Hey, I don't really have time to answer questions in detail at the moment, will get back to it, but there's no way this sizing can simply be labelled 'a disaster' - this is such a complicated spot with how the 3 ranges should play that I would suggest trying to look at it in different ways and perhaps offer a new opinion after more consideration. Currently I'm not sure what sizing I like the most and would have to think a lot harder.

I think the concept of setting up less than pot shoves is overrated and not something to be focusing on here, it would seem to require an unusually large bet to achieve that anyway. There seems to be room to manoeuvre over three streets here and just looking at this as a simple two street game seems to be an oversimplification.

To expand on what my thoughts were here a little more while I can.. The reason I think this is complicated is that when I make a small bet the first caller is in a very difficult spot. The smaller I bet the more incentivised he is to raise with his hands that need protection but that reopens the betting for me. If he calls I can consider his range somewhat weakened and now I can bluff additional hands that could not have gone bet-jam flop/turn (the AdK and KJ type hands actually that you mentioned). We have a lot of hands in our range that benefit from seeing a turn cheaply. I felt like your comment was being too hand oriented versus considering our overall range which is what I'm trying to do in tournaments like this against tough opponents. Cheers

I genuinely don't think I'm been hand orientated at all. Maybe you c-bet this flop wider than I do. When you get the chance I'd be interested in a rough range of what your cb-ing range? I would cb pretty tight in this spot, and for that reason I feel it's ok for my standard size to be a lot larger in this spot.

What hands do you feel benefit from the smaller size to see a turn cheaply? I feel there is very few.

Finally I think it's optimistic that many people will raise a lot of hands for protection here with a live range behind. I feel that most hands that raise here will be FDs + maybe additional straight draws. Maybe this assumption is terrible and I need to rethink how to play these dynamic boards.

Well a very large part of my range here will be AK, AJ with a diamond, KJs type hands that would really like to take the fold equity they have against hands like 88-99 and get to realise more equity by seeing a turn cheaply. Also marginal strength made hands like KQ, QJs, JJ etc do not want to get stacks in on the turn but would like to get value, protect, narrow opponent's ranges etc. I think if you're checking all these sorts of hands you won't be realising your fair share of equity in the pot, you risk the BB seeing free turns and usually let the first caller see the river for whatever price they want.

In one of Phil's PLO series he shows examples of using a 25% pot c-bet strategy which is not something you often see especially in a game where equities run closer.. but it's fascinating and can work particularly well in multi way spots because it's hard for opponents to figure out how to play their range and still denies equity and profitable bluffing opportunities from your opponents.. I'd suggest checking it out even if you're not a PLO player.

Again I'm not sure what the optimal strategy would be here but I'm confident a variety of strategies could be effective against different types and it's too easy to have a closed mind in this game when so much of the information that's available is monotonous/repetitive.

Thanks for taking the time to wb. Best of luck with the rest of Vegas. Often have watched Phils omaha vds in the past. Will try to find it.

Very interessing thoughts...

Hey thanks, no not just set mining at all, I don't think J43hh can be categorised as 'one of the better flops' - it's much better for EP's range than mine. Sure most flops give him a range advantage since he has more premium hands but this is one in particular gives most of my range nothing.. in terms of raw equity vs his range it might be like a 6.5/10 flop but it's too unplayable if that makes sense.. I think you'd say our equity is too non-robust. Q97s for example might make our raw equity vs range similar but we are more protected with strong hands. And yeah the strong bet size from him forced a quick fold but even half pot would have been difficult to counter.

To expand on that - basically I can flat a number of hands here from suited connectors to broadways to Axs to slow-played big pairs and having such a range protects me (allows me to show down 88 unimproved more often) on some boards and doesn't on others.

James chip leader with 7 left. gogogoggogo! RIO run good!

