value bet to whatever size they want on river.

This hand was a real life example where I just called turn, having seen my opponents often donking small here very strong in the past.

The 60% IP thresh-hold I refer to, is the thresh-hold for IP to value bet. Not the threshold for raising. Sorry if that wasn't clear. I mis-spoke a couple of times in the video.

The video actually doesn't go into the equity requirements for a river a raise. Perhaps a topic for a future video.

I can't speak with huge authority on the example you give. I'm almost certain PIO would never advocate a lead from OOP on the flop, so I'm unsure how strategies should play out.

Pretty sure that if we node locked OOP strategy and played the hand out AK would have enough equity to raise flop.

That being said, in spots where people take an unorthodox line it's often a good idea to play the hand with an exploitative strategy though, so I understand why you played it as you did.

Great video Sam! I really like this Pio Insights format. I've had Pio Pro for a few months now but struggle to do effective studying with it and these ideas are very helpful. What are your thoughts on having more emphasis on single sizing strategies for river in these spots? Do you think it would be a good approach to run a sim with 3 sizings and then develop a somewhat optimal single sizing based on that, then running the sim again with your newly found single river sizing? I think that focusing on single sizings would make strategies much easier to employ at the tables and also feel that we probably won't lose too much EV with good single sizing ranges, especially with pools playing so far from optimal. Thanks!

Find a clear mistake that most RIO members (and their opponents) are making.

Provide simplified thresholds or rules, based on your studying experience, that will help members effectively implement a better strategy.

Support your findings with examples, giving members the confidence to make the improvements to their strategy immediately after watching.

This is a perfect training video. Thank you, Sam.

Hey Sam, awesome video, i just got the elite sub again and this video is at least 10x worth it! I've used the same polarized river bet strategy in the past and this gives me new strategy to explore with PIO for my 50-60%ish equity combos OTR. Thanks & Cheers!

Just one comment, how does this apply in live setting? I've experienced that a lot of villains don't value bet thinly enough OTR to put us in tricky spot with our bluff-catchers, Are we small value-owning ourself with the very bottom blocking bet hands with 50-55ish equity when we can actually showdown those hands for free or exploitatively check-fold vs a river bet? on the other hand, we might get called by Ace high so I see some merits for it even vs those type of villains

So glad you liked the video and thanks for the enthusiastic post.

I think this strategy is even more effective in a live setting. Recreational live players will likely pay off river blocking bets bets too light, because in my experience they don't like to fold to small bets and don't like to be bluffed. Also advantageously, they are very unlikely to raise river bets thin for value. Even live pros very rarely raise the river without the nuts or near nuts. This makes the 'blocking' aspect of the bet even more effective, as we are rarely put in a tough spot facing a raise.

Good stuff Sam! I was thinking to myself, as the video neared its end, "He should really talk about what happens if V raises." And then boom, there it was! Well played.

An interesting principle of game theory is that the amount of money Villain will put into the pot shouldn't change based on whether you bet or check. If it does (for instance, if he bluffs and/or value bets into a check for a total amount of $ greater than he would raise into a bet), then he incentivizes you to check your nut hands consistently, as he puts more $ into the pot when you do, and bet your marginal hands consistently, as they will face less pressure than if they check.

As you point out, the field may well be responding too passively to blocker bets, which may incentivize us to employ them exploitably much, but at the very least suggests we should employ them at GTO frequency.

really great video! Saw Galfond put it as a must watch on site and realized and i missed over it. We block bet with 55-60% equity OOP, but when called, isnt our equity lower than 50%? But that is okay given we are oop?

THANKS FOR A GREAT VIDEO!

Hi Sam,

Great videos, really loving the insights from PIO series.
I have a question about how PIO works in the 95s hand.

As the HJ opener it looks like PIO is cbetting a bigger size about 6% of the time and then 91% of the time a smaller sizing.

When we look at how BB should respond against the the big Cbet will that be a strategy that only plays against the 6% range? Because PIO is clairvoyant.

My point is this. Once you get to the river. Is the blockbetting strategy what PIO wants to do only against the original 6% of his cbetting range?

It's fair to assume that villain uses this larger betsize with his whole range so then we would need to force that Cbet, the larger one, with his whole range on flop to get an accurate river strategy?

I hope that was clear. Not using PIO myself so not quite sure how the program works.

Love your videos!