Thanks, Lausbub!

Though we aren't doing fantastically against his range that is raising to get it in, we are doing well enough against it that it doesn't take many folds (or terrible raise-calls) to make this clearly a shove. In addition, if the BB folds we have the extra $80 of dead money (on top of the $103 in the pot). I don't think we can consider folding at this stack depth.

If people knew we were folding the nuts vs. this action that would be terrible ofc.

This is actually something you don't have to be quite so worried about in a multiway pot, especially when another player has already put in action. In simplified terms, the BB has much more of the responsibility to "keep the BTN honest" than we do once he leads the flop.

I only mention this because if you ever find yourself facing heavy action in a multiway pot where you are confident you can make a big fold, I don't want GTO concerns to cause you to put your stack in bad!

I think it's good to have a raising range and a calling range on the turn, with the best bluff-raising candidates being nut blockers like 33xx and 44xx.

Good question. I tend to agree with Cody that having a raising range makes sense here.

Though I don't find most of my opponents donk K52 flops often, many lead on boards like 952 with a wide variety of hands: Pair+gutter, OESD, Dry TP, Bottom pair and 3 live side cards, sets, etc. I think we can expect our opponent here to do the same on this board, more or less. As I mentioned in the video, I expect most people to continue betting on the 6 with the majority of their flop donking range.

If I'm right about those assumptions, we are actually up against a very merged range rather than a polarized one.

That said, the dryness of the board makes me tempted to continue calling with everything, as protection is less of a concerns, and because he will find himself in difficult spots on the river much of the time. He'll have so many low two pair type of hands that will be too weak to bet but too strong to bluff with, and I believe I could do a good job of leveraging my range and picking up more pots than I "should" against what I would expect to be a pretty well defined checking range.

I think what I'd like to do is keep my raising range small on the turn - maybe half my 34 hands for value and an appropriate number of bluffs. Given the dry board, I'd try to pick my raising hands from the top of my folding range. Hands with 44/33 are ideal but I won't have a ton of them. A hand like the one I folded in the video would actually make a pretty good candidate.

I change my approach to these situations (and most situations) somewhat regularly. That said, I like to have multiple sizings on a flop like this. As you may know from watching some of my videos, I don't balance in the strictest sense of the word. My balance when it comes to splitting my range across different sizings has more to do with intuition and less to do with a pre-defined strategy.

You're absolutely right that playing against the CO instead of the button makes a difference here. I'm much less worried on a straight completing turn (or a 2) hurting my playability, so I'm more inclined to lay him a better price to peel than I would be if his preflop range were wider or if the flop were T75 instead of T52.

I think I may not want to pot this board too often, but if I did, QJT9 doesn't make a great hand to do it with. It has playability on turns with all of its backdoor draws, and it can be doing quite poorly against his get it in range (It would do better if my hand were AJT9 because of kicker issues).

A hand like AAK4ddss has better equity against a shoving range and worse turn playability, which makes it a much better candidate to pot flops with.

sorry for spamming, if you prefer one post with different questions in it let me know.

As the one answering the questions, I find it easier and more organized this way. Thank you. I'm not sure if other members find it more difficult to sort through, but if so please speak up!

you flat K998s bu vs co against an unknown and quickly fold J887s bu co vs a reg. to me it seems like J887 can hit a few more boards harder, where as K998s does soso on most boards (biased?). So in terms of playbility J887s looks more attractive to me.

Do you happen to remember timestamps? It's taking me a while to find the hands. I agree that J887 is slightly better than K998 in most cases, so this was either an oversight or an adjustment to playing vs. an unknown (and/or a tight/good reg in the other hand).

In general you tend to flat less buttons than some people do (such as
fjutekk or oddsen if I recall correctly), can you elaborate a bit on
that?

How do you know that? :)

My button CC stat has increased in the past year, but not a ton. My opponents (the good ones) vary greatly in how often they CC, especially on the button. Some call wider than me (a couple - much wider), many call similarly to me, and some call less often.

