Thanks!

Hi craigbor,

Excellent question. What you are saying is a very valid concern. I'm not 100% sure how a GTO perfect player would play in our shoes (given some particular range assumptions for both players), but if the solution was so split our range into two betsizes, then what you would see is that some nut hands are bet for the small size some % of the time specifically to counter the problem you are bringing up.

Having said that, in practice I don't think this is a huge concern because the point at which our opponent would exploit this tendency is fairly far back in the game tree from the river bet. In practice what will likely happen is that in this spot villain will get to river with some fairly capped range, and if he chooses to shove with a high frequency over our small river bet we can simply adjust by calling with a bunch of our bluffcatchers. The only way we really get in trouble with the small bet strategy is if villain knows we will be using it, and therefore gets to the spot with a bunch of strong hands. However as the hand played out, that would require villain to x/call flushes (or sets or two pairs) on the turn and then check to us again on the river, which is not a line I see people taking here too often, and additionally a line that would have a lot of negative effects for villain in other parts of the game tree.

Does that answer your question?

Thank you!

Because I can get to showdown and win with AT, and I can't get to showdown and win with JT.

I do this because getting there with the gutter is "cleaner" when I x/r flop, bet turn and shove river rather than when I x/c flop, x/c turn, x/shove river (actually I don't think I'd even be able to x/shove river profitably when I get there).

To be clear, I don't really want to be building a pot with a gutter but I'd like to have a small x/r range in this spot and gutters seems to be the best hands that I can use as bluffs.

Yup, I'd still have two betsizes. Even if (especially if?) villain is checking Jx to me on the river I'd want to be shoving my AJ combos, so the spot really calls for an overbet with some part of my range.

There isn't anything wrong with your line of thought, but how it applies is very situation specific.

Normally when you are betting some huge amount as a bluff, your best bluffs are going to be, as you say, hands with blockers which have the highest EV. But the kinds of blockers you are talking about are going to be hands which block the villain from having the nuts. For example on a KQ3A7 runout the highest EV bluffs are going to be JJ and TT.

This doesn't apply so much to this hand as there aren't such clear blockers I could have. I certainly do need an ace in my hand to shove river (to block AJ) but there aren't really too many hands I'd consider shoving the river with that don't have an ace in them. From there, I'd want to block my opponent from having a J, perhaps AK and AQ (blocking QJ, KJ) are going to be marginally the better bluffs by some small amount, although the effects here are marginal.

The reason I said I'd want hands like Axhh to bluff small with is because the hands I'm really targeting by betting small are his weaker 2 pair combos which I really don't want to be blocking (so having reverse blockers) but I think the effects here are very small. Additionally, I'd have to consider that with Axhh I'd also be blocking some weirdly played FD's that are always going to be folding on the river - which isn't a good thing.

thank you for answering that, makes perfect sense. wp

Talk to Mr. GTO like that?

Hey,

Yes, I'd go smaller here. If we start raising a lot villain's best response is going to be to adjust his cbetting range, although I don't think that him being super wide is going to be too much of a mistake here even if we are raising hands like this because of villain's stronger range. The other obvious adjustment would be to play aggressively versus a raise with strong non-nutted hands (such as overpairs and strong 9x), but I'm not sure that he would be doing this because of how he is likely to perceive our range.

Re: raising with a smaller stack, I think what you said is backwards. I see somewhat more incentives to raise with a smaller stack. Or rather, the same incentives but less downside.

I think I would raise AJhh and AJcc sometimes on the turn but not often. I think I'd stab AJ on the flop at a decent clip, probably a tad more than AQ. Either way, like you said it's likely I'm overbluffing that spot.

I wouldn't be too concerned about villain bluffing every combo worse than JJ here - if that's his strategy I just have two easy check calls. The real concern with checking mostly AT type of stuff on the turn is that villain drastically expands his value betting range when I take that line and starts very comfortably betting JJ and QQ for value. I don't expect that too happen with a high frequency for most villains so I'm okay with not having too many strong hands in my checking range here. If it is a concern for you and you wanted to play a more theoretically balanced strategy, then by all means you can start checking some strong hands, but checking your whole range is definitely not the GTO solution in this spot.

I'm curious why you think checking sucks for 99, it would be the first boat that I would elect to check here if I was forced to put very strong hands into my checking range.

min16: Yeah, I think it's very possible he is never bluffing, but I think I still need to call with my hand even if he's never bluffing because he can have AQ and KQ and there aren't many combos of two pair and sets in his range given how the hand played out. So while I agree with you I think that continuing with two pair + only is a bit too nitty.

min27: What non SD hands do I have to bluff on the turn other than a few combos of broadway hearts? I don't think that betting AJcc means that I will bluff every single Ax combo here - I don't necessarily have to be the ones with a spade here and would prefer AJcc over AxJs to bluff turn here. Having said that, yes it's very possible that I am bluffing too much here and I should probably play more of a mix with hands like mine.

Whoops!