If we ignore the fact that zachattack and gambler probably have some history and reads on each others game, i think it doesnt make  sense to turn bluffcatchers like a Tx into a bluff  cause gambler isnt likely to find 3 streets of value with worst than Kx imo. So your not trying to fold out a polar range with a bluffcatcher right? Having said that,When he bets turn and river small , may  look like thin value from zack perspective but still i think he is more likely to be bluffing with complete air like Qj, maybe J9ss and thats about it having the As blocker . I think zackattacks range when he gets to this river is mostly value hands like AK, TT,KT,44 and K4dd. Dont think he is likely to shove worst for value but thats just too hard to figure out with out some gameflow between them. Overall , i think its a fold, gamblers range should look very strong : pre ante , ep open , cbeting into a strong range (sb flat) , barreling in an obvious bad turn to barrel ... So i really dont think that is a good spot to check/jam bluff.

Since our range is uncapped I think it's reasonable to remove bluffs from his range, leaving value hands as too many hands in our range can hero call. On the turn I think we can reasonably put him on Kx and fh as those are the value hands that don't need to raise for protection or value, given our aggression. River shove shove weights his range more towards fh as bare Kx is more likely to call, given our uncapped range. Fold.

Love the video a lot, keep up the great work. Given our bet on the turn I think he can still have bluff catchers and hands like qjs etc. If he is turning those into bluffs ever (which isn't to crazy since he has Tx its a pretty good blocker in this spot) then its a call. I think it comes more down to what our villain perceives our turn bet as. I call and expect to be beat some of the time but we are at the top of our range.

Great fking name dude :) GOAT

Hey Fedor,
great video series, really love your thought process & am looking forward to future videos!

First off, I have a little note on what u said about Gambler´s turn sizing:
He bets 1,225 into 2,716 on Ts4cKh Ks and u said u´d wanna bet 1,500-1,600, but I like Gambler´s sizing and wouldnt go any bigger than 1/2 pot to be consistent with my range here.

If we had QQ/AA in that spot, we´d still wanna be vbetting it with a decent frequency, to not get exploited by only betting trips+ or be semi-bluffing.

The turn bringing a 2nd K makes it less likely for him to have a K and might make him more likely to think his underpair/2nd pair is good, but we´re still not thrilled about "blowing" the pot with QQ/AA here.
And if the 2nd K does make him less likely to fold an underpair/2nd pair, we´re also allowing ourselves to bet the same sizing (~ 1/2 pot) with AJ,AQ,QJ,Q9ss,J9ss,Axss, which will also give us a cheaper stab at the river, if we´re intending on 3 barrelling when we miss.

I hope this makes sense and is a somewhat relevant factor when choosing our turn sizing?!

About the river spot.. I think it´s a fold. 

Zack just reps way too much showdown value to check/ship the river as a bluff imo.
I dont think Zack would even get to the river with QJ/J9/Q9 by just check/calling turn,when he doesnt get odds to call and he likely has reversed implied odds vs a strong/non-capped range.
If he wanted to continue with QJ/J9/Q9 on this turn, I´d expect him to lead turn big himself and fire again on river.
Check/calling flop with intention of check/shoving river feels like a disaster to me, as Gambler could just check back river with a bunch of hands that still beat him.

So,whats left in Zack´s range to get to the river is TT, 44, K4dd, Tx, Kx, AJ, AQ imo and I think even AJ/AQ do a way better job bluffcatching river than turning it into a bluff vs a non-capped range.

When he check/ships river, I think he has a FH the vast majority of the time and MAYBE and small chance of KQ/KJ (?!), but I doubt it tbh..

Actually..I´m still not done with the hand lol

Zack might not be better off calling AJ/AQ than turning it into a bluff..

