Yeah I just 3b this standard, maybe I should do it less wide when deep. I normally would cbet 1/3 but chose 1/2 because I was this deep.

So you think it's ok to just fold all bluffcatchers against aggression in spots like this? I think I agree. I don't think he should raise anything on that flop tbh, this probably means he is rarely bluffing.

You said that he shouldn't be raising anything otf. I agree with you in 100bb situation, however I believe deep it changes. And now he need to start raising to put his stacks in with strong hands (Q8s,88,QQ...) and find some reasonable bluffs.
That being said, I like your bluffcatch in perfect agressive world. In real life it is different and super ugly.

excellent post as usual

''pre-flop I think I would mainly be calling this hand, because it isn't suited and so doesn't make the nuts as often as it's suited variant, and we are playing 200 bb's deep so when we hit top pair it becomes extremely dicey to stack off with. where as if we were to have 100 bigs then 3 betting is fine and we can stack off with top pair fairly happier at a much lower spr.''
Hmm that is true but we are still ahead of his calling range preflop. Is it really wrong to charge his dominated hands like AJ, Axs, KQ, QTs+ for a chance to outflop us? I see where you're coming from but your argument is also true for AKo and even big pairs, they don't make the nuts that often either and it doesn't seem right to just call these and let him see a cheap flop with whatever junk he can be stealing the blinds with.

''on the flop I quite like x calling because we will have a bunch of AK and hands such as JJ/TT will do extremely poorly once we get raised and then the villains barrels ott. I think in any case you should be mixing, betting sometimes with this hand and checking others. on a rainbow board I would be much more inclined to bet this hand at a higher frequency.''
What if we bet 1/3 pot with our whole range, are there any disadvantages?
I didn't really think it through at the moment and if I bet bigger like I did then I agree that I need some checks and AQ is a good hand to check call 3 times.

No comments on the rest of your post, I agree with/understand it all. Thanks.

Live_your_dreams85 thanks mate :)

Resolve okay yeah i agree that in terms of EV/equity vs villains opening range that AQo is doing pretty well here, and if the pot were to end pre-flop then we should always raise because our hand is ahead of both villains opening range as well as calling range (although not as far ahead of calling range as you would think.) but we also have to take in to consideration the fact that we are at a positional disadvantage, which automatically increases the EV in 3 bet pots for IP with the exact same ranges if he were to be the pre-flop caller from, for example, sb vs the bb when he is OOP.

and then you now have to consider how our hand plays across multiple streets and the nut making potential it has, which at 200 bb's+ it plays pretty poorly. i mean, even if you make trips at 200 bigs there is somewhat of a decent chance that once you get all of the money in he will have a boat. and on KJT boards it's not exactly very disguised when we pile in a ton of money that we can have the nut straight as well as all of the sets. then, as i said, when we make top pair villain knows we have all AK combos as well as some AQ so won't be calling down with AJ vs triple barrels on, say, AT522.

however, let's say you have a hand like 65s, now villain knows that we have AK/AQ in our range, so we can start to hammer on A high boards and on big broadway boards where it is extremely difficult for us to have complete air hands to barrel with, as most 3 betting ranges are too big card heavy. and then on low boards such as 66x, 653ss, 987 etc where it smashes IP calling ranges (especially 3 to a straight, low boards) we have some nutted hands and not just AKo,AQo,KQs etc.

so at 100 bigs we want to have a more linear 3 betting range that is mainly big cards and big pairs with large suited connectors and occasionally low suited Ax/low suited connectors. now at 200 bigs we want to protect our range on more board textures. for example, lets say that villain KNOWS we never flat AK/AQ and the flop comes QJT or KJT, now how are you going to defend vs OB, OB, then 5x pot jams the river how exactly do you defend your range here?? okay, you will have the low ends of the straight and some 2 pairs but even these hands are potentially only bluff-catchers vs how villain is supposed to play. which is terrible to bluff catch 3 streets at 200 bigs effective in a srp. if he has K9 on QJT he is free-rolling because he knows that you never have AK, so the worse case scenario for him on clean run outs is that you two chop. now lets say you have 10% of your AK combos in your flatting range, he gets to the river with K9 and now suddenly 5x pot jamming is not so appealing, because you have to call only a very small % of your range, and because of this maybe you are only calling K9 and your small % of AK. so now jamming K9 becomes -EV when called because it as at best chopping and loses 100% of the pot when called by AK. so because you have mixed this hand in to a flatting range sometimes, you have given him a large river dilemma, and he will probably make mistakes with his river sizings and put too many weaker value hands/not enough bluffs in smaller sizing range, and perhaps end up over-bluffing for the large sizing. so you just exploit him by raising K9 to the smaller sizing and call a little more vs the jam than optimal.

