A Different Take on Pure Calls/Pure Folds

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A Different Take on Pure Calls/Pure Folds

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Francesco Lacriola

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A Different Take on Pure Calls/Pure Folds

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Francesco Lacriola

POSTED Sep 01, 2024

Francesco Lacriola explores spots where the solver would suggest a pure call or pure fold and offers a different way to look at these situations.

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RunItTw1ce 6 months ago

Hand #1 T73cc-7x-Jc board it would be better instead of saying 7cXc are pure calls blocking the boats and finding the bluffs with TdX is not easy. Would be cool to see you node lock villain to not find these bluffs with Td and see how much EV 7cXc loses by calling against a range of AcXc and boats. I'm a bit surprised AcAx doesn't get turned into a bluff.

Would you ever bluff here with an over pair?

26min thank you for node locking the 873r-Tdd-4d board to remove some 9x bluffs since you hold two 9s it blocks a lot of the bluffing range. Which as you showed takes it from a +10bb winner as a bluff catcher to a -5bb loser.

This is playing hand vs range correct? Where if it's range vs range then 99 is a call, but hand vs range, makes 99 a fold? Does that make sense?

Francesco Lacriola 6 months ago

Hand 1

Overpairs don't make great bluffraising combos because they only block flushes, which are close to indifferent to call vs a theoretically balanced shoving range -the only viable exception is the nut flush because it's not losing to higher flushes. You really want to block boats (which are auto-calls) and unblock strong not nutted hands, such as medium flushes and straights, which are the ones we're trying to fold out sometimes when we bluff-raise.

This is a spot where it's very easy to overbluff if you start to use all the AcTx, AcAx combos, and where players are going to overcall against people they perceive as "bluff-happy". In general population at midstakes (500-1KNL) doesn't like to bluff against a very strong perceived range (here we represent straights, flushes and boats, very rarely trips), especially when the range is uncapped and they represent few value hands. I expect this spot to be extremely underbluffed, because people don't like to consider folding flushes in this SPR and will consider herocalling also combos of 98 with a club and 7x, hence a way strong players can capitalize some EV is to include thin shoves with nut flushes.

Hand 2

The card removal is already included in Pio's calculation (it's reflected in the EV of our hand). In general it's a spot where the size chosen by my opponent is not very coherent with the ranges in play (we're not capped, we have sets, straights and flushes) and it looks like a size that wants to maximize against a strong part of our range (2p+), plus it's really hard to find natural bluffs for that size -the only combo is A9 off with a diamond, which is a super low frequency raise on the flop against my sizing. Jamming some Q9s with bdoor on the flop, without blocking the flush, is a suicidal play, as it heavily blocks our folding range and unblocks our nutted region.

To answer your question: I'm always playing against my opponent's range, but sometimes I would fold all bluffcatchers, even the premium ones, if I expect them to be significantly underbluffing. I wouldn't fold value-catcher hands like a straight, as I expect villain's shoving range to be straight +, targeting sets, two pairs and pairs with a flush blocker. This hand is very useful to show how theoretical EVs don't matter much in spot where some actions are very rare in equilibrium (the preferred size is the small bet), as EVs can shift massively by just nodelocking tiny fractions of few combos. It's also a spot where some opponents might decide to turn JdTx into a bluff and calling 9d9x would be a disaster against that.

777TripSevens777 6 months ago

Francesco,
Great content. Hand 2 the 99 facing river all in, I feel this line is mostly greedy value from the typical player in the player pool. Interesting having the 9d but I think I like your fold here. I enjoy seeing the node locking to show the concept you are explaining. Nice job.

Thanks Francesco.

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