check flop with QQ??
Posted by zerocool
Posted by
zerocool
posted in
Low Stakes
check flop with QQ??
what's the concept to checking the flop?
will you bet or check and why?
thank you for the help!
Loading 39 Comments...
betting here surely has to be more profitable than checking. betting for value/ charge draws and possibly make the pot HU on turn would be reasons for c-betting. checking seems bad here multi-way. dunno i could be wrong though!
pokersnowie told me to check it even with one or two player?
really don't know why?
Snowie is playing against Snowie and that is what forms an equilibrium if everyone played like Snowie. In multiway pots, Snowie's ranges are very Nitty so in your hand there is a high probability one of the Snowie opponents has a set. In your hand, Snowie may well advise QQ to XF. HU, on paired low boards, Snowie tends to bet unpaired hands and check pairs.
With most ranges Pio equilibriums in HU pots suggest that a small betsize be used and 100% of our range can be bet with approximately the same EV as a far more complex approach. Pio has nothing to say about multiway pots.
.
Does Pokersnowie know the tendencies of your Villain that called BTN. At some point you got to realize that GTO is applicable when you play vs. GTO Player. Otherwise you need to play exploitative Poker. If BTN bet a lot to a X than you should X. If BTN fold a lot to Cbet but Float a lot than you should X here. If he practically never fold to CBet than CBet. DOnt worry about GTO since there is no player at your stake that play GTO. Majority of the pool don't even know what is GTO. In fact practically no one fully understand GTO. Look for tendencies and exploit them.
I'll challenge that assumption. :-) If you look at GTO solutions, you'll often see that it's so loose/aggressive that it will exploit overly passive player pools (which is most player pools) without trying.
Simple example:
Look at the average BB 3B frequency vs SB steal for the pool you're in. Is that anywhere near 20%? Because that is approximately the GTO frequency vs a somewhat tight SB open (~45%) who defends perfectly (calling wide and 4-betting aggressively). If he goes wider, GTO of course goes wider, too.
If you adapted such a 3B strategy as your default (if you haven't already) with a proper range, you would do very well against your average SB opponent (assuming he opens around half the time or more), and you would not even be pushing the envelope to exploit him.
ZenFish, GTO is a DEFENSIVE solution to not being exploited. In which case you are extremely rarely exploited in micros. So i wouldn't pass too much time with GTO while playing micros as there is a lot of other stuff that will be a lot more useful to learn building our poker foundation going up the stakes.
GTO is teaching you HOW to not be beat. GTO doesn't teach you how to exploit. And of course nobody fully understand GTO right now.
GTO is always exploitative to the max. The confusion that GTO is somehow defensive comes from the fact that what we call the "GTO solution" assumes that both players are exploiting each other maximally and that at the end of the process, all leaks are eliminated from both.
If you put a GTO solver to work on an opponent with some leaks, it will exploit him in the hardest possible way. Give the solver an opponent who exploits maximally in return, you end up with the GTO equilibrium solution.
To that I would add, if you model your game around GTO'ish ranges (preflop most importantly, since that part of the game is not very complicated for 100bb stacks, if you can take opening ranges as a given), you will be playing a very strong game against anyone.
We shouldn't confuse GTO vs. Exploitative Where one is a Defensive approach vs. an Offensive approach.
GTO would be very useful vs. a REALLY good opponent which you wont find at micros.
Or it would be very useful when we dont know our opponent, we got no intel on him.
As Adam Jones explained, figuratively, GTO is like hiding in a bunker during a war than when we got intel on the opponent we can get out of teh bunker and charges on his weakness which would be Exploitative Poker.
As explained in my first reply, if you implement strategies with some resemblance to GTO frequencies (especially pre flop), you will probably be playing a more loose-aggressive and attacking form of poker than you thought was possible to win with.
Probably but GTO is irrelevant at micros.
Awww..i thought GTO is way of life :-)
People who say, "GTO is only useful against a really good opponent" just don't understand that the basis of game theory = Maximally exploitative poker.
It only becomes a Nash equilibrium or what they are thinking of as defensive GTO when the Villain is capable of pushing back to minimise the level of Hero's maximal exploitation.
If the Villain is instead a crappy player then game theory fundamentals will maximally crush that player.
Is GTO relevant to the micros????
Of course it is! Game theory teaches how to maximally exploit the crappy players at the micros.
By contrast, before the advent of solvers, what people have called exploitative poker have often been a set of false approaches now proven wrong by solvers. Collective, untested poker wisdom accumulated over the years is currently being analysed by maximally exploitative solvers for the first time, and being rewritten.
