Would it be fair to say that both player ranges are fairly strong and polarized? :)

Looks more like an MTT spot than a cash game.

I have no idea what they're doing :D

well played by sauce123 imo, probably missclick pre so his range is way to wide to call a jam

Im not qualified because I dont even play close to those levels, but I'd think:

Is it the first time bajskorven87 makes a 9x open raise? If so, this is not a common spot so I think sauce 3bet shove range there it is composed by all hands that have a +EV shove but don't want to get flatted and getting into a tricky spr vs villain calling 3bet range on flop, so I'd doubt sauce is playing QQ+ this way, but he may does, although I think his range would mainly be something like 99-JJ AQo+

My guess is that Ben would never cold call a 9x open here and is simply shoving a linear range of top X%. Then there are additional dynamics to consider, such as whether bajskorven has done this before or not, and whether it could possibly be a missclick or not. That should affect his range a lot.

Claudico's legacy.

missclick > tilt > spew

The first thing that Sauce should care about is having a high enough defense frequency, otherwise bajskorven has a very profitable bluff with all his garbage hands.

The second question should be how he is going to defend; flatting, 3-betting or shoving. And why.

The third question is what Sauce wants to accomplish with his range construction.

If defending implies committing 13 times the amount risked by vilain, and if that implies shoving 118bbs to defend 1bb (that we didn't VPIP), well.... interesting leverage situation. I would argue it's okay to underdefend that spot lol. Either we're pretty sure it's a missclick, and therefore we have an easy exploit. OR we're getting exploited trying to exploit when vilain fake missclick.

But you guys, seriously don't get too carried away with game theory. You get scary sometimes. And you also give me ideas. Very funny how the 'search for unexploitability' makes some players very exploitable.

Like, when you know vilain never can fold 'because it would be exploitable', but in reality you never bluff and just take his money because you know he's calling. Seriously there are spots where pseudo GTO-wizards play worse than recreational players. It might be that GTO is the future of the game and is the ultimate level of poker play, but the way it is applied is a lot of self-levelling IMO. I'm not aiming at anyone right ;-). If you're good at poker, you're good at poker. But merely trying to have a GTO approach doesn't make you good if you have a wrong approach (not saying it's the case for anyone here allright! I'm not starting a war), just as having good tools can make you worse off if you use them super badly. So beware of the good tools.

In this spot, fake missclicking just become incredibly valuable versus a player that will shove all pairs and many Ax (or whatever) 'to defend himself'. I repeat, 118bb shove to defend 1bb. As we say in french, bon appetit.

As for 'defending' in a general sense in poker, remember the old strategic point of taking EV- spots to create larger EV+ spots later. I really doubt this concept is no more applicable nowadays. It just changes. Here, for instance, I'm happy getting exploited ; if vilain really wants to push the exploit, he'll very easily spew one way or another, and by letting him exploit I'll end up exploit more. Just as you can fold versus the LAG player and wait for a hand, because he won't be able to fold AQ preflop OR he'll end up lacking mental focus 2hrs later after having been involved in every pot, when you had been quietly and wisely waiting for him to be tired = make mistakes.

If defending implies committing 13 times the amount risked by vilain, and if that implies shoving 118bbs to defend 1bb (that we didn't VPIP), well.... interesting leverage situation. I would argue it's okay to underdefend that spot lol. Either we're pretty sure it's a missclick, and therefore we have an easy exploit. OR we're getting exploited trying to exploit when vilain fake missclick.

This just sounds like a lack of fundamentals. If you want to have a real strategy, you need to have a response versus any possible action that your opponent might take. If the action is silly/bad then you should have many options to exploit this action. If not, it might be part of a good strategy. Clearly if you start overfolding vs 9x opens you will lose hard HU against an opponent that does this with a very wide range.

Seriously there are spots where pseudo GTO-wizards play worse than recreational players.

Very true statement. Solving 118bb HU NLHE as a 9x-open push/fold game will make you very exploitable.

Some time down the road a few years from now Baskjorven is going to be sitting down having a beer laughing about that time he misclicked vs sauce and 30 people tried to solve the spot

Nice to open 9x and know that a "Minimum Defense Frequency" thinker will defend top 15% of range!

(Not saying Sauce would automatically do this here of course).

So, Assuming we don't know anything about villain other than hes a good HU player and he's never done this before we have to consider that we're up against a range of ranges. The way I see it, there's probably about a maximum of 5 classes of different player types in this spot.