I disagree on bluffing the river here with AcKx; that hand has good equity to call.
If you're not double floating AcQx on the turn you probably need to take some QcQ/8c8-type hands to turn into a bluff on the river, those hands have much lower equity to call since they don't block, beat or chop Kx valuebets.

interesting question and it's hard to say exactly what my flat and 3bet ranges are in this spot.. in reality i'd be playing a mixed strategy (call it 'feel') with some hands - i'm not sure if that would be right or wrong in theory if we assume everyone is playing well/correctly. Would almost certainly flat 88-TT, I think 88 and 99 fairly often (sizing) can drop out on the flop (my range might be strong enough to include 77 pre as a flat too). If my flatting range is something like 88-TT, AA, AQ 100%, 77 JJ QQ KK 50%, AK, AJ 25% then I'm counting 60 combos so the 77-99 will make up a decent bit and maybe TT won't be a call if the opponent is at a good equilibrium - although it would appear that I'm fairly vulnerable here so I can't be too fold happy against a GTO opponent.. TT is probably a turn drop out, JJ river drop out and QQ may have to call down 3 some percentage (probably not on club rivers though). Please let me know your thoughts if you prefer different ranges/strategy or how you approach these spots in general!

GT - interesting.. showing up with 8c8 is a stretch but I will have QcQ sometimes, do you think you can overcome the card removal issues when so many players are opening AXs from any position? It feels like a stretch to be doing better than chopping against value bets with AK if UTG gives me any credit once the clubs come in. If that's the case it would have to be a better bluff right? But if your opponent is going to 3barrel KQ,KJs etc it might become really close. Lmk if you still disagree. (That's not considering the ICM disaster implications of doing this in an MTT btw)

I realised I just discounted most of my AK combos in the previous comment too.. as I said in the video it's going to be really hard to find bluffs :). Maybe at some stage I'll crev QcQ's expectation.

It feels like a stretch to be doing better than chopping against value bets with AK if UTG gives me any credit once the clubs come in. If that's the case it would have to be a better bluff right? But if your opponent is going to 3barrel KQ,KJs etc it might become really close. Lmk if you still disagree.

If you are not sure that he never valuebets KQ, calling with AK must be very profitable. He should also bluff here, aiming to make you indifferent between calling and folding with KJ type hands.

If he is going to have a ton of Ac*c, then he should also be bluffing with hands like AcQ, AcJ, AQc. Your hands like KQc and QcQ would block too many of his value combos if he didn't. So that negates the card removal effects from these blockers. By nature your AcK combos have a highly +EV call, so if that is your only bluffing combo he can get away with a super high folding frequency. Therefore I believe that you should take a hand like QcQ that has low/negative EV for calling and the next best blockers to bluff here.

Note that if you believe that he has nutflushes here a ton, your raise size is likely too large.

But when we have QcQ we block the AcQ, AxQc type hands you're hoping to be facing and instead the merit of choosing this hand vs AcK seems to be purely folding UTG off an AK chop (or a bad vbet with weaker Kx) when in actuality if he has the AcK himself it will be a fist pump bet/call too (disaster), we aren't getting anyone to fold sets/lower flushes, and punting against the many AXcc combos. I'm finding it a pretty tough sell atm. My impression is he definitely should be able to get away with a super high folding frequency because my jamming frequency should be awfully infrequent!

With that said I should amend my reply to Jens because JJ is looking like a better river call than QQ but might need to put chips in with both at some frequency (on non-club rivers especially).

Should also remind myself and others that I'm repping a grand total of two combos of value on the river so bluffing with whatever hand we choose to be the best candidate every time if we always get here with it would be a huge mistake too :).. for sure AcK is a nice natural call as a standard, although it might work out about right if I'm 3betting it more often than not.

Hi, yes it's a spot I would be looking to flat with AA but it is hard to justify with the other big pairs when there's so much equity to be had by getting KK,QQ in pre against AK/AQ. That said against the right opponent KK could definitely be a good flat, not QQ imo. AT might be in my flatting range, so might AJo against a particularly tight opener, I'd probably 3b/call AJs.. depends on the player as always. Cheers

if you're talking about flatting utg+1 vs utg the downside is simply that you risk not getting money in against some hands in utg's opening range, give others correct odds to take a flop and reduce your equity, and weaken your 3betting range. if you mean a different spot let me know. tailor your plan in such situations around the games you're in/opponents you're against. Balance is less important at lower stakes where you're not building history with players and they wouldn't know what to do with that history if you were.