88 should definitly be in a 3betting range BB vs BTN for value no matter what strategy you use. 77 is kinda close imo (Might be a 3b, might not) , but I don't get why someone would assume ppl 3bet depolarized BB vs BTN.

Nice video steve!

88 should definitly be in a 3betting range BB vs BTN for value no matter what strategy you use.

Why do you say this? Seems like it doesn't play/retain equity super well in 3bet pots OOP, but is obviously very profitable to flat.

but I don't get why someone would assume ppl 3bet depolarized BB vs BTN.

I agree; I'm not sure if the correct approach is to assume polarized or depoliarzed. To me regs' strats here seem somewhat evenly split (between polarized and depolarized) but I could be a bit behind the times on this topic.

May not be standard at micro or w/e. But at midstakes you're definitly a favorite with 88 vs a BTN RFI/call range in general. If we get called by more than 50% of the times by worse our play is for value.

My question to you is what ranges people defend in your games were you can't 3b 88 for value?

sweet16 conventional wisdom is to 3bet a linear (depolarized) range when in the blinds because the BTN, being in position, has more incentive to flat

If we get called by more than 50% of the times by worse our play is for value.

This is faulty logic for a couple reasons. First of all, we are OOP with 3 more streets of poker to play, and like I said before, 88 does not retain equity very well OOP in a 3bet pot (i.e. even though you may say a hand like QJs is technically "worse" than 88, we don't necessarily want to be putting a bunch of money in preflop OOP, because again, we're just not going to realize close to all of our preflop equity). Secondly, yes I agree that 3betting 88 BB vs. BTN is a profitable play, but that does not mean that it's more profitable than calling.

So yes, sure we are ahead all-in-equity-wise with 88 vs. a BTN's raise/call range, but again that does not mean that 3betting is more +EV than calling.

I don't know the correct answer; it just doesn't seem remotely close to a "clear" 3bet to me.

hi Steve, nice video so far. It seems you are making the assumption
that BB is 3betting perfectly depolarized. Do you find that a lot of
regs tend to 3bet 55-88, QJo, Q8s and J9s BB vs BTN?

If I did make that assumption I didn't intend to. My goal was simply to play in such a way that my opponent can't be 3betting weak hands profitably. If something like 75o is a profitable 3bet then your r/f's are pretty much guaranteed to be unprofitable and your strategy is (imo) bad. And I think this speaks to the polarized/depolarized argument. If your opponent's best response is to 3bet "polarized" (and I don't really like that term for preflop) that means some set of bad hands are profitable 3bets. That set is likely to be really big as there are a lot of bad hands in NLHE! So while the 3betting range needs some weaker hands, I'm more on the side of those "weak" hands being pretty decent hands that prefer to get a fold than a call preflop.

For the list of hands, I would say I don't see any of those hands much, but the lower suited connectors I see a lot and I think are reasonable 3bet candidates. If I make another video in this series it will be from the bb's perspective and looking at what kinds of hands do better as 3bets/calls vs the ranges from this video.

@ Steve,

Thanks for your response. Just so you know, I said you made that assumption for two reasons:

1 - Around 12:25 when you show BB's continuing range of 40.5% of the 16% 3betting range, you come up with top 6.5% of all hands, which implies that the original 16% was top 16%.

2 - When you bring up HoldemViewer later in the video, it seems to show top 16% of hands for BB's range, and you even talk about the possibility of BB 5bet jamming pairs like 55-77.

@ sweet16,

Another point I forgot to mention about your "3bet 88 for value" comment is that actually when you 3bet 88 in this spot, you should be hoping that your opponent folds, since you make a lot more money on average when BTN folds than when BTN calls, so it doesn't really make sense to call your 3bet a "value" raise.

Those seem like pretty good reasons and I think I probably made several assumptions I should have made explicit but didn't, including this one. A couple brief comments on your points.
1. Yep you're right. I think I need to make some kind of assumption in order to construct the 4bet range but I should make it explicit (and potentially exclude some hands I think play better as flats)
2. Is this around 19-20 minutes where I'm picking an equity for his bluff jams? If so that's just a list of all hands sorted by equity vs TT+/AK and I went through the possibilities to determine what equity to choose. If I remember right (it has been a while since I made this) I exclude 77-55 because I think they make better flats and chose an equity around the Axs type hands.

re: 2 - My bad; I've never used that program. I was referring to ~20:00 when you say, "We then have a bunch of pairs here that have a little over 31% equity" and circle your mouse over 55-88, but yes you do then say that they might play better as calls vs. our original open (right after I paused to make the comment). I should watch an entire video before posting a comment. Thanks again and I look forward to future vids.

