I don't really see this as being a great lead spot. The first reason is that this flop interacts pretty well with IP's open range. Like even a hand like AK or AQ might not fold this flop to a lead, and think of all the gutter + overcard combos he has that will 100% float. Not to mention all of his TP and overpairs. And our equity just is very minimal. I'm very fine check folding the flop with this. When flop checks and we get a favorable turn card, only then am inclined to start betting and trying to win this pot.

Hey Oli, good question man. Had to think about this a bit. I think what I've decided is that if I take this x/r line, and villain peels the x/r, and then I check (let's say a blank) turn, and I face a 1/5th pot sized turn bet, then I would call that. I mean, I would be very unhappy in that situation. The thing is, we can be pretty confident that villain will get to the turn this way with just tons of value combos that have me crushed. All (most) of his Ax, and better and even the PP stuff (thought that might check flop or turn).

But getting such good odds, I have to imagine that villain will take some of his TJ combos - just pure air combos and float my flop x/r. Then those would end up betting OTT. I'm thinking villain will sneak enough of those floats into his range that'll we'll have a +EV turn call. I actually have pretty low confidence in my assumptions and overall line of thinking -----> conclusion here, but this is the way I currently see this situation. Also, we have a tiny bit of equity to improve, so that gives us a small cushion / bonus in this situation, on the calling side of the argument.

And ya, I'd expect that a lot of his random floats will just shut down OTR. It's really interesting though - because on the one hand, we've taken a bizzare line, and now we have to have something because we check called the turn, yet there's really no way our hand still isn't at a massive disadvantage vs his range overall. So if villain chalks our line up to "bizzare, possibly strong line" or even just "bizzare line with a weak or medium strength hand, but won't believe my bluff" then he'll shut down a lot. But he could also take the other approach where he's like "man, I have no clue what this goofball is doing, but there's no way his range (or even his current hand) can stand the heat of my awesome range in this spot, I'm bluffing allin here on the river all day". Gotta know your players in these spots! Or at least the average player's tendency in this spot, and chalk villain up to that, since at this early stage of playing with him for the first time, that's all we can really assume about his game.

Cool question, and it makes me realize I shouldn't be so quick to unilaterally criticize this 3b size. I think the reason why I did jump to such quick criticism is because it isn't the normal size here. And that's an awful reason to criticize something on it's own, however I think the reason why this isn't a normal size is because he's risking more than he needs to risk on his 3b. I think that the ~2.5x ish 3b size that is commonly used at this stack depths has been established as such because it's the most effective size. Now that statement may moreso be true just as a product of the way games play, and not in optimum. But that's where it stands.

So yeah, my feeling is that he's just risking too much. You make a fantastic point about him making a leveraging 3b size here, and to be honest, it's great food for thought for me. At the moment, my first reaction is to think that if he made this full 3x 3b, in an attempt to leverage our stack, that we could develop a pretty solid counter strategy. I'm not saying that this strategy would be able to massively (or at all) exploit his sizing here, but we can pretty accurately note how our incentive to call goes down (worse pot odds) and our incentive to shove goes up (more in the middle) and appropriately assign our hands to shove or fold (not really call ever?). I guess I have yet to clearly dismiss his size as a worse option than a more common 2.5x, but I think him risking more is a good place to start.

As I write this post I realize I'm not addressing the fact that his 3b size takes away our strategic options of 4b/folding, and flatting his 3b. That is a very valid argument, and quite frankly I can't think of any single concept or aspect of this situation that I can point to say "yeah but, you're forgetting about XYZ". I guess my only defense of the 2.5x size would be to say that you risk less to accomplish a similar objective, and that a 2.5x 3b also carries with it significant (perhaps underrated) leveraging properties.

