I was using PIO to sim various A-high boards as 3bettor OOP and tried to find optimal sizes on them. To polarize our range we want to use a mix of large bets and small bets on most of the high card run-outs. On most A-high boards OOP has 0 checks, but as we want to bet larger in some of them, we also want to have some checks on most of them (unless we crush the board too hard and have 70%+ equity share on the flop). So I picked two good sizings and ran the sim.

These two boards are technically the same but OOP has massively different strategies between them. I'm interested discuss with fellow RIO members and find out what is the theory behind the two results I got:

Hand 1

AK2r

SB 3bet 100bb deep vs BTN defend - 100% pot bet - 25% pot bet - Check

Frequencies I got: 25 / 33 / 42

OOP vs IP equity share: 127 / 73

Hand 2

AQ2r

SB 3bet 100bb deep vs BTN defend - 100% pot bet - 25% pot bet - Check

Frequencies I got: 18 / 72 / 10

OOP vs IP equity share: 128 / 72

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So 25% pot bet and 100% pot bet being the only options, GTO-solution wants to check 42% on AK2r instead of 10% on AQ2r. Instead of checking a-lot we bet high frequency 25% bet on AQ2r, which makes much more sense in a traditional way of thinking the spot. Why is this? We have the exact same amount of nuts on both boards and the equities are really close with each other. The only difference is that IP defends a little bit more Kxs vs Qxs vs the 3bet.