I still think your point is valid and is an oversight I made when making the video. Glad you enjoyed the video and thanks for the feedback.

but I don't get why someone would assume ppl 3bet depolarized BB vs BTN.

Cool that I found this post by you, especially after the questions I was asking in you other video.
But defiantly seems like most regs are using a mixed strat, of polarizing and going wider for value.

Glad you liked it! I prefer bigger than a minraise. I have no real reasoning other than people who are better than me seem to think minraise lets bb call too many hands profitably. That argument sounds reasonable to me.

There are opponents against whom 4bet/folding AQs/TT might be best, but I think they're rare. Generally opponents who are 3betting wide enough I'm happy to 4b AQs/TT also have some 5b bluffs. I think 5betting just TT+/AK is a pretty big mistake.

I think he meant in a nuts/air-bluffcatch way, if our opponent never folds, we don't bluff, if we don't bluff, he has to fold. It could never be an equilibrium with an opponent who never folds.
The only exception I think is if our opponent has a draw and has too good pot odds for him to fold, but that's a particular case.

Well you're absolutely right that it breaks down at very shallow stacks (eg at 2bb stacks hu, GTO is jam 100%, call 100%) but I'm not following your example. I think you may have misinterpreted what I said.

If I construct a raising range such that your best response is to never fold to the raise, then my raising range is not constructed correctly. Can you give me a more clear example of why that would not be the case?

edit: jiibi's response is good, although I think it applies equally well in non-nuts/air situations (excluding some very shallow stacked exceptions)

It's sort of a throwaway and intellectually masturbatory point, I agree with the general stuff you were saying.

Maybe the most relevant "realistic" example as far as something we might see implemented at a table would be when we're out of position and have a range/EV advantage and are choosing between checking and betting I think it can be right for us to bet a size which opponent will never fold any hand to if our range has an advantage over his range. In such a situation betting 1bb with our entire range and never getting a fold could be preferable to checking with our entire range, whether such a play could ever be GTO is beyond me to prove but I don't see why it couldn't be possible

Another angle to approach this from is that when we're constructing ranges we often make opponents indifferent to folding or calling. Take river shoving ranges in nuts/air vs bluffcatchers scenarios as an example. In this scenario the bet with our range should be identical EV if opponent never folds as it is to if he never calls. Obviously we aren't in a Nash situation if opponent never folds here, but we can make the bet with our range without knowledge of whether he's ever folding and not care, we're not like, afraid he isn't ever folding because it would make our strategy bad or something. In fact the exact reason that we are making our range the way it is in that situation is to make sure opponent is exactly as incentivized to never call as he is to never fold; there's no problem with him never calling or never folding to the bet, they're both fine for us.

When we bet we want to be getting value or folds and almost always we'll be getting some of both, but theoretically I think there could be situations where we only get value or only get folds and preflop is very very far from solved so I wouldn't feel comfortable claiming that none of our preflop play could be right if we're never getting a fold with it.

An angle to approach it preflop is that limping the SB is an accepted "good" strategy if you do it in a balanced way. Limping the SB never gets any folds from BB so we've established that VPIP'ing without ever getting a fold can be okay, in our opinion, out of the SB. Given that VPIP'ing without ever getting a fold can be okay out of the SB we can't say it's impossible that minraising without ever getting a fold can't be okay out of the SB, we'd just have to accept that the reason we were doing it was that we were getting value against BB's range, but we weren't getting enough value against BB's range to force 72o to fold given its pot-odds.

Easy no, but I think a similar process is valid (ie figure out a reasonable % you're going to get 3b, make a 4b value range, make a 4b bluff range, call enough to not let him 3b too wide).

Thanks for the feedback, I'll likely make another video at some point taking the same situation from the bb's perspective and trying to come up with an approximation of a strategy.

