Every other Tuesday for the last 5 years :). Hopefully for the next 5 too.

Somehow I never realized the pattern that your videos came out every other Tuesday. Can't tell if I'm excited to know so I can be ready every Tuesday, or disappointed that I've lost the surprise factor.

Awesome, glad you enjoyed the video! 77s is slightly better (+ .005 pot) than 77 because my opponents bluffs are weaker when we block the spade. He now has more overcards and less flush draw. That being said the practical difference of .005 pot approximately zero, so I'd focus on frequency of bluffcatcher calls rather than composition.

By indifferent, I mean that some medium strength hand is indifferent to 3-betting or calling (like 76s). Any hand worse than 76s, then is -EV to 3-bet. Indifference can refer to a class of hands, but often refers to one or two hands and then anything with lower equity/playability is -EV.

"Any hand worse than 76s, then is -EV to 3-bet."

I don't think that's right. I can't think of a theoretical reason why that would have to be true, and in all the sims I've seen BB's range includes plenty of weak 3bet bluff combos which are indifferent between call/3bet, and even often between call/fold/3bet. I haven't done enough bvb pf work to say that sort of range construction is universal, but it's certainly not uncommon.

Yes, you're right BvB is going to the threshold hand is going to be weaker than any other position. 76s was an example not the actual hand.

The thought experiment here is straightforward: if I can 3-bet any hand at least 0 EV against your opening range, I should. If I 3-bet any hand against your opening, every hand you fold to 3-bet loses the open raise size. Your strategy is dominated so you switch to a strategy of only opening value hands at which point, 3-betting any hand is no longer 0 EV. Therefore the equilibrium is unstable and some hand must be made indifferent.

That indifferent hand is going to be weaker here than any other position, but will still be stronger than bottom 20%.

"The thought experiment here is straightforward: if I can 3-bet any hand at least 0 EV against your opening range, I should."

no... you would never 3bet a hand for which callEV exceeds 3betEV, nor would you 3bet every hand for which callEV=3betEV>0 as there is no clear benefit to deviating from equilibrium in this way and counter-exploitation would be trivial.

Edited the logic had a hole in it and again the extension.

Assume all hands are 3-bet EV > call EV and 3-bet EV > fold EV. If I can 3-bet any hand greater than EV of call and a fold against your opening range, I should. If I 3-bet any hand against your opening range, every hand you fold to 3-bet loses the open raise size. Your strategy is dominated so you switch to a strategy of only opening value hands at which point, 3-betting any hand is no longer greater than EV of a call or a fold. Therefore some hand must better to either call or fold than 3-bet at equilibrium and this hand is called a threshold hand.

In fact we can tighten this argument and say the number of hands that are 3-bet EV > call EV and 3-bet EV > fold EV is always less than the X% where X is defined as the breakeven defense frequency preflop in the big blind to small blind raise. For example, if I raise to 3-bbs in the small blind, my opponent cannot have a 3-betting range greater than 37.5%. Otherwise all of my opens that fold to a 3-bet are -EV and the logic above repeats.

There's also an ancillary argument, which you bring up which is "If 3-bet Y%, I can 3-bet weak hands." For example, I 3-bet AA and 32o, then 32o is a profitable 3-bet. The trouble with this is the overall strategy is lower EV than one that is better balanced. This is pretty straightforward to find in Monker or PIO.

Still haven't watched this video but I apparently get notifications about it because I posted a comment. Yeah; I'd personally be calling 77 to a big squeeze. Especially on Ignition if this is the spot. Because the flatter behind is more likely to be a rec and we'll play a 3 way pot. I'm not excited, but when I do hit my set, I'm feeling pretty good about the implied odds.

Hi Jeff,

I think you're exactly right, being OOP here against a big raise is difficult spot to capture EV. In fact, that's why I favor a big raise in position. Here's why I made the plays I did:

Against bigger sizings, we should call less often, because the odds we are getting are worse. The problem is that if we fold substantially more often, his 3-bet bluffs will be positive. An extra 2bbs mathematically means we can fold 3% or so more often. Not enough to really change our range composition.

