Honestly the weird SPR contributed to my uncertainty here. Calling felt losing vs 3/4 pot. Shoving felt like too much $. Raising < all in felt dumb because any reasonable size leaves us commited or virtually commited (so then why not just shove?) etc That was more what I was trying to convey, I just didn't do it very well.
17:50 I use bigger sizes quite often in tournaments and in this situation it looks like he has the 4x more in his range and also more air given you block Qd and some 10x that had bdsd/combo, so my initial play here would be x and secondary bet small 1/3ish on river almost to induce? Love your series, appreciate the deep insight.
With the JJ48ss board where you have 65o, do you ever have an overbet of around ~1200-1300 for geometric/good river shove sizing? i imagine hands like J4, 44, 65ss, occasional T9ss would like it (those are hands I often find myself doing it with in spots like this), but I'm wondering if that's a little too ambitious?
My initial reaction though is that I probably don't. Generally speaking paired board (especailly high paired boards) aren't great for overbetting. The problem of course is card removal. Once we put 2 overbets in villain mostly just needs Jx to call (or a few other things). If we have Jx, villain is most likely in his folding region and if we have air villain is significantly more likely to have Jx... That's generally not a good combination.
Obviously there are a few exceptions like exploitative ones, or simply if you're playing EP vs EP and it comes J22 or J33 - no one really has any trips here (beyond a sprinkling of combos) so in essence you're playing a board with just a jack on it and overpairs dominate and can overbet
Cheers - it's around 22:30. But yeah, makes sense. I guess it's a spot where we're just not gonna play for stacks with the exception of coolers/opponent spazzes. Jx's are so rare that since it's so hard to force indifference on value for massive sizing ... we shouldn't really have any massive sizings. Turn overbet doesn't make that much sense theoretically as Jx's are gonna pretty inelastic on most rivers if they call turn - though I have this sometimes as a exploitable turn overbet to get immediate foldouts from middle pair, and to get full stacks when I get river value, with 100% giveups on bricks. I think players are overly elastic in folding range from 75% PSB to 125% PSB , but I can understand now why it's kind of a trainwreck in practice. Thanks :D
46:23 - You decide to cbet KK on AQ6hh button vs bb. Can you explain why this is an "autobet" as opposed to a check back? Is it just b/c the bb range is so wide you get value from Qx/6x/Fds etc? Do you use the same sizing w/ KK as you would w/ Ax?
It's an auto cbet because of a bunch of factors. Mostly we're just pushing a lot of equity here. I use one size on this board for my whole range As well as all the other spots i auto cbet)
So if we're betting KK/Qx/etc don't we open ourselves up to getting cr a ton? I guess I'm just confused with what hands we'd be checking back here if not KK which on the surface seems like a good candidate.
I'd recommend running the board in Pio. That will show you the entire equilibrium (including how to play vs x/r if it's an auto cbet and what hands make good check backs if we don't auto cbet).
I don't have time to run this today but I'll try over the next few days. Remind me.
1) You definitely need to get pio and start working on it immediately. The honest truth is that if you aren't using Pio in 2017 you're going to just fall behind those that are.
2) There's two common flop strats.
i) An "auto" cbet that generally uses one size of ~20-35% pot for like 80+ % of range. (So it's not strictly a literal auto cbet but it's a very high freq cbet). This occurs on boards where we're trying to push equity.
ii) Lower cbet freq spots where we aren't pushing as much equity/want a more polarized cbet range. We cbet less frequently and use a larger sizing (because we are using hands that can withstand how much we tighten villain's range.)
So in this spot, KK isn't a hand that wants to tighten his range a lot (to mostly Ax) for obvious reasons. So if I was playing a polar strat with larger cbet sizes then this would be a checking hand. However, if I want to play an auto cbet for small size then this hand is fine. Sure he calls all Ax but vs my small size he has to call Qx, 6x, some gutter, hearts, some bdfds, maybe hands like 7s or w/e etc. KK still has heaps of equity against this range.