To be entirely honest, I don't know of a good quantitative way to figure out if I can add more hands profitably or not. Samples are not large enough to prove much in my DB, and HM doesn't provide a good way to categorize by preflop hand strength as far as I know.

Because of that, and since there seems to be no consensus among top players, I've been going with the very advanced strategy of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

My results are good, and I can't find a way to solve the problem with confidence. If there were a good way to "see how it goes" after trying, I would play around with different strategies. Since you'd need massive samples to figure out if a new button preflop strategy is working better (and because it wouldn't be a very scientific test, as other variables will no doubt change over time), I don't think this approach is worth much.

All that said, the fact that top players all play this spot differently is clear evidence that there is a nice edge to be had for whoever figures out the best approach. I'm all ears if you guys have any ideas!

This may be a case of me going too thinly due to trusting my gut too much. I really didn't feel I was beat, so I wanted to give him a chance to find something to call with.

Blocking one King is certainly relevant, but there are still two Kings in the deck for him to make two pair with. He would nearly always play K4 this way, and would play most of his K6 hands this way too, so those hands may not be as small a part of his range as you might imagine.

One big issue for this value bet, though, is the strength of my range. It's very hard for me to not have some showdown value on this board with my CO opening range. I may need to be bluffing hands with showdown value as strong as AJTx and perhaps even AAQ7 type hands in order for me to be able to value bet K9 here.

Against a shove, we are in a tough spot of course. I'm not sure how often people shove 87 here but I could see some people doing it. Both of my blockers, then, are relevant.

Obviously I have a hand which is towards the absolute bottom of my VB range (or perhaps shouldn't be in it at all), but the blocker effects seem good. I assume that blocking a Q and a 7 while not blocking a Qd or Jd is very good for us, as his weakest SD value hands with blockers (aka his most clear bluffing candidates) will be JJdd and QQdd.

On the other hand, those may be weak enough that they want to lead river, meaning that KQQ and KJJ become some of his most likely bluffs, and our K blocker is bad for us.

Since the blocker issues are a little unclear, it mostly comes down to how often I think I'll have a straight, which determines how often I need to call with non-straight hands. I think most people assume that I won't be betting many two pair hands on this river, and interestingly, KK doesn't make a great VB due to blocker effects. I should have a pretty straight-heavy value range so I think he won't take the x/r with his blocker hands close to every time. I think I'm okay folding a hand like mine to a x/r.

Our bet serves mostly as a protection bet. I think the clearest explanation involves looking at the spot from a wider angle:

-I have a significant equity advantage
-He (basically) either has the rare turned trips or he is behind a large part of my range

This is such a great bluff spot for the air portion of my range, but in order to be able to get away with all that bluffing I will need to bet most of my (large) TP-AA range.

As far as our particular hand:

I don't see much benefit when facing a call and heading to the river.

I agree! But I'm betting my hand hoping for a fold - this is the key. Though we likely have the best hand, this isn't so much a "value bet."

The reason you don't like betting and getting called is in large part due to the fact that club rivers or any river 9 or below put a large part of our range in a bluffcatching spot. This is all the more reason to end the hand on the turn. The added river playability for him means that making him fold a hand like 9985, even though it only has 6 outs, is very good for us. This hand (and all hands he may have) benefit from the ability to bluff and value bet a number of rivers that are clearly better for his range, especially since we have to act first.

With our actual hand, this turn gives us the ability to force folds from many 4-12 out hands which also have good river playability. With other parts of our range, we can make better hands fold with a very high success rate, but we need thin value/protection hands like ours to help us accomplish this.

Great question. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I have a clear answer for you. I tend to go with similar sizings on most boards due to a combination of what I'm used to and laziness / tableninja.

On an extremely dynamic board like this, the IP player gains a greater advantage than on more static boards. There are a couple of ways to leverage that advantage though.

On the one hand, offering our opponent a worse price on a peel when we have a range advantage is clearly a good thing. On the other, leaving more room to play rivers, especially vs. a x/pot from him, is a good thing as well.

