Think we need to bet for value and protection. I expect to get called at least on the turn by AQ/AK. Just a strange set of unfortunate events that led to me folding the best hand!

16.55 Yeah I do see what you saying. Think we do have best hand a lot and can get called by worst. Just think in general when people three bet from the big blind (particularly when they three-bet someone as aggro as me) their skewed towards having it a lot. I slightly disagree with what you say about being low in our range though, I mean I just don't peel much 8x, 9x, maybe just T9s, so while I have TT that's lower, that might just be it.

21.00 Haha! This definitely a spot where I'd like to credit myself with an exploit but it's probably me just being imbalanced and giving off a large tell. Basically I think I just dont wanna get spew jammed on by AJ or whatever, so I've gone bigger with my sizing. Think with strong made hands and hands I'm comfortable bet-folding you'll see me go smaller here. Definitely a leak if your playing at the top level, but may be fine at mid to low stakes.

Also, at 16:55, ppl tend to be more polar out of the BB, so they may not have many hands that can even call a bet that are weaker then QQ

Agree with your assessment of the KQ and 67 hand really appreciate such well articulated input. As I outlined in a comment above I think that with the range I peel this 3-bet I'm not that high in my range (given the flop texture). While betting turn against some villains will have a positive expectation I think checking back is also fine. We can also check back draws as well with a higher frequency and then bet them if checked to on the river.

Came to write exactly the same comment. Waiting for a good answer now :)

Seems like your right on this point. I would rarely defend 44 and nearly always jam 77 so we don't actually have the combos i suggest. Although we do at a slightly deeper stack depth. Villains rarely 3-bet 44 as a bluff though, nor should they. Thanks for pointing out my oversight.

Definitely is an option. Given that if we have a value hand we're targeting a call from AK/AQ. A lot of villains will call out of frustration if you lay them a good enough price.

Hey, so this the kind of spot that in one way is very simple to analyse and in another way very complex. Let me expand.

So the first thing I look at when deciding whether a defend is profitable or not is the odds we're getting and our equity vs our opponent's range. Here we need at least 35% equity to continue, given that out of position we're going to get bluffed at least some portion of the time.

Against a very strong value range, with no bluffs, of AKo+ TT+ we have 30% equity and should fold. However, if we just put in three off suit bluffing combos A9o, A8o and QJo our equity leaps to 42%. Furthermore, my impression is that the player pool is over-bluffing in this button vs co spot. That is possibly in response to people over-opening because people are undefending the big blind!!! You see how it get's complicated fast! But my point is that if we include AQs, AQo, KJo and KTo in our opponents range we now have 45% equity and a slam-dunk defend.

So paying attention to opponents tendencies is gonna be key here. You will certainly find people turning up with 84s, K6s and the like, giving you an indication that their bluff frequency is too high.

I would also remind you that against these type of opponents of which there are many in the player pool we arent gonna have huge trouble realising our equity at almost any stack depth post-ante. Most tourney players are out of line enough that we can fast play draws as an exploit, an call down with top pairs.

Hope that helps. Sorry it took me a while to write back. SCOOP intervened! Let me know if you want to get into this further.

Hey, so this the kind of spot that is in one way is very simple to analyse and in another way very complex. Let me expand..

So the first thing I look at when deciding whether a defend is profitable or not is the odds we're getting and our equity vs our opponents range. Here we need at least 35% equity to continue, given that out of position we're going to get bluffed at least some portion of the time.

Against a very strong value range, with no bluffs, of AKo+ TT+ we have 30% equity and should fold. However, if we just put in three off suit bluffing combos A9o, A8o and QJo our equity leaps to 42%. Moreover, my impression is that the player pool is over-bluffing in this button vs co spot. That is possibly in response to people over-opening because people are undefending the big blind!!! You see how it get's complicated fast! But my point is that if we include AQs, AQo, KJo and KTo in our opponents range we now have 45% equity and a slam-dunk defend.

So paying attention to opponents tendencies is gonna be key here. You will certainly find people turning up with 84s, K6s and the like, giving you an indication that their bluff frequency is too high.

I would also remind you that against these type of opponents, of which there are many in the player pool, we arent gonna have huge trouble realising our equity at almost any stack depth post-ante. Most tourney players are out of line enough that we can fast play draws as an exploit, an call down with top pairs.

Hope that helps. Sorry it took me a while to write back. SCOOP intervened! Let me know if you want to get into this further.

Hey mate. So abover I've outlined my approach to defending vs lp three-bets. Now if we're defending a wide range we also need to ensure we're not over-folding flops.

