It's an interesting thought to consider attempting a checkraise. It depends a lot on how you want to play your combos of 78s/QJs/other random hearts. My general assumption of an average opponent's checkback range on this board I think will look like --AK-AT/AA-JJ. When you have 78s or QJs which of these lines do you think is best to get him to fold JJ-QQ/AT-AQ?:
bet turn/bet river
chk/call turn c/r river
or c/r turn and shove river
I think bet turn/bet river rarely gets him off an ace and I think chk/call turn doesn't get him to bet his hands like KK-JJ twice so we are going to be putting money in bad against those. So this would mean that based on this strategy we should have some hands in our range that are strong enough to attempt a chk/raise on the river--stuff like 99 and TT.
All that said, I think his most likely holding here is going to be QQ which has the main portion of our value river c/r range (99/TT/AQ) crushed. We did see later in the video that he did not 3bet A3s from BTN vs hero's CO open. Doesn't mean he can't have weak AXs here but it means he's likely more value heavy in general in these positions with his 3bets.
Not sure I'm really answering your question, but these are the things that I'd think about with regard to it and my conclusion I suppose is that we are better off just betting out on this Q river with most of our strong hands and folding to a raise meaning I wouldn't really have a river c/r range here.
One last thought is that if we are trying to chk/raise the river here w/ T7s it feels like we might be attempting an exploitative play in order to 'justify' our bad preflop call which sort of falls along the lines of making the error of compounding on a smaller mistake by making a larger one which as a general rule is a bad thing to do the vast majority of the time.
Like I always say I really don't have all the answers so whatever you or anybody else thinks about this your comments are welcomed.
Warriors represent, represent! Around 17:00 you say betting small to set up three seperate bets on 844dd is less preferable than ~200 as a Cbet. Can you please elaborate why this is a better sizing? My default has been to bet around 1/4 pot here with range.
LOL. Gonna be rough in the playoffs w/out Bogut...
As to your question...I covered most of this in the video so sometimes going back and giving it a few more listens it will start to click. Essentially, the 1/4 pot strategy isn't as good on some boards as it is on others. The more dynamic the board, the better the 1/4-1/4-shove works as you're able to represent a much wider range and your opponent continues to define his range as weak as he goes c/c c/c on a board that has the nuts change drastically from street to street. When there's no draws, or very few draws like here (only diamonds), the smaller bets just don't serve any purpose other than letting him get away from his hand on a later street if high cards fall and the board comes scary for his 99-QQ. Those are rarely if ever folding to a 1/2-shove strategy so why let him get away from those cheaply? I'd take the same line with diamonds so if he ever decides to c/c flop then c/f turn, I'm pretty much always winning. One other thing the 1/4-1/4-shove doesn't allow is that he can't reverse float you by c/c the flop light then betting river when turn checks through because when you 1/4 the flop it looks like you are betting turn w/ 100% of your range.
Awesome reply. I guess my logic for wanting to 1/4 pot, 1/4 pot, shove is that this board favors our range so heavily, we want to be cbetting with everything, and shoving most board runouts, but perhaps I am spewing here. Bogut is our achilles heel! Damnit.
Cool video, and I like your point on bet-sizing in the 4bet pot.
The last hand of the video surprised me a little bit where you didn't want to fold 85o and said that we limp our strong hands to protect these types of hands.
I was surprised that you thought 85o should be a complete, since we only have so many strong hands and completing every broadway, every Ace, every King, every Queen, every connected hand down to 56+ and every suited hand already brings us to 65%. Do you think we should be completing 100% due to pot odds?
Well there's 15 dollars in the pot and it's 5 dollars for us to complete. Getting this price I think we only need 20% equity or so to complete against a random hand and every hand does have at least that much equity. I still fold all hands that both cards are T and below, unsuited, and can't make a straight due to playability reasons.
We need to complete 5 to make a pot of 20, so that is 25%. 32o has 32.3% equity against a random hand, but weak hands will likely make make less than their equity since they often have to fold and will be dominated more often.
Thanks for clearing that up. Appreciate you to point out any mathematical mistakes I make here and in the future because obviously that's a weakness of mine.
Yes it's true certain hands realize a lower percentage of their overall equity. It's also true that in this situation of blind vs blind that we aren't guaranteed to see a flop the times that he raises our limp.
Playability is just a made up word that basically implies this concept of 'frequently realizes it's equity' which is why I said I would tend to open fold those rather than complete despite the fact that they have enough raw equity to continue.
Well there's 15 dollars in the pot and it's 5 dollars for us to complete. Getting this price I think we only need 20% equity or so to complete against a random hand and every hand does have at least that much equity.
