Thank you, appreciate it.

I didn't do much of pio for the hands since I was mostly just looking to showcase the methodology, and I was worried about making it too heavy. I go a little deeper into it in the next video, where I am able to build on the theory from this one.

As for the hand, my bet size choice would mostly depend on how much I perceive the bb to be leading and xr turn and river. I was expecting hands which can beat a straight to be pretty limited when he just xc turn; which made me lean towards the overbet. When I unblock all the strong calling hands so well I usually can't help myself and just go big. That being said I did run this through pio just now which spit out this

Pio greatly favored like a 66-75% bet size ott and also a small range bet sizing otf (Something I would have gotten wrong in game for sure, my thoughts were that on a more dynamic board I want to throw some bigger bets in otf) so it doesn't get to the river with many of the 98 combos but a pretty equal split between bet sizes on the river.

Oh i agree that river is an overbet, i should have been more clear, i just had a feeling that your overbet was far too small on the river and that pio would probably not ever use this size over another if it had options like 1.5x 2x or shove. Thanks for the reply!

Hi theotherguy

Thanks for the kind words. That is a good question, I think you just need to keep working on it off the table and it will keep getting easier. One thing you can try doing is grouping your hands together into different subsections such as "strong vbets" "weak vbets" "bluffs", that might make your life a little easier.

Cheers.

Hey,

Appreciate the kind words, thank you.

In this specific spot I don't think there is much our opponent can do to exploit this smaller sizing(Even if we just leave it capped at KJ). The only hand he should really have that would be able to do so is KQ(everything stronger will just be going all-in regardless), and he would need a v.large sample before he has a strong enough read on us to exploit this. Nevertheless if a case does arise where our opponent starts raising our smaller bets super light as an exploit, we can now move our strong value bets from the large to the small bet size. Since our opponent is very aggressive vs our small bet these hands won't be losing any EV, and will probably be gaining some as they still stack all the good hands+now the bluffs. We can basically keep moving strong hands into the smaller betting range until the point where they are equal EV to a large bet size (the point where our opponent realizes he can no longer raise super light vs that range)

Cheers.

Hey,

Yeah basically we want to give our opponent incentive to call us with hands that lose to our value bets, and if we don't bet with enough weak stuff he will just fold everything. Assuming we constructed our turn range well this shouldn't really be a river where we need to bet everything we have, but we should be aware that nearly all hands we get here with will be a high frequency bet.

In an unlikely situation where we don't actually have enough bluffs for our value bets, we would bet at a 100% frequency and our opponent will fold every one of his bluffcatchers. This way our showdown value hands will pick up the whole pot(which in a theoretically correct poker is the most you can ever win), instead of the portion of if that they would if they check back. This doesn't seem like a great scenario, since our value bets never get called, but it's actually pretty awesome since our opponent won't call hands that don't at least break even anyway. So in reality we get to win the whole pot every time, instead of a portion of it.

Thank you ! :)

Hey Shekhar

That's a really good and perceptive question. What you should keep in mind is that when we design optimal ranges both players are omniscient, so they see each others strategies. The bettor designs his bluffing range based on what the best bluffcatchers are for his opponent, so if the opponent decides to bluffcatch with hands that seemingly don't block anything, the bettor will just shift his bluffs to block those hands anyway, and what ends up happening is the caller still blocks the bluffs, but now blocks no value. It would be an incredibly rare situation for the caller to be able come up with a strategy where he only blocks value bets and never blocks bluffs, because the bettor chooses his bluffs with the callers strategy in mind. Basically it would have to be a spot where the bettor has no potential bluffs that block the bluffcatchers.

These 2 strategies will converge at a point where the caller has no incentive to change his bluffcatchers because it will give the bettor an opportunity to increase his EV, and that point will be where he blocks the largest number of value bets(which should make sense).

Cheers

Hey,

By definition a "bluffcatcher" is a hand that is 0 EV against a balanced range, meaning it is indifferent between calling and folding(it's not making money either way), therefore if we just take away 1 of the bluffing combos the scale tips and all the bluffcatchers become -EV, the fold option is obviously still 0 EV, so we fold them all.

That being said this is a heavily theoretical explanation of the situation. In reality there are blockers in play and other variables such as your opponent adjusting to you grossly overfolding, so if one players bluffing region is just slightly short it's going to look more like what you're describing. Nevertheless though that only applies to a minor lack of bluffing combos. We will hit a point where all these other variables are just not worth taking the -EV call and we start folding everything again ;)

Cheers, and thanks for all the kind comments.