The profitability of a 4-bet is based on his fold to 4-bet and his range composition with sizing only small factor mathematically here, so I don't think we can increase 4-betting with only the information that he 3-bets to a large sizing.

I agree with you Tyler, but don't think it is particularly great strategy anyway(3betting large)
1)We have more players behind to act
2)By 3betting too much big, we allow opponent to shove vs our 3bet wide range and we will go into all-in wars.
3)likely OOP response in high rake environment is to just shrug fold pre very often, and x/R aggressively in big pot postflop.

The profitability of a 4-bet is based on his fold to 4-bet and his
range composition with sizing only small factor mathematically here,
so I don't think we can increase 4-betting with only the information
that he 3-bets to a large sizing.

I'm thinking we just use some of our calls as 4bet ''value'' (TT,99,AQ). But again it all depends on villian size

Good discussion, I appreciate the feedback. I like the way you are thinking about it.

On points 1 and 2, I agree and I think that the sizing where these effects are the most important is much bigger, like 17bbs 3-bet rather than 12-bb.

"likely OOP response in high rake environment is to just shrug fold pre very often"

This is exactly what I want mathematically overfolding pre is a big mistake. I can now profitably bluff with all my suited connectors, pocket pairs, suited aces. If he should fold 3% more of his preflop range and he actually folds 15% more is a hyper profitable mistake.

This is exactly what I want mathematically overfolding pre is a big
mistake. I can now profitably bluff with all my suited connectors,
pocket pairs, suited aces. If he should fold 3% more of his preflop
range and he actually folds 15% more is a hyper profitable mistake.

Overcalling preflop big mistake too(rake is too damn high to be playing many postflop spots), whether you choose to lose to pokerroom or to your opponent.
However I haven't seen extreme examples, and even stars 200z is rather small so it is easy to notice if someone going out of line by 3betting and adjust (if you are smart player).

Don't think we will agree or discuss it over couple of beers, both strategies have merits

Thanks for the fact check :) I was wrong, I hadn't looked at this board construction (paired board and two broadways) before.

Sorry, not wanting to set you up with zero context, I found the mentioned comment and have pasted it below. It was a response to a subscriber's comment asking about river MDF (using a good potential river calling hand as a river bluff raise sort of thing), and the quote below starts off with a quote from that subscriber's question, followed by the RIO coaches answer.

'Are you concerned that by raising, we are taking too good of a calling hand out of our river MDF?'

"This is a heuristic not a GTO thing. GTO just says we're maximizing our EV at the node, there's nothing in there about MDF or w/e. In NLHE, it's common for hands on the lower end of the calling range's EV to mix bluffraising. . . ."

So this gets technical here quickly. I'll try to explain it as simply as possible. MDF is the % of our hands that we need to call to make a no-equity bluff breakeven.

1. However poker is a game where our opponent bluffs have equity, so the MDF can actually be too tight in certain situations where all of our opponents bluffs have equity. An example might be a low paired board like 332. All of our opponents bluffs have two overcards and have between 12-25% equity against our range, if we fold MDF then we lose money, because all of his bluffs occassionally suckout on our value hands.

2. Sometimes we have hands weaker than our opponents "bluffs", those hands should be folded because they always lose. When we look at GTO solver fold frequency in these situations it will be higher than MDF. An example of this situation is where we double barrel OOP and the draw completes on the river. Now our opponents bluffing region will be weak pairs. Since our give-ups include lots of hands worse than weak pairs, we will fold more than MDF.

3. The final situation is most complicated mathematically, but in certain situations our opponent has called two or three bets before betting. In these spots, we calculate the MDF with the money from the calls included, because if our opponent bluff is 0 EV in this situation. It's actually -EV, because he payed two bets to get to the spot. This is common on super dry boards like AAK63, where IP has called flop and turn and then bets river in position.

Reflecting 6 years later on this -- I think everything is reasonable on the turn (just repping a jack). On the river -- I do have decision about whether to block or jam, which seem like more obvious sizing choices here. The b75 reps a Q which isn't much of range.