Stopped at 2nd hand where You call a 3bet OOP w AJs. Usually when You get a cback on a flop like QQ6 with possible flush draw, the OPP is giving up or his hand has a showdown value. When You bet a turn like 3/4 of a pot, You are repping a pretty thin range. So, on the river when a flush comes out, He will amost never bet KK, AA, so what are You repping and what do You beat there if You are going for a c/r the river...

Hi Nick, I found this video helpful, thankyou.
43:34
U bet turn with a set of 55 when flush completes, how often do you expect to be checkraised here? i assume you are just calling it off?

bigdogs,

the depth makes that hand a little tricky but i don't think i can be betfolding turn without a great read. even vs a flush i still have over 20% eq.

facing the turn XR is unpleasant but theres just too much value in betting turn and getting called --> jamming most rivers.

Hi Nick,

I really liked the discussion about your friend who regressed after learning more about theory. The amount of times I've justified calling by saying 'top of range' and 'if I don't call I'm exploitable', only to get shown the nuts is unreal. I think it's a pretty common problem. I'm naturally more of a station than the folding type so these concepts have definitely not helped my game at all.

That being said, this concept of natural bluffs really makes a lot of sense. Hopefully I can use this to make more folds.

Hi Nick,

I would really like to hear your thoughts on flatting 3Bs OOP vs only 4B or folding. Traditionally I have played the latter with 100bb stacks, but have been noticing a trending away from this and toward the flatting approach. What is it about today's game conditions that makes you and other good players think flatting shows a higher EV? Thanks!

22:32, what would be the worst pair youd call here? what does your calling range look like in general here?

99-22,AQo-A9o,KQo-KTo,QJo-QTo,JTo,AQs-A2s,KQs-K6s,QJs-Q7s,JTs-J8s,T9s-T8s,98s-97s,87s-86s,76s,65s

otr i would try to play a mixed strat with all of my non-Ax pairs (call Ax 100% of the time). just b/c thats how gtorb does it .. it would call a small fraction of the time with a lot of diff

Great video Nick. I admire how critical of your play you are

In my personal opinion, I feel like the QT hands was the most interesting and could of used more discussion. What exactly the top of your range is, at least in relative terms I think depends a lot on what exactly he is VBing and what he is bluffing with.

If he is VBing AK and turning T9s/T8s into bluffs then I think QT is close to the bottom of your range. Would rather he calling with AQ/AT/KT/AJ/KJ/Potentially J9s, Although im not exatly sure what your flop and turn strategies are for all these hands. If he now adds( or switch's with T8/T9) some hands such as J9/J8s(assuming he is just VBing AK), I think exactly What hands are best for calling could be quite interesting. I dont know much about GTORB( my entire knowledge of it comes from your last video, which I really enjoyed and hope you do more GTORB vids in the future) Im not sure if it lets you weights ranges, like CREV, but if it does, I think it could be quite a cool spot to play around with in a future videos.

I think your talk about about your friend who toke up theory and noticed a negative impact on his game was interesting. I had the same thing happen to me about a 1.5 years ago when I started learning it. I would say there was about a 3 month period where it was negatively effecting my game, But now I feel it has paid off. Im not exactly sure what happened. It is still something i think about from time to time, as it makes me weary when I think about trying to make a lot of changes to my game all at one time. The best I can figure is I was mainly miss applying a lot of stuff which I had taken on board and it toke me awhile to properly digest what I had learn. I still wonder if there are somethings I have picked up which I am still miss applying.

Its a good point about QT potentially being the wrong blocker for the call, even though its at the top of my range. If GTORB had clairvoyance over a villain who was using Tx hands as bluffs, it would definitely pass on QT and choose to bluffcatch with hands that didnt block the bluffing range.

that being said, GTORB's bluffcatching strategies on the river are, for the most part, highly mixed. It's also worth noting that the corresponding bluffing range for the other player is also highly mixed. You hardly ever see a very concentrated bluffing or bluffcatching range in GTORB when ranges are wide.

Once one player has clairvoyance over the other's river bluffing or bluffcatching range, he responds by using the best re-blockers. GTORB's solution is the result of both players having clairvoyance over the other's range -- neither player can take too much advantage of blocker effects in most spots b/c it leaves the other player too strong of a recounter.

This isnt to say that it completely disregards blockers, just that it puts more attention on not concentrating a bluffing or bluffcatching range than most humans.

Hey, just wanted to ask a more general question when it comes to defending 3bets by calling. How does your calling range change base on villains 3betting ranges?

ie.

say UTGvsMP and villain 3bets 3% vs 6% vs 9%
or BTNvsSB and villain 3bets 8% vs 14% vs 20%

its kind of hard to say from 6% to 9% b/c it could just be the difference between him 3betting polarized or unpolarized. , which doesnt really give you room to expand your calling range (he's allowed to 3bet more aggressively if he's linear). If someone's at like 3% tho, i'll just start folding a lot more of my AJ/KQ type hands

sb v bb pretty much the same story.

