Thank you for the kind words!

Leading T9ss: in a vacuum I would agree that it would play much better as a lead (and not even close). However, I am reluctant to having a leading range at all in this spot because range vs. range we are pretty far behind, so it doesn't make much sense to start throwing money into the pot. Leading hands like T9ss here would also require that we develop a value leading range for balance, which in turn would be pretty disastrous for our already weak range that we check to him on the flop with.

Ax and who has more in their range: I'm actually not sure who out of us has more Ax. While he is quite likely to check back a significant portion of his Ax holdings on the flop, the fact that I did not 3bet also reduces my Ax combos quite significantly, especially at these stacks.

Agree with everything you said about K2.

You solved it. I just can agree. Waiting for the next ones!

Could you be a little more specific about what you are asking? My turn leading range would have 2x hands for value, and for bluffs I would have my weak draws that I did not x/r the turn with, but this was covered in the video so I'm wondering if you are asking something different?

When it comes to club turns, I don't think I would lead any - the BU has more strong hands in his range than me.

Thank you!

I think the way the terms "protecting your calling range" is phrased leads to a lot of misconceptions - I don't like the term at all although I am guilty of using it myself. 

The problem with the term is that it leads players to think that in order to be able to x/c light they also need to have strong hands in their range. To me this seems backwards. A better way to think of it would be like this: you start out initially with a weak x/c range. Villain is not incentivized to barrel you a lot - both as bluffs, and also lighter for value. As a result you are now incentivized to slowplay a lot and c/c a lot of strong hands because of two things - you now pick off a lot of his bluffs, but he is also value betting light so you don't lose out on making money when he has a hand anyway. So it's not a "I have a lot of weak hands I am x/calling with, better add some strong ones in there!" thing, it's more of a "x/calling this strong hand is now massively profitable so it's the best line with it given how often villain barrels down" thing.

When it comes to selecting which strong hands you choose to slowplay, the best ones are going to be ones that are least vulnerable and which block the least of the hands that he would barrel (although the latter is IMO overvalued because if villain is more likely to have a hand that would barrel he is also more likely to continue putting money in if you choose and alternate, more aggressive line). 

Ditto. Although I think in reality there is a tendency in these spots for people to just be like "OMFG I have the nuts!!!" and revert to some kind of mindless fast play/slow play and not even consider their overall strategy and stack sizes. I liked the video, 30bb is an unusual stack size and not one I have a heap of experience playing with.

Absolutely agree

Thank you!

Breaking down how many bluff vs. value combos you want to have in this spot is actually very hard because we are not completely polarized. In the extreme case, almost all of our value bets lose to 33. More commonly, some of the time we valuebet Ax and get called by a better Ax. The more I think about this spot the more I'm leaning towards having two betsizes for this river (large bet with more nutty valuebets and some bluffs, small bet with valuebets that may be behind when called and some bluffs), but I have to think about it more to see what the actual breakdown would look like.

1. I think at these stacks it is still important to size your bets to set up to threaten stacks. Not doing so is problematic especially if you are doing it as a result of the logic of just looking to bet once and get the best price on your bluff. If you intention is to mostly bluff once and then give up you want to have the most FE possible right then and there. Sizing small would just incentivize me to peel very light which is not what villain would want if he just wants to bet once and give up. 

2. I meant two different things by awkward. The first was just the traditional awkward which meant to say that since overbetting in general is not something you see often it would be unusual. The second was meant to say that it would be fairly poor planning because by the river villain would be fairly polarized if he barreled down, and if that is the case then sizing bets more uniformly would be more profitable. Although, thinking about it more, maybe he would not be as polarized as I thought on a lot of rivers, and the board isn't really static, so smaller sizing on earlier streets might be pretty good. 

Still, I think from a practical standpoint when I see this sizing most of the time villain does not currently hold a hand with which he intends to barrel down. Had he flopped a monster I'm sure he would have looked at my stack, tried to plan out future streets and considered betting slightly bigger to get stacks in easier. I realize that this seems like a silly thing to say about a 50/100 game, especially when we are talking about an elite player, but at the end of the day when you are playing an 8 hour session these are the things that start to slip, so when I see him bet his normal sizing when there is good reason not to if he had a strong hand I think it is worth giving heavy consideration.

I was also thinking about 2 sizings for river, but.. 
1. i think your 1/3p range as stated would be too weak
2. we might not (or might, haven't done any work on this spot as to what our full range might be at this point) have enough hands in our range to support splitting ranges for both sizings

I agree with what you are saying. I wasn't so much against betting small - what I really didn't like was the specific sizing that I picked in the video - it's neither here nor there and doesn't fall into either of the categories that it would make sense to split our betsizes into.

In short I agree with your last paragraph.

@sippin:

What do you mean by our 1/3 pot betting range is too weak? I don't agree with this, because we actually have a ton of hands here that can comfortably value bet for that size. If you mean that we don't have any super strong/nut hands in our range when we bet that size (so we aren't weak, just capped) then in that case I agree that would happen if we split our range here into different sizes. However I don't think that being capped is much of an issue here.