People who say, "GTO is only useful against a really good opponent" just don't understand that the basis of game theory = Maximally exploitative poker.
That sentence is false.
GTO and Game theory are distinctive. GTO would apply vs. another player that play GTO.
Have a good read
http://www.runitonce.com/nlhe/breaking-apart-misconceptions-about-gto/
A semantic argument is a waste of time and I won't bother with it. I prefer not to use the term GTO because it invokes wrongheaded belief about what it means.
I prefer to say I aim for maximal exploitation using game theory. It is up to my opponent to defend.
I urge you not to get hung up on semantic definitions but to try to appreciate the best way forward to improve as a poker player. Solver tools like Pio offer the opportunity to identify how to maximally exploit our opponents in HU pots. The Pio way is much better than the historical use of collective player experience which is often simply flat out wrong.
By the way, you seemed to really love Poker Snowie but you should keep in mind that Poker Snowie is not GTO.
Snowie doesn't use game theory to derive its strategy. It use neural networks. This has nothing to do with GTO.
No, I am not enamoured of Snowie for sound theoretical reasons. I am a user of Snowie because you can apply it to certain situations if you understand its limitations.
Actually Snowie does use game theory to derive its strategy. It uses neural networks to seek a minimax solution. Minimax minimises the maximal exploitation of both players. Minimax is the underlying strategy in solvers such as Pio.
However, theoretically, a Nash equilibrium theory only applies to HU pots. Currently there is no theoretical solution to 6max play only HU play and only HU pots once ranges are known that derive from a 6max start.
Snowie's "solution" does not apply to real world poker unless all players at a table play like Snowie.
This is an outdated slide. It is a relic from an earlier era. Trying to rote learn a "GTO strategy" is an outdated idea. The concept that is current is to maximally exploit our opponent based on our range and our perception of their range.
Before solvers it was wrongly thought by poker theorists that Hero could play his range in a set way, ignoring his opponent. Some called this GTO' as their best approximation of what they thought to be actual GTO if it was known. And that one should adopt this approach against unknowns to minimise an opponent's exploitation of our play. But this approach is wrong. There is no such defensive strategy except as defined by our opponent's range. If we don't know our opponent's range, we can't maximally exploit it. And GTO' can be exploited by an opponent who knew our faulty fixed approach.
We now understand that decisions on how much to bet and when to bet or check or raise cannot be made in a vacuum. They interact with the opponent's range. Using PIO, I can change a given equilibrium point from a Bet to a Check or to a raise, all on the same community cards, by varying our range and our opponent range. Sometimes the equilibrium point is to check 100%, sometimes to bet small with 100% of our range, sometimes to have mixed betting strategies with 1/3 at one betsize, 1/3 at a second betsize and 1/3 checking. It all depends on our range and our opponent's range.
The only points solved in 6max are when it is folded to the SB vs BB. BB as last to act against an earlier single open raiser is approximately solved. However, even that is not solved fully because the open raiser's range has to vary depending on table dynamics and then that critically affects BB's response.
Hey guys, I'm doing a new "Forum Crawl" series on Twitch and this thread was one of my favorites from today's stream. You can listen to my analysis of it by clicking the time-stamp of the link below. Respect to everyone ITT!
18.45 - 34.00 minute mark.
Watched it, really cool !
Nick,
I'll try to better explain what I meant. Solvers such as Pio allow us to define the population tendencies in our player pool. For example, maybe the pool only XR half as much as maximally exploitative and uses a more value heavy XR range on a certain flop texture. Solvers allow us as Hero to maximally exploit that population pool tendency and through study understand that exploitation better so as to apply it in our player pool.
Over the years there has accumulated a collective poker wisdom from collective empirical experience (lots of people think something seems to work) about how to play exploitatively. Solvers allow us to gain much more certainty about those spots by expressing that wisdom mathematically in many situations and see if the solver finds that that conventional poker wisdom is in fact the best way of exploiting that population tendency.
Using solvers in these exploitative spots allows Hero to have much more confidence about how to exploit the population tendency modelled. It replaces herd mentality (from collective wisdom which is often wrong because of herd biases such as confirmation bias) with mathematical game theory proof.
Maybe it is not for everyone but for those with a mathematical tendency IMO solvers are looking like they are essential to maximal exploitation of player pool tendencies. It is probably a deficiency in me but I have always found herd advice very confusing and fuzzy and easy to misapply (maybe because I like to put firm boundaries around concepts and how they relate to other concepts).
NB. In this post I didn't need to use the confusing term GTO once, yet I relied on maximal exploitation computer techniques completely.