Really this question has found the limits of my knowledge on this subject, and I have no way to entirely answer your question, ha. I hope this helps to some extent, and if I can clarify it in any way, or you can find a way to prompt some more information out of me, I'm all for continuing trying to understand this spot better with you.

i think it really depends on the opponents opening range. as ranges are typically formed, later position tends to have more speculative hands that benefit from playing a flop (t8s 87s k9s KTo QJo T7s) and UTG has more hands that are just strong in raw strength because they have to get thru so many players. So by nature, UTG prefers to GII pre as he has AK/ TT+ a much higher percentage of the time, which are hands that want to get it in.
obviously, a much tighter range 3bets a UTG opener as a result, but overall a UTG range just plays much better versus a large 3b as they have a way higher percentage of hands that are pretty clear jams and benefit from just getting it in rather then playing a flop (AK and JJ+). like QQ doesn't want you to flat, they want you to 3b so they can jam. so for this reason, making this leveraging play where u force ur opponent to jam or fold works better versus a late position opener, especially if the 3bettor is in the SB and therefore OOP. you force your opponent to either jam weak hands that prefer flatting or overfold. and if u make it this size with 35bb, they can't like turn KQo into a 4b/fold either so it works really well if you dont overdo it. now they have to fold KQo in LP (wwwww) or jam (scaryyyyy cuz ur snapped by AQ AK JJ+ and do terrible).
As for this hand, as i said i dont love making the big 3b cuz utg doesn't have that many hands that love flatting. and what you said, yea i agree it makes his strategy much easier, and thats why I'm not sure. i think making it a size where its not great to shove cuz not enuf out there, and a size where flatting or 4b/folding isn't great either is probably best. like 2.78x might do that (just random approximation by me). Since we are IP, i dont mind having him flat a ton but i just think dont know what hands to use as bluffs. like i dont wanna do it with KQs cuz i puke when i get shoved on (i cudda flatted). if he flats a decent amount tho, i want to have strong playable hands. or do u not have a flatting range here? i cud maybe use the top of folding range like KTs/KQo might be too weak to call and then balance that with AK/QQ+.. i just think our GII range is very tight v UTG such that we need pretty tight bluffing range. i see good players making the smaller 3bets so definitely for that reason i want to, but i like to try to find optimal ranges

Dude great post. The differences you laid out in sizing 3b in LP v LP and LP v EP make tons of sense. And it's a pretty cool concept that I've really never put together succinctly like this in my own head, so thanks for doing that.

I think the 2.78x 3b size for this spot sounds badass lol. It's a sweet hedge, trying to capture the benefits of both a small(er) and a big(ger) size. And I think it' actually pretty effective in doing that.

I mean LP's flatting range vs EP is going to vary a ton based on EP's RFI. Like vs me here, I think he should have a relatively substantial flatting range. I've shown that I'm out of line with my opens, so he can take hands like KQss and print money by flatting. Even hands a fair bit worse than that might do okay flatting vs my opening range here. Now in general villain from this hand will be facing a tighter, more responsible opening range, so he'll have to tighten both his flatting and his 3b range of course.

I can't think of a circumstance where I wouldn't have a flatting range at this stack depth really, if I were villain in this hand. I suppose if all of the blinds have reshove stacks and I was worried they'd squeeze tons. So yeah, I think your general rules of thumb in this spot should be 1. Have a flatting and a 3b range 2. Use the tier of hands that just missed the cut for being included in your flatting range as your 3b bluffs; add/subtract combos based on villain's open range, tendencies, skill, and gameflow / overall MTT considerations 3. 2.78x 3b is badass. Haha.

I actually think I'll experiment with that 3b size a bit. However as a general view, I don't mind making smaller (within reason) 3bs, and having it go to the flop a bit more often.

Great post.

I think your points are all entirely valid and the simple fact is that you're correct in a lot of ways, especially in that we should have at least made mention of how his range and sizing should changed as his position at the table changes. I think a good bit of compromise is in order, from the smaller raise size camp, and the 3x camp here. I think that a bigger raise size (than min or near min) here from EP is fundamentally correct, as it reflects the fact that his range should and will be tighter to open from this position, as you said. I think that idea is correct in theory, and I see no reason why it couldn't be applied at this table, and certainly no reason that would deem the implementation of such an ideas a patently bad move at this current table.