Intresting video Nick.
I got a simuliar question.
When does playing unexploitative is -ev. For example, if you use crev to find balanced 4betting/calling 3bet/folding ranges in each position, so you are not beeing exploited. Then if your opponent is only 4betting or 3betting like 2%, wouldn't it be better to fold much wider?

The reason I am asking is, if my calling range is much wider than the 3betting range and I am OOP, wouldn't it be better to fold exploitative like 70% of hands? e.g. I open 16% and defend like 50% of my range vs a 3-6% 3betting range. The same for the button, I open 50% and defend 50% of this range vs like 10% 3betting ranges.

I tried to use the equity of hands and R to see what hands are +ev to defend.

Thanks for your help.

Then if your opponent is only 4betting or 3betting like 2%, wouldn't
it be better to fold much wider?

for sure , and for sure again to the similar vs 3bet question. constructing a well balanced preflop range vs 3bets and 4bets mainly ensures that you're not exploitable to aggression. it also ensures that if villain is actually nitting, that you won't be paying his value with too wide of a range.

The best way to think about it would be this:
if someone is only 4betting 2%, he's not exploiting you if you play a solid vs 4bet strategy -- b/c his value is still only getting paid at a rate that we're calling appropriate/solid for us to be paying him in theory. Whats happening is that you'd be missing a chance to exploit him, by overfolding.

he's making your 5-bet bluffs extremely losing. but if you're playing an optimal 5-bet range, he does not get paid at above an optimal fqcy by your range, even tho he snaps very often vs 5bets. we're concerned with the frequency at which his value gets paid, and +EV opportunities he passes up by folding hands vs 3bet that were +EV 4bet bluffs.

you're confusing villain increasing his overall EV for the hand with villain's 4betting range simply having more equity. Take 2 models:

I 4bet a range of AA only, you 5bet jam A5s-A4s, AK, AA-TT

I 4bet a range of AK, AA-JJ. you 5bet jam the same range as above ^

in both situations, the EV of my AA is the same. hence i did not exploit you by only 4betting AA, assuming your 5bet range is optimal (huge assumption, but it serves the point). I can never exploit an optimal defense, b/c by definition exploiting means i'm making more than i would vs an optimal opponent.

But yea, of course we would want to re-devise our 5-betting range if we had clairvoyance of his 4bet range. Point is -- only the player who is already deviating from optimal can be considered exploitable. hope this helps.

Nick, if I'm understanding the above correctly, would that mean that you can 3b/c5b, or 3bet the same ranges versus everyone if you play it optimally? In your other video I seen you had defined rangers for 3/4betting and facing 3/4betting by position. Does thart mean you use the same base model (while making adjustments to exploit) against all opponents? Such as 3betting/call4b versus an UTGopen from CO whether they open 20 or 50% and whether they 4b or fold high or low?

I just posted a question in general poker (if you come across it that would be awesome) and this would go some way to answering.

yea, basically if you're not going out of your way to exploit a known tendency, then you would protect yourself by playing optimal 3B/4B/5B fqcys. it ensures that you can't be exploited on by guys on either end of the coin. you pay the nit the proper amount when he has AA (see ex w/ shibulon), and you don't allow the aggro to exploit you when he over-bluffs. in reality, you'll be exploiting both players -- the nit is missing out on +EV bluffing opportunities with optimal bluff randomizers , and the lag is using bluffs outside of optimal that are actually -EV vs an optimal defense.

I can see the benefit of having set hero ranges in GTORB when studying and implementing in future scenarios actually. Thanks for the reply Nick, I do have a follow up question. How do you go about deciding what an optimal 3b/4b/5b frequency is? Proving to be a sticking point, and guesswork for me at present.

Cheers

we wont really know until we have preflop solvers. It's likely a hugely mixed strategy consisting of most starting hands. a more practical way of approaching it would be to make sure your frequencies are relatively inexploitable. make sure you can defend vs 3bets by either calling or 4betting enough. make sure you can defend against 5bets by either calling or 5betting enough. and make sure that you have hands in the felting ranges that are strong enough to warrant it. thats the jist of it. on a more advanced level you may want to start considering factors like postflop board coverage. .

we wont really know until we have preflop solvers. It's likely a hugely mixed strategy consisting of most starting hands. a more practical way of approaching it would be to make sure your frequencies are relatively inexploitable. make sure you can defend vs 3bets by either calling or 4betting enough. make sure you can defend against 5bets by either calling or 5betting enough. and make sure that you have hands in the felting ranges that are strong enough to warrant it. thats the jist of it. on a more advanced level you may want to start considering factors like postflop board coverage. .

Hi Nick. With T8s on 36 minute, if your assumptions about opponent range are right, isnt jamming with mix of hands better than small bet? Especially when you go for bet/call yourself. If you think that he is unaware of fact that xr is superior strategy over turn overbet, than his range is pretty much capped and your best EV move is to jam.

Hi, the hand at 12:20 on A22 I don't really understand why you would seem to prefer a bigger sizing for the in position player. I would think he bet small because he thinks his range is very strong compared to yours and wants to be balanced.