Checking back strong hands IP to protect your range?
Posted by HodorIsKing
Posted by
HodorIsKing
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Low Stakes
Checking back strong hands IP to protect your range?
I am currently trying to figure out how often I should be checking with some top of range hands to protect my checking range. This includes hands such as top set on dry flops, flopped trips, flopped flushes and flopped FHs. Usually when I check as the IP player, it's with hands that either don't want to get check/raised, can't get multiple streets of value, have SD value and don't need to bet (or function better as bluffcatchers vs probes), or give-ups that have no equity on flops that are good for OOP's range. What are people's thoughts on such spots? Is having a capped checking range something to be worried about at the microstakes?
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learn about it and study it but dont do any of it in practice because your protecting yourself from nothing just go to value town big boy
all those spots you mentioned just incorporate smaller bets which accomplish the same thing, if you check you are missing too much value
I wouldn’t worry much about capping my range at the micros and being exploited. There is still good value in checking strong hands on boards where the villain can’t have much due to card removal.
What's the "real" disadvantage of a capped range? Think about it. ;-)
Why are you considering this at microstakes? Are you playing with the same regs over and over that this really becomes a thing? Do regs have a super clear view on how you play certain hands?
Checking back a strong range happens quite often in spots when your opponent is using overbets ott.
Do you think your opponents are putting so much pressure on your „capped“ range?
so you wanna check to protect your range
protect your range from what?
if you dont have a clear answer for that then you dont need to protect your range and your seeing ghosts and end protecting against nothing and losing value
Personally I think stuff like protecting our range etc. just isnt needed in a microstakes pool where so many people, even regulars, stay relatively oblivious to what you are doing.
The 3-betting / 4-betting game, that happens a bit at the microstakes. So there, I sometimes get in a 4-bet bluff to not have a 2% 4-betting range only consisting of KK+, AKs+
One thing I also noticed is that you "exploit" that 3-betting / 4-betting game a bit by not 4-betting shoving, but just make it a bit more than 2x. So I raise to 30c pre flop, they raise to 90c. and I make it 2 euro. They can now call or shove with worse (or win if I am bluffing) but if they shove with worse.. That's great. Especially on a level where people start to overthink stuff easily. I notice it about myself so others must have this too. The feeling that I have been 3-betting so much so now this guys most be 4-betting light.
If I just 4-bet shove instead of making it 2euro then I only get called with their best hands and they wont make a mistake. But even there I am probably just like everybody else a complete nit when it comes to 4-betting light. Axs might become a 4-bet, broadways.. And that's it.
Not sure if anything else happens at the microstakes where we already need to think about the things 200nl+ regs need to think about (or 100nl regs? I am not sure where that starts.)
As a side note. I have been playing like a complete nit last week to see if I could do it and it amazes me how people call me with A high, 3rth pair etc just because they want to see if I am not bluffing. And this is also done by regulars. I can be fishy like that myself while I don't need the small EV to win and move up to 20nl.
I think the lesson I am learning is between small EV and big EV. From my limited understanding, a bluff catch for example, sure can be profitable.. but only small. Same goes for a lot of the "fancy"/advanced stuff and playing a wider range of hands (24+vpip). If your player pool is so that you need to small EV lines to be a winning player you need to go after those. But the microstakes pool is so that people stack off versus your KK with A4s pre flop.. Or call of 3 large bets with 3rd pair. So we don't need to small EV stuff. It's just ego.
"protect your range from what?"
That is the point. I already asked for the disadvantage of a "capped range". But nobody replied. Seemingly everybody takes it as granted that ranges need "protection". Which is not true.
The discussion about "how to protect our range" is entirely misleading when we do not exactly define what we wanna achieve.
So again, might anybody try to explain his thoughts about range protection?
BigFiszh Do you mean that most at the microstakes are not thinking correctly about ranges in general? (so what do they call with for value, raise for value, as a bluf..?)
No, I'm not talking about stakes - or specifically microstakes. "Range protection" is purely not existent. Every combo is played on it's own EV. There might be a situation where combos are essentially better checked than bet - and it might seem as it would be to protect the rest, but that is just our human interpretation, even though at the end it comes out by the same.
But again - and aside from that: ignoring the stakes, who can explain what exactly we wanna "protect" our range against?
I am not sure BigFiszh
What I do get is that you might not want to bet every time you have it and every time check
It when you don’t. “It” being a very strong hand. Check calling I sometimes do with a not so strong hand and perhaps you want to protect your range with that.
If you think about the other person range is might not matter much if you are not playing some huge meta game. He is not going to continue with a small hand playing a big pot. He is not going to bluff you that much. So in the end, I don’t see a good reason to do it. But I am not very familiar with the concept around range protection. It seems like something that shouldn’t matter that much versus most players.
Maybe it’s something I do a bit with not just 4betting with the nuts?
think we are arguing semantics here
not betting a hand because it cant get three streets of value is not protecting range to me
protecting range applies when you are facing a very aggressive opponent who puts the max pressure on your weak ranges with large/overbets at a high frequency - then you must protect it with some stronger than normal hands
when the pool is not putting any pressure on your weak ranges and do not make large/overbets at any frequency and fail to even value bet at a normal frequency aka playing weak passive, you don't need to protect from anything in practice
I still disagree. Or I think most have a wrong understanding of "range protection".
So, let's assume, my xb-range is weak. And Villain knows it. He makes an overbet. I got to defend X%. What keeps me from calling bottom pair? Even A-high? Nothing? Cool. So there's no need to "protect". The only thing I lose by not "protecting" my range is a potential raising- (and bluff-)range. But that is not "protection" in the original idea, that is maximizing EV of the strong hands. That is what I meant. At a certain point, xb a strong hand might get higher EV then betting - because we get the chance to profit from a potential overbet. But that does not "protect" our weak hands.
Second "disadvantage" is that Villain might valuebet lighter. Nobody mentioned that so far. If I start calling with bottom pair or even A-high, Villain can bet hands for value that he otherwise wouldn't even think about (as we call way lighter than "normal". But a) HERE's the specific of the micros, you will NEVER find anybody doing that and b) we are not looking at EV's for specific situations in isolation, but overall. If Villain starts valuebetting lightly, he still has to have a lot of those hands in his range, which means, he has to defend a LOT against the hands that we did NOT check-back on the previous streets.
In other words, as long as we earn more money by betting our strong hands on the previos street, we do not care about "range protection". Once it breaks and our strong hands earn more money by checking, because we "grab" the light value bets / bluffs / overbets / ... from Villain after checking, we check.
Summarized, we do not check to "protect" anything, rather we are streaming in the slip of the weak hands, like an alligator keeping the head under water. The alligator does not protect the water. :D Maybe that helps.
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