I take the approach of betting smaller to make a x/r more difficult for him (and therefore less frequent). This lets me barrel more comfortably with the weaker protection and weaker draw parts of my range. Against a PSB, he can raise to ~$700, leaving $300 left to play on the river. My sizing allows for a raise to ~$580, leaving $420 left to play. While it doesn't seem like a massive difference, it very clearly benefits us (the times he raises).

I may overestimate the effect this has on his raising frequency, though, and since it won't happen that often overall, we may be better off focusing on maximizing EV when he doesn't raise. This likely would mean betting full pot (and maybe less often than I currently bet this spot).

Cliffs: I suspect you're right, but I'm unsure.

Thanks for giving me the feedback to take into account!

Good question, Midori.

I don't think we should be betting 100% of our flop b/c range here (should we?)

We definitely shouldn't be in theory.... very far from it actually. There are some pretty serious and exploitable consequences for putting in much more money against a check than you would against a bet.

I think my hand makes one of my better semibluffs because it fits the two most important criteria when looking for your best semibluff hands:

1) Low/No Showdown Value
2) Many outs to a very strong hand

I mostly chose to bet this hand on the turn because it has zero showdown value, and this will be the case on most rivers too, but I have a 2nd nut flush draw and potentially some live straight outs. The 7 and 3 blockers help as well.

I'd be checking back a lot of showdown value hands like the ones you mentioned. Even with my hand - turn the J into an 8 and I think I probably should check back.

A3 is interesting because I'm very unsure what to make of his x/r -> x range. I probably don't get to bet-call dry A3 on the turn, and his weak bluffs have so little equity against it that it makes a good check back.

I think an interesting hand category to play here is sets. What do you (anyone) think we should do with a hand like KQ55, both with and without a flush draw?

Thanks for a very prompt reply, Phil.

I mostly agree with your selection of hands to bet (and check back) and the reasoning thereof. Having a good/(near-)nutty draw with no SDV is interesting: on the one hand, it's awesome if we can bet and take down the pot now. On the other hand, we still don't want to get check/raised and have to fold our hand. Of course, there is the 3rd scenario which is him calling our bet and us having more options on the river IP.

All in all, I think it's crucial to estimate the range that he is playing like this, and figure out out much FE we have. What I mean by this is that, if we don't figure to have any FE on turn, we probably should check this hand back (unless he always continues by calling) - what do you think?

As for KQ55 with and without FD, I think I'd like to bet with both. Here are my thoughts..

a) KQ55 without FD

Since we don't block FD, our opponent's range can have more of them. These are the hands he will most likely x/c on the turn, and we need protection against them. Downside is that once he x/r again on the turn we probably have to fold because we won't be priced in (unless he raises small, which happens rarely when he's OOP), but I don't think that's gonna happen very often, and it's just too risky to check back our set when more than half the deck can complete some kind of draws on the river.

If we check back our sets in this spot where he can def. have bluffs or semi-bluffs with equity, we will be playing a bluff catching game on the river if he forces us to, and I just don't think that's gonna do us much good. If the turn didn't bring the 2nd FD, I'd be a bit more inclined to check back because protection is less of an issue (although still important). I could be wrong on this, though.

b) KQ55 with FD

Well, now we are blocking a FD (maybe 2) and that will weigh our opponent's range more toward straights and sets. However, he can still have hands like TP + NFD, against which we are pushing a pretty big equity edge. Also, good thing about betting our set + FD is that we are always priced in when he check/raises on the turn.

In short, all the reasons mentioned in a) still apply, we will be pushing more equity with our added FD, and we can continue against his x/r.

-- midori

I hadn't thought much about doing this, and it isn't intentional. It's just a reflection of how I think about the situations and figure them out for myself.

I was a philosophy major as well before dropping out so I guess it's just ingrained in me!

Thank you for pointing it out.

