SRP BTN vs BB Qh9h5s - A Pio Write Up
Posted by CatorMan
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CatorMan
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SRP BTN vs BB Qh9h5s - A Pio Write Up
SRP BTN vs BB Qh5s9h BTN: 55% equity
On this flop we use a 2 sizing strategy. Sets, two pairs and overpairs are bet always with the big size. Strong Qx bets big, Q8 and lower checks and bets small. Strong 9x K9+ mixes big bet and check and weaker 9x mixes check and small bet. 5x is mixed with a higher frequency check, with added draws we end up betting mostly with the big size. 22-44 are bet often for the big size with a heart and checked without. JJ, TT and 88-66 are always checked. AT, AJ, AK are checked at a fairly high frequency, with hearts the betting % improves. A9 and below off suit is bet very frequently. Broadways are a very high frequency bet, with only KQ no flush have a sizable checking range.
Turn: Ac after X/X BTN: 56% equity
BB now has a block and a big bet with equal frequency of 10% each. The big size revolves around 2 pair + and the small size around Ax, the Ax is bet at a very small frequency max 30% w/ AT down to almost 0% with A3. Our 2 pair + is bet at a higher frequency, A9 / Q9 blocking more of villains calls will bet with a 60% frequency and 55 & 95 unblocking more BTN calls will bet at a 100% frequency. Most of the bluffs are flush draws and open enders (JT) and wheel A draws. We mix bluffs between both ranges heavily favouring the big size, always favouring the big size with our strongest draws.
Turn Ac after X/X and BB check.
BTN plays an even more polarised strategy, using an overbet 21% of the time, 2/3rd pot 9% of the time and the small size 5%. As the range is similar I will just use an overbet sizing here. The value cut off for overbetting is AJ, w/ AT very occasionally overbetting. We are now in a situation where nobody has any very strong hands, as bet ours on the flop and BB probes the turn with there strongest hands. We now have much more strong Ax and two pairs and this makes up our value range. We have no need to bet any of A8-A6, A4-A2, Qx, midpairs. Our bluffs are made up of all of our gut shots and open enders (J8, T8, 87, 86, 76, 54, JT) at a high frequency as well as flush draws. 66 w/ a heart and 22-55 that checked the flop with a heart are now bet at a high frequency with 33 & 22 betting without the heart.
BB vs delayed overbet
BB now has a pretty logical response to the overbet, calling all Ax. Qx is mixed but very low EV and only low Qx are called at all (Q7 and lower) with Q2-4 calling the most and QJ-QT pure folding. This is because our most frequently used bluff from BTN are JT / KT / T8 / J8 so unblocking these is vital with our Qx calls. There is a smattering of raising here, but it is mostly our strong value that we bet the flop with 95% of the time so it only makes up 1-2%.
River Jc BTN equity: 50%
We again have a two sizing strategy as the BTN using an overbet 40% of the time and 2/3rd bet 30% of the time. The overbet size consists of Ax two pair and the 2/3rd size consists of lower two pairs and AK. All Jx are now checked as well as 66, which has showdown value against BBs 5x+draws that missed. 44/33/22 are always bluffed, the weaker the pair the more likely it is to overbet. Kx hands that we have even with a heart get bluffed a good amount blocking the nuts. As well as all our low showdown value hands like T8, T7, T6, 87, 86, 76 and 5x that barreled the turn is also turned into a bluff.
BB vs River Overbet
Qx 2 pairs and J9 are very marginal hands that will be sensitive to BTN having enough bluffs through this line. You prefer to call these hands without a heart unblocking a lot of the BTNs bluffs. J5s of which we only have hearts will always be folded as we do not beat any value hands and block bluffs. All Ax two pair are called as well as AT and A8 with AT being a fairly high EV call and A8 being very marginal albeit still almost full frequency. A2-A5 and A7-A6 are always folded. Because our strongest hand through this line is AJ, we do not get to have any raises.
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Nice breakdown of actions.
Focusing on the flop, why do you think we're betting big with our sets and 2pair? What do you think about mixing a big and small bet with our K9+?
I think we generally want to bet big with our sets/two pair hands because they will get a lot of value now on a board where the equities can shift quite dramatically on turns and rivers?
