Most players are between 25% - 30%. The higher the wtsd number, the more likely you are checking marginal value bets on the river. If you choose to bet those marginal value bets, then your wtsd falls.

Closer to 40 in most situations. We can see that if it gets above 50. Our opponent can start loosening his calling range from the big blind substantially.

Thanks Cloud! I'm glad it helped.

There are two issues with posting these.
1. If I cold call strong hands preflop then my sb and bb cc winrate will be higher (and my 3-bet winrate lower).
2. These numbers don't converge very quickly, so they are uninformative (too much variance).

I can tell you that I have won 5.7bb/100 over 6 million hands on Pokerstars at 400NL and higher. I hope that satisfies your criteria.

Hi Zig Zag,

Thank you for your question! The first part of the game tree we look at is when villian cbets 60%. This means that he misses his cbet 40%. So we can write a mathematical expression like .6 * (EVwhenCBET) + .4 * (EVwhenNOTCBET) = OurEV.

And now we know that EV_whenNOTCBET = HisCalltoBet% * (OurEVwhenHeCalls) + HisFoldtoBet% *(OurEVwhenHeFolds).

We solve the EV_whenNOTCBET equation and then substitute that into the OurEV equation to find the value.

If this is still unclear, please tell me so I can make it clearer.

Hi ZigZag,

I should never do math on the spot while shooting a video :).

We can figure out the probability of a person, who folds 40% after missing cbet; checkfolding the first 4 times after missing the cbet. We do this by

(chanceVillainFoldaftermiscbet1) * (chanceVillainFoldtaftermiscbet2) * (chanceVillainFoldaftermiscbet3) * (chanceVillainFoldaftemiscbet4) = probabilitypersonfolds4timesaftermissing cbet

Since every value is equal to (40%), we can rewrite the equation as (.4)^4 = .0256.

There is only a 2.6% chance that a player, who folds after missing cbet 40% of the time; would check/fold the first four times. This implies that its very likely that his actual fold after missing cbet is much higher than 40%.

Thanks for following up! I appreciate your question.

Hi Ugur,

Cold-Calling from the Big Blind and making -30bb/100 is excellent with most hands. Its 70bb/100 better than folding!

1. Our goal from calling from the BB is to call all the hands that lose less than -100bb/100 against a particular opponent.
2. Our goal from the SB is to call all hands that lose less than -50bb/100 against that particular opponent and the big blind.

Link to Excel Spread Sheet

thanks a bunch!

Of course, but its closer to 38% for a 1/2 pot cbet rather than 33% (toy game 1- A). It may even be lower because his weakest hands like 54o, 65o, and 64o should rarely improve enough on future streets to gain even a small fraction on the pot.

The topic of future street play is too broad for my simple toy game and requires an in depth knowledge of OOP future street play. For example:
If he chooses to c/f the turn 100% of the time after not betting twice, then its going to be better to check back the flop with our air with the intention of betting the turn when he checks.

That's right. Its highly dependent on the lower end of their ranges equity in the pot. On a board like T98dd against normal ranges, a check/fold near ..66x(1-a) is more appropriate. On most boards .85x(1-a) is a very reasonable estimate.

The basic idea is that most high volume tags have predefined ranges for cbetting and checking. They are only likely to deviate from those ranges if the exploits are obvious. Widening our range from 65% to say 90% is unlikely to have a large effect on our call cbets numbers. Our range is weak to begin with and the marginal addition of the extra 25% with only weaken our range slightly on most board textures.

Also our fold to cbet numbers on his HUD are likely to be an collection of situations vs a variety of players so its unlikely that he would become aware of our exploit unless the entire player pool displayed the tendencies or we've played tens of thousands of hands against him.

Also our fold to cbet numbers on his HUD are likely to be an collection of situations vs a variety of players so its unlikely that he would become aware of our exploit unless the entire player pool displayed the tendencies or we've played tens of thousands of hands against him.

