That's possible. Tim also plays in extremely tough games, mostly at high stakes.

I think its a very intresting hand too. Not sure how Ben percives the Ac turn in this dynamic, since its not clear at least to me whats the best decision on flop with A7-AQ hands. And i think thats very important to know whether you want to check with your range on the turn, or fire a lot.

I don't think I said I was cbetting flop with every A high? I think cbetting every A high would be a weak strategy.

I like XF ok too, that's definitely the other viable line. I don't think it's good to bet very much Ax on the flop here, but it's probably good to bet a variety of Ax combos sometimes.

Raphael,

I think one of Katya's main bluffing hands is Jx. I'd expect something like J8cc to bluff shove river a ton. The river is just a brutal spot for me against a very good player because my range will be ace heavy such that I have to call river with some of them and fold most of them. Against weaker players (and/or tighter 3bettors) the river is a very easy fold.

(smoke)

There's a spot earlier on the video at 6:40 or so where Ben opens QJ on the button and the flop comes AJ4 rainbow and he says that it's a good flop for him and that he'll mix up betting and checking with his hand which leads me to believe that he's likely to occasionally bet some Qx on AQ5ss CO vs BB too. Also, when the Q pairs on the turn I'd imagine that Ben will be checking back some non-zero % of his boats due to the fact that we'd be blocking a big chunk of villains calling range on the turn so we'd prefer to allow him to bluff missed draws on the river. I could be wrong though...

H,

I don't play as bad as you seem to think I do ! It'd be really hard to get to $25/$50+ while making instructional videos if my gameplan involved making wild raises where my range is 100% bluffs !

Could holbcn be right if what he said is exactly jinmay's thinking process? Sometimes we can assume how most of the regs will think in spots (mostly at lower stakes than this) so shouldn't we bluff close to zero percent in this spot after taking this line? What I mean is, if he doesn't think at your level (and you say a couple of times that you don't know exactly what he's doing and how he thinks) is this bluff bad ?

7,

No, I don't think making reads like that is how to win at poker.

I play way lower stakes obviously, but I tend to check AQ if I'm sauce situation sometimes since it needs no protection and him catching up isn't that bad really (and our hand crush this board). If he makes a flush we will still probably get 3 bets (bet, check, raise) in postflop (?) and the same goes if villain got Qx (he wont probably raise turn or river so maximum is 3bets post if he does not improve to a boat). And I sometimes believe people can go out of line when they're in jinmays situation since he'll have a lot of broadway offsuits like KT,JT,KJ and a couple of other weak hands that may want to bluff to prevent us to showdown for free.

At like 37 minute mark you flat T8s however on the BTN. Do you know that this is a +ev play? Especially in such a strong lineup and vs a 3x raise? Or what do you consider the bottom range that's ev0 or better to flat here?

I think a strategy of XF TP there will get exploited by a counterstrategy of double floating 6x/5x and then bluffing river, which is something Katya is capable of.

D,

If you're thinking about XF flop, you need to consider how he plays 2 hand classes (a) Axs, and (b) 22-88. If you think he checks both of these hands, then flop is an easy XF, because his only semibluffs will be very strong like AJ/AK/J7s/Kxs. That's a bad strategy on his part, but the exploit is to fold 59s vs B, and then to play turn aggro vs X/X.

I think most strong players will fire a lot of Axs on this flop, and then will typically X 22-88 along with a bunch of medium strength value behind. Against a strat like that I think 59s has enough possibilities to be on the bottom end of our XC range.

I'd take some CB calling range and assume he calls Kx on river, then I'd distribute his pocket pairs and high cards as folding some to a turn bet and some to a river bet until his frequencies loosely approximate MDF over the final two streets, especially the river. From there I'd choose my most efficient bluffs so that he can't improve by folding middle hands on any specific street.

I ran CREV, and in fact, T8s is one of your good bluffing hand, QJs QTs and JTs even little better as opposed to a hand like AQo or 78s which are slightly minus ev bluffs due to removal. Very impressive how you figured that out in game in like 3 seconds.
Also his MDF includes calling hands like TT and JJ for sure on the river, if we expect villain to not do it, is that mean that we can higher up our bluffing frequency on the river , and say bluff with our whole range? since we have a +EV bluff then?

Brit,

I think if villain is playing well he'll leave us an ~0EV bluff with QJ-T8 type of stuff, and make the rest of our range -EV on river. There might be some betsizing issues, where we can make a mistake by betting too large on flop/turn such that we have no ~0EV bluffs (but that's our problem).

In game you just have to make a read about how wide he is on each street and then pick if you think your hand is a good bluff. I think triple barreling here for >60% pot tends to be really thin readless.