In my opinion, what you mentioned is a very efficient way of improving your understanding of poker. However, I don't think thinking about various river outcomes is conceptually very different than thinking about your range in some spot. In the former, you think about scenarios with river cards different than the one actually fell on the board; in the latter, you think about scenarios with your hole cards (or their distributions) different than the 4 cards you actually have.

In this sense, in order for us to come up with a comprehensive (and exhaustive) list of strategies, we indeed have to take at least 4 variables into consideration: a) our range, b) our opponent's range, c) bet sizing(s), and d) the board runout.

Bet sizing, by definition, has the most number of possible outcomes, and very often we simplify those possibilities to a handful of options, i.e. half-pot bet, pot bet, 2.5x raise preflop, etc. However, this doesn't necessarily have to be the case, and fully exploring the bet sizing and its affect on the EV of a strategy pair would be very demanding. Good news is, a small change in bet sizing usually doesn't affect pot odds by much, and so far limiting our options to 3-4 choices seems to be working pretty well.

Then come ranges. This is what is talked about the most often, and we are relatively familiar with a) and b). To some extent, we are used to d) as well; whenever we count "outs" on flop or turn, we are actually fine-tuning our strategy for a number of different board runouts. Of course, this is often done more implicitly than a) and b), and yes, Phil has been astute to point those out (or "think out loud"), but I believe most of us are already doing a conceptually similar thing at the table. It's just that when we hear Phil talking about it, we realise we probably have to give it more thoughts than we already are. :)

Sorry for the ramble. I was writing my thesis and decided to take a 10-min break. Time to go back to (more) academic writing..

-- midori

@Midori - the unique part is that Phil isnt just imagining a certain run-out (a "regular" 7), he's talking about a 7 that also somehow makes him a straight. But the board is QJ23-7, so it isn't possible for a 7 to make him a straight. He's thinking about a river card, call it 7*, that behaves like a 6 (or A) with relation to his hand, but behaves like a 7 with relation to his opponents hand.

@Cody: Thanks for elaborating.

I think studying these "impossible cases" still helps our understanding of poker. In the example you mentioned, I would like to think the fact that Phil cannot hit a straight on a 7 river is, albeit correct, just details; the general idea behind (I presume) is that there are river cards on which both players' equity distribution changes in a similar way, one in a more polarised way and another in a more merged way in this specific example.

It just so happens that this (the case 7 giving him a straight) was prohibited on this river, but as long as there are similar cases, studying these spots can still prove useful and the details shouldn't matter too much IMO. To be honest, I would suspect that it doesn't really have to be an actual river card. The equities of both players will always have some distribution, so we can assume we will have such a distribution first, and then see which river cards will fit our assumption the best. Of course this will (usually) take a longer time than picking up actual river cards, but I just wanted to point out about the "generality" of this approach.

Also, I am not sure if the following would be the best analogies, but let me give it a shot anyway. In mathematics and physics, there are strictly prohibited possibilities. In math, we cannot divide a number by zero and we run into this often when talking about limits, as in lim (x->2) (x^2-4) / (x-2). In complex analysis, there are poles at which the function f(z) does some weird things, or its value is not well defined. Still, it helps to see how these functions behave around these limiting points, like approaching x to 1.9, 1.99, 1.999 in the former example, or z -> a in the latter, in order for us to understand the characteristics of these functions, or of the limiting points.

These are just my rough ideas, and like I said above, I wouldn't be surprised if this approach is an inefficient or unfeasible way of studying PLO in practice. In theory though, at least, I don't think there are contradictions..

-- midori

I like the math analogy very much. It's funny because rather than the thought-experiment analogy, I was considering an imaginary numbers analogy...

Without the use of imaginary numbers [i = sq.rt (-1)], you can't tackle equations with sq. roots of negative numbers. In a similar way, the imaginary river card allows Phil to tackle a situation where his actual hand improves (hits a straight) and his opponents range improves as well (due to more two pair combos).

Another possibility of what Phil may be doing here is (indirectly?) thinking about the situation where the board is QJ34 (3 diamonds) and his hand is AK56 or K256 (no diamonds) and the river card is actually a 7.