I'm not sure if I follow what you're asking but we should be defending on the flop more vs cbets since villain should have a 2:1 bluff:value ratio with a larger betsize.

On the turn the ratio gets closer to 1:1.

Why does his bluff ratio have to be larger on flop? I never fully grasped this. Doesnt that just mean we can start raising a lot on flop?

But what I mean is on the river we defend a % in relation to our odss to call in equilibrium. With a pot sized bet, at equilibrium, we defend 33% on the river. What I mean is how do we figure out how much to defend on the flop?.

Lets say our opponent pots the flop, why is it that on the river we call 33% at equilibrium, but we don't on the flop? Or do we?

The dryer (more dry, I dont know) the board is, the more air villain has, the more he will bet his air, therefore you should bluff raise or float more. The draw-heavier the board, the less he will bet pure air,(because you can continue with more hands) but more draws, which have decent equity, so your overall equity with your single pair, high card hands decrease, therefore you should defend less. Monotone boards are great to bluffraise tough with or without blockers.

You also dont need to "defend" against something (by the way what is to defend, our strategy, our ranges our ego ?) unless you got a solid reason to think you are being exploited.

I am asking from a GTO standpoint. hether you like GT or not its what I want to know. So my opponents real strategy does not matter to me. Only his strategy at equilibrium (or an approximation).

So if someone with a GT background could add to this that would be appreciated.

Theoretically you should defend the Flop at a frequency that deters Villain from being able to wrecklessly bluff (keeping his weakest hands indifferent between checking and betting)
Since even very weak hands usually have some equity on the flop, villain would still likely be making too much money with these hands if you only defended the bare minimum on the flop. He still has equity and by just calling you give him the opportunity to realize that EQ.
-> We should be defending slightly more that 1-a on the flop to make up for that

Having said this I that I think our defense frequency on the flop should be a function of the profitability of our Range.
Often it will simply be impossible to defend certain flops at a sufficient frequency since our range misses the Flop very often / or Villains Range hits very hard. We have to conceit and Villain can be betting a ton on these flops.
However there will also be flops that favour our range and then we should not shy away from defending significantly more than 1-a.
Bottom Line: Defend every hand on the flop that you can profitably continue with

I mean I agree with you dozzer, but defend every hand you profitably can has nothing to do with GT. Does this mean we simply have no clue?

Also lets say the flop hits our opponent well and we need to XF a lot. There should still be an equilibrium in which we maximize our minimum EV (our minimum EV on this type of flop will just be lower than on a flop that favors us more).

You guys seem a bit paranoid about being exploited like "OMG he c-bets 85% percent on average if have to call with Q high or I get run over".

Some people dont realize that a fold is often the best and easiest way to exploit betting range.

Villain can have 2:1 bluffs otf because on every street villain drops some bluffs and by the river his range just becomes more value. You could do some hand examples to see how that works.

If pot is $12 and villain bets $8.50 you defend around 55-58% somewhere in there.

If villain has a polarized range then he will have more weak hands to bet flop with but bluffs often have equity too and it is correct to bluff a lot otf so there is nothing really to exploit. You should raise a fair bit to cb yes but just because villain may have say KQ on 952 doesn't mean he will b/f. If villain is decent they will not simply fold because they don't have a strong hand.

Villain can have 2:1 bluffs otf because on every street villain drops
some bluffs and by the river his range just becomes more value. You
could do some hand examples to see how that works.

that's why. and the composition of both ranges on a particular flop will dictate exactly the ratio of bluffs:value he can use to hold that general indifference.

If pot is $12 and villain bets $8.50 you defend around 55-58%
somewhere in there.

there is no rigid formula for this OTF. 1-a goes out the window when hero's range loses more by trying to defend 1-a than by overfolding. in those cases villain uses higher the c-bet fqcys -- but it's not exploitative, it's just the new equilibrium for that texture.

there's no rigid formula, just like OTF. but 1:1 i think is usally an ok estimate

if you want to know more about bluff:value ratios I made a video about them not too long ago: http://www.runitonce.com/pro-training/videos/bluff-value-ratios/

Thanks a lot guys!