I think in general theory stuff is more useful when you don't have a hud or any reads. The hud gives you reasons to deviate from your theoretically sound strategy to exploit the mistakes others are making. So even if I think the ranges in this video are good, there's a huge chunk of the player pool I play differently vs because of what my hud says.

If I ever do a liveplay video it will be hudless in a game I don't normally play where I just try to play a reasonable strategy and ignore all "reads".

Our 4bet range is 13% of our opening range or 6ish% of all hands. I call significantly extra because our opponent's weak hands get to see a flop when we call. The ranges I end up with in the video result in a fold to 3bet around 50% although I think you likely should defend a bit wider than that.

Well first of all when you have an Axs hand then there are only 36 combos of AJ+. And if you flop an ace, now there are only 24 combos of AJ+. And sometimes you make two pair!
Flopping top pair in a 3bet pot and being beat means you're going to lose a lot of money. That's ok because it just doesn't happen very often. But it's not ok (vs good opponents) to fold so much to 3bets that they can make a lot of money with weak hands, because it's really easy to get dealt a weak hand.

I think a reasonable starting point is to come up with a strategy that does well vs your opening ranges. If you find that this counter strategy does too well vs your opening ranges, then you can adjust your strategy.

Say you think it's correct to open 20% from the hijack and play a strategy that does well vs 20%. If your opponent instead opens 10% (or 100%) you're going to be making some "mistakes" in that you could exploit him more, but your strategy will definitely win money from him.

Glad you liked it!
1. I have no idea, good question! I would imagine it has to be pretty big before you can be at all confident, but you can start making small adjustments earlier.
2. I would slightly reduce my weak 3bet frequency and be a bit more liberal in my 5b jams. I don't like to make huge adjustments that are very exploitable until I'm confident my opponent just doesn't care.
3. Well you seem to have AKo in both ranges (maybe meant AJo in your 4b bluff range?) but I think your 4b bluff range is just way too strong. I would flat call all of those hands and use weaker hands to bluff - something like a few weak Kxs, a few Axo and some other random suited stuff. Ideally I think you use small % of a lot of different hands instead of picking specific combos but in practice either is probably fine. edit: If my opponent calls a lot of 4bets I might change that a bit but I would still flat the hands you listed as bluffs.

Thanks for your replay. Regarding part 3 - I didn't mean to include AKo so just the rest of the hands.
I`m currently playing 10NL, and because villains don't have really wide 3bet ranges I consider those hands to be somehow too weak to call simply because a lot of the times when I hit an A on the board I won't be good vs his 3b(that has a bunch of AK,AQ,AJ) range so I would 4b bluff and use the As in this hand as blocker for his strong hands, assuming he would fold AQ,AJ vs the 4b. Does that make sense?

Yes and no. Yes those hands are good 4bet candidates if you can't call them profitably as they have good blockers. But if your opponents are 3betting so tightly you can't call those hands I don't see why you'd want a balanced 4bet range (and I don't think TT and maybe JJ/AKo are good 4b/c vs someone 3betting tightly from the blinds)

I think I`ll have to work on my 3b calling range vs 6-10% 3b ranges from blinds. Could you give an example of a good 3b calling range vs such villains from blinds when opening the bu?

You are right, I don't need a perfectly balanced 4b range vs those villains.

I would use the balanced 4b range vs villains who are 3bting 12-16% from blinds... but if you think those are too strong to 4b bluff then I`ll probably change AT,A5-A2s with KTs,K9s, A4-A2o. Does that sound good?

again I prefer a little more randomness in the combos (and I would flat KTs) but yeah that seems reasonable-ish.

I feel active blinds often 3bet with pocket pairs, suited connectors and premium hands, against this range even though we are in position and we can call with a decent chunk of our opening range, 4bet maybe a good strategy? would like to hear how you guys think.

1. Can you give me a time stamp for the 6.79R - 2?
2. I believe that's pretty much what I came up with. Now I think it's unlikely that 72o realizes 100% of it's equity, but I also think it's reasonable to conclude from that that button needs to do some combination of opening tighter and/or defending his opens more aggressively. Lastly I didn't account for card removal at all so 72o will get 4bet slightly more often and get a fold slightly less often, making it a -EV 3bet unless you somehow realize >100% of its equity.

So in the previous slides we came up with an EV equation of:
EV = 0.367x - 0.936

and that:
x = 18.5R - 8.