So let's say we're defending 147 combos against the c-bet we need to call with 74% (109 of them) or his c-bet auto-profits.

I think this a pretty solid way of approaching the problem. the ranges are a little rough but you can see we're already at 106 even when we have flatted AA half the time pre-flop. We would also likely fold KJss, 66 and 77 before QJs with a back-door, so against this c-bet we have a mandatory defend to protect our range. Hope that makes my thinki8ng a little clearer.

Thanks for the in depth response.

Sam

Obviously the two ranges interact. If we include something in our flatting range, we weaken our jamming range and vice-versa. Think a mixed strategy with flatting slow-plays a portion of time is best. You can also exploit villain tendencies as well of course. The less likely they are to be three-bet calling the more you want to slow-play big pairs. There is no easy answer.

Hey bro. So i'll answer the two above questions in one here. The TT hand is a pretty handy example of how i visualise my range when I reach a river. So basically when I talk about having 'the bottom of my range' I visualise all the hands I reach the river with. How many combos roughly I will be betting for value and therefore how many I can bluff. this can be a complex thing to sketch out. However, the first combos you're going to bluff with is the 'bottom of your range.' Those hands which have the least showdown. When we have those hand we're gonna have an easy bluff.

So let's take the example of the TT hand. As you say we are gonna have missed spades, but KJss, KTss all made pairs and are gonna be good bluff-catching candidates and JTss obviously has made the nuts. So we've only really got AJss and ATss as air balls, which is just two combos. the next worst hand we have is TT.

Hope this clarifies how TT is nearly the bottom of our range on this run out and why it makes a good bluff candidate.

any opinion sam?

Hey bro. Nice breakdown and apologies for the huge delay in replying. Had the whole SCOOP grind and then some personal stuff. I think your breakdown of the hand is very good and hints at two larger issues that I frequently come across when examining river ranges in MTTs.

The first is that it's very important that if you are going to have a strategy where you are defending a lot of hands to 3-bets, that include a good portion of slow-plays, including some AK, in order to have strong hands on a variety of run-outs. This is something that I don't say explicitly in the video, but can probably be surmised from the examples I use here the other video I did on 3-bet pots. What I kept finding when I broke down 3-bet pots is that on a lot of boards I had few hands that could take three streets of pressure if I always 4-bet JJ+ and AK. Your breakdown bares this out. You demonstrate how thin our actual value range is. Unless we have some AK and AA, we end up being really bluff heavy on this run-out.

So how come this strategy still works well in MTTs? Well this brings us to the other wider issue that I've been thinking off. So many MTT players, myself included leave themselves wide open when they check rivers. They almost never leave themselves with sufficient bluff-catchers. If a spot is close they almost always prefer to go for thin value rather than protect their checking range. You demonstrate how many floats/draws we reach the river with, but few regs capitalise on it by checking strong hands here.

Thanks again for the reply. Although it took me a while to get round to it I'm sure other subscribers benefitted from the analysis in the meantime.

Thanks very much sir!

Hello mate,

Broken this down a little in the above reply. I think that you're right it is, indeed, a bad river to bluff. However, I think regs don't balance rivers well and check few strong/made hands on the river here. It's something that we as improving poker players should be conscious of. Even though there is no obvious draw on the flop the in position player still gets to the river with air at a decent frequency so we need to check some portion of strong hands on the river to bluff catch with.

Hello mate,

Broken this down a little in the above reply. I think that you're right it is, indeed, a bad river to bluff. However, I think regs don't balance rivers well and check few strong/made hands on the river here. It's something that we as improving poker players should be conscious of. Even though there is no obvious draw on the flop the in position player still gets to the river with air at a decent frequency so we need to check some portion of strong hands on the river to bluff catch with.

Cliff:
- Variance isn't always a bad thing. We play tough against other regulars even oop.
- We are heavily weighted towards bluffs on some run outs but other players aren't good enough to exploit it.
-We're bluff heavy in spots but their check-calling range is emptier than the Rio in August.
- TT is good a portion of the time but we have a lot of hands we can value bet on this run-out and can increase our bluff frequency.
- Your posts are great and I dig your engagement.

Thank you very much for the replies !!!

AA, AQ, AK, JJ, TT, QJ

The speed with which strategies are evolving is actually scary. My earliest videos are already archaic in poker terms!! The tools we have now and the amount of off the table work the top instructors on this siite are now doing has really transformed things.

In the exact spot you mention, though, I think I was slightly ahead of the curve. Calling here with AA-KK at some frequency and AK, QQ, JJ, TT at a high frequency works pretty well. I think it's a spot where examining your HUD and adjusting to frequencies is important also, as folding is certainly not unreasonable.