Thank you Zache!

Good question. I thought about this topic a little bit when I discovered ruse.ai and saw how quick and efficacious it was overall. I think that delaying the outputs is probably the most effective (and perhaps the only) way of preventing cheating.

Whenever I think about the future of online poker I always end up feeling completely unsure about what will happen. People have been expecting it to die for many years and somehow it seems like it's not dying even though the action is going down in general a little bit every year.

Anyways, how's volume/grinding this year so far?

Ha, reading his made me miss a little bit my old blog and I’ve been thinking of starting a private one because I think sharing a lot of stuff publicly, specially being a HU player is not very wise. If I end up doing that I’ll make sure to invite you as you’ve been such a long time supporter of me :)

Volume has been worse than I was aiming for but I’ve had quite a bit going on outside of poker and I’ve improved a lot on a few other areas of my life so I guess is not that bad. Rather not share much about results but they’ve been good in general.

Hope everything is fine mate!

Thank you and hope everything is fine with you as well amigo!

If I end up doing that I’ll make sure to invite you as you’ve been such a long time supporter of me :)

Nuno Alvarez me to please! I don't play any HU or online any more but would love to read whatever you write.

Thank you mx, glad you liked it.

I think the 0 EV hands here against this sizing will be the non-backdoor FD T9’s and 89’s and the K9o type hands. The reason why this sizing isn’t great from an optimal perspective is just because it allows IP to float a little bit too much with the backdoor hands and just folds out a bunch of very low equity combos.

Good question. I think in general, playing a capped range vs an over aggressive opponent is not where you would like to be so the idea of including strong hands in what it looks like a capped range seems like the way to go. However, I get the feeling that Linus’s range here almost looks stronger when he continues by calling against the re-raise than when he goes over the top and that’s why I think this can end up working better vs a player like Stefan.

Haha! This sounds like leveling thoughts but I get your point! Maybe not playing capped here is better vs certain players, thanks for the thoughts! :D

Thank you Demondoink!

Since you guys seem to be enjoying this, I'll make another one :)

8:55 - XR with this hand is indeed not ideal and that's why the equilibrium would bet it in the first place. I think that check/calling to lead a bunch of rivers isn't great since we will allow IP to check/back and beat us with bluffs quite often and our range doesn't really get to lead many cards in general anyway.

18:00 - Yeah the ''raise to see where I'm at'' play is quite common in live games in my experience as well. It really doesn't have much merit since you will end up commiting yourself in some spots that you don't necessarily want to and you will be able to ''see where you're at'' by calling as well.

Nuno Alvarez one more question for live cash against players that donk to see where they are at how do you approach this spot? I've tried raising roughly 3.5x size vs half pot donks with QJ JT type holding on AK3 type boards. Just last week guy called flop raise and turn barrel 2\3 pot with KQ. Against these guys who dont think in ranges is it even worth bluff raising? Several other times people limp call like A4o and get sticky after they face aggression. Its nice when I actually have a hand but its hard to make hands.

I'm really not the best one to answer this question since I barely play any live poker but my guess is that you'd do alright by raising and barreling off a lot since their most common holdings for this kind of bets will be medium strength hands. I do think bluff raising is still worth it since they will likely end up overfolding if you are aggressive enough on the right spots.

I think the reason is that one is a SRP and the other is a 3bet pot.

Let's say that the JJ2r was a SRP, then i'd imagine that the IP player would just range cbet for small sizing (just like you do on almost any paired board).

However, if it's JJ2r in a 3bet pot then you are going to size up because you don't really care if your opponent has a Jx, you are just trying to get in stacks with (lets say TT+) on brick run outs in order to force your opponent to defend weaker pocket pairs etc vs your river all in. Also, because your opponent is defending a tighter range pre (and doesn't have auto folds from hands like 65o etc) then if you cbet small on JJ2r then you will get almost no folds from the IP player. Which is good, exploitatively, if you have a hand like KK and are looking to get floated by some weak backdoor hand so that you can x call down against him (like what happened in this hand), but less so for your overall range that is wanting to put more money in on early streets with it's value region, and also garner fold equity with your bluffing region.