Then we just substitute that value of x into the first equation:
EV = 0.367 * (18.5R - 8) - 0.936
EV = 6.79R - 2.936 - 0.936
EV = 6.79R - 2

whatever result you get will be in bb. The EV equation is just the sum of the EV (measured in bb) of each possible outcome (get 4bet, get a fold, get called) weighted by how likely it is to happen.

SB folds 85% of the time, BB folds 35% of the time, so button gets a fold .85 * .35 = 29.75% of the time. BB calls and we see a flop only when sb folds, so that happens .85 * 0.5 = 42.5%, not 50%. Otherwise looks correct.

Shouldn't (4.5R-2) be (3.5R-2)?

no if bb calls pot will be 4.5 and we will win R of that

Of course. Facepalm. I was thinking solely pre-flop about what we were risking to win what instead of thinking post-flop numbers.

IMO constant should be (0.425*-2)-0.1087 = -0.9587 not -0.741

Hence 1.91R-0.9587=EV
R = 0.50

BTW Wolfram Alpha auto solves equations like this

WDYT?

yeah I didn't check numbers but that appears to be right. Winning half the pot with a hand with decent equity, position and part of a less capped range doesn't seem unreasonable at all (plus we ignored the blocker value of the A in the preflop %s)

Yes, you're right, IamIndifferent. My mistake.

It's + -0.1087, not + 0.1087.

@Steve Paul

The "R", we have calc is how much equity we need to realize, right?

So a hand that has 50% equity vs BBs callrange, needs to relize at least 100% of it's equity to be a profitable open?

R is the % of the pot we win on average. So if R=50% and we have a hand with 50% equity then we need to realize 100% of our equity. I believe Lefort defined R the way you're talking about, Will Tipton defined it the way I used it in this video and I prefer this way.

Thanks. Any chance of you updating your calcs in thread with corrected values?

Done. I have updated the first calc.

you can't reply to a reply, not sure exactly why but that's the way it is

There is only one level of nesting so you can reply only to comments at the highest nesting level and never to indented comments. It's probably a programming thing meaning the site programmers have not coded for multiple nesting levels.

There is only one level of nesting so you can reply only to comments at the highest nesting level and never to indented comments. It's probably a programming thing meaning the site programmers have not coded for multiple nesting levels.

Seems GTO

We risk 2.5 to win 1.5, so if the blinds play 3bet or fold our open needs to work at least 37.5% of the time. If b is how often each player 3bets, then they both fold (1-b)(1-b) of the time. We need this number to be larger than 0.625 if our raise fold is going to show a profit.

When you also consider that we will be getting called pretty often (a worse result for our raise/fold hands than a fold would be) in reality we need this number to be significantly larger than 0.625.

But the point of this calculation was to put a cap on the blinds 3bet ranges. If they are 3betting more than 37.5% of the time, we should never raise/fold as the button. I think this is clearly not correct, therefore I think the blinds should cumulatively 3bet less than 37.5% of the time.

Thank you, very clear.

I'm trying to construct an HU preflop range with this method. For now, I suppose this scenario:

• OR 2.5bb
• 3B 8.5bb
• 4B 21.25bb
• 5B 100bb

I put my OR range on 100% of combos. Now we start to create a 4bet range based on how often we faced a 3bet:

PFR risk 2 to win 1.5 -> 1.5/3.5= 43%

So, if BB 3bet more than 43% we can't OR/Fold. And to cap BB 3bet range we use the formula (but I think this is only for BTN steal Vs. blinds dynamic because there are two opponents):

(1-b)>0.57 ---> b < 43%

Now, you reduce 3bet% from 21 to 16, because our opponents defends their blinds with call or 3bet and not only with a 3bet. Why you choose this ratio? What can it be a good ratio to cap 3bet% in my scenario?

Thank you very much :).

The 21 to 16 is half looking at what regulars do and half shot in the dark guess. I have no experience at all playing hu so am not the best person to answer your question.

Great. Thank you Steve.
One more question for you. Can I use this process to desing exploitatives preflop ranges? You talk about this a little bit at the end of the video but, as exampe, if we use exatly the 5bet range of BB or SB (or both) to construct 4bet value range, bluff combos and so on, we would get a correct result?

