#1st post - (live) How to exploit people who are still stuck in the "bet 2/3rd-3/4 pot" mentality
Posted by Threepwood
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Threepwood
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#1st post - (live) How to exploit people who are still stuck in the "bet 2/3rd-3/4 pot" mentality
Hello Everyone !
1st post here (Just signed up for Elite today!), long story short I am getting back to the game and after a few live sessions realized how much more I have to learn and improve (DUH) so I just signed up to here so I can better myself. One topic that kept recurring to me is bet sizing.
I've noticed, that some of the bad regs in the game I play at still cbet 2/3-3/4 pot with their entire range on most of the boards.
Question is, what are the best exploits to counter that strategy on different boards?
For example, I understand that on a dry board such as K 7 2r they are going to miss alot but how do I construct a defense range here against their bet size? How to approach this ?
As you can prob see I'm very much a beginner at this, and while I am plowing through the bet sizes videos on the site I would also love to hear your thoughts on how to get better on this topic, find exploits and construct crusher ranges. Thanks !
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When people use bigger bet sizes, you can fold more hands, which makes your range stronger.
The obvious thing to do in this case is to fold your garbage, and call a lot with the rest of your range. Especially if you're in position.
The point is that their range on the turn would be weak, so they will be forced to check a lot. That's when you can apply pressure. They have bloated the pot with a weak range, and their range will not be able to take the pressure.
Or they will be forced to bluff a lot, in which case, just call them down with decent hands in your range.
Apart from these general principles, you can also buy a solver like GTO+ or Pio, and see how to react to different bet sizes.
Thank You, that's a fair assumption. How do I expand upon it to build ranges? Both IP and OOP
Assuming the driest board in the deck of K 7 2r for example, how do different hands in my range want to play against such a player (mid pocket pairs, A high backdoors, etc.)
That's too broad a question. Depends on your range, your opponent's range, whether you're IP or OOP.
As a starting point, you should consider Minimum Defence Frequency. Say, they bet 3/4 pot. Then you have to defend 57% of your range according to MDF. Since the flop is a bit better for Villain's range, you can overfold, so it's reasonable to defend about 50% of your hands.
So go through your range, and see what hands you can defend (by calling or raising). Usually what you'll end up is something like most pairs, some Ace-highs (not all of them), and some suited hands with backdoor draws.
If you use a solver, it will tell you what kinds of hands you can defend. Solvers don't follow MDF, so their strategy can sometimes be hard to understand. Also, they use a lot of mixed strategies. It takes some experience, playing around with various boards and lots of simplification to translate it to a "human" strategy.
I am not using a solver as of now, trying to figure out things and calculations "by hand", but yeah, figuring out MDF and where am I in my range in relation to how often I need to defend is a good starting point, thanks !
There are of course more player types that cbet 1/2 to 2/3 pots on a dry board.
- against nit players that only cbet like 40% or less start 'over folding' and only continue with top pair or better
- against aggro players that cbet like 80% keep a wider range e.g. call with all pairs and not only top pair and perhaps even with two overcards and a backdoor flush
- .....
Really like this answer from belrio.
Totally agree that with what he said. They will have a wide range on the turn and probably will play a "bet the good stuff" or polarized strategy on the turn.
So if they check you can apply very agressive strategies (that´s what solvers are doing) as they probably at best have bluff catchers.
If you let solvers do their thing they just go overbet overbet on turn river if he never checks his nutted hands.
Sure you can´t do this everytime since villain´s gonna notice but you can apply the basic principle of playing agressivly with the hands you choose to do so.
So yeah, in reality it makes your life easier since you don´t have to defend so much. Also they probably sometimes check the flop and if you can figure out what they check there you can take advantage of that too.
Most of the time people check second pair/ third pair typish hands.
I would recommend the video by Sauce exploring the proper adjustments facing different cbet strategies. Basically he concludes that the less polar villain's betting range the less polar your raising range will be vs a bet. Also you will want to fold more of your weaker bluff-catchers because they have less equity/ev vs a linear range. You also want to bet pretty much your entire range vs a X because villain's X range is weak/unprotected. So it's less about villain's bet size and more about his range. Size does come into play because it affects SPR and that does affect your strategy (look at Apotheosis vid How stack size affects strategy). Also, as he stated above, bloating the pot with a weak range opens villain up to exploitation but only if you're defending properly.
I ran a few sims in GTO+. The exact solution depends on the details (ranges, bet sizes and so on), but the general idea I got was the following:
I assumed that the Villain is opening fairly tight and c-betting entire range 2/3 pot on K72r. Hero is playing with reasonable ranges (flatting a reasonable range in the BB and cold-calling fairly tight in position). I then looked at the flop strategy.
(a) The strategy depends a lot on whether your OOP or IP.
(b) OOP, the defending frequency is lower (because you're flatting more hands in the BB). It's roughly about MDF, maybe a bit lower (depending on exact ranges). There is a fair bit of aggressive check-raising (stuff like A2s is check-raised) and a fair bit of calling.
(c) IP, there is a lot of defending -- the cold-calling range is quite tight in the first place. Depending on the ranges, GTO+ defends 80% or even more of the cold-calling range. There's a lot of calling, with a decent portion of raises mixed in with strong hands and good draws.
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