Have all of my RIO hearts, could only give two. On this subject, how do you deal with playing better than this? Do you watch showdowns like a hawk and trust your intuition? It's really not an easy task, determining how much a reg is playing vs us differently than they are vs the field. Our HUD sadly only gives an answer to the latter. I'm particularly eager about this because again... MTT player. Knowing how someone plays vs the field is near useless once they know that I'm not the field and have a pretty good idea that I know as much about them too.

For example... we notice reg X seems to not follow through rivers enough because we see showdowns where they don't. OK cool except maybe he thinks villain was a calling station, or a "fun player" or just a random and his idea of the population tendency is that they're payoff wizards. So now we know what they don't do... vs some villain who isn't us. How long until we stop making weak folds vs them because we just don't know if they were exploiting and play us differently, or just don't bluff rivers enough?

I guess that's enough questions for one post but your thought process is generally so clear and grounded... want any advice I can get.

Hey Pepe,

Its a good question (How do exploit a reg without being exploited ourselves?). There is no simple answer. Some things I think about it when I'm playing.

Has my opponent been losing or winning big recently? Players who are winning tend to be more conservative than players who are losing (Loss-Aversion).

What sort of winrate does my opponent have long -term? Breakeven players are more likely to play a memorized strategy. Big winners generally try to actively exploit our play. Against big winners, understanding our own hud stats (where we tend to fold too much or call too much) is more important than exploiting their hud stats.

Is there a large deviation (and it needs to be large!) in hud stats against hero compared to overall hud stats? Short-term variance plays a large role in the numbers and most players don't try to actively exploit solid opposition, so I'm very careful about jumping to conclusions against competent opposition.

I can keep going. The basic idea is that players fall into types/levels of awareness/perception of the game. Making sure that you understand their psychology better than they understand yours is key to being a great player!

Is there a large deviation (and it needs to be large!) in hud stats against hero compared to overall hud stats?

I use HM2 and try to use this somewhat, in relation to 3b vs hero, fold vs hero steal etc. How much do you find yourself using this in-game? Like do you have vsHero specific pop-ups? Do you just study your opponents off the table to see if they are showing certain patterns against you?

This is one of the areas of the game where HUDs show the most limitation I think and I don't think it's a bad thing. I actually really like decyphering spots like "would he try this against ME", "does he realize I'd realize this is a bad spot to be light" etc. I just like to figure out what makes someone better at these things even if there is no straight answer.

Thanks for taking the time to answer everything as well as you are!

Hi Pepe,

My hud has vs hero stats. The only situation I can think of ever using them though is when some guy is 3-betting me like a mad men. I might look to see if its my perception of the situation rather actual fact. I'm sure there are other uses, but the numbers take forever to converge and that makes them pretty much useless versus 90% of the player pool.

I'm glad you liked it Raphael!

Thank you for the kind words!

The difference between the normal formula (%Fold * Pot - %Call * Betsize) and the formula I used (%Fold * Pot - %Call * Betsize - Amount called preflop) is the position of our EV calculation in the tree. The former formula doesn't take into account previous action in the hand (our call preflop). The latter formula's "Amount called preflop" moves the EV calculation to preflop. This is important because we are calculating the other EVs for preflop so to sum them together we need each part to be in the same game state. Otherwise we are trying to sum together apples and oranges.

Another way to think about this formula is to state it as (%Fold * (Pot - OurInitialCall) - %Call * (Betsize + OurIntialCall) ).

This with some algebraic simplification can be rewritten as (%Fold* Pot - %Call * Betsize - Amount Called Preflop) . The key identity is that (%Fold + %Call) = 1.

I appreciate your question. Is that clearer?

Hi Pepe,

I posted the excel spreadsheet with the value of 2p in a 3-bet 100 bb pot. 2p wins 38bbs in this situation. This drastically skews your outcomes.

We need to take down the value of two pair to 8bbs (probably much more realistic in a tournament) and adjust the potsize for tournament play (add ante * 9 to potsize (B24)).

With these assumptions along with a 75% cbet, I come up us needing a check/fold after missing Cbet of 75% before ATC is profitable in this situation.

With some cunning you can fill in the blanks for other sections of the flopping range such as flush draws and midpairs. This will give you a much more accurate picture of exactly what hands should be called preflop.