The strat you want is based on a pile of different things, too many to list here. Looking through pio helps you determine which boards/positions you want to use which strat on and some digging sheds some light on which factors contribute.
Great vid! Sick heater btw!
27min A8cc, why not 3b/f pre instead of flat? I feel like we can handcuff his stacksize here forcing him to fold or shove. When we go post flop, it seems we are looking for two pair/FD or better. Otherwise we just pot control/play the guessing game on alot of boards as we can't barrel as comfortably for value/ we aren't even that deep to begin?
I think your mistake here comes from the notion that we don't often flop the nuts with this hand (you pointed out we need 2p/flush to really want to shovel it in). There's no rule in poker that says that every hand you play has to flop the joint and get 3 streets. It's totally fine that mostly this hand just makes "fine" hands and calls down/pot controls.
I can't prove that's necessarily true but I can prove the opposite is untrue (that we should only play one type of hand).
Consider a hand like 44 and a hand like A8s. 44 frequently flops nothing (except the crappy pair that it started with). When this happens we want to put 0-1 bets in postflop generally. (We fold immediately on KJ6 and peel one off on some boards like K32 or w/e.)
Conversely, A8s as you noted, makes a middling pair of aces or a middling pair of 8s or a 3 flush with overcard or w/e pretty often. It somewhat less often (compared to 44) flops a hand that wants to shovel in heaps of BB.
So let me ask this question: What happens if our range only contains hands like 44?
Well then villain probably plays a strat that bets twice for smallish sizings. We fold a lot on the flop and a lot on the turn and mostly by the time we call turn we have a set.
What happens if we only play hands that make bluff catcher type things? Well then villain pounds away over 3 streets with a lot of overbets and we can't stack off often enough.
But what if we mix both hands? I flop a lot of middling hands with KTs/A8s etc so that I'm not overfolding flop/turn with my range of just 22-66. But when villain decides he wants to blast away I'm not forced to call down with a bunch of middling pair type crap because I have some sets to protect me.
So the fact that A8s has this type of equity distribution doesn't automatically make it a bad hand. It just is what it is.
In terms of why I don't like 3 betting here, consider how often you would be 3b/folding if started using a bunch of hands as strong as this one to vpip. That seems extremely exploitable.
Thanks for the response really appreciate it! Above would make more sense if Villan was 40bbs+ or so
You're kinda treating it like a cash game spot imo. With 44 we should rarely flat vs this stack size as we don't have the right odds to set mine and it plays poorly post like you said. A8s is obv a lot better post but vs a 27bb opening range how does it play?
I guess what i'm trying to say is you would end up playing this ("What happens if we only play hands that make bluff catcher type things? Well then villain pounds away over 3 streets with a lot of overbets and we can't stack off often enough.") strategy the fast majority of the time off this effective stack size.
Just seems rather exploitable to me.
I didn't mean we call with 44 here in this specific spot. I'm just saying in general.
I was trying to point out that just because A8s doesn't flop the nuts super often doesn't necessarily prevent from being a +EV call (and in fact, you almost certainly need some of these hands in the calling range).
And no, because at 27BBs the threshold for "nuts" is much weaker than at like 100+bbs so we don't need a set to happily stack off. Tp should be more than enough.
Hi Apotheosis,
What are your thoughts on players raising 2.5x-3x into a sub 20bb stack in the big blind, do you think this is a good strategy to implement?
Also as a side question, how important was/is playing cash games to improve your game; Do you think its a must for tournament players?
Thanks for the great content
It's not something I personally do and it's probably not as good as raising smaller but I don't think it's a catastrophe or anything. Certainly it's probably at least close enough to correct that if people play poorly against it that may be enough to offset the theoretical EV loss. In short, I wouldn't worry about it.
Playing cash definitely isn't necessary.
