Feel free to send me a pm Raphael, but I'll probably pick hands myself that reflect some concept that I want to show the audience. But if you draw my attention to a great hand, and especially if you write me some of your own questions and thoughts regarding the hand, I'll definitely take it under consideration.

The easiest way to balance a frequency is to just pick 54 (12) combos and a roughly equal number of premium bluffs, say 75o, and play both as pure strategies to this line. Or maybe bluff the 75o ~75% or something for more precision.

However, a clairvoyant opponent will exploit a strategy like this for a lot, but it's a fair assumption that people won't put us squarely on this strategy choice.

If you want to play a stronger strategy it's usually fine to take a selection of bluffs, say 87o, 75o, J4s, J5s, Qc5x, other sorts of things, and then shove each of them a small percentage, say 15% or so. This should sum to something approaching a balanced range and should be less exploitable to someone picking counter blockers.

In general though, when a spot is as uncommon as this one is, it's likely close enough to shove 54 and some frequency of bluffs. A good heuristic is to pick a bluff you think is going to be highest EV, then shove that most of the time.

Thank you for your response. The problem I see with this is that you need to be betting 45 and 75o with the same frequency on the flop. I don't think that OtB_RedBaron does that, since 45 has a three card straight and can barrel more turns since he will turn and OESD on 8 turns, whereas 75o can only turn one double gutter.

Taking this line with 75o and 45 as a pure strategy is nice for when the board runs out 62 no flush; but it seems unreasonable to construct your ranges on the flop such that you can balance your bluffing frequency easily on a 62 no flush runout.

For this reason in Kanu7's shoes I would suspect that OtB_RedBaron is underbluffing in this spot because he is too afraid to overbluff, not knowing his exact frequencies well enough. But Kanu7 called with a marginal bluffcatcher, so he was likely thinking the opposite.

Right, I mean add as much precision to your strategy as you can in the moment.

If it feels more natural to you to base your river shove frequency off of one hand, maybe go with 87o, as this hand has a similar number of backdoor straights.

Maybe an easier operation is just to start with say the 8-10 combos of 54o that get played this way depending on your prior street play and then try and add 5.5-7.5 combos of bluffs drawn off of various parts of your range. I don't think there's a simple operation you can do that will get a) the precise ratio of bluff:value combos, and b) won't be exploitable somehow. You'll just have to think on the fly and become familiar with how to weight bluffs in unusual spots like this.

To go back to your original example, you might modify the 75o and bluff it 100% of the time on the river, knowing that you X it more often on the flop.

I don't think there's a simple operation you can do that will get a) the precise ratio of bluff:value combos, and b) won't be exploitable somehow. You'll just have to think on the fly and become familiar with how to weigh bluffs in unusual spots like this.

I agree with this statement. In order to get the most out of these massive overbet bluffs you need to be very precise and accurate. In a spot like this where it is very hard to figure out the frequencies of all value hands and all bluffs since you need to know your own frequencies from the previous three streets. I would argue that a smaller bet size should be used; that is safer, you will be less exploitable if you make frequency mistakes.

Therefore you should not bet all-in, unless you have the nuts.....

I always wonder that too. Doesn't it seem that Kanu did a call without blockers to the nuts because redbaron is good enough to know he has to bluff in this spot, but it's very easy that he overbluffs this spot with his blockers to Kanu's calling range

GT,

I don't think you need to be very precise and accurate. It's equally likely we're overbluffing as underbluffing supposing our intention is to bet a balanced range, and I don't see a reason why our opponent will be able to estimate our range with more precision than we're able to.

If (somehow) we were playing against an exploitative bot, I do think adding complexity to our play would tend to lead to errors for the reasons you've stated.

I think it's more of a stylistic choice than a cut and dried logical argument whether or not to add complexity to our play in a spots where complexity also tends to introduce error. In general, if I'm better at exploitation than my opponent I'll try to complicate the game tree, and if I think my opponent is better at exploitation I'll try and simplify it.

Ben, can you explain this comment to me? "Maybe an easier operation is just to start with say the 8-10 combos of 54o that get played this way depending on your prior street play and then try and add 5.5-7.5 combos of bluffs drawn off of various parts of your range."

What I'm wondering is, why can't we take an even number of bluffs/value hands and just go 50/50 with those for balance, but here you say 5.5-7.5 bluffs/8-10 value. I'm just wondering why it's not 50/50?

Thanks buddy - awesome vid!

Eric,

Because we want to make our opponent indifferent to calling.

Haha thanks, the goal was to tread the thin line between in depth analysis and boredom!

As a high stakes player I can definitely say that a large majority of the player pool makes overbet bluffs. And I think most of the player pool attempts to approximate a balanced range with them, at least in many situations.

I agree Brian.

On the other hand, it's also a very human thought to say "he can't have the nuts here, and I can, so I'm going to try and take down this pot." And that thought gets OTB shoving tons of bluffs here. As you might have seen in the earlier iterations of the river play, if Kanu only calls with sets> and mixes with his 2pairs, then shoving a hand like 87o will win almost 12bb.

Not sure how you google how much volume someone have played at the highest stakes.. You have to count the fact that otb plays a bunch of other sites than stars like ftp, 888 etc which got nl5k+ as well.

Aside from that I'm quite sure that guy isn't scared money at all... First of all he's like the sickest crusher ever, I don't got whotfru atm but I remember watching his graph and damn it's beautiful. Guy even has like history losing almost his entire roll if you read at twoplustwo taking shots etc a couple of years back. Not saying this answers your question, but I dont think a guy like him that is a top tier regular (maybe something like top 5 or even top 3 in the world when it comes to 6max NL?) is playing scared money at all in these spots.