Assuming Gambler´s value range to bet 3 streets is: TT, 44, KT, KJ, KQ, AK. That´s 36 combos.
And assuming his semi-bluffing range is : AJ, AQ, QJ, Q9ss, J9ss. That´s 50 combos 

If Zack thinks Gambler is bet/folding everything but a FH vs Zack´s (in my eyes) really strong line, Gambler would only be bet/calling with 6/86 combos (folding 86% of the time) then calling with any pair and turning AJ/AQ into a bluff (needs to work 68%) would be a possible line to take for Zack to take to fold out splits and dont lose AJ<AQ, so it would make AK more of a call in Gambler´s spot?!

Anyone feel free to correct me if I messed up the numbers, it´s almost 3am lol

Hi Fedor, 

excellent video! Looking forward to the discussions. :)

I think Zakattack gets to the river with something like this: TT, 44, AKs, AQs, KQs, KJs, KTs, K4s, AKo, KQo, KJo, KTo, QTs, JTs, T9s, QTo, JTo *considerable amt. of Tx (27/51 combos total)

Assumptions

Zackattak's value range for shoving here depends on what he thinks Gambler4444's value range is. If he thinks Gambler is value betting: AT, JJ, QQ, AA, AK, KQ, KJ, KT. He can easily shove his Tx & AQs to get him off everything but boats (unless Gambler has already adjusted).

From Gambler's perspective, out of the range that Zack gets to the river with, only KT, TT, 44 and Kd4d beat him. 10 combos out of 51. Meaning a lot of possible bluff combos for Zack.

For us to fold here, we would need to think that Zack thinks we aren't thin value betting two-pair and only shove AK, KQ and boats. Against that range we would have 32% equity and we need 34% to call. *Zack has a bit more than Gambler so the shove is for 10,500 total*

Based on all this, I'd likely call as I would anticipate Zack to take advantage of the situation and bluff shove his Tx instead of calling.

Let me know what your thoughts are, if i'm thinking about the hand correctly and if there's anything I did not mention that could improve my thought process in the future.

Thanks.

The only hand, that makes sense with how the hand was played and not Zack bluffing range on the river is K3s. On the flop I expect from Zack to c/raise all sets and two pairs combos, so I think he could bluff river w QJ after turn and river weak bets. Ofc he could call turn w AQ and AJ having a plan, what he will do after, when river bricks. So, I call and make some notes after this hand. 

Fedor, A+ video all the way around. There was a ton of good information in your commentary on the HU match, and this interactive component regarding this AK hand is very fun and stimulating as well. Nicely done. 

As for the hand in question, I'm writing this without having read and of the previous replies, so as not to be biased in any way. Apologies if I present information or ideas that are essentially quotes of posts above this one! 

The first thing we need to keep in mind is that based on our price, we'll need to call and be right 31% of the time. As such, vfor every 3 value bets villain has here, he'll only have to have one bluff for us to make +EV.  

I'll start with my reads on villain. I assume that Zach is the type to 3b AK here pre, for better of for worse, at least some of the time. There are 3 combos of AKo/AKs remaining, I'll give him one of those. Does he 3b TT here? I don't think most would, and I don't have a good feel for what villain would do here. I'm comfortable saying he calls here nearly always or always. He has all 44 for sure. He has all KT for sure. He has no 33 by the river. That's all well and good - his value combos are easy to identify - but how often does he bluff here? 

I tend to think he could bluff here at a rather high frequency. I view Zach as someone who could either CRAI with Tx, making a conscious decision to turn his blocker for middle set into a bluff. I think that he could do that (he's capable), I have no feel for how often he will do that (act on his capability). I also feel very strongly that Zach is one who would act impulsively. I think he could make an exploitative read and suddenly take an unplanned action. The specific instance of this that I'm thinking of is that he might read into hero's turn and river sizing more than the average player would, or more than he should. It's possible that he sees this smallish / relatively small sizing compared to what he might expect most players to bet in this spot as a thin value bet on the part of hero, with either AA, QQ, or JJ. Zach might seek to punish that by CRAI with his Tx. One might suggest that he could use that same logic and try to shove his KQ for value, but I think that he would come to the conclusion that hero's "thin river bet sizing" could include AK/other Kx. However, he might not think it includes boats, especially if he were to block a boat (by holding Tx). If all of these assumptions are correct, then this is a fairly favorable situation for villain to CRAI as a bluff.