"We risk 2.5 to win 1.5, so if the blinds play 3bet or fold our open needs to work at least 37.5% of the time."

Shouldn't it be 62.5%?

Good video

yes just mis-wrote, I correct it in the next sentence/rest of the post

As you move farther from the button, it's not going to work as well because different positions are likely 3betting significantly different range.

Yes, I imagined. Thanks again Steve!

Yes I believe you're right. Someone sent me a pm a while ago with the same issue, but I forgot to write a correction in here.

Hi tried your calculation for 4b/call with 99 and 45%
EV= fold%pot + 5bet%equity*(-4b/callBET) + (pot+ 5betBET))

EV= 60%12+40%45%*(-97.5+(12+91))=8.2bb
is this correct? Steven's calculation showed 6bb

Similarly for AQs EQ=45%
EV=60%12+40%43%*(-97.5+(12+91))=8.15bb

Shouldn't it be EV = 60% * 12 + 40% * 50% * ( 120,5 - 80) ?

I think that the way I worded it in the video is a bit misleading. AKs wins 5bb by 4b/c vs a 10% 3bet with that stackoff range. But if you flat, your EV = 18.5x - 6.5 since you've put in 6.5 and the pot is now 18.5 (both the 4b/c and call numbers ignore rake). So to get the same EV you'd need to return on average 62.5% of the pot. This makes it much closer, and totally neglects AK's blockers (he has 25% less combos of his value range when we have AK). Taking the blockers into account will significantly increase the 4b/c EV.

OK, I figured blockers should be a significant factor here.

A little outside the scope of this video which is now over a year old :) A couple points to consider.
1. KK cannot be 4bet called vs a 5bet range of KK+ unless we're getting ridiculous pot odds (note he has 6 AA but only 1 KK when we have KK)
2. If your opponent is truly only 5b KK+ and calls a reasonable % then it's likely 4b/fold will be best with KK. We don't get stacked by AA which we often will if we call, he's never bluff 5betting and we get value from his call range.
3. In your current setup, KK is a dreadful 5bet since your best 4bet range is something like {AA, blocker hands}

Hope that helps a bit.
Steve

Thanks a lot.
January is kind of preflop constructing month for me so I always review the video so I can check my process.Thanks a happy New Year.

Personally I'd stick with the play I know is good and call. I feel like if I'm assuming an unknown is on average splashy enough to where I want to value 4b 88, I'm not so sure I want to fold it to a jam.

I don't see why not, though there will be some major differences in some of the numbers (e.g. 3bets have very little fold equity in plo vs nl)

Not sure what you mean (this video is 2+ years old). As far as I recall the only software I use in it is Excel, PokerStove and HoldemViewer.

So is this Excel where you can see a string from left to right where it shoes which cards he folds, calls and raises? Looking at pictures on google from the other programs they unfortunally cann not do this...

Can you give me the time in the video that you're looking at?

Yeah would be easier from the beginning, just didn't know it by myself either.

Whatched it again, it starts 23:55min.

Same program you used in your first video.

Ah right forgot I used it. That's CardRunners EV, often shortened to CREV

No Problem, at least we found it, thank you

Yeah to solve for F you're going to have to do a little algebra. So we have EV = 0 and E = 0.305 (careful, you used 0.35 which is 35%!)

200.5 * 0.305 - 91 = -29.85 so we have:

0 = 29.5F + (1 - F) (-29.85)
0 = 29.5F - 29.85 + 29.85F
29.85 = 59.35F
F = 50.3%

thanks alot for the reply, was worried the thread would be dead, this makes way more sense now but im still a little lost with the 2nd part of it.

0 = 29.5F + (1 - F) (-29.85)
0 = 29.5F - 29.85 + 29.85F

on the 2nd line why do we add 29.85 and then take it away again? is that just me being bad at algebra?

yea i realised this was just me being bad at algebra, figured it out all now thanks alot for the replys Steve.

Yes the minimum defense is related only to betsize. In practice you and your opponents may both deviate based on stats, but in this video we're looking at making a good default strategy to start from.

I am stuck in this simple (i think) problem: whose betsize I have to look at to calculate MFD. When we are talk about BTN you look at his betsize, but when you talk about 3bettor's MFD you look again at 4bettor betsize. I am a little bit confused.