it's the same kinda thing in 3 bet pots, he knows your ranges because you are probably not really randomizing and you are playing the exact same 3 betting range as you would at 100 bigs. so on certain board textures-on Axx for example, he can over-fold or just raise and then barrel off on turns/rivers because he KNOWS that you just have top pair and that you are probably not going to be calling down 3 streets here. and if you do he can just take note and then under-bluff in future situations in very deep pots, because this hand will probably stick in your mind of the time he raised bottom pairs and bet turn/jammed river to try to get you to fold AK on Axxxx. so you are more likely to call him down again in the future.

so yeah, if you wanna 3 bet AQo i would think you are just gonna cause yourself more problems than if you just flat, and if you were an optimal bot you might increase the EV of this hand very slightly by 3 betting, but as we are both humans then probably we are going to make much costlier and larger mistakes with this hand when the pots get really large, so that will decrease the EV of the 3 bet and thus makes calling now substantially higher EV.

Hmm that is true but we are still ahead of his calling range preflop.
Is it really wrong to charge his dominated hands like AJ, Axs, KQ, QTs

AJo should fold pre-flop always, Axs should mix between 4 bet/call/fold and should only really be calling to make flushes/straights/2 pairs and not to make top pair and call 3 streets with. KQo should fold, and again KQs should proceed extremely cautiously at 200 bigs when making top pair and should only really be looking to pile in money with 2 pair+. QTs should probably fold, and is again similar to KQs in the fact it is not trying to call the 3 bet to hit top pair and then call down 3 streets. so thats the problem, when we get action over mutliple streets with AQo we are just getting lots of money in very bad.

we are ahead of folding range, but by 3 betting and getting him to fold A9o we potentially miss out on a couple of streets of value when we dominate his top pairs. the exact same is the case when he has QJo/QTo and makes top pair on the Q. if we 3 bet pre we get him to fold these hands and not dominate them post-flop.

What if we bet 1/3 pot with our whole range, are there any
disadvantages?

yeah the disadvantages are that IP will probably fold like 10-20% of his range, will raise a ton and then apply pressure on later streets, and will have position on every single street vs a range that is very weak and not able to withstand pressure on certain board run outs. also, we allow villain to float pocket pairs that can make the nuts on later streets and suck out on our top pairs/overpairs. and still get a lot of value because the spr is still pretty large for a 3 bet pot on the turn. for example, JJ is a marginal flop continue vs a pot sized bet, but vs a 1/3p he can float or raise, and when he makes his J on the turn he can pile in money, and on certain turns like a T/9 or club he can turn his hand in to a bluff and get us to fold AQ/KK/AA etc.

this post got too long but i've been doing non poker stuff today so my brain had lots of poker analysis to get out! haha :P

agreed. but i don't really think AQ is that high in our range really. apart from flush draws that have rivered a pair this would be our weakest 1 pair hand that we would get to the river with on this line. i think weaker Qx mixes more x calls on the flop or doesn't 3 bet very often pre-flop, or would fold vs the turn bet.

you could argue that AQ makes a better call down than AA/KK because it blocks QQ but i don't think it does because, at least from my experience, people don't raise top set on the flop here because they generate far too many flop folds.

and of course we have sets and 1 combo of straights in our range too.

this is only right if we consider not cbetting KQ/QJ/QT and even then AQ overall from all the hands is still pretty high in our range. but yeah that doesnt still mean we should call just for that reason.

yeah I mean I struggle to think of even one hand that villain would be bluffing with?? I guess Linus would manage to find bluffs here, perhaps by raising the flop with a hand like 87s, so that he can have bluffs on a run out such as this one. but unless you are a high stakes sicko and you are realising that you have to bluff raise a hand on the flop that makes an okay call, then you are going to end up with 0 bluffs on certain run outs because people do not bluff flush draws, and neither should they because they make for terrible bluffs (although I wouldn't hate bluffing JTcc here fwiw.) however JTcc shows down for some EV so even bluffing that hand on the river is questionable and goes against the average poker players intuition, to bluff a flush draw that just rivered a pair.