That is my exploitative and read based conjecture at the hand, now let's look at the more factual side of things. His value combos AK (1) TT (3) 44 (3) KTo/KTs (3). Damn, it's hard to make good hands in poker. Total value combos = 10. *Note that his value combos could go up to 12 at the maximum, if the other two possible combos of AK are in his flatting range preflop, and not his 3bettingrange. The tightest I could imagine the Tx portion of his preflop flattingrange is T9o plus and T7s+ Accounting for removal effects, that is 45 combos. If he took a mere 4 of these combos and CRAI as  bluff with them, we're still +EV on calling his shove. Now it's possible that a lot of his Tx folds the turn, although  unlikely the way I see it. For the sake of argument, let's say he folds half of his Tx on the turn. Well, then he still has to find a CRAI with 4 of his remaining 22 combos. I see this happening quite easily. 

I'm calling here. 

And a final note or two - He might x/r some of his 44 and even TT on the flop, though on this dry of a board and facing a biggish bet on the flop, I could see villain just checking calling a trying to rep Kx or Tx by doing so, and hoping to encourage barrels from the hero. But it's key to note that one or two of his precious few (10-12 max) value combos could not even be in his range on the river. 

Nice video Fedor. I like your approach to the game and I'd be interested to see analysis of what you believe to be more commonly occurring "interesting spots".

As for the last hand...

GTO/Balance-wise I think we need to call here.

Let's assume Gambler's value range is {KK (1 combo), TT (3), 44(3), KTs(2), AK(8), KQ(8), KJ(8)} for a total of 33 value combos. If he is balanced in this spot, giving 3.15:1 to Zach means he should have 33/3.15=10.47 bluff combos assuming Zach's range is {bluff catchers}. Now, Zach's range is not {bluff catchers} here, and in this instance I would not expect Zach to get to the river like this with hands which don't beat our bluffs almost ever, while he will often play his nutted hands this way. My understanding is that we should be bluffing somewhat less against such a range, but I'm not an expert on the topic. Let's set bluff combos at 10.

If AK is the best hand we fold, we fold all our bluffs, AK, KQ, and KJ (total 34 combos) and call KK, KT, TT, and 44 (9 combos, with a T blocker this is reduced to 6). Zach risks 12282 to win 7565 so he needs us to fold 61.9% of the time for a shove to be profitable as a bluff. We fold 34/40=85% of the time here if we only call with better than AK, so a bluff shove with a T is ridiculously profitable for Zach. We would need to call an additional 12 combos to make a bluff with Tx break-even. Just in case Zach is doing something weird with AK or worse for value I would call AK, call some KQ fold some KQ, and fold KJ if we're trying to add 12 combos to call. If we are value betting wider than my initial range (or we check back KK OTF) then we would need to call even more combos.

Exploitatively, I also prefer a call.

Let's assume Zach's value range is {KT (3), TT (3), 44 (3), K4s (1), K3s (1)} for a total of 11 combos. We're getting 2.24:1, so Zach needs to be bluffing with >4.9 combos(=11/2.24) for this to be a call. To be generous to the folding argument, let's assume Zach's only potential bluffs are Tx. If we give him AT, QT, JT, T9s, T8s that is 9+12+12+3+3=39 combos. Therefore, to have 4.9 bluff combos he must bluff Tx 4.9/39=12.56% of the time. I would guess that Zach is bluffing Tx at least this much, and given that he sometimes raises value hands before the river and he may have other potential bluffs I prefer a call exploitatively (and by this same analysis with KQ/KJ as well)

To do a quick classification to make this analysis more useful in-game, this just seems like one of those spots where villain has a high ratio of potential bluffs:value hands, and it would appear to a thinking player that his line looks strong enough to get some very strong hands to fold (e.g. we're considering folding AK) plus he has good blockers with his potential bluffs, therefore leading to villain taking a reasonable % of those potential bluffs and deciding to bluff. This leads to his overall bluff % being somewhat high and means we should be inclined to call.