@Daniel

I was referring to the ranges he gave for 1/3p (Ax and some bluffs) being too capped, from a theory standpoint.
In practice I think splitting the sizing is probably the best way to go and in theory we might be able to actually split up 2 sizings well, I just wasn't sure. 
Also agree 100% with what you said about your in-game bet being neither here nor there. 

Sorry, missed your last comment from a week ago. Why do you think that in theory being capped is a big problem for us when we bet 1/3 pot?

He alluded to the answer in the video but maybe this will help: Since we are significantly shallower, position is less important, and therefore we are able to realize more of our equity OOP, the true value of which is probably around 34% (vs. villain's range), which is a decent amount greater than the pot odds we're getting pre (22%). Personally I'm not positive if it's a +EV call either way, but hopefully that answers your question.

Ya interesting. I don't doubt if its +EV call pf-more interested in equity/stacksize. I would think we have more implied odds (flushes/trips/twopair) a bit deeper which helps us realize more equity than shallower. Of course as we get much much deeper, we become reverse implied by being up against bigger flushes/trips/2pr and would think we realize a bit less equity.

On the flip-side of that we are more likely to get bluffed off the best hand when deeper, reducing our realized equity. But maybe some of your points are good and I'd also be interested in seeing what Daniel says.

Of course 7 high is going to be better as we get shorter. Whenever you have trouble conceptualizing spots like this always think of extreme cases. Would you rather play 72s OOP 1000BB deep or 50BB deep? Why?

Now think of what happens as stacks get really short (and since we are talking extremes - think of what happens as the amount of money you have behind after peeling preflop approches 0). What would happen is that your hand would just realize all of its equity against villain's range. Now start increasing how much money is left behind. Do you think that when you have 72s OOP you would ever realize more than your fair share of equity? What happens to how much equity you realize as stacks get deeper and deeper?

@mplecki's 2nd comment here - that's backwards thinking. The deeper you are, the less appealing holding a 7high flush becomes. How often are you going to be getting in 100bbs in this spot with a flush and be thinking "this is a great spot for me"? I can think of plenty of spots like that I'd be fistpumping in when 30bbs deep, though. That additional 70BB making things worse for you, not better.

Ya, we certainly realize all of our equity as we get super short, however, do we have enough equity to defend against a pening range in the first place? It doesn't mean anything really if we just realize 100% equity of a negative equity hand.

Like I said, I'm unfamiliar with cap ranges. I'm toying around with holdemresources at the moment to get a rough estimate... I kinda assume this will spit out best opening ranges given stack sizes. Maybe there are some nuances.

looking at chipEV, 1500 stack sizes, 250/500 blinds, no ante, SB is jamming 77.9% BB call with 72s is +0.10 bbs.

at 200/400, sb jams 75.3% and 72s is -0.13 bb call. 

300/600, sb jams 82.2%, 72s is +0.26 bbs, and 72o/32o are +0.07

So we're +EV duper shallow where we are calling ATC. 200/400 for touch less than 4BB eff we are losing money. I'm sure 4-20BB has a few different opening strategies including limping/minraise/jamming, so I don't really know what happens or how to go about estimating our equity.

Daniel, in response to your equity-realization-based-on-stack-depth post I don't think things are necessarily so linear. Obviously we get to realize 100% of our equity if we are all-in preflop (so calling a minraise 2bb deep is a no-brainer), but I do not agree that the amount of equity we realize always continues to decrease the deeper we get. One example could perhaps be small pocket pairs, let's say 44 vs. a larger open size. When we are 4bbs deep we can easily realize 100%. When we are slightly deeper though (~25bb?), it becomes tougher to realize a good chunk of our equity share OOP because we cannot continue on many flops and when we do flop a set we cannot get paid much money. When we are deeper than that (~75bbs to 120bbs) we are again able to realize more of our equity because of implied odds. And then when we are super deep (250bb+ or whatever), we again realize less, because of reverse implied odds and we can rarely float and we may even have to fold a set on occasion etc. So it seems like if we were to draw out our equity realization OOP for some hands it would be more like a wavy line than a line or curve in one direction. Do you agree with this, and if so I guess you think it just doesn't apply with 72s?

mplecki,

To get an idea of equity realization stuff for cap etc. I'd recommend watching my shortstack preflop play video, in particular the 3 handed situations video. 

I would also use CREV for doing what you are trying to do. Also, why do you have it set up with the SB jamming? If you want to do that, then sure but you have to have an ante then to make up for the lack of the dead SB when BU opens and SB folds and you are in the BB.

oblioo, 

Yes, I agree with what you wrote. It would definitely not be linear for a hand like like 44, or even 98s etc. (although more linear for the latter). What I was saying was basically simplifying it for "crappy" reverse implied odds hands like 72s, K2o, etc.

Thank you for the compliments.

I agree with what you said about the two betsizes.