I don't disagree with your reasoning, but by that logic we should actually be completing 100%. I think using a river model here is a bit oversimplified, but I don't yet know how to improve it.
What it seems like you're essentially saying when you consider pure pot odds as the justification for calling here is that we realize our true equity (call it E) with a frequency such that the following equation is satisfied:
(Equity of 85o vs. Random Hand) * (Percent of the time we have to realize our equity) = 20%
85o has 41.81% equity against a random distribution and we use E = 41.81% to get:
(41.81%)* (Percent of time we get to realize our equity) = 20%
<===>
Percent of time we have realize our equity = 47.83%
So calling with 85o here is essentially saying that we realize our equity 47.83% of the time. We could go a bit further though: Assuming we fold 85o whenever we get raised, then the amount of time we get to realize our equity would have to be:
47.83% - R where R is Villain's raise percentage when we limp
Of course, R would have to quite reasonable since we're limping our strong hands as well, so for the sake of discussion let R = 25%.
We then have that we need to realize our equity the following amount in order to justify our call:
47.83% - 25% = 22.83 %
So your statement seems equivalent to saying that with all other things being equal (which they are not but we'll pretend), then we need to realize our equity roughly one out of five times. I guess this seems pretty reasonable. What do you think?
Edit: The calculation was just using your numbers (which Game Theory pointed out were off). Regardless, we would get a slightly less percentage for how often we needed to realize our equity if we used the correct calculation of the pot odds.
As has been documented, I'm quite weak when it comes to mathematical theory. Everything you wrote seems right, but it's predicated on us pretending that all these other things are equal which seems incorrect to me. It also seems like we give up a lot by not raising hands like AA-TT/AK-AT so I would assume those hands are making up for a lot of these weaker limps. The truth is, no one knows the real answer because we need a computer that can solve for all of the potential situations postflop which are myriad. I'm comfortable limping 85o but despite the fact that it could very well be correct to do so, I'm not really that comfortable w/ stuff like 82o 83o 72o 92o 93o 94o T2o, etc ...
That was interesting you consider yourself quite weak in areas like mathematical theory and finding equilibrium. If you don't attribute your success in HSNL to mathematical theory, what do you have been the most critical factors?
Is it a combination of exploiting the smallest advantages with great game selection/tilt control?
It's a combination of a lot of things. I'd call it like an intuitive feel of frequencies that has developed over time from playing millions of hands. Pay closer attention to when I'm talking about a situation and comparing one line to another. You should be able to pick up on things like "X action is going to cause us to lose money when A, B, and C situations will come up, Y action will cause us to win when D, E and F situations come up. A,B,C occurs more frequently than D,F,E, so we should take action X". That's a very basic example but you should be able to notice a lot of those types of discussions in my videos. That's not even all there is to it because there are other factors to consider like opponent type and overall range versus range factors that would adjust how I play a hand in one scenario versus how I might play it in another. The best players nowadays are able to switch seamlessly between play using GTO principles and exploitative play based on the scenario and their opponent.
And yeah I would say I have pretty good selection and very strong tilt control. The game selection is kind of easy to have, the tilt control just comes with experience. When I was younger and less experienced I used to tilt super frequently. I think it's something that comes with maturing as a person and understanding reality. There's no one answer to this question or secret key or whatever--you just need a lot of experience and you have to have the mindset that you are always learning and you can't really ever be satisfied with where you are at or what you have done.
It seems really valuable once you've studied some poker theory and understand what ranges look like and are able to use stats in combination, but it also seems like it will actually stunt your growth if you use it before you're ready.
As you said, I think it could be either. Personally, I don't really use the hud much at all. I'll use it for basic things to get reads on if I'm against a donk or a regular, or to get a general idea of how aggressive my opponent is. Anything beyond that, I think it's very easy to become over-reliant on the numbers that the HUD produces.
It really just depends on how good of a player you are, the better you are and the more you understand those numbers in relation to reality, obviously the more useful they become. If they cause you to make mistakes or to become over-reliant on it, they could cause you more harm than good. I stay away from it because I find that I'm better able to play closer to equilibrium without it and I tend to focus too much on trying to exploit tendencies that may or may not be representative of how my opponent actually plays (due to too large or too small sample size, etc) when I do use it.
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Good video Peter, it's obvious you've spent a lot of time thinking about the game.
Hey thanks. I always appreciate positive feedback. Any constructive criticism is welcome too as I always want to be improving.
@3:40 the Ts7s on A92TQ, what hands would you checkraise by the river? And what do you think his double delayed cbet range looks like in this spot?