I don't care if Zack has a relevant Tx blocker. He can turn it into a bluff all day long if he wants. I have the most relevant blocker ever, the KING. I click call.

(and sighs when I see K3dd)

If villain perceives our smallish river barrel as weakness why overbet shove instead of get good price on a reasonably sized bluff raise that looks more credibly like value and doesnt risk his stack? Does the range he is targeting really fold that more often to a shove than a raise to 4-4.5K?

Hey guys, this is GREAT Content in here! 

I currently have a deeprun in the GCOP Rozvadov, so I will answer questions and post my analysis when I'm finished! :)

I d put Villian here on a range of valuehands like: KT, 44, TT, AK(??) and thats it.
His bluffing range may include some combos like QJs, AJs, J9s and some random Tx that he monkeyshoves into our 3 barrel.
Depending on the fact that Valuerange and Bluffrange is very in balance here starts the Metagame.
You told us that Hero seems to be kinda agro, but not obviously doing stupid things.
Given the fact that villian seems very tight but not ABC, with cb100 and fcb0 he seems to be aware about his range and how opponents may think about it.
I see many good reasons to call and many reasons to fold the hand.
Though we are pre ante and if folded still 40bb deep a fold may be reasonable.
But, I personally would call here i guess.
Because the FCB0 shows me that he is defenitely capable of tricky plays.
The fact that he is playing a 8-8 sytle but not being nitty let me think that he is a very good player that is picking his spots very carefully and will try to put me in difficult spots.
His shove puts me with the top of my range in a very tricky situation.
And i think that players like him are playing much more often the spot/situation then the actual hand.
They put maximum pressure on you and are doing things we do not expect.

While Im writing I getting more and more confused about this guy.
But it seems this is helping my theory about how tricky he plays.

I d make a crying call and let me show the 44 i guess. And honestly typing nh in the chat :-)

Because of all the great feedback and thoughts, I will talk about my point of view about the hand in my next video. 

Tune in! ;-)

Great Vid Fedor!

But i think you are making here the same mistake you are talking about in the Video:

Analysing a pretty rare Spot versus a very specific opponent.

agree with what beldarion said. Can't really call this a standard spot since it comes up once  every 12012919 hands. Feel free to check your HM2 database and look at your river checkraise after check calling flop and turn. how high is that number and how big is your sample?

to add my thoughts to the actual hand: villain needs to be showing up a with worse hand more than 31% of the time. So is he?
He's probably shoving all his QJ(16) combos and only 44 TT (6combos) and KT (only 3 combos left)..  also let's not forget about K4s and K3s (2combos)
for value which makes him  way too bluff heavy.  easy call.  we are losing to 11 combos and we are getting an absurd price. 
am i missing something here?!

Dont you think that youre trying to read too much in relative marginal spots against omgelbartu? You said something like "I thought after limping twice it was now the time to raise with J2s, but I was wrong", he probably just had a hand that he was comfortable getting it in with.

As it looks like hero is value betting I think it makes it look more of a fold. Think the villain has a set here 95% of time on flop and is roping and doping old school style 

Hey Fedor,

We easily see that the valuerange of Zackattack is KT,TT,44 he could easily play this kinda way.

I asked myself a few minutes what should give zackattack the reason to bluff this river because our range is obv kinda strong here with all boat kombos and all Kx(KJ-AK) here.

Given the fact that we bet a lil small on turn and especially on the river, we found a leak that we are unbalanced in this spot. We bet like 2,4k into a pot of 5,16k we seems to be quiet normal, but lets imagine we've got a set(boat) in this spot.

Would we ever bet that small when villians range is much more Kx heavy? I dont know hero, but it could be possible that his sizing would more likely look like sth. from 3,0k up to maybe 3,8k.
If Villian got this same idea when he was playing why not adding some more bluffs into the ch/r on the river.
I would end up calling if you think zackattack is capable of picking up the same information.
I'm sure that most regs are folding Kx against this kind of play on the river which would make it perfect to do for Zackattack.
I would love to get an answer from you Fedor.

