AQs is imo a very easy call pre and as played a turn shove. he doesnt really have a big range there and is very likely to check back AA/AK/KQ and only shuvs hand that call us anyway - that means he can realise his EQ for free. we dont really have a c/c range there either.

AQo on QcJc7c. I dont like the check behind. AcQx is a way better check back. but without the club we need to valuebet it.

Unless you dont open 20 ish % UTG. Why do you 2,5x EP/MP?

AKo: Either you go bet bet bet or check back bet bet (which is nice ith the Kc). but for bet check back and mot likely catch a bet on the river AK is way too strong. it looks like  a turn check back because you´r afraid of a c/r.
fwiw: on that board people come to the river with a very capped range and you allways have a vbet OTR vs a check/call check/call line. 

AA: the check is just not good vs a 12/10. its a a very easy bet bet bet spot. you even say that hes uncapped (KK,QQ,JJ). And hes very likely to check back a ton of hands that would likely call 2 streets. preflop you disscount SCs, postflop you give him a very wide range (otherwise you wouldnt c/c the turn right) btw would that player never bet 87s OTT.


KK i´d size a small cbet and shuv the turn. i would only exploitively check it back if i knew the fish is a aggrobox and like to bet the turn VERY wide. and with that i mean JTo on a 2 or so

Ok Ill give you a detailed response so others can read it and don't ask the same questions:

AQs - I don't really like calling 3b oop in these positions as a general strategy but because its suited calling is definitely an option I would entertain. 4b is obv fine though so whatever. As for turn, I have to completely disagree with you here - the whole point of checking here is to rep the weaker hands in our range like AK, AA, and bluffs which we rep very well. If we bet here we have no bluffs and he will fold out the weaker parts of his range that might have bluffed when checked to. Also your point about 'realizing his equity' with the hands you mentioned is pretty much completely irrelevant considering all of those hands have 3 outs one time to chop and are drawing dead to win the pot. 

AQo - Yes better to with a club but I think its just a nice example to check back vs this sort of opponent who is going to x/f this flop v frequently.

Ako - Yes checking back the turn is because I am scared of x/r - in these positions I doubt he c/c with many weaker hands so the check is obv for pot control as I stated. 

KK - I think with these stack depths on this super-dry and super-uncoordinated board, a check back is easily optimal and its not close tbh. The point is not necessarily to get him to bluff off, but to let him make a pair he can call down on. As I said in vid, if it was a normal 3b pot its an easy c-bet but when hes got almost 1/3 stack in pre its so easy to get stacks in otr when we check back flop.

AA - With the fish in bb he can have some (not many) sc pre so that was a mistake when I said he didnt pre. Hes a 12/10 but as I said hes a pretty tricky player and will float in these spots with hands like AQ, AK because he knows he reps well. Against those sorts of hands we do better to check. But anyway, the point of the check is to protect our checking range and have strong hands in there as well weak ones.

That leads to this - in a way I think you have kind of missed the point of the hand histories I posted - by definition the lines I've taken are unorthodox and not what I would necessarily normally take. Ultimately though, its a a look at how we can be unpredictable, deceptive which is great for meta-game and being a tougher opponent which is obviously very important in the long run. Im not saying your points are invalid (they certainly arent), and in vacuum I don't disagree that some of the checks aren't strictly plus ev vs betting, but they were there to illustrate how we need to be balanced and protect our checking range which is what the video is all about :)

Simon, when we "protect" our range we are trying to stop our opponent being able to make really large bets at us on later streets. In 3bet pots or when stacks are shallow relative to the pot having a capped range isn't a problem as there is not enough money behind for our opponent to do this. So in theory checking a hand like AQss on the turn doesn't really accomplish much, and all the hands he wants to shove on the turn when checked too will still want to shove even if he knows you occasionally check AQ!

Yes thank you Brock, couldn't have answered the question better myself :) That is exactly what I was trying to put across throughout video and in the answer I gave to the first question. 

great video, very helpful

eq. fest...can you elaborate on why you think Brock and Simon have misconceptions about balance?

Very helpful indeed,i used to play too straightforward and now i'm trying to play less weak by building a checking range more balanced.Good work Simon.

Agree with eq.fest. 

Balance is not about playing the same hand in different ways, its about determining the equilibrium where neither player has an incentive to change their range. When you say that you sometimes play a hand one way and other times use a different line, than, by definition, you're saying that both lines have EXACTLY the same EV, otherwise their would be no incentive to play the hand in two different ways. Now while Simon didn't explicitly state that he thought the more traditional line was higher EV, he does imply many times that he only takes the alternative lines sometimes for "meta-game" purposes. There is no theoretical reason (including meta-game) to play a hand in a less than EV way. 

Along the same lines, he says "deception" and "unpredictability" are two reasons to play these hands with these lines. This argument falls under the same problem as the former argument, they sound mostly like metagame reasons. In fact, if you played a GTO strategy, you could tell your opponent how you play ALL your ranges in every situation ahead of time, and he still wouldn't be able to exploit you. This seems to contradict the value of 'unpredictability' and 'deception'. That is not to say that there isn't value in having some strong hands in your checking range, I just don't think Simon did a good job of explaining them.