Bluffs should be comprised of hands that are around 0EV (bottom of
calling range is beginning of bluff-raising range). In cases where
opponents are 200bb effective it is likely that hands like A8, A2 and
K8 are going to be turned into bluff-raises as they will not stand 3
streets of calling at this stack depth.

yeah of course in theory this is true but you have to hope that villain realises on the flop that he will have to bluff raise hands that most players will intuitively pure call with. such as bottom/2nd pair like you said. because do they really want to start piling in money when villain can just station him for 3 streets with a hand like AQ?? and then also OOP has all 3 QQ combos so starting a large 200 bb bluff in to a very strong range, where many players don't even fold AA/KK here to flop raise/barrel off seems to be a stretch (although of course they should at some frequency, in theory.)

I mean if I got stationed here by AQ I wouldn't see the point in having a bluff raising frequency here on the flop with paired hands because clearly I 1-either got unlucky and he randomized a call down with this combo or 2-he just felt he was too high in his range with a hand that should be only called down at a small frequency (I'd imagine.) and then my flop/turn/river plays are almost all certainly -EV.

as for your selection of hands, K8s should be a pure fold pre co vs the bb 3 bet, A2s should also be mixed between 4 bet/call/fold and I doubt any of the 3 options have an EV of much greater than 0. and even A8s is a marginal pre-flop defend here, because you are facing a very strong 3 betting range (at least in theory.) the positive is that we can apply a lot of pressure post flop when so deep, but again, this is only beneficial if OOP is willing to fold some big hands in spots where we are repping stronger hands than overpairs. so i'd prefer to defend these hands either vs fish who will pile in too much money when we make trips or a flush, or vs weaker regs who fold too much post-flop.

I just ran a sim, and although the ranges are nowhere near optimal in
the sim, neither are the sizes used by OP, so they will work. As I
stated earlier I have not done much work at 200bb... In the sim it
looks like the bluff-raise 3 barrel hands should be K6s, A5s, A3s, and
KQs (KQs being merged). As I thought it helps to have A and K blockers
but it seems that any pair on this board has too much value as a call
to be raised as a bluff (which is a little surprising).

yeah that's the problem, poker players at the moment seem to adhere to the rule that you do not bluff rivers with busted flush draws, so you can pretty much eliminate those bluff jams on the river from any regs ranges. and again, from my experience, KQ is much more likely to be a call down vs a triple barrel than it is to be a flop bluff raise and then a barrel off. so I think from that sim we can realise that regs are playing absolutely nothing like solvers and we can fold comfortably on the river.

the Ax/Kx blockers are pretty irrelevant. I mean he is not calling a flop raise/turn barrel with pocket Jacks. so pretty much all of villains range by the river contains either an A or a K-AA/KK/AQ and perhaps KQ. and then you actually completely unblock all of OOP's nut hands when you hold the Ax/Kx because now he has less combos of AA/KK etc and a slightly higher % of sets/straight.

and when you have the Ac/Kc then you are blocking hands that are gonna pure fold the river-such as KQcc (at least i'm guessing is mainly folding) and then A high FD's. so having the Ax/Kx is probably slightly worse than it is good, and I would much rather have KQ or QT.

it seems that any pair on this board has too much value as a call to
be raised as a bluff (which is a little surprising).

yeah that makes sense, I mean OOP has a bunch of AK combos as well as gut-shots etc so raising the flop with 2nd pair when we are ahead of a bunch of his range and have position doesn't seem great. we also just narrow his flop range to hands that beat us once we raise, and kind of negate our positional advantage because the spr is now much lower than it would be had we just called vs the c bet.

also K6s should never be in the pre-flop range of the co player unless he is a fish. A5s/A3s should also be mixed as 4 bet/calls so I think your pre-flop ranges may have led to slightly inaccurate results.

I have a 512gb server atm so I will throw a 200bb COvsBB solve in
there soon. My guess is K8s is a pure call because the 3bet size is
small and our defending range should be wider IP than that of 100bb
because we get to use the position and stack depth to our advantage.
At 100bb K9s is 0EV COvsBB with this size 3bet. Suited Aces and Kings
are going to be the hands that benefit the most from IP 3bets so I
would imagine that our calling range should contain more than just
K8s.

I use Snowie so if you wanna see the calling ranges then just put the 3 bet sizing and the stack size in to that and check out the results. we talked about how AQo wasn't a 3 bet at these stack depths, so why exactly would IP start defending even wider when OOP has an even tighter range than before?? if you start calling all these crappy K8s etc vs a 3 bet from a tight range then you are just gonna end up making a top pair that is dominated by both AK/KQ, or some crappy second pair that is probably never going to show down for any EV at all (as OOP will play QQ/JJ/TT etc very passively on many board textures.)