To calculate MDF you look at how much was risked to win how much. So if we open button to 2.5x, and bb 3bets to 9x, he risks 8 to win 4, so we have to defend at least 4/(4+8) = 33% of the time or else he automatically profits by 3betting any 2 cards. Now say we 4 bet to 19bb. We risk 16.5 to win 13, so he needs to defend at least 13/(13+16.5) = 44.1% of the time. In practice we often call so the aggressor gets to realize some equity and thus you have to defend more than MDF. There are also spots postflop where we might defend less than MDF because our opponent has a significant range advantage.

Ok, that's fine. But is there a relation between tha fact that as open raiser we have to see the flop at least the 2.5/4 times (or we lose money with our opening/fold), and that facing a 3bet we have to defend at least 4/12 times? Thank you for your patience [I know it's part of your job (and maybe part of the mentality of a winner poker player), but you do it very well].

If you're 2.5x'ing a hand that is going to fold to a 3bet then you're right that the minimum you need to not get 3bet is 2.5/4 (getting folds is best, if you get 3bet 1.5/4 and get called some too your open is going to be -EV). Breaking apart that 2.5/4, the 4 is the total in the pot and will become the numerator in how often you need to defend vs the 3bet (since that's how much the 3bettor stands to win if you fold). The denominator in how often you need to defend will be 4 plus however much the 3bettor is risking. Not sure if that qualifies as a relationship but that's all I can come up with :)

My poor English made my question a bit ridicolous. Anyway I thoght that I have two mandatory MDF: one because of the size of my raise and the other for the size of the 3bet. But I was wrong because I have only to consider the latter, right?

Correct

Hey,
Glad you liked the video.
First q: He needs to defend 9.6% vs a small 4bet. If we ignore the possibility of him calling the 4bet (ie he jams 9.6%) then we just call whatever hands have enough equity - we don't need 50% equity since there's a bunch of dead money in the pot.

Second q: there's no math that tells you the correct frequencies. You can use MDF to figure out the minimum you need to defend, but since you're often calling you can only estimate how often you actually should defend. Math can tell you that opening 50% and defending vs a 3bet with 10% is wrong, and that defending your whole opening range is wrong, but it's more about narrowing the goalposts than it is about finding the one correct number.

This video is 3 years old, don't still have the ranges sorry!

In both cases we're determining a threshold, just from different perspectives. In the first case, we're determining the most we can get 3bet before a raise/fold must be EV negative. We could take the same situation and determine the minimum that the blinds must defend (ie not fold) to stop us from raising any two cards.

We risk 2.5 to win 1.5 (total pot 4) so if they fold more than 2.5/4 = 62.5% of the time then we can raise any two cards. So their minimum defense is 37.5%, exactly the same as their maximum 3bet %.

But yeah the idea is that in both cases we are calculating some frequency such that EV = 0. The math is the same in either case.

Thank you Steve!!

If you're just starting to play poker then yes this video is probably a bit too advanced. Not sure the best pros to watch for beginners, maybe someone else can chime in or you could post in the forums.
Best of luck and hopefully you'll still enjoy the video when you come back to watch it again :)

Play tight range and print it up on your printer of what to open in each position. ONly play 1 table until you can memorize the ranges then slowly add more tables. You will lose lot of money if you bluff to much( it takes advanced thinking to run proper bluff), call down to much with marginal hands and draws ( new players don't understand the thinking needed to make proper hero call), and play to wide of range ( wider you play the more marginal spots your in which advanced players can handle). IF your not sure to play a hand or 3b if your out of posiition just fold and take more chances in position. If your in position you have an edge. Get holdem manager or poker tracker study your hands and opponents hands you notice win every day and are tough to compete with. After you get in like 300-500k hands maybe ask around for a cheap coach that doesn't charge high hrly rate to fix up some of your leaks. You do that I think you will be fine. Its not hard to make money at poker its following the proper process and being patient. I didn't do that and it cost me way more money then it should of because I was impatient.

Your brackets in the second part are in the wrong spot
0.40 * 0.50 * (200.5bb-97.5bb) should be
0.40 * (0.50 * 200.5bb - 97.5bb)

That said I did make a mistake in the calculation in that part, see fritzlm's comment above.