Good pick, Nick! We got a little clash of ideologies in this thread (sorry to OP for derailing it), but I thought it was worth throwing in some GTO debate on a general basis (not pertaining to the QQ hand as such).
I agree very much with your approach to solvers and the best way to use them. On the other hand, I think Adam's statement that GTO is inapplicable to micro games is a wrong way to think about it. One can get away with dismissing a GTO (rather, a pseudo GTO) approach completely in soft games, but ignoring solvers and what can be learned from their solutions will hamper a player's development in the long run.
What I suggested was to recognise how much aggression we can get away with without making ourselves exploitable, and I think pre flop is a good place to start exploring that. I realise that Pio Edge is out of reach for most new players, but I do think they will benefit from looking at pre flop solver solutions. Because landing on the flop with good ranges makes post flop play so much easier! It also helps you to know what your ranges actually are, which is another reason to put some work into pre flop range construction.
I get the impression that you (Nick) don't care all that much about pre flop, and I do agree that post flop is where the money is really made. I don't suggest that new players start copying pre flop Nash ranges, but rather try to understand how and why they work. And I also think emulating pre flop Nash frequencies/ranges in a simplified way will do several good things for an ambitious new player:
I've done a lot of pre flop crunching/testing and continue to be amazed at how much better a Nash'ish 3B range performs post flop compared to "blocky" chart ranges (like the ones recommended to micro players by coaches like Alan Jackson). With Nash'ish ranges your bluff combos will flop all kinds of freak (in the eyes of our opponents) two pairs, trips, sets, and draws on many boards that miss the bluff part of a "blocky" static 3B ranges rather hard. Low paired boards come to mind.
Just having 3-4 more combos of strong hands post flop that comes from your bluff range spiking something freaky that it was not "supposed" to hit will have a strong impact on how aggressive/sticky you can play post flop on boards that your opponent will perceive as not being particularly good for your range.
+1
Similarly, post-flop it is amazing how much better mixed strats perform than blocky fixed strats.
Being able to have a diversity of combos (but correct range percentages) in any spot pre and post-flop makes hand reading for our opponent a nightmare and exposes the traditional hand reader assuming blocky ranges to outsized mistakes due to their overinterpretation.
sick thread xD
makes sense now, I agree for the most part. For the sake of relevance I think we could go even further with it (I won't use the word GTO!)
Assume we are modeling any street besides the river. The solver suggested MES to any locked villain strategy is going to be inexploitable, meaning unless villain wants to go back to the origin of his balance (pre-lock), he will not be able to increase his EV.
Since the solver MES by definition needs to be inexploitable, to me it's more like a "minimal exploit strategy" relative to what I can apply in practice. I can go way more exploitative than a solver MES in a large/anonymous player pool because the pool fails to adjust at any type of consistency or intensity that would cause me to limit myself to the solver MES.
You could simulate a fixed post-lock strategy by locking all future nodes for villain in the solver to resemble pool tendencies, but this is a huge pain in the ass. My point is basically that solver MES recommendations are still passive relative to what you can get away with in practice. For river sims, villain locks yield the most intense MES for hero, bc villain has no ability to recounter vs major imbalances on future streets. This is what forces hero to "behave" more in the pre-river models.
Probably stuff most guys know but i think it's important to make the distinction that solver MES is not "real" MES, there's just not a more accurate term because the wizards probably never played 500k hands lifetime. Some game theory terminology tends to lose relevance in practice.
I have sim'ed locking across all streets for sim'ed player types (Nit, loose passive, maniac, reg) but it is kind of like "whack-a-mole" as the solver keeps finding a future street way of re-exploiting until I finally get them all locked down. But I enjoy the process as I feel it is giving me a better appreciation of how ranges interact across streets with the decisions both passive and more aggro having exploitable consequences, sometimes incentivising more aggression other times significantly less.
BTW Nick, i never read your blog but i would be interested, could you post the link plz.
Thx.
Let me challenge a bit your assumptions about Solvers. Of course solvers are gonna give you mathematical sound answers. As quoted in JFK "Scientist could demonstrate that an elephant could hang by his tail, attached on a daisy, over a canyon". The problem i see is that you remove all the human aspects of the game relying only on solution from Solvers and that's precisely why i said "GTO don't apply to micros really". Of course in the practical term it apply, very much and it will give you great guidelines and answers, i never said the opposite. But when you talk about "collective wisdom" that's exactly why i think a pure exploitative approach will work better at the micros.