@brit how is 87s minus EV due to removal? I think its a balance between blocking Kx and not blocking floats. T8s seems very good as rarely ppl float T9s or 98s here but very frequently have KT K8. QJs QTs QJs blocks his stronger Kx but I think it also blocks floats, so I would argue T8 and T9 function as better bluffs.
The only downside is that versus 55-JJ, T8 and T9 obv do worse. But QJ QT can still check back and realize equity IP so its not like we totally lose out by not bluffing with it cause we are not OOP and won't be bet off the hand frequently and unable to see river if we dont bet

@fivebetbluff
78s and T8s are different from only 1 card. The T seems to do a better job as blocking Kx than the 7 does. And this small difference makes 78s very slightly minus EV bluff , and T8s very slightly +EV bluff, thats it.

Ok if the spot is easy for you, for me it's not. We ll have many Kx and AA in our range so it make sense to bluff the river (and which sizing), but in the same time it seems that he has a lot of Kx and he's not folding that very often (ever?) .. So for me it's a very tough spot to decide to go for the 3 barrel bluff or not.
If you have an easy answer then please say it.

bob,

Every video I answer flop cb sizing questions the same, which is that I don't think the precise sizing matters much, but it does matter which range of hands we use for each sizing. I agree that the smaller our cb sizing, the more medium strength hands and protection bets we should be betting, and the lower our ratio of pure bluffs should be.

I actually think, in hindsight, I like a bigger cb sizing on the J94 board there, because I'm probably more polarized than is best for a 50% cb.

Thanks Ben, I think flop and turn sizing is an issue that I struggle with a lot, probably for two reasons:-

1. It's not something I can just throw in CREV or crunch in equilab to easily come up with a reasonable model (c.f. range construction); and
2. 'Polarity' as a concept doesn't seem to translate well to streets before the river.

Any tips on how to go about evaluating different sizing options?

Bob,

Excellent points, I agree that those are the two main complicating factors. There isn't really a short answer here, unfortunately. You'll have to just play and study a lot and pay attention to what your opponents are doing.

Ssick_one, I bet Qx pretty rarely there, and when I do it's primarily KQ/QJ, and KQ-Q8s with a BDFD. The biggest Qx combos are effectively TP with worse blockers because OOP almost always 3bets KQ+, so they're fine to bet for value on 2 streets and I like to keep a few Qx combos in my betting range.

S,

Jc5o is maybe a bottom 20% hand in our distribution, so it's only worth a call if we think his frequencies are very weak on later streets.

I have some crazy eyes goin' on in this picture

And a disgraceful lack of beard.

FBB, I just don't think people typically put on enough pressure on Ko/9o, and Q/T/spades that I feel like checking behind QTo makes more than betting. I'll check back some draws with worse blockers for getting immediate folds, especially low spades.

Vitor,

I don't think I have a big enough sample. I'd like to see a comparison of the EV of stealing suited Ax from UTG/HJ as compared with 22-55. (paging Tyler!)

I'm here. 22-55 has an average winrate of 29 bb/100 with a standard deviation of 10bb/100. A2s-A5s has an average winrate of 10 bb/100 with a standard deviation of 11.5 bb/100.

More than you ever wanted to know...

Bulat,

I'm not sure. I only have 119 trials of calling a 3b with 22-77 in 6m games in my most recent database, which is insignificant. I feel pretty confident we should either always call with small PPs vs 3b, or we should at least sometimes call with them. They do fairly well against the high card heavy ranges I seem to see a lot.

Sorry, I don't like responding to declarative sentences that I'm wrong. I definitely might be wrong, but please make an argument. To clarify: I'm not saying the BB is doing well absolutely, (i.e., having an EV of over half the pot with range) I'm saying J43hhh is an above average board for the BB.

Perhaps you misread my post but I never declared that you were wrong and I never would declare that you were wrong. I only stated that equilab says its wrong, then I asked for your opinion.

I get it that as a video producer you have to deal with alot of aggressive and demanding comments which can grow tiresome. I will be mindfull of that when commenting in the future :)

" To clarify: I'm not saying the BB is doing well absolutely, (i.e., having an EV of over half the pot with range) I'm saying J43hhh is an above average board for the BB."

Love where you're going with this, I'm 51%+ sure I think I know where you're going with this. I assume you are assuming BB's range is wider than ours so among the boards on which he is <50% vs our range, this one is above average (as in less bad than the majority of boards). Am I right in assuming? You know what they say about assuming. Anyway, would be great if you could clarify the clarification. Decent odds you get that a lot as is...

Pepe,

Yes, that's what I meant. It would be counter productive to say otherwise, which is why I was trolling shibulon a bit.

I kind of need to troll sometimes in these comments threads because there's just so many of you guys and I can't help myself, but I also feel the need to respond to almost every question. Fair?

Hey you're incredibly active both on your vids and the various forum threads! If you feel the need to be cheeky in this mild and polite way, I don't think any of us will get mad. That had to be the lightest trolling I've ever seen...

sauce's not very healthy, take care