Cantor,

I'm glad you agree. If I do decide to make a replayer video it will definitely not ignore smaller pots. Stealing a page out of Tyler Forrester's book, I could filter for a certain spot and go through every hand that comes up. IIRC, he recently had a terrific video filtered for 3b pots where he went through even the mundane flop x/f (which is a good thing for someone like you or me).

I think it's great that you've got a specific aspect of your game in mind that you're trying to improve. Having this kind of awareness or reflection makes the process of getting better much easier. As a precaution, just be wary of not letting your red-line affect your decisions in-game. When you review your sessions later, I encourage you to go back and look for spots where you could've made thin value bets. In my opinion, this is significantly overlooked in favour of bluffing/hero calling spots when considering NSDW. Just make sure you're not making bad hero calls/bluffs in game for the sake of your red-line. This might be something I discuss in a video later on (not quite yet though, since I'm still working on this myself).

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated.

Thanks Lucas!

I think your point about what one person considers standard might be foreign to another is paramount. Identifying these discrepancies has helped me uncover fundamental flaws in my own game. It's probably my favourite thing when watching videos to find spots where really good players do the polar opposite of what I might; and then for them to call it "standard". Often times it can mean that I had/have a theoretical issue somewhere in my thought process for that hand.

Welsh,

I agree that our decision with KQo CO vs UTG should be quite player dependent. However, I'm reluctant to agree that KQo has to be a -EV 3b against the average opponent. This is a fairly difficult thing to determine. Furthermore, it depends on what the average UTG range looks like in your player pool. I find the average reg opens ~18%, against which I think we can profit from at least sometimes 3betting KQo from the CO. If you find that this number is significantly lower for your opponents, then you should certainly just fold.

Sniveller,

I do tend to do more than my fair share of flatting against 3bets, both IP and OOP. As for the small pairs, it's extremely marginal either way -- and I'm fine with just folding too. Pio did not create these ranges.

FL,

both spots are very marginal and are reasonable folds. I haven't got a way to know for certain which hands are +EV defends. With these cuspy sort of hands, there's a few key factors that should sway my decisions heavily:

• rake: this is why I said should. I admittedly struggle with this, and am possibly defending too wide when playing 50nl. However, I don't think I'm too out of line.
• skill edge: I loosen up a decent bit if I think I have a significant edge, but I'm also happy to tighten up against good regulars.
• open size: IMO this is the one a lot of players mess up. Our defending ranges change quite significantly against a BTN 3x as opposed to a 2x for example.

I think my WR from the BB was around -30bb/100, though I could be way off. For the majority of that sample I played quite a bit tighter from the BB though, so it's not the best indicator.

Thanks Insilicio.

I'll keep this in mind for the future. Unfortunately, I lost my entire database (for the 2nd time in 2.5 years) either right before, or right after this video. Therefore I cannot do a filtered replayer video like this quite yet.

You can request your hand histories from PokerStars support

Elorean,

what I like to do is input two different bet sizings and just see which one Pio likes to use most. Often times it'll use mixed frequencies, in which case I lean towards the one used more often (and not split my range the way Pio might suggest). There may be a more sophisticated way to do this that I'm unaware of. For now however, I'm bounded by trial and error.

Glad you enjoyed it, Skipper!

All of those filters that you mention sound like excellent ideas. No doubt I'll refer back to them in the future when I make a replayer video. Like I mentioned in a post above, it's unfortunately just not a viable option at the moment. Currently the only purpose I have for a replayer would be to slow down the pace even more.

Hey Z,

as I mentioned, I'm not the person to ask about rake considerations. Sorry that I cannot be of more help. If in the future I feel more qualified to answer this, I certainly will mention it in a later video or comment.

Watch cameron couch's latest video :)

Insilicio,

thank you for the well thought out comment. I meant the BB likely has a polarized slightly 3betting range preflop, not that he has a polarized cbetting range. In fact, I think BB will likely do a fair bit of merging here. However, if I (or you) thought that BB would cbet here with a very polarized range, then yes, I agree that we should not be raising.

*I too ran this hand through Pio, and perhaps it has to do with us using different ranges or bet sizings, but my solution did in fact give the IP player a raising range. I gave OOP the option to bet either 50% (approximately what he did here), or 33%. As suspected, the smaller the OOP player bets, the more raising IP does. I believe this is because the smaller bet size results in a more merged betting range, thus allowing IP to extract value with more hands. However, Pio was raising slightly less frequently than I thought it would.

*Disclaimer: I actually gave the IP a slightly smaller raise size OTF than what I used in the video. Looking back, I think the sizing I used in the video is slightly too big. This would presumably change the results in a way similar to how the OOP cbet sizings did.

To sum things up and answer your question(s):

• Yes, I am doing this as a counter to how I think a lot of people play here, but I think calling it an exploit would be unjust.
• My assumption was that OOP has a somewhat polarized 3betting range preflop, but a very merged cbet range on the flop. Further, I think he's going to bet this flop at a very high frequency (correctly so, at least according to Pio).
• I believe the correct counter to this is for the IP to have a raising range to extract more value with our range.

However, I do think the IP flatting his entire continuing range instead is a reasonable strategy, and one that is easier to play (because there is no book-keeping required). That being said, I think having a raising range (at a frequency slightly lower than what I initially thought, and a smaller sizing) is the, probably marginally, better strategy.

One last thing: if you find that the players in your pool tend not to cbet flop here with almost their entire range, and do polarize themselves, then the IP player almost certainly should not be raising. For better or worse, I did not want to make this assumption with no reads against a regular.

QT+. Even though we don't bet those hands with a 100% frequency, I think we'll find ourselves underbluffing if we don't bluff 9 high here. The hands I would check here with the intention of folding are hands like 22-44, 66, 77, etc.

Cohen,

Steve Paul already has a video about exactly this.

http://www.runitonce.com/poker-training/videos/analyzing-hands-with-piosolver-2/

FF,

that would be a huge exploitative adjustment to make with no history (6 hands).

Even if he did tighten up, I don't think he will restrict his range so much that he only has JJ+/AQ+. Furthermore, the vast majority of hands that beat us on this river have bet the turn already. So that leaves him with a range that is A or K high and 9x heavy. Yes, he still has the occasional Jx, but those are very infrequent combos (especially depending on how he mixes up his 3b strategy pre; given your 3b assumption, he has even fewer Jx than mine).

Given this, I think he will very infrequently bet river (not many hands worse than K high, not many hands better than 9x). Since he bets river infrequently, has a relatively large bluff-catch region, and we have a range that is comparatively strong with some Ax that we can bluff, I think our highest EV option is to bet ourselves.

In order for me to make an exploitative adjustment here I need to assume at least one of the following:

• his 3b range preflop is extremely tight
• he frequently checks back turn with QJ+

I knda disagree with both.

Pio check-raises it on the flop.