Have you ever ask yourself "why" the standard open is 3x in online micros game? The easy answers would be "collective wisdom" copy/paste theory re-chewed by players who are seeking magic formulas but don't want to think about the game really. But why 3x !? Christian Soto & Matt Berkey talked about a really great concept called "Pain Threshold" where you should seek what are the "Pain Threshold" of your opponents. And it's all based on the human aspect of the game, an aspect that will never be taken into account by solvers. EDIT Not until 2045 when AI will take care of itself as Ray Kurzweil predict it :)
Suppose you play at a 6-max online micros standard table than every time you open 3x you got at least 2 callers. Next time you open at 4.5x and suddenly you got only one caller. Next time you open at 5x and suddenly players start to fold, you found the "pain threshold" and can start to exploit it relentlessly until table adjust. Now your card doesn't even matter, solvers doesn't even matter. Those informations are really important and are infos often over looked by Cartesian thinkers. Don't get me wrong, i'm a math lover too. And i think that at some point it hurt my games on some aspects of it. EDIT And i don't think solvers will teach you that. And since players at micros adjust really badly it becomes way more profitable i would say to seek those "Pain Threshold" since opponents will derive so much from their initial strategy, facing those unorthodox play, that it will be very easy to read them and start to make exploitative plays vs. them.**
Collective wisdom is an extraordinary source of infos to deviate from the standard and start to explore new ways of thinking about the game. As Soto said, you'll be past by the game really soon if you don't try to find new ways of playing this game. At the end of the day, no sound poker strategy can dismiss game theory/math, it's well understood but there are aspects of the game that solvers will never take into account. At the micros you should seek for theses bits of human infos instead of relying purely on solvers because this is the pool where it will matter the most to establish an exploitative solution.
(Sorry for some grammatical errors as i am a french Canadian :) )
Sorry, I like to prove everything, Solvers are one input but humans are by nature irrational (though they tend to think themselves rational) so I test suggestions in the real world.
For example, I deliberately played tens of thousands of hands opening 2x from all positions, then opening 2.5x from all positions and opening 3x from all positions. I then filtered my DB for each position and compared which opening size was most profitable both in steal percent and overall profitability.
My opening sizes by position are based on that research. And the best sizings I found also vary by stake. I have done similar research for post-flop CBet sizings versus different player types with (surprising to me anyway) results. (If I were to play at a new site I would again vary my sizings on a smaller sample to test if the new to me site seemed to conform or not).
How do you outcompete regs if you follow the herd and merely do what other regs are reputed to do by collective wisdom? You don't. Your statement is contradictory: collective wisdom is old ways not new ways.
You outcompete by having an edge: by definition something you do that is different. This cannot come from collective wisdom as an edge and collective wisdom are mutually exclusive.
We should differentiate between the targets of collective "wisdom. There is collective wisdom about how to play against recreational players which for the most part is more reliable and then there is collective wisdom about how to play against regs which for the most part is a mixed bag of solid advice and plausible misinformation.
IMO, there are a lot more "secrets" and misinformation in the collective public "wisdom" about how to play against regs because inherent competition in the same player pool incentivises cliques to share "secrets" only with one another but spread misinformation more widely.
I contend that solvers (and a growing number of other tools) and disciplined experimental play followed by subsequent DB filters allow Hero to gain confidence in or to refute, in other words to distill collective "wisdom" from collective misinformation.
As a follow on, I believe that anyone offering advice should be called upon to provide an appropriate "proof" for that advice. Something that can be independently analysed and challenged for validity and generalisation.
This is good practice and a core principle of science:
Any theory should be falsifiable.
If you present something as a Truth (which is common when advice is offered, even if it's bordering on speculation), give your audience a way to prove you wrong.
Well no prizes for guessing part of my background is as a research scientist. I have a trained, heightened BS meter for "Truth" and a keen desire to uncover hidden assumptions that might allow the extraction of a grain of usable Truth.
That makes two of us. :-D
@iamindifferent
I think you misunderstood what i was saying.
"Collective wisdom is an extraordinary source of infos to deviate from the standard and start to explore new ways of thinking about the game. As Soto said, you'll be past by the game really soon if you don't try to find new ways of playing this game".
Collective wisdom tells us how the mass play, so we know how to exploit that particular standard way of playing. That is why it is an "extraordinary source of infos" it tells us how to deviate from it.
Well, in reality there is a lot of unfiltered data out there. The challenge is to categorise it into actionable +EV wisdom or not.
When i refer to "collective wisom" i'm talking about how the game is thought to the mass. And fortunately for studying/hard worker players, the mass want magical formulas and don't want to think. They most likely never ask "why", why is it a good board to C-Bet, why is it a good Turn to 2nd barrel. They play by mimicry, monkey see monkey do. By knowing how they see the game, you have that edge to create your own exploitative strategy.
A lot of regs play that way too!
Be the first to add a comment