Raphael, if AQs is a call given ICM, then I'm certainly calling AQo. I think I've talked a lot so far about how I'm not trying to play a preflop strategy identical to that of an ICM calculator's.

@30:05, I'm not 100% sure what "inelastic" means, but I think it means that he'll continue with similar hands regardless of the size I bet? If so, yes, I think a good player's range should be elastic here and he should call more often against a smaller bet than against a larger one. I agree with you that 3x is probably calling even a very big (i.e., at least potsize) bet almost always. But (aside from being results oriented) I don't think there's good reason to believe more than a small % of his river checking range is 3x, especially given the preflop action and his history of limping. Pistons should have many more combos of Ax, and K high, as well as similar frequencies of mid pocket pairs (though he'll probably bet these more often than not), and Kx (though he'll also bet this most of the time) here. A range like this will be elastic with regard to my betsize, and I chose to size my bet down because my EV should be fairly similar regardless of betsizing with my hand/blockers, and because I wanted to increase the percentage I'd get called and regain the chiplead, which I think is worth a fair amount of EV at this table.

Hi Kevin, can you give me the timestamp?

~14:00. Thanks!

I think the very bottom of my range (facing 1/3 pot on the flop) are random gutters, usually with a BDFD, for example K2hh. There's a fairly large number of combos of those hands, as well as random 9x (though that's infrequent) or 77/88. I can also choose to bluff with weaker Tx here, especially since my Jd blocks some hands like AJ or KJ which might cb flop then x turn in his range, making his river betting range when checked to more bluff heavy.

Hi Jesse, thanks for the insightful post.

My problem with shoving here is that I'm much less confident in my reads than the video might have made it appear. Once we start adding some uncertainty to my reads, J9o gets a lot less attractive to shove. For example, against a range that has him making this play half as often with premium value hands as the AK/99 stuff, (http://gyazo.com/a20075e739e5879419509d1fc46f18bb) J9o has 40% equity against his calling range while A9s has 45%. In reality, I was very uncertain about Pistons' range here, and so I was going to play a strategy that's robust to most assumptions. Unsurprisingly, that strategy is one where I'm jamming a balanced and strong range such as the one I described in the video.

Now, it might still be a good adjustment to shove more often than I really should in order to take advantage of Pistons if he is limp/RR bluffing too much. The problem with that play is I was not confident in Pistons' bluffing frequency at all here, and the small read I have is that he tends to be a player who isn't afraid to get in there with marginal hands preflop. So, if I was going to make any adjustment here it was going to be to fold a bit more often than I really should be to the LRR.

What I was trying to describe in the video was a plausible scenario where a good player's LRR range might differ a lot from his R/4b range at this stacksize. I think, in general, people like to appear to apply less pressure (with say a raise and small 4b) with their premium hands in order to induce really light shoves, and they like to avoid seeing flops against me and take advantage of my preflop peskiness by LRR more often with hands like AK and 99-AA, and maybe some hands like A8o which don't particularly want to see flops OOP with hands like J9o. On the other hand, Pistons might have just decided he wanted to limp his range this orbit and then had a plan to LRR some region following his limp, there's no way to know.

Brickster,

I think you bring up an important and popular argument, which is that if we're going to have a close decision vs a 4b then we shouldn't 3b ourselves.

In fact, what we need to think about is our indifference between our other strategic options. We know KJcc is +EV to call here (though we might not know the exact +$EV value), so folding is out of the question. So, if we 3b (planning to fold), then our $EV must be >= to the EV of calling.

This indifference is independent of whether or not we have a close decision against a 4b unless we make some questionable assumptions. To take two independent cases, imagine that villain raises 100% of hands and then makes us indifferent to the 4b with the range you posted- in that case we still want to raise/fold because our FE is so outrageously high. In another (more plausible) case, imagine that villain calls the 3b as often as he raises, and that he folds some fairly high % as well. KJcc will have much higher EV against the calling range than another candidate 3betting hand like K9o, so we can easily be incentivized to 3b KJcc over K9o even though we "lose more" when we get 4b with KJcc. The only types of cases (though they're important) where we're disincentivized to 3b KJcc (as well as any other medium hands) is when villain is playing a strategy of raise/fold, coupled with an in line RFI frequency. In that case, we'll get similar amounts of folds with KJcc or K9o, but KJcc will almost certainly be incentivized to flat; otherwise we'd be 3b bluffing like 80% of the time (i.e., any Ax, Kx etc would be bluffs if he folded way too much). So, if his strategy is to make 3b bluffs have an EV near 0 using a R/F strategy, we'll be making a mistake to 3b KJcc and other hands like it.

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for the comment.

I just find that generally when someone puts in a raise of a reasonable size in NLHE, our response is to raise some relatively strong region, call some weaker region, and fold the rest. Often some hands in the raising range can be slowplayed sometimes, and some hands in the calling range can be raised sometimes.

More concretely, if we call with 88 and don't improve on the flop, we'll be able to find a fold on a bunch of flops, either any flop with an A, one with three overcards, or often one with 2 overcards.

Going into more depth than this becomes an EV problem that it's useful to use software like CREV to model. I think the key points that you might have overlooked are that the benefits of shoving (denying equity to his hands that would fold) comes at the price of being called by a range we're doing poorly against. And calling gains the benefit of folding on flops where our ev/equity is poor while running the cost of giving free flops to his bluffs.