1) Balanced or nearly balanced

2) Unbalanced

2) Should break into 4 categories

2a) Unbalanced and value heavy
2b) Unbalanced and air heavy

2a) breaks down into

2ai) Unbalanced and value heavy because he's trying to level someone into thinking that he's misclicked (Think more of a "one time" thing where he's going to try and "trick" sauce)
2aii) Unbalanced and value heavy because he's actually constructed a preflop range this way on purpose (Think, more of "I have an actual strategy for raising to 9bb pre and I just haven't put enough weak hands in it)

2bi) Unbalanced and air heavy because he misclicked (took a range that's designed to open to 2.5x or w/e and opened to 9x by mistake.
2bii) Unbalanced and air heavy because he's actually constructed a preflop range this way on purpose assuming people will overfold (using hands that do well vs a tightish range but would really prefer we overfold (lowish suited connectors come to mind)

The big problem is that I really think 2bi is super unlikely. First of all, think of how many hands you play a year and how many times you misclick. It just doesn't happen that often. The other thing is that they're playing 20k NL HU. This doesn't strike me as a game that you're 16 tabling or w/e which would make you reasonably likely to misclick.

Also, 9x is a pretty peculiar size to misclick to. It's not like he's been opening to 2.6x and now made it 26x. My only guess is that 9bb is his 3b size which means the most likely misclick he makes is thinking he's 3betting instead of opening which is obviously a mistake, but then we're presumably up against a 3b range.

If that's the case, I'm really not sure how good of a spot we're in anyway.

I assumed he's 3betting 20% and calling a jam with 8s+ and AJ (feel free to chime in if you think this is blatantly wrong).

I took our A blocker into account but didn't bother using the 7 because I'm not really sure what the air in his range is.

Anyway, he stacks off with 5.66% of hands and folds with 13.2% of hands (the rest being hands he can't have because we hold the A)

So, he calls 5.66/ (5.66+13.2) % of the time---> 30%.

So, 70% of the time we win 2080 and 30% of the time we play a 47470 pot with 30.5% equity.

(So we get back 14241, thus we lose a net of 9534).

So the EV of this play (if he has accidentally but in a 3b sized bet with his actual 3b range and then decides that hes calling it off roughly this wide in the heat of the moment) is 0.7(2080)+0.3(-9534)= -1404 (or roughly 3.5BBs) (Compare that to the EV of fold which is -440) given how i constructed this equation).

You can chose to argue with a few of the numbers in this sim but I think it's safe to say that even if he misclicked with his 3b range we're not really in a great spot.

So, my concern is that if we're unsure of the strategy he's playing and that given how unlikely someone is to genuinely misclick combined with how mediocre the spot is anyway if he genuinely misclicked but thought he was 3betting we should really err on the side of tightness.

Mathematically we have to defend 18% to this (assuming he's balanced and we want to be balanced.). A7s is a 15th percentile hand, so if we aren't flatting anything we should jam it but its already pretty close. That being said, the only cases where we're in really good shape is when he totally misclicks and makes this sizing with his normal opening range (which I think we can dismiss as SUPER unlikely) or he has purposely constructed an air heavy opening range to 9x (which intuitively feels sort of unlikely, but more likely than him actually misclicking). That being said, we're probably not doing amazingly well in this spot vs that strat either with this hand (just given how poorly we do when called) . (Admittedly this almost has to be +EV given he's already unbalanced towards air in this case and we have a good blocker + not terrible equity when called). That being said, it doesn't strike me as super likely, nor does it strike me as being massively +EV the times it does occur. Additionally, I think we'd have a pretty good idea that this was happening since he'd more than likely have to be opening 9x with some notable frequency if this was the case (Because if he has AA, and even a few other value combos hes going to need at least a few % of hands to be unbalanced which means he'd be opening to this size a few times in first 10 mins of the session or w/e so you'd realize it. (If he hasn't opened a few times to this sizing then this case becomes even less likely and things get even bleaker.) All other situations range from super marginal (where he has his regular 3b range for this size) to really bad (where he's unbalanced towards value either because he's trying to level us or because the range he's built just happens to be.

I haven't modelled a balanced strat for 9x/push or fold /call or fold but i suspect given where our hand lies in the grand scheme of things its probably not doing much better than just okay vs that strat anyway.