I think you are over-estimating the power of suitedness at 200 bigs. you don't make a flush very often, and when you do this will not make up for the EV loss you had when you flopped top pair with K8 on Kxx and called multiple barrels. also, OOP can make very large bets post-flop and then you don't even get to utilise your position nor realise your equity with your flush draw.

likewise with those crappy Axs you just end up making weak top pair which, again, shows down for low EV and when you start calling multiple barrels you again are facing a range built heavily around better Ax.

from my experience these hands don't really play any better at 200 bb's than they do at 100 bb's, except from now we can 4 bet a little more aggressively with some of these hands and trick our opponents on certain board textures (for example we get to 4 bet 65s sometimes at 200 bigs eff because we are very unlikely to get jammed on.)

This is absolutely incorrect. Actually these are the most relevant
blockers. And that was shown to be true in the solve.

no it wasn't because they were good blockers, it was because we ran out of bluffs so we had to bluff jam some hands that would show down for pretty much 0EV. otherwise villain can just exploitably fold everything but a set. because, as you said, it doesn't like raising flopped pairs on the flop with the intention of bluffing them on later streets. so we get to the river with very few bluffs, so it makes sense to bluff jam with fairly poor blockers because we just do not have any other hands to choose from.

it doesn't make sense that Ax/Kx of clubs would make for good blockers because our river jam is intending to fold out AA or KK, at least at some decent kind of frequency.

Yes, you are right on the nail here and now contradicting your
previous statement that "the Ax/Kx blockers are pretty irrelevant." A
lot of his value range does contain an Ace or a King.

I am not contradicting myself?? because OOP has 3 bet pre, c bet the flop and called vs a raise and then called vs a turn double barrel. so it is reasonable to assume that pretty much all of villains range is at least top pair top kicker or Ax flush draw. so when we have the Ac it's not as if we block OOP value range, because he isn't calling any worse hands ott than AQ so we just block more river folding hands than we do when we have a hand such as QT (which blocks QQ and unblocks KK/AA folds.)

What straights does he have here? And yes, he does have slightly
higher percentage of QQ or 88 in his range compared to the rest of his
range but QQ and 88 make up such a small portion of his range.

one combo of T9cc. they don't make up a small portion of OOP's range when ranges have already condensed so much starting from pre-flop and continuing through to the flop/turn/river because of the action sequences.

let's say for simplicity he has the 6 combos of sets, then he has the 6 combos of AA and 6 combos of KK. then 1 combo of T9cc. and i'm guessing that AQo is only 3 bet sometimes so maybe he has half of the 12 AQ combos so another 6 combos of that. and then the off KQcc and then some hands that are always folding to the river jam like A5cc.

so he has 7 nut combos (sets+1 straight), 12 overpair combos, 6 AQ combos and then maybe another 2 Qxcc combos. so of his realistic river call downs almost 1/4 of his range is the nuts. then, if IP is somehow balanced here, he can just mix the rest of these hands and call them at some frequency. because they all probably have a similar EV to call down (almost 0 probably.)

so if this is OOP's potential river calling range then having the Ax/Kx is not very good, and isn't a good blocker it's just a hand that is 0EV to x down and IP needs to find some bluffs so has to sometimes jam with a fairly poor bluffing combo.

I have to disagree until sims can be produced that reproduce this. At
deeper stack depths our range should start becoming wider In-Position
as we get to use our position to apply leverage which leads to the
rest of our range being able to realize more equity. There are many
videos where you hear good players on RIO say "we aren't deep enough
here to call profitably" or "if we were a little deeper we could
call". The reason they use that language is described at the beginning
of this paragraph.

it shouldn't become wider if OOP is significantly tightening up his 3 betting range. it doesn't make sense to start calling K6s when OOP is only 3 betting AKo+,JJ+ and then some suited Ax. because then we just end up with a very weak range post-flop that has to over-bluff in many scenarios because OOP's range is so much stronger and we are trying to move them off of overpair's, which is never particularly exciting to attempt to do.

I think you are very much over-estimating the value of the suitedness of these hands, because unless these hands make a flush, they very rarely show down for any significant portion of the pot and do not play well as barrels (like a hand like 54s would on certain board textures.)

I've played a ton of very deep stacked poker at 500z, and I doubt that weakish Axs/Kxs are making much more money than if I had just folded them to the 3 bet. they are much better as 4 bet bluffs, and then widen your calling range with some lower suited connectors or some lower pocket pairs that you couldn't call at only 100 bigs (for example 22-44 btn vs the blinds.) every half decent player is able to recognise that you will have A TON of flushes on 3 to a flush board textures, so even if you hit your flush you are pretty unlikely to stack him. it's much better to fight fire with fire and if he has a very strong 3 betting range then you have a very strong flatting range. then you can apply a ton of pressure when required, but you have a strong range in which to do it with and not just your entire button opening range that you decided to flat because you have position and you are deep.