In many of the examples, Simon says that it's important to have strong hands against specific opponent -- "aggressive opponents" who will "bluff a lot" when they smell weakness. While this makes sense from an exploitative standpoint against this particular opponent, it doesn't seem to be a good reason for including "strong hands"... instead it just seems to be a good reason for calling down wider. For example, if the assumption is our opponent bluffs too much, then it's not really that hard to just call down wide with all of our made hands / bluff catchers. This isn't the equivalent of "protecting our checking range" -- our checking range is just fine if the opponent bluffs too much. The type of opponent where we need to protect our checking range has different attributes which weren't stated specifically in the video. 

When your checking range is capped, it's susceptible to your opponent in two major ways: thin value bets AND over betting. When your range is capped, your opponent has the ability to bet for thin value *knowing* that he'll never to rarely be value cutting himself and rarely being raised. Therefore, by including stronger hands in our checking range, we keep our range from being capped and disincentivize the opponent from value betting too thin. Along the same lines, when our range is capped, the Villian can bet very large with all of his better hands than our cap. This is what eq.fest meant by "In 3bet pots or when stacks are shallow relative to the pot having a capped range isn't a problem as there is not enough money behind for our opponent to do this". Similarly, if our opponent has an incentive to bet larger when our range is capped, than this is going to incentivize us to slow play strong hands since it should eventually make it higher EV than playing faster. There are more than these two reasons to put some strong hands in our checking range, but they are the two most important to me, and they didn't seem to be specifically stated in the video. 

I also think that Simon is misconstructing his range with the AQs hand with his explanation being that he wouldn't have a "bluffing range". Quoting Simon, " the whole point of checking here is to rep the weaker hands in our range like AK, AA, and bluffs which we rep very well. If we bet here we have no bluffs and he will fold out the weaker parts of his range that might have bluffed when checked to. " In back to back sentences, he says that we should check with our "bluffs", but then in the next sentence he says that if we bet that we wouldn't have any "bluffs". This is contradictory on the surface.

Is it just me, or in the first hand is an oven alarm going off in the background - (some kind of high pitched beeping thing) or do I need to check my house isn't burning down?

Question about the discussion of it being theoretically wrong to ever take a line that is less EV than another for the sake of balance.  Take a situation where we get to the river in a certain spot and we feel its best two have two different bet sizes, one consisting of strong nutty hands and bluffs we want to bet bigger with, and the other mostly hands we are going for thin value with, and some bluffs that we bet smaller with.  To do this don't we need to have a few nut hands in our smaller bet size range, so that our opponents can't exploit us by raising too liberally?  And when we do bet smaller with our strongest hands, aren't we probably sacrificing EV in a vacuum?

I feel like this is the standard advice when having multiple river bet sizes, but after reading this thread, Im wondering if this isn't really the case.  Do we need a few nut hands in the second range for the sake of balance, or do simply have to call down lighter when we get raised to defend it?

Great vid. I find myself playing too straightforwardly a lot, and I always wonder if I missed out on more value.

in the last hand of the video. The spot where you have KK vs AJss.

I remember seeing another instructor one time somewhere in a similar spot where he had KK on a dry flop vs a fish in a 4bet pot that betting a little on the flop was good because the pot was big enough to protect at that stage (it was an MTT mind). if he folds we've won a big pot was his point but perhaps in an MTT survival comes in to it more and protecting big pots is more important than in a cash game where squeezing EV out of every part of a cash game hand. 

Also is the bet size on the turn optimal since we are giving him really good odds to hit or is this results based thinking creeping in on my part?

thnks, n

Thanks Simon. Great video.  

@ 5:15 - This is one of the things that comes up a lot at small stakes, though. If you check in this situation, of course you know that you're making the right move and that you're setting villain up to bet out with all sorts of junk but a lot of fish will simply check back with a ton of their range that a competent player will typically bet at. That's one of the things at nanostakes that's obvious right off the bat: There's a ton of check/check'ing turns and rivers that shouldn't be and tons of times villains aren't even making position raises when it's standard. Of course, as you emphasize in the beginning of the video (and is the case with a lot of plays in poker) we're looking for specific spots to check back hands to disguise our range and these are not going to always be profitable plays. Sometimes they are though and you're showing us how to identify those spots and I'm glad you've decided to do so.

I do want to reiterate that I am talking about the nanostakes though. Under 50nl. Below that, due to the ignorance that can exist in a lot of your competition, many of these plays actually don't get the value intended since villain doesn't do what's standard anyway. That's why at the lowest stakes, simply value betting with big hands is enough to have a decent amount of success provided you don't have any unrelated glaring leaks. I watch these videos to get some education that's a little over my paygrade and head right now though and once again, I'm enjoying this video thoroughly as it's really expanding my mind and the way I think about the game. 

@ 7:20 - Do you really not mind his shove here? A 63 bb shove like that with ace high? Was his shove mathematically EV? 

Very cool. Thanks for your analysis of the shove @ 7:20! 

Obviously I am very late to comment but at 5:10 you say that a flush draw would be a good barrel here. What if he raises our bet when we do have the flush draw?