Cool hand. How should/would IP's cb strat differ here from a regular RFI + IP 3b + RFI call? The range composition for OOP is quite different. Ben, you mentioned trying to apply pressure to KK-type combos, which seems to imply that IP is playing a similar strat to the "regular" IP 3bp spot. I'm wondering if there's more/less incentive to play checks against this SB range.

It makes me happy when multiple other Pros drop into the thread to talk strat, and it makes me even happier when multiple pros debate a point among themselves and it isn't just "sauce Q+A". So thanks !

Juan, I guess first to reply to Paul's point, I'm not sure exactly how my range is going to look here and how that will effect IP's flop cb strategy. So, I'm first going to lay out how my range is constructed from a more generic OOP vs IP 3b perspective, and then discuss how things might change in the squeeze spot.
--> In general, IP is going to cb small with a high freq on this board texture. OOP is going to fold a lot, and XR a lot
--> OOP's XR range is designed to have at least some bluffs on every runout. I disagree with the assumption that only natural semibluffs like OE/FD are going to be XR as bluffs. I think I'll be XR some weight of nearly every hand in my continue range; so that's going to be hands as weak as QJdd/55?/22+BFD. That range can barrel on cards that are good for the more natural semibluffs, like a 9s turn. That range also has some giveups on even kind of strong looking turn cards (I won't be barreling QJdd on the 9s turn) so it puts a hand like KcKh in a tough spot on flop either have to fold its EV or get in a high freq of marginal turn+river spots.
...So, I think IP is maximizing by flatting with AA because AA wants to keep in those marginal semibluffs and call down.

Paul, good question. Squeezing ranges run more linear and smaller sizing than 3b ranges, and the burden for continuing is spread out among the PFR and the 2 flatcallers. The sb range is pretty capped at something like 99/TT, and something like AQo/AJs, or around there. I think sb range will be continuing mostly the suited/paired hands, and a few big high card hands like AQo. On flop, stacks are short enough that hands like AQo and ATdd etc can be value XR. I think bb will be cbetting frequently to get folds from hands like 55-22 without a spade, and from all the various highcard combos without a BFD. There are a lot of combos of these hands in sb range. BB can also get value with JJ-KK from the high freq of 88-99 in sb's range, so it isn't as if BB cannot be called by worse. These spots are pretty sensitive to range imbalances though and this is a very uncommon preflop line, so I think it's reasonable for both BB and sb to consider explo strategies if they suspect the other player is unbalanced.

I do not like that flop 3 bet with AA at all tbh. okay i think we have to first identify who our opponent is, it is not some random fish who is x raising here 5% and stacking off 100% vs our flop 3 bet. we are playing vs one of the best players in the pool and as such we should try to play our range in a more balanced/deceptive way.

Sauce states when playing that he thinks you have 0 bluffs here in game and that is clearly a big problem, because now he can exploit that by folding some of his weaker x raises and continue with his combo draws and sets. for example he x raises AJdd/ATdd and some kind of frequency, he isn't going to jam these vs a flop 3 bet he is probably just going to fold straight away as, like he said, you have 0 bluffs and he is destroyed by your value range.

or when he has a 87/56 type hand that doesn't contain a FD and is looking to those hands that duplicate his set combos to bluff with. you now take away his ability to bluff with these hands.

vs 66/77 we are getting in the money regardless. so really you are just kinda worried about 89ss/T9ss/45ss type hands, which are 3 combos and he will be squeezing then at least some % so maybe 2 combos then vs 6 combos of sets. and numerous other combos of medium strength top pairs, mid/bottom pair blocker type bluffs, QJdd BDFD random x raises etc. so we don't really need protection from anything in his range except from 2-3 combos of hands. and even then we can still happily get in on spade turns as Sauce is still going to jam sets when a spade comes.

and also, do we even want to get it in on the flop with AK?? i mean i probably wouldn't if we feel that Sauces range contain sets/2 pairs/combo draws+some bluffs. i would just call that hand and see how the board changes OTT. so basically we want to 3 bet the flop with 1 hand in our range, and leave our turn range extremely vulnerable when we call because AK is now effectively a bluff catcher if Sauce polarizes his range correctly by the river.

also, and this is my last point, Sauce identified that your range is always stacking off here, basically at least AK but probably mainly just AA. he can call vs your flop 3 bet and when the turn brings a spade he can just donk jam. then what do you do when your range contains 0 flushes and AK has 0% equity vs most of his range and even AA has like what 20% vs most of Sauce's range?? then we just gotta fold top set that seems atrocious.

