Alright so I was playing 400NL - 2000NL up to BF but have been out of the game since. I was fundamentally aware of the idea of calling 1-A and how that influenced what hands were value bets and how the number of vbets you had plus the number of hands with equity you had influenced your number of bluff combos but I never bothered to implement it properly because it seemed hard to work out the intricacies and I was rolling in money anyway.

So, I have a bunch of questions that I had then and was somewhere between 95% sure on and completely lost as far as even starting to answer them and I'd love it if someone took them all on! :). I understand this is going to be a daunting list though. Honestly it is difficult for me to even work out where to start, I guess I'll start with some easy ones.

1) Say I want to start by learning how ranges play on some basic boards, which five boards would you recommend I load up in CREV to give me a basic starting point?

2) (a) Am I correct that if I expect to have 10 3-barreling value combos and I'm potting every street I want 10 bluff combos on the river, and then I can essentially count those as value combos for my turn range so if I'm potting turn I want 20 bluff combos + those 10 follow-through combos + those 10 river value combos, which means by the same logic I want another 40 bluff combos on the flop so with three pot bets and 10 3-barrel value combos I want 70 bluff combos? If I go for half-pot bets the same math would give me ~24 bluff combos for 10 value combos.

(b) Practically speaking what are some easy heuristics to let me adjust this theoretical model to account for hands which only vbet twice and hands which are semibluffs rather than pure air? As a suggestion if I have 10 one-street value combos for 1/2p could I just add another 5 bluff combos to that street while ignoring the multiplicative nature of multi-barrel value combos on bluff combos and then have those value combos in my c/c range the rest of the time? For semibluffs does it work to just assume that villain's calling range has hands with similar equity against my value hands to what my semibluffs have against his bluffcatching hands such that their equities more-or-less symmetrically cancel out?

3) (a) When calling is it always exploitative to cull your calling range on the flop or turn to lower the number of two or three-street values hands villain can have? For example say my range is so wide on a board that calling 1-A against 1/2psbs would leave my opponent with enough two or three-street value hands to bet 100% of his range, what happens here? Do I fold flop more often, or does villain bet smaller, or do I completely abandon c/c as a line and fold almost always and otherwise play with leads or raises, or something else? Sorry if this question isn't focused very well.

(b) When calling flop is there an easy way to decide what hands I prefer? Like when I'm choosing my 60/100 calling combos and have to decide between second pairs and ace-highs or between ace-highs and gutshots are there any non-obvious factors which influence my decision?

Obvious ones to me are blockers and equity vs one-street/two-street/three-street value hands. I don't know if that's all there is though and I don't know how to value them really, I guess I have to change my priorities depending on how often I think the villain is 1/2/3 streets on this board.

4) (a) Say I'm immediately polarized on the flop so all my value combos are three-street. If I adjust bluff frequency according to the math in 2a I will have checking ranges on the turn and river which are never calling a bet. Is this bad? Is there any reason I need my checking ranges to call at 1-A when I am constructing a betting range?

(b) If (a) is the correct way to play does it follow that I also don't need to call at 1-A against raises with my barreling range? To me this seems like a spot where if I correctly identified which hands were valuebets villain should not be able to exploit me with raises in a balanced way, so if we're both playing balanced his raises are meant to be profitable and the second he raises more than his valuehands can support I adjust by calling and he is losing a ton of money.

5) Am I actually expected to flop sets as much as Sauce123 does or is he running hot as balls in his videos? Also is there cognitive bias at play here where I'm only noticing the ways in which he obvious runs hot and not ways in which he obviously runs bad? This is a throwaway question I do not actually expect you to answer it seriously but if you want to go for it please do.

1,000 thanks to anyone who made it through all this.