Hi,
It's an interesting thought to consider attempting a checkraise. It depends a lot on how you want to play your combos of 78s/QJs/other random hearts. My general assumption of an average opponent's checkback range on this board I think will look like --AK-AT/AA-JJ. When you have 78s or QJs which of these lines do you think is best to get him to fold JJ-QQ/AT-AQ?:
bet turn/bet river
chk/call turn c/r river
or c/r turn and shove river
I think bet turn/bet river rarely gets him off an ace and I think chk/call turn doesn't get him to bet his hands like KK-JJ twice so we are going to be putting money in bad against those. So this would mean that based on this strategy we should have some hands in our range that are strong enough to attempt a chk/raise on the river--stuff like 99 and TT.
All that said, I think his most likely holding here is going to be QQ which has the main portion of our value river c/r range (99/TT/AQ) crushed. We did see later in the video that he did not 3bet A3s from BTN vs hero's CO open. Doesn't mean he can't have weak AXs here but it means he's likely more value heavy in general in these positions with his 3bets.
Not sure I'm really answering your question, but these are the things that I'd think about with regard to it and my conclusion I suppose is that we are better off just betting out on this Q river with most of our strong hands and folding to a raise meaning I wouldn't really have a river c/r range here.
One last thought is that if we are trying to chk/raise the river here w/ T7s it feels like we might be attempting an exploitative play in order to 'justify' our bad preflop call which sort of falls along the lines of making the error of compounding on a smaller mistake by making a larger one which as a general rule is a bad thing to do the vast majority of the time.
Like I always say I really don't have all the answers so whatever you or anybody else thinks about this your comments are welcomed.
Hey Peter, nice video ! Thank you so much for all this work that you putted on these 3 videos, helped me to keep working on my strategy !
Warriors represent, represent! Around 17:00 you say betting small to set up three seperate bets on 844dd is less preferable than ~200 as a Cbet. Can you please elaborate why this is a better sizing? My default has been to bet around 1/4 pot here with range.
Hi,
LOL. Gonna be rough in the playoffs w/out Bogut...
As to your question...I covered most of this in the video so sometimes going back and giving it a few more listens it will start to click. Essentially, the 1/4 pot strategy isn't as good on some boards as it is on others. The more dynamic the board, the better the 1/4-1/4-shove works as you're able to represent a much wider range and your opponent continues to define his range as weak as he goes c/c c/c on a board that has the nuts change drastically from street to street. When there's no draws, or very few draws like here (only diamonds), the smaller bets just don't serve any purpose other than letting him get away from his hand on a later street if high cards fall and the board comes scary for his 99-QQ. Those are rarely if ever folding to a 1/2-shove strategy so why let him get away from those cheaply? I'd take the same line with diamonds so if he ever decides to c/c flop then c/f turn, I'm pretty much always winning. One other thing the 1/4-1/4-shove doesn't allow is that he can't reverse float you by c/c the flop light then betting river when turn checks through because when you 1/4 the flop it looks like you are betting turn w/ 100% of your range.
Awesome reply. I guess my logic for wanting to 1/4 pot, 1/4 pot, shove is that this board favors our range so heavily, we want to be cbetting with everything, and shoving most board runouts, but perhaps I am spewing here. Bogut is our achilles heel! Damnit.
Cool video, and I like your point on bet-sizing in the 4bet pot.
The last hand of the video surprised me a little bit where you didn't want to fold 85o and said that we limp our strong hands to protect these types of hands.
I was surprised that you thought 85o should be a complete, since we only have so many strong hands and completing every broadway, every Ace, every King, every Queen, every connected hand down to 56+ and every suited hand already brings us to 65%. Do you think we should be completing 100% due to pot odds?
Well there's 15 dollars in the pot and it's 5 dollars for us to complete. Getting this price I think we only need 20% equity or so to complete against a random hand and every hand does have at least that much equity. I still fold all hands that both cards are T and below, unsuited, and can't make a straight due to playability reasons.
We need to complete 5 to make a pot of 20, so that is 25%. 32o has 32.3% equity against a random hand, but weak hands will likely make make less than their equity since they often have to fold and will be dominated more often.
GT,
Thanks for clearing that up. Appreciate you to point out any mathematical mistakes I make here and in the future because obviously that's a weakness of mine.
Yes it's true certain hands realize a lower percentage of their overall equity. It's also true that in this situation of blind vs blind that we aren't guaranteed to see a flop the times that he raises our limp.