On J94r i'm slightly less sure because this is a board that i use 75% cbet on in 6max, but i'd imagine that because pre flop ranges are much wider in HU, then we want to size down to around 50% pot or so, so that we can value bet much wider and force our opponent to defend a bunch of marginal hands that can just pure fold if you go larger. If we use a larger cbet sizing then we can no longer value bet 4x, 88-55 etc. It's fine to use a larger cbet sizing on this texture in 6m cos both ranges pre flop are tighter, so you are less incentivized to cbet small as your opponent connects pretty well on this flop texture and doesn't have hands like K6o/K5o etc (that they have in HU) to auto fold. More of their range will consist of pairs, straight draws etc, so you prefer to size up and bet more polar to pressurize this region.

Anyways perhaps i'm wrong, because i'm no expert on HU, but hopefully some of my points are valid (and i'm almost certain the JJ2r 3bet pot one is correct, as i'd never block cbet this board in 6m either but would use a 50% sizing, but i'd range cbet in a SRP for 33% on the same texture).

Demondoink nailed it!

It just has to do with how ranges interact on each spot. Just to add something, position is also very important for this. You rather bet small in a spot that you're IP than in a spot that you're OOP.

In SRP 6 max BTN vs BB, BTN can cbet ~25% sizing with range. It's the highest EV single-size strategy for BTN, mainly because it generates an over-fold from the BB compared to 1-alpha defence frequency. This over-fold adds EV to all hand classes in BTNs range so (almost) all of them prefer cbetting, hence the range bet.

In HU the BB does not 'over-fold' to this 25% sizing, because the BB's range interacts more with this board. Instead the BTN sizes up a bit, and the highest EV single cbet size strategy is to bet ~50% sizing. The BB struggles more to meet it's required defence frequency vs this sizing, which is in part why it is higher EV for the BTN to choose this sizing.

For the JJ2r 3bet pot, I agree with RunItTw1ce that the smaller sizing is better. I tried a few hands on GTOWizard's new function to find optimal bet sizes for this board and others in HU 3BP. Based on some quick research it seems that higher board pairs require BB to size down, as trip combos are more prevalent for BTN. For lower ones ~77X or lower, BB doesn't care much about trips anymore as they are so few combos, and sizes up to 50%.

For the JJ2r 3bet pot, I agree with RunItTw1ce that the smaller sizing is better. I tried a few hands on GTOWizard's new function to find optimal bet sizes for this board and others in HU 3BP.

I checked this one on GTOWizard and is favoring the 40% sizing as I expected.

Based on some quick research it seems that higher board pairs require BB to size down, as trip combos are more prevalent for BTN. For lower ones ~77X or lower, BB doesn't care much about trips anymore as they are so few combos, and sizes up to 50%.

I used to also think that when the trips combinations where more prevalent for the IP player we were supposed to size down but doing more research on this topic, turns out that what matters the most in order to chose a small sizing (25%) or a medium one (40%) is whether or not the board is FD. On rainbow paired boards, IP gets to call a bit too many hands vs a 25% sizing since it's in position and has plenty of backdoor combos to overcall with. However when the board is FD, the backdoor hands become substantially worse and IP doesn't get to overcall nearly as much, therefore OOP sizes down.

Nuno Alvarez interesting JJ2ss has less continues than JJ2r. Never would have guessed this. People always size up on two tone boards being "scared" of flush draws.

Thank you mat, another one is coming next :)

Very interesting meta-game indeed, I agree with your view of the match.

Also, sick runout on that hand, straight twice

Hey, thank you!

I think that you reasoning is flawed indeed. I believe this comes from the idea of playing poker ‘’as a whole’’ rather than thinking on each spot individually.

Using this hand as an example, even if 53hh isn’t a holding that wants to raise the flop often at all, OTT it has become a hand that is begging to bet in order to deny equity to some high card hands and also realise equity on a short SPR.

My advice is that rather than think in general terms about the game, we should think about it hand by hand, spot by spot and don’t connect spots together all that often.

I assume you mean if Stefan shoves river? It's not a pretty spot because he's indeed repping 2p+ but AT is still quite good since it has outs to improve and unblocks every single bluff.

Haha that's right!

In theory I'm pretty sure we're supposed to check back. In practice I can see a small bet working against some opponents. In order for us to be able to bet big, a lot of things have to be in line with our thoughts.