As for how it helped me, I'm not honestly sure. It was the game I played for the first 2+ years of my career, during which time I improved. Could I have improved the same amount by playing tourneys? Idk. I don't really have a suitable control. Certainly it was much better than not playing anything but I'd have to imagine that if you want to play tourneys then practicing by playing tourneys has to be either the dominant or co-dominant strat.
With you blocking 33/22, isnt it a spot where population is really unbalanced towards bluffs? If he's not limping 100% of his range (so 93o/92o), its really difficult for him to show up there with more than like 8 combos that are beating you. And given that most of his bluff check/raising range should consist from flushdraws/combodraws, shouldnt we be interested in him charging for realization with these?
Awesome series, im cash player, but your videos are still bringing tons of value.
I played around with equilab, and now i think i get why i thought there is more value in reraising for protection/charging than there really is.
All his flushdraws are always having two overcards to us and then he has combodraws, so even if he's overbluffing heavily, we are still like only 55% ahead of his raising range at flop.
But at the same time i dont see how equity now shifts at turn at 6d that is one of unfavourable (sure its not heart, but still its worse than most cards) runouts, that we now want to raise turn and not flop.
Sry for multiple comments, but i was trying to figure it out while watching. I might be lost there because im not familiar with limping strategies (as these are not too common in NL small stakes), but its difficult for me to see why we would want to call but raise 6d turn.
I think you've essentially figured it out. I believe we're not pushing enough equity on flop to keep firing $ in. While the 6d isn't the absolute best card in deck, given how most villain's construct their ranges here I think I'm now pushing enough equity again to be able to raise.
At 2:00 with T9, what is your opinion about donk betting turn? Don't use these lines my self atm, but thinking to implemet them more into my game so would be nice to get some fundamentals.
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Why are we concerned about raise folding equity away on the 9To hand if the alternative is to just fold it?
Honestly the weird SPR contributed to my uncertainty here. Calling felt losing vs 3/4 pot. Shoving felt like too much $. Raising < all in felt dumb because any reasonable size leaves us commited or virtually commited (so then why not just shove?) etc That was more what I was trying to convey, I just didn't do it very well.
17:50 I use bigger sizes quite often in tournaments and in this situation it looks like he has the 4x more in his range and also more air given you block Qd and some 10x that had bdsd/combo, so my initial play here would be x and secondary bet small 1/3ish on river almost to induce? Love your series, appreciate the deep insight.
I don't think he has any 4x in his range here. Why do you think he does?
Sorry, you're correct, I was thinking vs UTG. And was thinking short handed, 34s, 45s, a4s, 44.
Hey Chris,
With the JJ48ss board where you have 65o, do you ever have an overbet of around ~1200-1300 for geometric/good river shove sizing? i imagine hands like J4, 44, 65ss, occasional T9ss would like it (those are hands I often find myself doing it with in spots like this), but I'm wondering if that's a little too ambitious?
Can you timestamp this for me?
My initial reaction though is that I probably don't. Generally speaking paired board (especailly high paired boards) aren't great for overbetting. The problem of course is card removal. Once we put 2 overbets in villain mostly just needs Jx to call (or a few other things). If we have Jx, villain is most likely in his folding region and if we have air villain is significantly more likely to have Jx... That's generally not a good combination.
Obviously there are a few exceptions like exploitative ones, or simply if you're playing EP vs EP and it comes J22 or J33 - no one really has any trips here (beyond a sprinkling of combos) so in essence you're playing a board with just a jack on it and overpairs dominate and can overbet
Cheers - it's around 22:30. But yeah, makes sense. I guess it's a spot where we're just not gonna play for stacks with the exception of coolers/opponent spazzes. Jx's are so rare that since it's so hard to force indifference on value for massive sizing ... we shouldn't really have any massive sizings. Turn overbet doesn't make that much sense theoretically as Jx's are gonna pretty inelastic on most rivers if they call turn - though I have this sometimes as a exploitable turn overbet to get immediate foldouts from middle pair, and to get full stacks when I get river value, with 100% giveups on bricks. I think players are overly elastic in folding range from 75% PSB to 125% PSB , but I can understand now why it's kind of a trainwreck in practice. Thanks :D
46:23 - You decide to cbet KK on AQ6hh button vs bb. Can you explain why this is an "autobet" as opposed to a check back? Is it just b/c the bb range is so wide you get value from Qx/6x/Fds etc? Do you use the same sizing w/ KK as you would w/ Ax?