But I think it's a question of magnitude. A full 3x here from EP starts to have real consequences, that I feel are adverse ones. First, we're risking more than is necessary to make the "steal". This is just a function our effective stack depth. At shallowish stack depths, a 3x raise just seems to be needlessly big. Your point about who is in the BB and how the BB will play is a good one. I just think that perhaps a 3x raise might start to narrow his range too much? Taking out hands we wouldn't mind him jumping in there with , say if we laid him a relatively steep price (compared to a MR) by making it 2.5x from EP here. This is pure estimation on my part, and I don't have any math to back up my idea that a 3x raise might narrow his range too much. Also consider that at this stage of a MTT, a 3x raise will stand out. I'm not even sure what I mean by that; or how the average villain will interpret that. But it will be a noticeable bet that stands out, and that will cause villain's to adjust in some way. This is just a very basic and very general point I felt compelled to point out, ha.

Cliffs. I think we were quick to jump on this raise size with criticism because we (certainly I) felt it was risking too much and discouraging the BB from calling a lot of his bottom-of-defend-range hands, in a situation where we'll have a tight range and a big range advantage, and don't mind him in there (to an extent, of course).

Hope this helps! I realize a lot of this is inexact to say the least, I'd be happy to clarify and or all of it, and/or discuss and follow up questions you may have.

reason why i raised in this case instead of floating was I figured it has the same effect, will be cheaper this way plus wont give you a chance to barrell turn.

Man, this is great. Thank you so much for responding. This is a really good post in general, and just great here in the context of the overall discussion, because now we have both players perspective, and a smart 3rd party perspective (Jason) , plus whoever else ends up commenting here. I wish I'd read/responded to this when you first wrote it, but better late than never.

And man, the more I think about this spot, the more unsure I am how I feel. I like it less and less by the minute, actually. I think on the surface it looks like I made a sick level or something, but I just think there is quite a bit more luck than meets the eye here. And because of that, I think I am going to be much better off in general just taking the fundamental approach of check calling flop.

You are right in that I did not know you well in this moment. I recognized your SN just from seeing it around, but I had no specific reads in my memory, or any notes to go off of, and very little data in my HUD. So, I had to operate in this spot as if you were the average (regular) player. I think the key difference here is in how we each thought I would perceive you (or an average regular player, in this situation, from my perspective). You thought that I "wouldn't give me (Linc) credit for understanding your range (here)". But the way I actually saw it was that in this day in age, the average regular player is pretty damn capable of recognizing that sort of thing, and even making some plays in intense situations (like this one) off of that hand/range reading. In short, I figured you'd be capable of recognizing that I have so few x/r combos for value here, and make a play on me because of it.

But now that I read your post and think about this spot again, I'm just thinking that there is so much luck involved in me making that assumption. I mean, I think I am correct in thinking that most regular players are capable of taking the line (of thinking and of action) that you took, and in this case, I was clearly correct. However, following that logic, the IP player could just click-raise his A8 vs my checkraise and print money vs my Q6 or A2 or whatever hand I have that is trying to take this line. No matter what tricky line I take, I cannot escape the fact that I am at a massive range disadvantage here. Now I think my saving grace in this spot is that just in practice, IP players seem to play their ranges in a near ideal manner for my play here to work. That is, they will often click their air and peel their strong hands, so I can be pretty confident in what my opponent's range looks like based on the action that he takes. Of course this certainly isn't a sure thing. Also, the easy counter for this play for IP is to just call my x/r with all of his hands (or at least all of his strong hands and some floats) and bet 1/7th pot OTT when I have to check my garbage range to IP, after my flop x/r gets peeled.

Just a few final thoughts about this situation that I haven't been able to fit into the post yet:

-Your assumptions about my PF range (and how it then relates to my postflop ranges) is spot-on.

-I had no intentions of taking JTo or something and making this play (so that makes your point in your 2nd post very good; that for you a click raise is better than a float, because you instantly shut me down with a click raise. Although I probably shut down vs a float too, however in that scenario I get to see a turn, and have the chance to improve my hand strength). That kind of shows how much confidence I have in the read / exploit; not a huge amount, because I felt I needed this equity of my 5 outs to make this play. I had no intentions of barreling turn when my flop x/r gets peeled. I think all of your strong hands play this way, and you will have a tough time having enough floats for me to profitably bet or shove turn.