Playability is just a made up word that basically implies this concept of 'frequently realizes it's equity' which is why I said I would tend to open fold those rather than complete despite the fact that they have enough raw equity to continue.
Well there's 15 dollars in the pot and it's 5 dollars for us to
complete. Getting this price I think we only need 20% equity or so to
complete against a random hand and every hand does have at least that
much equity.
I don't disagree with your reasoning, but by that logic we should actually be completing 100%. I think using a river model here is a bit oversimplified, but I don't yet know how to improve it.
What it seems like you're essentially saying when you consider pure pot odds as the justification for calling here is that we realize our true equity (call it E) with a frequency such that the following equation is satisfied:
(Equity of 85o vs. Random Hand) * (Percent of the time we have to realize our equity) = 20%
85o has 41.81% equity against a random distribution and we use E = 41.81% to get:
(41.81%)* (Percent of time we get to realize our equity) = 20%
<===>
Percent of time we have realize our equity = 47.83%
So calling with 85o here is essentially saying that we realize our equity 47.83% of the time. We could go a bit further though: Assuming we fold 85o whenever we get raised, then the amount of time we get to realize our equity would have to be:
47.83% - R where R is Villain's raise percentage when we limp
Of course, R would have to quite reasonable since we're limping our strong hands as well, so for the sake of discussion let R = 25%.
We then have that we need to realize our equity the following amount in order to justify our call:
47.83% - 25% = 22.83 %
So your statement seems equivalent to saying that with all other things being equal (which they are not but we'll pretend), then we need to realize our equity roughly one out of five times. I guess this seems pretty reasonable. What do you think?
Edit: The calculation was just using your numbers (which Game Theory pointed out were off). Regardless, we would get a slightly less percentage for how often we needed to realize our equity if we used the correct calculation of the pot odds.
As has been documented, I'm quite weak when it comes to mathematical theory. Everything you wrote seems right, but it's predicated on us pretending that all these other things are equal which seems incorrect to me. It also seems like we give up a lot by not raising hands like AA-TT/AK-AT so I would assume those hands are making up for a lot of these weaker limps. The truth is, no one knows the real answer because we need a computer that can solve for all of the potential situations postflop which are myriad. I'm comfortable limping 85o but despite the fact that it could very well be correct to do so, I'm not really that comfortable w/ stuff like 82o 83o 72o 92o 93o 94o T2o, etc ...
Peter,
That was interesting you consider yourself quite weak in areas like mathematical theory and finding equilibrium. If you don't attribute your success in HSNL to mathematical theory, what do you have been the most critical factors?
Is it a combination of exploiting the smallest advantages with great game selection/tilt control?
It's a combination of a lot of things. I'd call it like an intuitive feel of frequencies that has developed over time from playing millions of hands. Pay closer attention to when I'm talking about a situation and comparing one line to another. You should be able to pick up on things like "X action is going to cause us to lose money when A, B, and C situations will come up, Y action will cause us to win when D, E and F situations come up. A,B,C occurs more frequently than D,F,E, so we should take action X". That's a very basic example but you should be able to notice a lot of those types of discussions in my videos. That's not even all there is to it because there are other factors to consider like opponent type and overall range versus range factors that would adjust how I play a hand in one scenario versus how I might play it in another. The best players nowadays are able to switch seamlessly between play using GTO principles and exploitative play based on the scenario and their opponent.
And yeah I would say I have pretty good selection and very strong tilt control. The game selection is kind of easy to have, the tilt control just comes with experience. When I was younger and less experienced I used to tilt super frequently. I think it's something that comes with maturing as a person and understanding reality. There's no one answer to this question or secret key or whatever--you just need a lot of experience and you have to have the mindset that you are always learning and you can't really ever be satisfied with where you are at or what you have done.
Hey Peter, what are your thoughts on the HUD?
It seems really valuable once you've studied some poker theory and understand what ranges look like and are able to use stats in combination, but it also seems like it will actually stunt your growth if you use it before you're ready.
As you said, I think it could be either. Personally, I don't really use the hud much at all. I'll use it for basic things to get reads on if I'm against a donk or a regular, or to get a general idea of how aggressive my opponent is. Anything beyond that, I think it's very easy to become over-reliant on the numbers that the HUD produces.
It really just depends on how good of a player you are, the better you are and the more you understand those numbers in relation to reality, obviously the more useful they become. If they cause you to make mistakes or to become over-reliant on it, they could cause you more harm than good. I stay away from it because I find that I'm better able to play closer to equilibrium without it and I tend to focus too much on trying to exploit tendencies that may or may not be representative of how my opponent actually plays (due to too large or too small sample size, etc) when I do use it.
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