I think that hand from your perspective was a pretty big mistake, but that is just my opinion of course i could be wrong.

Demondoink , to clarify, I definitely DO think Juan's flop 3b range contains some bluffs. I don't think the flop 3b happens much at equilibrium, and I did expect Juan's range to have fewer bluffs than an equilibrium flop 3b range if we forced one. I did not have high confidence in these reads having barely played with Juan, my read was mostly an observation about similar situations from the 500z pool vs typical strong regulars.

Ben Sulsky yeah that makes sense. i just feel like if we are not really meant to have a flop 3 betting range at equilibrium that it is just extremely tough to know which hands would slot in to that range in game. and thus we will end up just putting our strongest hands in to that range with very little, if any, weaker ones/bluffs.

but of course neither of us know Juan's exact ranges here, but maybe he doesn't either :P

Ben Sulsky and would Juan not introduce a flop 3 betting range here for one of the next 3 reasons:
1-he thinks we are x raising too frequently and thus wants to punish this strategy by both expanding his stacking off range and adding some bluffs. and reduce part of the game tree to a single street game/2 street game.
2-he thinks we are x raising too tight. so he figures that our range is so tight that he might as well just get in more money with top set before the board gets dodgy OTT.
3-he likes his hands and wants to get in more money.

so 2/3 of these scenarios would lead to an extremely strong flop 3 betting range. and for scenario number 1 would he really expect us to go monkeys on an Axxss flop OOP in a 3 bet pot vs a strong range?? I highly doubt it. and it's just very difficult to construct a bluffing range on the fly. should we bluff KK because it blocks AK and we would want to get in AK vs a flop x raising range that is too wide?? or is KK too strong to bluff and we should just be flatting with it??

i honestly have no idea what hands i would 3 bet bluff an Axxss flop with. so i just feel like it ends up that his flop 3 betting range is pretty much all value and will fold to our jam close to 0% of the time.

First of all, I'm going to quote my last answer to Ben:

I forgot to mention one important thing in my previous comments: given the BU caller is a probable rec given you had 0 hands of him, I expected you to sqz with a very high freq, or always, 88+ ATs+ AJo+ and mixing some BWs. So when you tank call, I remember I gave you a veery narrow range: like 55-77, 88 when you don't sqz, 9Ts, maybe 89s plus some BWs. Given in the range I assumed, you didn't have AQ, AJ, ATs, and I wasn't expecting you to bluff with a hand like QJdd, 66-77+combodraws were a huge amount of your c/r range and that's why I decided to 3b.

That being said, I'm going to be completely honest here by quotting you:

2-he thinks we are x raising too tight. so he figures that our range is so tight that he might as well just get in more money with top set before the board gets dodgy OTT.

This was the case. Given his range was so narrow, I thought his c/r range at this point would be extremely strong, and my 3b range was exploitaitevely aiming to that. I would have 0% bluff here tbh, and I don't care, because he can't know this, and we are not playing this same spot again ever probly hah. Of course it would be a disaster if he could be able to fold a set under the premise I only have AA here, but that's not happening

yeah that makes sense, but when you say he can't know that you don't have a 3 bet bluffing range here he did actually mention this in game. so even though he doesn't know with 100% certainty it was at least in his mind. and if he doesn't think you are 3 bet/calling AK on the flop then MAYBE he will, at least at some small frequency, fold a set here or a 2 pair like 76. because if you're not 3 bet/calling worse and have 0 bluffs then this is the correct counter of course.