-I would like my play a bit better here if you had 18BB to start rather than ~23BB , because it's less to risk on making this play. And also, if I were to just check jam this Q6 here, the EV of the play would look a lot better for me when you have 18BB then when you have 23BB.

-Interestingly, I believe I would have just called your cbet with Ax (because this is how I seem to always play these spots). I think I felt like making this play with 6x here partly out of protection, since most of your bluffs have 6 clean outs to improve to a hand that is able to win vs my 6 at showdown. That's a significant amount of equity, and a large amount of hand combinations within your overall range.

And hey man, thank you again for making this post. It's just a super cool thing for you to do, and I appreciate that we get to have this conversation now. Hopefully my post helps you out, I know yours helped me.

Cheers,
Nick

PS, nice bio lol

yup better late than never, nice response!
I def like your point about partly making the checkraise for protection against my random 6 overs which of course i have a ton of the time. I think some regs tend to overlook the value of protection/denial of equity in tournaments alot and always like to take the highest cev line even when the difference is close (not saying checkcalling is higher cev even here thats up for debate too), which over the long run increases their variance and i think as tournament players we should, when we make decisions, not only evaluate our cev but also the amount of chips we have to risk and the frequencies at which we do to realize that equity.
I think from a tournament play perspective, the protection value here def does play a role. Because when you checkcall and lets say i just take my free card on turn alot, i will get there with overs 23% of the time, which you steal away from me (or even better like in this case make me bluff a whole lot more) by checkraising.
The lower likelihood of players in my shoes to keep barrelling on this board with complete air, and the lower the frequency of air barrels, the better the checkraise line becomes i think.
Now i guess it is still up for discussion which line is better in the long run, as so often in poker though having to calculate for multiple streets on multiple runouts over large sample size is basically not possible to accurately do and we would have to go with some generelizations and some intuition based on experience. Now add to that other factors of mtts like the protection value we discussed and ICM etc.
But i did like your play, esp against myself and my thinking process at the time, when i saw what you actually had in that spot.

Great post. I think your thoughts here are really sharp. So much so, that you might even induce a rare short post from me! Haha.

No but I very much agree with you that the idea of protection/denial of equity in tournaments is both a key aspect of gameplay, and an overlooked/underrated one. I would go so far as to describe it as a tenet of my game. Also agree that increasing protection is worth an EV sacrifice, to a degree, and in certain contexts.

Because ya - we cannot let people win pots ITM the WarmUp with their give ups 23% of the time! If we can help it, obviously there are situations like this one where we're at a severe range disadvantage and none of our options are particularly appealing.

I also agree that a lower barreling frequency by IP increases the merit of the x/r line, but also am of course not certain either how the exact EV shakes out. I don't think it's necessary for us to know exactly (would be nice of course) , and our discussion here has me feeling pretty good about my general approach to these spots going forward, and especially about the factors I will consider. IP's barrel freq and IP's response with his air region to a x/r , namely.

Thanks for another thoughtful response, I've enjoyed the discussion.

Wow man, fantastic stuff on both of your posts here. I am really sorry I haven't responded until now. Of course there just is no reasonable reason for such a gap in response time. But man these posts are awesome. I super appreciate you taking the time, especially on the post below. It's just incredibly useful information.

BCRUNGOOD asked a very similar question in a post a couple posts above this one, so much of the rambling takes place there. The short of it is that I am unable to supply a satisfactory rebuttal to your points and overall contention that a bigger raise size might be better for Maxx from EP here. I'm no theory expert in these situations, and in fact could be found quite guilty of mimicking the population in terms of raise sizing here (and in a lot of spots). However I think that anything beyond a 2.5x open here ceases to yield a favorable ratio of benefit to risk.

For all of BBs implied odds that get reduced when we make it bigger PF, so too do his reverse implied get reduced when he folds hands that do very poorly vs our tight range. This consideration strikes me as a double edged sword with pretty equally sharp blades.

