Thought Process and Range Evaluation in Bluffcatching
Posted by Francesco Lacriola
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Thought of the last hand was definitely the most interesting. I initially disagreed when you thought that the villain could be using a BB strategy in SB, honestly I think it's much easier for the villain to not know what he's doing than using knowledge from another spot in this one, but of course this depends on the perception of each one, but initially my intuition is that he was totally underbluffing thinking that he can always c-bet bluff this board, so when he plays x it gives me a warning signal.
Yeah, it's a spot in which both assumptions lead to the same consequence (villain is underbluffing) and therefore we're allowed to massively exploit this line by overfolding.
It's probably a spot where some players would think "I need to check some strong hands" overlooking that they can just go for a range bet, thus leaving a very strong checking range, which can be exploited by over-realizing equity and overfolding against delayed aggression.
This type of class is great for all players, thank you very much for showing the whole thought process and range reading, this was really good.
on the first hand, Js5s BB vs BTN, board J54r 3hh 6o , you say that the turn 3 is very good for our range when we check raise, can you explain why.
The 3 turn massively improves the equity of our x/raising range: we improve some straights, some 2 pairs, we get pairs + GS or OESD and the bluffs like Q6s bdoor turn into overcard + OESD and sometimes FD. Our range becomes so strong that villain is already forced to fold some top pair hands against big bets, as it's hard for us to have unpaired hands, our bluffs have a ton of equity and top pairs are in a terrible shape against our made hands.
The fact that you ended up calling in every hand seems like kind of like a flaw in the video, it's almost as if you're teaching us how to talk ourselves into a call in bluffcatching spots, not teaching us how to make the correct decision in bluffcatching spots.
Thanks for the feedback! I tried to put more emphasis on the hand reading part of the bluffcatching process, but I didn't intend it to be a guide of "how to talk ourselves into a call", more of an analysis of spots in which I decided to call and what made me lean towards calling, and decided to include also hands in which villain actually had it.
I understand that showing both lines (calling and folding when facing a close decision) has educational value, but usually river folds tend to be either kind of trivial, or adjustments in relation to the metagame of the stakes you play (there are common tendencies between pools, but also difference in aggression levels according to specific pools) or very specific according to the player profile you're facing. I could have added some folds against recs (as I'm not concerned about giving away reads in this case), but even then it's quite pool and player specific. F.ex in my pool recs tend to have a very strong range when they lead river for pot+ and can overbluff smaller sizes, but I cannot state this as an universal truth, as it's possible in other pools recs start overbluffing or overplaying weaker hands with pot+.
I play in a very small player pool so I prefer not to reveal adjustments against a specific opponent and against my pool, both because I don't want them to know (I hope you can understand this) and because I think it's more valuable for a general public to avoid "biased" decisions and focus on the thought process (which is always a baseline and has to always include all the information available to consider deviating).
Your videos are the best and I am learning so much from you. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.
Hey Francesco,
1:10 are overbets also an option on this turn?
With this SPR pot is fine, as it leaves roughly a little bit more than PSB on the river. With a bigger SPR it's possible to implement overbet, but you either have to split sizes (not reccommended) or to decrease your betting frequency (also not reccommended). Pot is a pretty versatile size on very connected turns like this, you can size down to 75% on similar board conformations which include a double FD.
8:11: Your GTO analysis is pretty rigorous. Presumably, you didn't know, at the time of the hand, how weak a villian you were facing? You make no allusions earlier in the hand that you thought IP might be severely overdefending flop with the sort of hand he ended up bluffing on the river. It changes the nature of your river decision. To begin with, your river block is already close. According to some parameters, your hand nearly almost bets. Adjusting them slightly, however, turns your hand into an almost pure check. For example, in the solution I derived, after betting slightly larger on turn, you almost always checking the two pairs, J5 and J4, on river while retaining the block for your sets. You then use this hand as a frequency bluff catch, typically against the range to which you already alluded, 6x hands and the like. Either way, whether to block on river with J5 is a close decision from a GTO perspective. Therefore, the decision whether or not to bet, should probably be made acccording to exploitative dictates. For example, do you agree that against block IP will be overdefending overpairs facing river block? If so, block will almost certainly be the way to go. Similarly, it might be the case that block over-induces bluff raises from IP relative to the sorts of bluffs he makes facing a check. Such a conclusion seems to be borne out by the results of the hand; although it seems unlikely that IP will find significant missed heart bluff raises on river as he is expected to, for example with AhQh. Overall, what is your exploitative perspective on the hand given the closeness of the river block bet?
I think on the river our hand can consider block/Call, block/fold or check/call, check/fold. I think the block node performs better than the check node against low-midstakes population and then you can either follow GTO in the response against a shove, or deviate towards one side or the other if you have a player specific read.
I think the AQhh type bluffs are really counterintuitive there, and would expect people to bluff more often a range built around 6x combos and not to find thin value shoves such as 66 (this has a HUGE impact on the EV of the bluffcatch), ending up in a very polarized spot with a super narrow value range.
43:56: Interesting observation--the difference between OOP C-betting strategy BB vs CO and OOP SB vs CO--and the latter being a range bet. I looked into BB Cbet and CO counter-strategy and remarked that what I see in practice, is in no way similar to what one sees in GTO. BB is expected, in theory, to mix small bets and include a bunch of check-raises against a relatively depolarized and widely mixed CO strategy. I think, in practice, BB checks a decent amount of his moderate strength hands, and doesn't necessarily play much of a x/r strategy. Conversely, CO will often polarize facing check, and BB will play a passive call down or fold strategy (although solver much prefers battling via check-raises). I would guess that SB would misapply this principle to SB vs CO spots as well, which would make me assume that he has either a nothing hand, like the hearts you mentioned, or a moderate strength hand way more often than he would AK or the 99 that actually showed up in his hand.* Therefore, I think assignming him an inordinate amount of HH bluffs in this unforeseen node makes this a good call down.
*As you menionted, 99 is a particularly absurd hand to play this way. Using a more conventional small range C-bet on the flop, bet turn and jam river, he would still, more than 2/3 of the time, get all the money from your hand AJdd by the river.
Francesco,
Thanks for the video. Enjoyed the format of explaining your thought process then using PIO to analyze the spots. At 29:00 you have AhTh on a board of 9hKdAs 4h 7c and villain triple barrels all in with the J8o. Don't know that I would have found that bluff combo in real time, but it does make some sense (blocking our best top pair AJ). Seems like J7 makes a better bluff because it blocks more two pair combos as well as AJ. Do you think that J8o bluffs because villain struggles to find enough bluffs here or because these are the best combos to bluff with?
Fun and interesting video, looking forward to your thoughts.
J7 is also a great combo to bluff (blocking AJ and A7s). Here J8 can also lose to QThh QJhh (if you don't have the J of h) and there are a bunch of Kx hands which really hate facing a shove.
Most of the Kx in villain's range are KQ (the only offsuited combos that call in some rake structures as KJ can be significantly -EV with most low and midstakes rake structures), therefore having the J doesn't block KQ and blocks AJ (which happens to be the most common decent top pair in SB's range, as AQ is close to a pure 4b preflop), being one of the best blockers.
This is a spot in which bluffing the river can be strongly -EV against some player profiles (if they overfold Kx without a redraw on the turn and overcall Ax on the river): if this is the case blockers don't matter and all bluffing combos are losing EV.
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