I guess A9/K9 when betting can still get value from a lot of draws and weaker 9x and we need to have some 9x in our big betting range on the flop for future streets. I think it is probably going to be fine to just bet pure in both sizes as long as our overal frequencies are fairly solid if we bet more strong 9x and check weaker I think that is probably a good way to go?
What do you think?
CatorMan I do agree. We can mix some big bets with the A9-K9 because they deny equity but also unblock the J and Tx here. These holdings also blocks the strongest sets in their range. Even though these type of hands aren't the strongest, betting small will keep their range wider with more hands that can outdraw us on later streets. To add, betting small will also increase our propensity to get raised and getting raised with these hands which would be troublesome because of their lack of SDV (against the top of Villain's range) and smaller chances to improve on later streets.
Edit: I also think betting big with A9-K9 is great because the combinations that will want to raise our big bet range the most will be their 99, 55, and Q9(25%-50%). Again, when they have less sets and 2pair we expect them to have a lower raise frequency which would affect how they balance their range with their bluffs so this can be an exploit we can take advantage of if they raise this board frequently
Nice thoughts John Doe not something I had thought about. I definitely agree.
I messed around with 2 flop sizings on some boards like this for a bit (there's a post somewhere of me talking about the benefits to them) but I found I was screwing myself up more than I was generating edge from making things complicated for my opponents. By no means am I saying there's no merit to this strategy but more that in terms of a time investment perfecting and learning how to adjust within this very complex strategy you're going to see relatively small returns relative to the amount of effort it will take you to be completely happy with how you play this system. I don't just mean the flop, in fact the reason I stopped playing this was you start to see some weird results on turns particularly that I could understand whilst staring at the sim but processing and recollecting all the little things that happen was fairly difficult for me personally at least. So, yeah, that's not really a knock on the strategy itself, per se, but rather just something to consider the relative fluency you're going to be able to execute this at. Also when you learn how to polarise flops btn vs bb say, a lot of what you learn on this flop is very transferable to either defending as bb or to a different flop like 974ss but unless you're going to consistently play and come up against 2 sizings across a lot of boards you might find it difficult to apply this knowledge elsewhere. A lot of the concepts you find in these sims will still be generally applicable, it's just that the specifics will be a bit less clear.
Something that's worth considering it's impact on your turn strategies here is the relative value of protection to various hands in your range, you can essentially measure this by looking at a hands capacity to get called by worse hands whilst folding out hands with good equity against them. So just looking at a reasonable candidate for a thinner value bet like A6 here, yes it's clearly able to bet for value, but if you bet and get a fold with A6 it's very likely you were up against a hand with 0% equity that you wouldn't have minded catching a pair or bluffing on rivers. There's a fairly similar situation for a Q, and by the time you get to a 9 you'd have to start picking a really small sizing to consistently get called by worse given all the offsuit Ax that is looking to x/c here and even then you are unlikely to fold the hands which are doing reasonably well against you like KJ/KT/JT. There are also occasionally dynamics like a hand has pretty low sdv but it's going to need to call a bet on river anyway and it has some additional equity to draw out on hands that are ahead, the presence of a lot of these hands starts to incentivise small betting but here if you have a hand like 5xhh that would very clearly fit this description as btn you're likely to just bet flop as that's a fairly high ev hand that is happy to play big pots on a lot of run outs. If you look at some other turns you'll hopefully see this sort of thing have an impact on your sizing choices when the board is perhaps a bit more dynamic.
Also it's worth taking a look at what you do with those low pairs when you get a less good river for your range and to try working out what the benefits are to bluffing them on turns given there's a fair few rivers they don't want to fire through on. Betting with this hand class is something which happens for a fairly specific reason across a lot of spots and is actually a really good way to start thinking about range interactions rather than the false dichotomy of bluffs/value.
Yeah this makes sense. I went with this board because it was just a hand I had marked for review so I just followed the line I took and decided to write it up. I was trying to keep in mind your feedback of focusing on the 'why' rather than the what. I don't think I got it, but it is going in the right direction.
The pocket pairs are interesting. Are you referring to the SD value bluffs video that was made on here revolving around the broadway straight draw calls? They seem to just be used as bluffs if and when we are struggling to find enough hands to use a bluffs in some spots. Mostly using flush blockers. Any more insight on this?