David Alford we are having a poker discussion you cannot whip out your equations and sims mid-game and look up the line you are supposed to take. you actually have to do some thinking for yourself and what I said in my last comment was with both sims and logic from playing applied. where as you just seem to be saying PIO says x or y so I will follow what it says without actually working out why it says that.

for example you said that Ax/Kx blockers are good to bluff with because PIO uses these combos to bluff with but you didn't actually debunk my points about why they aren't particularly good blockers?? and that it is merely because we run out of bluffs on this run out so just have to bluff with hands that aren't particularly great hands to bluff with.

but yeah I agree this has been a good conversation and I have enjoyed the back and forth with you :)

David Alford you seem to be the one taking it personally if you think that by me saying that you have to do some thinking for yourself means that you are unsubscribing from the thread and I can no longer comment on your posts lol.

BTW, you have to assume one player or the other is a fish as the 3bet
size is sub-optimal. Either OP is not a strong reg and doesn't know
what stronger strategies look like or OP is targeting the CO being a
fish with his small size 3bet. Either way, one-way or the other CO
should be playing K6s even if it does not show up in equilibrium.

you insulted the OP and basically called him a weak reg, but when you are even slightly questioned you get butt-hurt and unsubscribe from the thread?? very mature. you should learn something from OP who simply posted a funny meme in response and laughed off the 'insult.'

anyways good luck to you and no hard feelings :)

yeah man agreed. think it helps those who are posting as well as whoever is reading through the comments as well, and of course the OP gets lots of opinions which i'm sure he is happy about :)

hahah rekt. yeah don't worry about what he said the EV difference between various 3 betting sizes will be marginal at best and shouldn't make any difference to your win rate. if you wanna 3 bet larger at 200 bigs you can but then you have to 3 bet an even tighter range. for example if you want to you could 3 bet 6x vs the original raiser but this will leave you with either an extremely tight range that does poorly on a number of board textures. or it will leave you very vulnerable to 4 bets as you are investing too many bb's with too weak of a range.

tbh I don't really change my 3 bet sizing when we get deeper I don't really think it makes any difference really. you cannot negate the positional disadvantage regardless of your pre-flop sizing so it doesn't matter a whole lot imo. and when you start to 3 bet huge you leak EV from other parts of your ranges-for example hands that used to 3 bet for 4.5x can no longer 3 bet for 6x and now you have to fold them or call and play OOP with rake, and now your range is much tighter and more face up on a number of board textures. so I would rather have a more protected and balanced range, and not be so susceptible to 4 bets or cold 4 bets and play, for the most part, the same range that I would do at 100 bb's.

XD This post made me laugh for about 3 minutes. Sorry mate I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt hoping that you were targeting a fish. What I meant by "fish" is "weaker than the pool". Not as if you are making massive mistakes everywhere. Term might have not been the greatest :)

The size of 3-bet is a few Big Blinds smaller than optimal at 100bb which sacrifices EV in a few places. One of the places is playing at a deeper SPR in 3bet pots OOP. When the SPR is larger the IP player will gain EV if they utilize bet sizes correctly. You want to reduce this edge by 3-betting larger (and probably more polarized). Another is your flatting range becomes weaker therefore is vulnerable to over-bets by competent regs.

I assume that as the effective stacks grow this concept is applied more. Though I have not currently ran the sims for 200bb optimal sizes and at this point will be skipping doing that.

Yeah that makes sense. I was wondering what's going on with regs 3betting to 4.5-6x the open raise size nowadays. It's pretty annoying because I can't really 4bet bluff them when anything much bigger than a min4b would make me pot committed, and a min4bet gives them good odds to see a flop with pretty much anything.

Would it be a good strategy to just call our entire defending range to those huge 3bets? Or maybe min4bet linear?

So, you should have a 4-bet bluff range. And you are correct that min-4-bet is the only sizing you can use (besides shove). Those 2 options are actually indifferent for some hands when the correct 3-bet size is used.

Flatting your entire range is likely to sacrifice some EV if your opponents catch on to what you are doing. What I would do is slow-play AA about 50% of the time to protect your calling range. You can also choose to shove versus the huge 3-bets with some hands that that are vulnerable [JJ, AK].

It's pretty annoying because I can't really 4bet bluff them when anything much bigger than a min4b would make me pot committed

Yup. It is a pain in the ass isn't it? :P