It's an auto cbet because of a bunch of factors. Mostly we're just pushing a lot of equity here. I use one size on this board for my whole range As well as all the other spots i auto cbet)
So if we're betting KK/Qx/etc don't we open ourselves up to getting cr a ton? I guess I'm just confused with what hands we'd be checking back here if not KK which on the surface seems like a good candidate.
I'd recommend running the board in Pio. That will show you the entire equilibrium (including how to play vs x/r if it's an auto cbet and what hands make good check backs if we don't auto cbet).
Ok thx. Don't have pio yet unfortunately.
I don't have time to run this today but I'll try over the next few days. Remind me.
1) You definitely need to get pio and start working on it immediately. The honest truth is that if you aren't using Pio in 2017 you're going to just fall behind those that are.
2) There's two common flop strats.
i) An "auto" cbet that generally uses one size of ~20-35% pot for like 80+ % of range. (So it's not strictly a literal auto cbet but it's a very high freq cbet). This occurs on boards where we're trying to push equity.
ii) Lower cbet freq spots where we aren't pushing as much equity/want a more polarized cbet range. We cbet less frequently and use a larger sizing (because we are using hands that can withstand how much we tighten villain's range.)
So in this spot, KK isn't a hand that wants to tighten his range a lot (to mostly Ax) for obvious reasons. So if I was playing a polar strat with larger cbet sizes then this would be a checking hand. However, if I want to play an auto cbet for small size then this hand is fine. Sure he calls all Ax but vs my small size he has to call Qx, 6x, some gutter, hearts, some bdfds, maybe hands like 7s or w/e etc. KK still has heaps of equity against this range.
The strat you want is based on a pile of different things, too many to list here. Looking through pio helps you determine which boards/positions you want to use which strat on and some digging sheds some light on which factors contribute.
Great vid! Sick heater btw!
27min A8cc, why not 3b/f pre instead of flat? I feel like we can handcuff his stacksize here forcing him to fold or shove. When we go post flop, it seems we are looking for two pair/FD or better. Otherwise we just pot control/play the guessing game on alot of boards as we can't barrel as comfortably for value/ we aren't even that deep to begin?
Cheers!
I think your mistake here comes from the notion that we don't often flop the nuts with this hand (you pointed out we need 2p/flush to really want to shovel it in). There's no rule in poker that says that every hand you play has to flop the joint and get 3 streets. It's totally fine that mostly this hand just makes "fine" hands and calls down/pot controls.
I can't prove that's necessarily true but I can prove the opposite is untrue (that we should only play one type of hand).
Consider a hand like 44 and a hand like A8s. 44 frequently flops nothing (except the crappy pair that it started with). When this happens we want to put 0-1 bets in postflop generally. (We fold immediately on KJ6 and peel one off on some boards like K32 or w/e.)
Conversely, A8s as you noted, makes a middling pair of aces or a middling pair of 8s or a 3 flush with overcard or w/e pretty often. It somewhat less often (compared to 44) flops a hand that wants to shovel in heaps of BB.
So let me ask this question: What happens if our range only contains hands like 44?
Well then villain probably plays a strat that bets twice for smallish sizings. We fold a lot on the flop and a lot on the turn and mostly by the time we call turn we have a set.
What happens if we only play hands that make bluff catcher type things? Well then villain pounds away over 3 streets with a lot of overbets and we can't stack off often enough.
