It's definitely plausible to call AK over say 99 here, but it's so rare that we see a shove from a reg, I would tend to give credit (with an evaluation afterwards of what type of hand he chooses). The trouble with the play is that it is so rare on this board, that it'd likely be just one player in pool choosing the play so it would be highly read dependent. I believe also I had the Ad, which would turn this combo into a fold removing 2-3 combos of semibluffs against a pseudo-balanced strategy.

So the idea on Axx EP vs BB is that Ax is really worth one 80% potsize bet in these positions, so we can stretch it over two streets by betting small and get a couple of more bluffs than bet small then check-back. It's a pretty common theme in pio to spread one-street hands over two streets with a series of small bets.

On not bluffing low pairs, So there's two ideas to keep in my here: The first is to have a profitable bluff we need to fold greater than MDF% of hands stronger than our hand. This requires a substantial overfold, because a healthy portion of checkback range loses to 4th pair (flopzilla gives me 38% of range loses to T4s). So to be profitable, we'd need a fold frequency of 4.44 in 7.14 or 38% of better hands. This would mean altogether to make this bet profitable (assuming I never bluff in position) we'd need a fold frequency of 76% (which I believe is unlikely given the smallish size and how wide ranges are).

The second part of the equation is that when he checks, I'm going to be able to bet about 8% of my air here as a bluff along with 24% of the better hands for value. So it's actually slightly better to bet, because we don't always showdown against the 34% and win. Subtracting the air that would bluff, we get a 30% value for the checkdown and win.

If we put my ability to bluff into the original equation, we'd need a minimum 68% fold frequency to consider betting this hand. On a generic board, in position player here has folded 47% of the time to 5/8 pot size bet over the last 100K hands. So it'd seem to be a large mistake costing approximately -$17.

We could of course play players who bluff more aggressively on the turn (strengthening river range) and fold more to bets than the average players and this could be a good play. But I don't know how "on god's green earth" he could know that 50 hands into our match.

On TT and turn sizing, in some sense the value ranges are pretty fixed for betsizings betting say 66 at 40% here, is turning it into a bluff. This doesn't change the value region, it just increases the bluffing regions, and given how indifferent TT is between shove/call/fold. This would switch TT into the call/raise action from the fold action. If the pool moves nittier, then yes, the fold will be bad. But the one thing I know about high-stakes players is that they aren't generally afraid to call or raise, so I'm not terribly worried about making a marginal fold UTG vs SB in a 6-max game. The ranges are some of the tightest in the game with a 6% 3-bet from SB and UTG as a solver solution is supposed to be mix-folding 99 and QJs to 3-bet.

The other thing about betting 66 at 40% here is that the same idea, I spelled out in the T4s hand applies, we need a really a nice overfold here to make this worthwhile, because I am correct to fold AK, AQ against 66, which means the target hand for the bluff is precisely TT or low frequency suited connector or Jx (which just isn't going to happen). The math is a bit more complicated due to the protection implications of the bet with 66, so I'm going to skip it.

If he bets smaller here on the turn with 66, then he is actually value-bet/protecting 66, because I'll be forced to call some AQ,AK theoretically to the small bet to prevent draws to defecting to small only.

I just wanted to say I appreciate all the questions being asked and the lengthy detailed response. Some times I feel like I'm on an island asking these types of questions :-P

RunItTw1ce I appreciate your detailed questions as well. I do read them and the responses.

Sometimes I feel my questions are simplistic and the idea I am asking about too basic for someone who has been studying here and playing for as long as I have. Sometimes for me the basics provide the most troubles as I think too much or look for more advanced or "fancy" strats when it's really the basics that matter. I also just really suck at poker ;)

SoundSpeed truer words never spoken. I feel EXACTLY THE SAME!

Though flush draws benefit from the small bet strategy, there isn't many draws here that actually have more than 13% equity against Ax. If the board was lower and more hands had 13%+ equity against top pair (overcards), you'll see sizings go up and PIO prefer to front load.

On the TT hand, it's more that if he bets too big with too wide of a value region, he gives too much money to my slowplays, so he has to cap the size of the value range and the size of his bet. Otherwise, an always check value strategy absolutely crushes him.
It's the same situation as jamming 33 for 100bbs. It's likely the best hand, right now, but the times it loses, it loses too much.

TT is always going to be a tricky decision here. It's a bluff-catcher, when he bets this big whether I bet 1/3rd pot on the flop or full pot. The thing about bigger is it's actually a worse bluff-catcher in practice (because less floats), so in some sense, big moves the hand into easier decision than small.

On the TT hand, If he knew I was 4-bet calling 100% of TT, then jamming JJ or QQ instantly is a smart play. The problem with this line of thinking is that the pool isn't 4-bet calling TT very often and I'm not 4-betting TT at 100% frequency. I went over this spot in detail in my last video and my call EV even with 100% frequency JJ-KK, AKo jam is -3.5bbs.

I'm a little skeptical here of small bet here against a typical strategy. GTO wizard assumes a lot of balance in the check back range and a healthy number of bluff raises. When these two things happen sizings fall, but I find it unlikely that the typical player is going to get the same level of balance as GTO wizard (even at 10/20), because the counter-play that GTO wizard expects lots of bluff 3-bets against raises and MDF defenses against bets (including esoteric lines like call turn raise and c-r bluff river), just aren't that common in pool. With KT, I think that moves my strategy into something more traditional like bet twice for normal sizing here.

No 11 hands isn't a sample that has converged in any reasonable way. The 67/50 and 11/0 are the same player at 20 hands until we see a showdown like Q4o in MP. Then I put much more weight on the 67/50 being accurate. I've played both 50/40 and 12/4 over 50 hands this year on ignition tables, so it's just not valuable.

Props if you can calculate a 5-bet jam range that makes TT precisely indifferent at 93.8 bbs and 21.8bb 4-bet in 8 seconds. The thing is that even if he copied a solver strategy exactly, I'd still be profitable, because my stack size is smaller than the solver 5-bet assumption. I think solver level analysis here with TT breaks down, because the values are so precisely tied to stack-sizes and what hands get 5-bet bluffed and at what frequencies. JJ might be slightly lower EV against the solver jam because of a 4% region of jamming A5s, where TT has slightly more equity against A5s, because of the 9876 boards.

Thanks Tyler. I didn't factor in stack size or smaller 4bet size. What I have been doing is when I face a 3bet IP with AK I'll 4bet jam it about 25% of the time, then 26-75 I'll use a regular 4 bet size and 76-100 I'll flat the 3bet. Then vs shorter stacks I mostly just jam.

OOP will be higher frequency jam for me at least in my recent play from Ep/MP from one of my earlier comments it's like 0-50 I will jam over the 3bet. 51-75 I'll use a normal 4bet and 76-100 I'll flat the 3bet.

In your game I think you are correct, I don't think enough QQ-AA are only taking 8 seconds to figure out if they are going 5bet jam or flat the 4bet.

A couple of things here. One ranges in this spot are stupid tight in solver land. He should be mix folding pocket pairs preflop and flop which is the majority of the region I crush, The second thing is that protection defaults small here like 25 percent or so. Solver doesn’t like 40 percent because it can safely fold TT here about 15 percent of the time before it becomes exploitable. Basically it looks weird because it’s a pure defend to 1/4 but to 40 it starts to mix.

Obviously not mixing SB vs button etc. just SB vs EP.