You know what, we should do these writeups once a week with the same board texture and our own solvers to see if there is similarities. Like for example I am well versed in Snowie so I can do an write up this board after I analyze it and post it on this thread. Since OP used PIO, someone else who is able to do a different solver than the 2 already listed can contribute by doing a write up as well. Then we can see how different solvers/AI play the same board to see if its GTO or we are all getting scammed. Mine won't be as detailed as the OP cause I don't think ppl can read 2 screens+ of text so I'll just keep it simple.
I think a snowie write up would be interesting, its not a solver in that its not attempting to play in an unexploitable way. Possible that because of this Snowie is exploiting the lower stakes population better and does very well. There was an elite coach on here who used snowie a lot wasn't there? As far as the other solvers go, as long as they are solved to the same level of exploitability the results will be the same.
Sorry for the length mate. I had good intentions of keeping it shorter and more succinct but I am not a writer and my thoughts are generally pretty unorganised haha.
Sizing your bet on the strength of your hand is one of the fundamental things not to do in poker, it just tells your opponent what you have. What you want to be dong here is size based on the board texture and make sure you work to balance the amount of time you bet for value with sufficient bluffs.
This isn't what is happening. We still have bluffs in both ranges and strong hands are mixed at a very low frequency into the smaller size. The big size will have stronger hands in at a much higher frequency but the BB has to defend by calling and raising the small size more anyway because of the price that they get.
Really happy all the responses this got. Will reply in the morning when fresh. Cheers guys!
I have done a full write up of BTN vs BB SRP then played vs bot think i have mastered it haha i love doing these
Would love to read some mate! Post away :)
Here's the short Snowie summary done at 50nl:
Flop: BB is actually strong enough to lead 1/4 of the time on this board for 1/4 pot with most of its draws. If BB checks, BTN is checking back a lot and betting only AQ+ and strong draws. KQ is the threshold here for betting/checking.
Turn: BB 2x Pot Overbet at a low frequency with 2pairs+ and strong draws. BTN has to call with Ax to bluff catch.
River: BB value bets small 1/4 pot with 2pairs+ to force button call with tons of Ax.
Takeaway: Most ppl are not leading almost ever in the BB, most people bet too many hands on this flop and do not overbet turn in the BB. Use this to exploit your pool.
I don't want to come across a rude but this is why you shouldn't use snowie. This just highlights the way snowie "thinks" which is very simplistic in that it just generates a rough calling range vs each sizing then calculates the ev of each hand vs each sizing and puts them into the highest ev one without any attempt to counter exploit itself. If you start leading flops where you're at a range disadvantage the IP player is supposed to start putting in tons of money vs your x which in turn results in the EV of x/r going up and so then suddenly you have an incentive to x every thing. It's not some weird rule that people came up with, this is how it comes about that we x everything out of the bb on most boards and snowie's inability to grasp this or other similar dynamics is why it's not particularly effective as a studying tool
Its really hard to pin down how Snowie actually thinks unless we have access to the code, so our assumptions are just guesses. However I do know that Snowie does not put hands in the highest EV size and blindly since I've looked through ranges in details by looking at the EV of each hand and this is not the case, otherwise it would be very very unbalanced. It is in fact doing some sort of magic balancing which I've tried to contact their support about but never got a clear answer. So the suggest size and range isn't just a tier of highest EV hands put in the highest EV sizes, you can deviate and gain higher EV (like 2x Pot AA Pre) but Snowie will say its suboptimal.
Now that isn't to say when it leads its balanced because it clearly isn't, but again Snowie isn't trying to be perfectly balanced like PIO. Donking spots are rare so I am not going to discount Snowie completely, since there analysis and hand range for a checking range which probably resembles closer to theory available in the software.
You are not coming across at rude at all because these issues are the ones that commonly show up when its human brain trying to understand machine so its hard to know which ones to trust or not, and I've had doubts about it as well. But trying to understand GTO is like worshipping God, sometimes we have faith and sometimes we have doubts and yes there is always a chance that any or all of these software is leaving us astray. Not to say Snowie is the devil because I don't think it is, its preflop ranges are very very solid and I would champion it over other preflop ranges, but its postflop tendencies is up to the users discretion.
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