But what if we mix both hands? I flop a lot of middling hands with KTs/A8s etc so that I'm not overfolding flop/turn with my range of just 22-66. But when villain decides he wants to blast away I'm not forced to call down with a bunch of middling pair type crap because I have some sets to protect me.
So the fact that A8s has this type of equity distribution doesn't automatically make it a bad hand. It just is what it is.
In terms of why I don't like 3 betting here, consider how often you would be 3b/folding if started using a bunch of hands as strong as this one to vpip. That seems extremely exploitable.
Thanks for the response really appreciate it! Above would make more sense if Villan was 40bbs+ or so
You're kinda treating it like a cash game spot imo. With 44 we should rarely flat vs this stack size as we don't have the right odds to set mine and it plays poorly post like you said. A8s is obv a lot better post but vs a 27bb opening range how does it play?
I guess what i'm trying to say is you would end up playing this ("What happens if we only play hands that make bluff catcher type things? Well then villain pounds away over 3 streets with a lot of overbets and we can't stack off often enough.") strategy the fast majority of the time off this effective stack size.
Just seems rather exploitable to me.
Cheers
I didn't mean we call with 44 here in this specific spot. I'm just saying in general.
I was trying to point out that just because A8s doesn't flop the nuts super often doesn't necessarily prevent from being a +EV call (and in fact, you almost certainly need some of these hands in the calling range).
And no, because at 27BBs the threshold for "nuts" is much weaker than at like 100+bbs so we don't need a set to happily stack off. Tp should be more than enough.
Bravo !
Hi Apotheosis,
What are your thoughts on players raising 2.5x-3x into a sub 20bb stack in the big blind, do you think this is a good strategy to implement?
Also as a side question, how important was/is playing cash games to improve your game; Do you think its a must for tournament players?
Thanks for the great content
It's not something I personally do and it's probably not as good as raising smaller but I don't think it's a catastrophe or anything. Certainly it's probably at least close enough to correct that if people play poorly against it that may be enough to offset the theoretical EV loss. In short, I wouldn't worry about it.
Playing cash definitely isn't necessary.
As for how it helped me, I'm not honestly sure. It was the game I played for the first 2+ years of my career, during which time I improved. Could I have improved the same amount by playing tourneys? Idk. I don't really have a suitable control. Certainly it was much better than not playing anything but I'd have to imagine that if you want to play tourneys then practicing by playing tourneys has to be either the dominant or co-dominant strat.
8:35 32o
With you blocking 33/22, isnt it a spot where population is really unbalanced towards bluffs? If he's not limping 100% of his range (so 93o/92o), its really difficult for him to show up there with more than like 8 combos that are beating you. And given that most of his bluff check/raising range should consist from flushdraws/combodraws, shouldnt we be interested in him charging for realization with these?
Awesome series, im cash player, but your videos are still bringing tons of value.
I played around with equilab, and now i think i get why i thought there is more value in reraising for protection/charging than there really is.
All his flushdraws are always having two overcards to us and then he has combodraws, so even if he's overbluffing heavily, we are still like only 55% ahead of his raising range at flop.
But at the same time i dont see how equity now shifts at turn at 6d that is one of unfavourable (sure its not heart, but still its worse than most cards) runouts, that we now want to raise turn and not flop.
Sry for multiple comments, but i was trying to figure it out while watching. I might be lost there because im not familiar with limping strategies (as these are not too common in NL small stakes), but its difficult for me to see why we would want to call but raise 6d turn.
I think you've essentially figured it out. I believe we're not pushing enough equity on flop to keep firing $ in. While the 6d isn't the absolute best card in deck, given how most villain's construct their ranges here I think I'm now pushing enough equity again to be able to raise.
At 2:00 with T9, what is your opinion about donk betting turn? Don't use these lines my self atm, but thinking to implemet them more into my game so would be nice to get some fundamentals.
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