GSWE,

My experience when playing nosebleeds with high stakes regs is that the majority of people tend to play too fancy in the nosebleed game they aren't used to. I think some people try to play their A++ game when they take a shot, but what they actually do is try too hard and end up hurting their fundamentals or playing unbalanced.

Certainly there are other people who play tighter in big games. But I tend to think the people who play tighter are the guys who aren't trying to compete with the best regs, but who realize there's a huge whale in the game and they can be +EV playing tight. That approach definitely won't work in a 3handed game with Kanu and Phil Ivey, so I think OTB is going to be playing his A game.

I think it's at least equally likely that OTB is playing too LAG as too tight.

Good points Sweet16. You're definitely right that Kanu's call with KJ+*c should be lower EV against the range of strategies OTB could be playing than a call with KJ no clubs. Specifically, there are some viable strats where J5cc and J4cc are significant parts of OTB's bluffing range.

I'm not sure why Kanu called, like this post if you want him to post ITT :)

Those are pairs?

Against someone bluffing the river with pairs - hands with equity when checking down - you can fold more than MDF. Also 9x no draw no kicker is a bad hand to overbet the turn with (you can't have 9c*c).

"Against someone bluffing the river with pairs - hands with equity when checking down - you can fold more than MDF. Also 9x no draw no kicker is a bad hand to overbet the turn with (you can't have 9c*c)."

Could you elaborate on why this is the case GT? Does it just have to do with the fact that his checks will have EV too and we want to make him indifferent with our calling frequency between bluffing or showing down?

Does it just have to do with the fact that his checks will have EV too and we want to make him indifferent with our calling frequency between bluffing or showing down?

Yes, when he checks he will win some part of the pot. With air he is betting $111k to win $23k. If checking has an EV of $5k, he is betting $111k to win only $18k, so Kanu7 can get away with a lower calling frequency of 14% (18/(111+18)). Sauce calculated a calling frequency of above 17% for air hands.

Also it should be clear that 95/94 don't have other options that have higher EV since they are too weak for normal valuebets and they lack good card removal effects for bluffing small.

It should be very obvious that 94/95 can't play to this line. Think about the opportunity cost we'd have to pay on the flop/turn/river to play a hand MP like this! My guess Zach is that you were just focused on maximizing the EV of a river bluff rather than focusing on maximizing the EV of 94's line throughout the game tree.

Nice to see you chime in! Did you really decide on a 10% calling frequency with this hand, spin your RNG and click the call button?

it would prob have been interesting to discuss how that EV changes if the baron were to bluff 1 combo too many or 1 combo too few for this very large size.

The pot is 58bb and the all-in is 277bb. If OtBRedBaron bets 10 combos for value, he must have 277/(58+277)x10 combos = 8.27 combos for bluff. Barring card removal effects, if OtBRedBaron bluffs 1 combo too many the EV of calling a 0EV bluff goes to:

EV = 9.27/19.27(277+58) + 10/19.27(-277) = +17.4bb

If OtB_RedBaron bluffs 1 combo too few the EV of calling a 0EV bluff goes to:

EV = 7.27/17.27(277+58) + 10/17.27(-277) = -19.4bb

That is from a hand vs range perspective.
If you look at those errors from a range vs range perspective, you must call every bluffcatcher if he bluffs one combo too many, this will cost him about 17.4bb with his entire betting range. If he bluffs one combo too few you can fold everything, this will cost him 277/(58+277)x58bb = 48bb with his 45 combo's.

Hey Kanu thanks for posting :)

yea definitely interested^

I need to append this. I played with a gto solver and it's going to choose a smaller bet amount with 54 between .1 and .333 of the time (depends on number of slowplays) for balance against jamming KK and 99.

Hi Matus,

It depends on the prior street play. Tyler's result sounds correct to me, and it's the norm (rather than the exception) to split bet sizes with nut hands down your betting abstraction.

1. Idk, kind of.
2. If Kanu underdefends vs X, then OTB bets basically 100% when checked to. If OTB bets often when checked to, Kanu never bets a nut hand.

There are exceptions to this for various reasons but this spot will not be one of them.

wish you could hear my laughs when I read this

yes. Also because as bet sizes get very large, the nuts will be a higher percentage of his calling range.

Although in this case, OOP can't have the nuts, right? (can't xc, xc with 54)

hey zach, dont understand your answer. i am asking if the essence of the idea of all this is blocking them from blocking the top of your range (or having k4 k5 and blocking ur 54). I dont think we bluff with 5x and 4x to block the top of his range, given its so rare. I am just checking to see if bens point was that we bluff with 5x and 4x so that he doesn't have really strong bluff catchers with k5 and k4 hands, given they block value hands and bluffs. if we bluffed instead with hands like qj jt qt, he has much easier call with k5 and k4 because it takes our value combos from 16 to 12, and makes us way unbalanced and for a very profitable call. but now if we have 75 as a bluff, him having k5 isn't as useful as it was and helps us really take advantage of the fact that we have 54 in our range way more

You're pretty much there. The best way to think of it is that you want to block villain's calling range as much as possible when you bluff. The more you block his calling range, the less likely he is to have a hand that he calls and therefore the higher EV your bluff has. In this case villain's (my) calling range will contain a lot of K5/K4 so having a 5 or 4 is a good hand to bluff.

Hi Z,

My next video will be some 6m zoom play.

no ben no more NL video
PLO please