Ah thanks a bunch. Felt like the 2p equity needed some severe skewing but I don't have your DB to work with :) So it seems even considering antes and small raises, with our value region EV dropping drasticly, villains who fire flops at a high clip pretty much crush any attempt to exploit we make. I guess this makes intuitive sense because well... we're defending low equity garbage so our R vs high cbettors doesn't help us out much and our bluffing opportunities are rare. So unless they're checking a vast majority of air this is definitely not the way we exploit this profile.

I tend to find very high cbettors check very strong on say... the obvious culprit flops like Axx, Kxxr etc. These same villains tend to check extremely weak on T9xss and the like because they're not exerting pot control much if at all, and have very few sensible traps. Would your experience mirror this? I know you're a CG player and really, at least today, people at your stakes don't really foam at the mouth when they see three and just bet because well... that hasn't worked for a while now.

I'm glad you found your mistake! My experience has been similar. Most players auto cbet A, K board with their air, so when they check the usually have good showdown value. T9xs is a more mixed bag. People at midstakes are concerned about balance so you'll rarely find players who c/f say 90% after missing cbet; even on this board texture.

Thank you Koivisto!

Thank pacmang!

Thank you for your kind words!

@ (1-A)

Board texture plays a key role in optimal strategy. The KQ2 board hits the in position player harder than the oop player so folding more than 1-A is fine. When I talk about 1-A, I generally use it as shorthand for "a strategy that is robust against a gto counter strategy". In actual GTO play 1-A is used (with some adjustment for the fact that in position can check and gain some equity) when ranges are symmetrical. If they are asymmetrical then 1-A is no longer a valid approximation.

@ Which hands to choose to bet the turn -- I'd start with my hands with no showdown value, move to hands with little showdown value, and then move to medium strength hands. Your actual range should changed based on the distance of his strategy from optimal strategy. Its too numerous to list in this post, but every strategy villain chooses has a max exploit counter strategy. Finding that strategy for lots of villains is a really good way to win lots of money.

I hope that helps : ) I'm going on vacation today and won't be able to follow up until next Sunday.

Again, thx a lot. Have a great vacation!

Thank you! I say 2 pair for brevity, but I am referring to 2 pair or better.

You know I check both numbers and have it memorized like Cbet 50% Fold after missing Cbet 65% = auto profit. You should be able to program notecaddy to come up with a badge, but that is obviously time consuming and error prone.

I just asked if you use notecaddy for that, because you told you were recording on your notebook, and on the popups I couldn't see the spark graphs, so I thought you didn't have notes on the notebook to show any notecaddy related stuff.

What do you think about creating stat that shows (1-cbet%)*fold after missing cbet??
I will take sometime to know what marginal hands to call against different opponents, I guess I need to pratice on your spreadsheet.

This video is an incredible a-ha moment for me, thank you very much.

Hi WM,

You definitely could create a stat in notecaddy like that. In fact that might be the best way to do it. Thank you for the suggestion. I'm super stoked you enjoyed the video
!!!

I'd usually choose 3-betting unless the value gain for calling was very very high. Two reasons:
1. I don't have to pay rake if he folds to the 3-bet, this in generally means more money for me.
2. Its quicker: as a multitabler, I need to think about the difficulty of a profitable decision as well as its pure profitability. Any line that costs a larger amount of time to execute also costs more money to execute.

Thank you for the feedback, Arnaud! I'm planning on continuing the series later this year.

Hi Pukeshou,

Good question! Its more complicated than I can do it justice but here's the basic idea:

Since we have no "fold equity", You'll only call hands preflop that have a certain amount of postflop equity against the villain -- enough equity to be profitable without fold equity. We won't look to bluff more than enough to keep villain playing his silly strategy (10%-15% of the time is generally enough) and our hands will gain too much value when they flop value hands. This makes us very +EV without having to expand our ranges!

The link is fixed.

Thanks, much appreciated

I'll win some of those 2bbs invested pre when he folds between 1/3rd and 5/9ths of the time. That makes it cheaper for me to play hands, which means some hands will become profitable to play here that weren't profitable when he folded only 1/3rd of the time.

Thanks Truepower!