I think the high probability that he's unbalanced in a way that hurts us here and the relatively low probability that he's unabalanced in a way that helps us here makes me want to fold a hand that is already at least somewhat close.

Sorry that was kind of long winded but I'd love to hear some thoughts.

how can you missclick 1800 on 100/200?

Do you non-Swedes know what bajskorven means in Swedish?

Bajs either missclicked or he's trapping, and I had a suited ace. Obv he was trapping.

Given that no one seems to have come up with a great counter-strategy...can opening 9x be part of a good strategy?

If Sauce is going to respond with push/fold to the 9x open then bajskorven can polarize between AA and trash like 52o. AA is the hand that benefits the most from a wide all-in range, so it makes sense to dimish the EV for AA to make this 9x open.

In order to defend enough to make 32o breakeven between folding and 9x, you need to shove a range like AA-88,AT-AK,A*s,KQ,KJs-KTs. (12% range)

From this range, AKo has the worst equity of all hands when called by AA: 6.83%. In order to make AKo indifferent between shoving and folding, AKo needs to get called 8.3% of the time. AKo blocks half of all AA combos, we assume that it doesn't block any of the trash hands,

That means that AA is (8.3+8.3)/(100+8.3) = 15.3% of all combos pre card removal. That means 33 combos of trash and 6 combos of AA. Against such a range, Sauce will do much better by 3-betting to 17x. If bajskorven now wants to 4-bet shove his trash hands he suddenly has the problem that they have terrible equity, so Sauce can fold a ton of his range. For instance to make 32o a losing hand to shove, all Sauce needs to do it to call with 29% of his range: AA-99,AKs-AJs.

If bajskorven wants to counter that strategy by opening to 9x with hands that have ok blockers and equity against AA-99,AKs-AJs, he would actually need good hands like A3s. (Not even JJ or AKs has over 50% equity against this range!) The same goes for hands that can flop strong when called. Those hands have a profitable open for a normal sizing, further allowing Sauce to defend fewer combos to this 9x open, which further dimishes the EV for AA to take this line.

Splitting ranges between 3-betting and calling might even be more profitable, but tougher to balance.

Bajs was just like i can`t beat this nerd so imma level him.

Sick Thread!!

Why would shoving even be any part of a defense strategy if you think bajs most likely range is AA/trash/maybe KK. Calling and 3betting to 4400 are both much better with most of the hands that would fall into an MDF prescribed range. I suppose Sauce's play reflects that he just thought it was like 90% to be a misclick, but that seems like quite a poor assumption for the reasons Apotheosis stated.

It's very possible that, in theory, calling is the only correct way to begin defending against the range I gave. Then again, that 9x open range is def an explo one and is not designed to rebluff effectively, and 3betting seems like an effective exploitative response to fold out that high percentage of total garbage and save yourself some headaches. As far as hands 3bet with, I think AA/A6o-ATo/A6s-A8s/56s-89s would be the range, while we would be flatting the 9x open with like 44-KK, suited broadways, AJ+ and stronger Axs.

I was thinking more along the lines of calling off my SCs from that 3bet range vs a jam as they have better equity vs AA than any of those "strong" hands and dominate some of baj's trash, if we think he is actually capable of making a stand with those. It also seems like these ranges could result in a clickback type rebluff strategy rather than an allin wager by baj.

I was only guessing at how I'd respond in a vacuum, in the moment, against the super polar range we guessed he might be using, if I even cared to try to "defend properly". If we think he has developed an actual 9x open "strategy" versus just a "tactic", figuring out various equilibria for our defense would require a lot more work. In the more likely event that he is just clicking buttons with a value heavy maximally polarized range, we shouldn't be spending much time figuring out how much money we should voluntarily be adding to the pot with hands like QQ.

You can also look at this from another perspective, which is that by opening to 9bb IP has already lost a fairly large amount of EV off of a more optimal RFI. So, I can exploit by either under/over bluffing and guarantee an IP EV <= to a more optimal RFI size provided I don't exploit by an amount MES for an amount larger than the difference between optimal RFI and 9x.

+1 for sauce to make a vid about this hand

gaucan, what hand has "low equity" versus the weaker hands we want to defend? Our R is not good with three streets to play OOP vs a polarized range, and all of his trash has similar equity to a strong draw vs our unpaired hands. thanks for the snide comment.