Greetings :)

Hello,

Very interesting hand at the end.

I have some questions about it.

Do we really go for three streets of value with JJ/QQ/AA? Isnt it too thin in that spot?

Is that a good spot to continue with our bluffs on the river? Hands like QJ/AsQs/AsJs? Which hands you are going to bluff on the river in that spot?

While AK is a clear value bet cuz we are pretty much at the top of our range, how do we approach this spot with a hand like KJ? Do we still go for three streets vs very good opponent? Do we expect him to call down worse enough to make it profitable? What is your value betting range on the river against a good opponent?

Is AK a clear chk/shove in his shoes? Is he expecting to get called by worse ever?

What if Hero is some unknown player to ZackAttack? Is it more of a fold then? Since Zack wouldnt know if hero is capable of making big folds and wouldnt be that happy to turn Tx/QsJs into a blu

As others stated, he have 12 value combos if he is flatting AK every time pre. I dont know the guys and how he plays AK, but I would just go with that he flats all of them just to see how we stand and how many bluffs we need him to have, to make this call +EV.

On the video it says that, we need to be good 31% of the time to make this call profitable, but according to my calculations, we actually need 35%? Am I doing something wrong there?

So if we need to be good 35% of the times, we need him to have 5 combos that he is turning into a bluff to make it +EV call. So 12 value combos and 5 bluff combos. Do we expect him to get to the river with all of his Tx hands? If his preflop range consists T7s+ and JTo,QTo,T9o, those are 42 combinations of hands, so we need him to turn just 5 of those 42, to make this a call.

Now what our range looks like on the river?

Im not sure how good is to go for three streets with AA/QQ (not sure about JJ so I wouldnt include it) here, but lets say we sometimes do (50% of combinations). Our range prolly looks something like AA(3*)/KK(1)/QQ(3*),TT(3),44(3),AK(8),KTs(2),KQs(2),KQo(6) and some bluffing hands(?) like AsQs(1),AsJs(1),QsJs(1) which I dont think changes anything in this spot, cuz he beats them any way? Thats 34 combinations, 31 of those are value combos.

Now what do we think about his thought process during the hand? Is he expecting us to fold everything but FHs? If so, than out of 31 value combos, he is expecting us to fold AA(3),QQ(3),KQ(8),AK(8) thats 24 combos which means we are calling 7 combinations and folding 24 and in his eyes, this means we fold ~75% of the times and call 25%, right? (I might be wrong here Q_Q) He is risking 12K to win 18K so his bluff needs to work ~66 of the times (might be wrong once again :D) which in his eyes it does.

Now if he dont exect us to fold AK, then we fold 14 out of 31 combos, which are ~45% and now his bluff will work 55% of the times, which changes things and he should be too happy to bluff this UNLESS he holds Tx blocker which reduces our value combos.

At the end Im folding the river if its me in heros shoes, cuz I dont expect him to make a move on me, without knowing how I play and if im capable of making big folds, or not.

Please feel free to correct my leet math skillz if you see something wrong. I would really appriciate that!

About the last hand with trip kings I think at my usual stakes of $25 and down it's an exploitative fold, players simply don't balance their river CRAI range and like you said it's always the nuts. From a game theory POV folding every time you don't have a boat is horrendous but that's why it's exploitative.It's kind of scary to bluff in this spot because you have to have a strong read that your opponent is not only disciplined enough to fold a king but that he also thinks you're too tight to pull a move like this, it's a very specific read. I have no idea what the right play is here because I don't have enough experience at high stakes. I know the correct play against the average player at my level is to fold but every player is different and you never know what players have in their toolbox. I'd be really interested in seeing HHs where ppl have seen bluffs in this situation. I'd also like to hear the opinions of players who play higher buy ins regularly.

Congrats on your last FTOPs win, I hope to see a HH review of it eventually. I really like how you explain things. I'm happy that you're one of the instructors here, I like to learn from the best.