I can understand what you are saying though, that if Sauce is pretty much 100% getting it in on the flop with a range that you have 60-90% equity vs then it seems good to just pile in more money before the board gets scary. but, despite the tank etc, I still firmly believe he will have some bluffs here, as well as thinner value x raises, again, at least at some kind of frequency. the tank pre-flop he could have been answering the door, so you can't read a ton in to that.

and from what I've seen of Sauce he likes to flat more hands than pretty much any other reg at 500z, so I think a bunch of the hands you discounted in his pre-flop range would be in there due to the weak player flatting the button. and that, unlike most regs, he would probably expand his calling range more than his squeezing range here, but that's just from what I've observed of Sauce playing. probably for me and you we would expand our squeezing ranges and call less due to the 'dead money' of the weaker player.

You're totally right about my bluffing range here BUT, whats yours? Hah.

How you dare?! xdd

After looking more I agree the A76+ss board gets bet a lot less than some other boards, and all the A+ss boards seem to get bet kind of a medium/low amount by IP in similar spots.

I don't think my range is nearly as wide/condensed as the one you posted; that range looks a lot closer to my entire preflop VPIP range the first time, without the offsuit hands. I think it's possible I'm just supposed to fold preflop here due to my range being too unplayable. There are some spots where the preflop callers are supposed to do some defending with top X% of range, and some where they fold nearly whole range and I was a bit confused which this was. It seems like if I'm going to defend pre I would need to mix fold/call with a bunch of my marginal hands, and pure continue the stronger ones like AQ/99-88/KJs etc.

You are totally right, that range is huge, and it's not even close to the one I put you ingame. Truth is I had a difficult time trying to figure out your range at this point. I'm usually having like almost a 100% fold in your shoes here given how capped is your range. Bb player cant exploit the fact I'm folding 100% to 3b here because he has to worry about 3 players so... Pretty inusual spot, and thinking about your range was kind of weird, and I could be very wrong about it.
I forgot to mention one important thing in my previous comments: given the BU caller is a probable rec given you had 0 hands of him, I expected you to sqz with a very high freq, or always, 88+ ATs+ AJo+ and mixing some BWs. So when you tank call, I remember I gave you a veery narrow range: like 55-77, 88 when you don't sqz, 9Ts, maybe 89s plus some BWs. Given in the range I assumed, you didn't have AQ, AJ, ATs, and I wasn't expecting you to bluff with a hand like QJdd, 66-77+combodraws were a huge amount of your c/r range and that's why I decided to 3b.

If you ever call the 98s preflop it's with a very low frequency. like close to 0 I imagine.

you're calling $48 to play a pot of $139 -> need to win 34.5% of the pot back to call.

you have about 31% equity vs. an 8-10% squeeze range and, as we know, you'll realize less than 100% of that. if we give you an r of 0.85 you'll win back $36.6, losing $11.4 on the preflop call.

edit: r with a low frequency suited connector could be more like .9 - .95 but that still gives us a pure fold preflop.

Well, at least someone here definetely showed up with some freaking bluffing range.

:D

@33:20, I believe the way this spot works is we combine all our value hands Ax> into a ~full pot sizing, and then our opponent raises a low ish freq with various slowplays. By combining all our hands into one sizing we freeze every hand but FL> to raise which benefits our EV. We've mostly trying to get value from random pairs smaller than A, and I don't think our EV vs these region is hugely effected by sizing in this case other than that we want to bet kinda big.

tree:
(exploitable for 0,42 % of pot)

this is interesting question. I just watched the triple threat vid and he goes over this exact situation. saying that optimally it should be a check but metagame wise vs this particular player type to bet explo since his value range plus strong semi bluffs will want to bet big given that 8x and 6x will over fold. I almost answered this question based on that he just went over this and how could you have not understood but then remembered that it was another video. so watch the triple threat vid if you haven't already.

I agree it's a very bad bet optimally. I was probably too greedy there hoping for additional fold equity.

I use roughly geo sizing on this texture because there are few draws and because my range contains more combos of the nuts (AA-KK).

my range contains more combos of the nuts (AA-KK).

Ben is such a boss, he even has KK combos in his range on a KKK board.
Combinatorics is idiotic.