Yes our range is tight and will have the "medicine" for 3b shoves , in the form of clicking call often, but if we make it bigger the hands that are just slightly -EV for him to shove at X stack depth now become +EV (vs the same open range) because we're added more money to the pot to be won, and we haven't disincentivized him to shove any further (by us calling him more).

I hope these thoughts are at least coherent, even if I'm not providing precise science. I'm happy to clarity any of the points I've brought up if need be.

I mean this is just an incredible post. Thank you, Zach. I'm getting so much out of this. It's striking too, because in almost every poker post or conversation, there is room for debate and dicussion on what's the best course of action. Here, you just brought undeniable information to the table - #CaseClosed! The 300k bet size is better. This is just so powerful.

I have a rather odd and blunt question - how did you notice this? Like how did it occur to you that the smaller bet size would be better? I never would have thought of that in a million years. Now the statement "the main problem with going large here is that the mode of our range is thin value combinatorically". Awesome. Or did you just run the math on each bet size, and then discover after the fact the drastic difference in what each bet size allows us to bet? I'm very curious about this, because there wasn't even a glimmer of recognition for me of this, and I'd like to develop a way to recognize this type of spot in the future.

i get what you mean Zach. great post. but where did you get that a9 is the thinner vbet we can have ? i know that he's gunna be calling tighter but like he seems so totally capped that i dont think he has better then even 8x here often at all, and i think we can vbet all 9x for a jam (escp when we block 9x by having it ourselves). its not like we are bluffing with such an awful price that he can fold comfortably all Ahi, 33-66 7x 8x, which is what a9 being our minimum vbet would imply. what hands does he ever have that even beat a9? one combo of 99? and what else? id think he'd call all 9x he has, which id assume he wud have t9s j9s q9s k9s and play like this a decent amt and i doubt he'd fold those along with all his worse pairs. like what can he have? 2x is rare as hell and 77 is only 3 combos and it may bet flop for protection.
the other issue i have with ur range assessment above is i doubt we are betting turn with all our 2x and hands like T7 T8 for this sizing. u also have us betting like k7 and 87 and 55 for this size, idk that doesn't seem right me.
thoughts?

5betbluff,

I think things like are we betting 2x to this size OTT is such a small detail that it doesn't really matter in the overall equation here. It would take more time than it's worth (debatable) to examine exactly how each combo would play, and what size it would use, etc. Plus, the main take-away we should have from Zach's post is the concept of how hero and villain's ranges change for the different bet sizing options hero has here OTR. So don't get lost in the specifics of this hand, but just take a step back and think about how the ranges are working here in general. It's pretty neat stuff.

I think Zach determined that A9 is our thinnest value bet here from a pure balanced range standpoint. As hero bets bigger here, villain has to call less hands, simply because his pot odds are worse. So when we look at exact ranges and combos, villain is now folding hands worse than A9 because of this.

I see where you're coming from - From a basic hand reading standpoint, it seems like we can value bet thinner, but I think Zach is demonstrating that if both players were trying to play this spot with perfectly balanced ranges, that A9 is what ends up being the cut off point for what hero can value bet. It's just the way the combos and pot odds math works out.

I'm confident my explanation is correct, but not certain. Let me know if this makes sense, or if I'm overlooking something major ha.

well we have not spoken at all about villains range and what he needs to call in order to defend properly. what hands does he have better then A9 here? theres no way he has enuf TT+ slow plays or 2x to call instead such that he can fold all hands worse then a9. that is absurd to me haha. i understand he needs to call tighter but if he folds a9 and worse, he is not calling nearly as often as he needs to (he wud need to call like 40% or something)

It's my video and my responsibility to comment. I'm thankful Jason took the time to jump on the call and look over my hands. Now, you're 100% right that I'm flat out dropping the ball in responding to comments. It's bad. I tell myself that it's okay to be late because the comment-leaver will still get the response from me (eventually) and it will be useful for them at that time. But that's a pretty awful way to look at it because 1. It's my job to respond on time and 2. It kills the chances of having a great, multiway conversation as you suggest. So I apologize for my tardiness, even though there is no good reason for it.

its alright nick. i was probably on a downswing when i made this comment lol