So there is some EV loss on small bet if your opponent plays really well against it, I don't generally put a ton of stock in this line of analysis, because the actual question is which sizing does our opponent play worse against? The EVs are very very close between different flop sizing strategies.

On the bluff-catching idea, it's interesting my main takeaway was that it was more important to understand his bluffing range than to try to defend GTO-esque ranges, because against an underbluff it doesn't matter we should just fold and against an overbluff we should just call. Every bluff-catch under the wrong assumptions is just costing us money.

The other interesting idea is if our opponent just doesn't care what he is bluffing then we are actually more concerned about equity against hand range, because he might decide to turn 99 into a bluff. An example of this would be in Slaski's last video when he turns QQ into a bluff on KT98x in a 4-bet pot. This strategy performs better against someone who calls pairs rather than calling just the top X percent.

the actual question is which sizing does our opponent play worse against?

This is a question I just started asking myself this week because of your review. Most of my sizing decisions have been based on simplifying the game tree for me to try and replicate. I am now reevaluating my entire approach to cbetting to center on sizes that make things more difficult on my opponent.

I really didn't get the sense that villain was that passive, he also check-raised KQo on T82 if I remember correctly so he's probably some sort of tag. I'm all for jamming against loose-passives, but if he's a tag, we will see rebluffs. I don't really see what 20bbs accomplishes compared to jam or 12bbs because it seems to get called by roughly the same range as a jam and a jam puts in 100bbs. At 12 bbs, we should pick up some rebluffs but rebluffing 20bbs would be much rarer, because we are repping a good flush or a bluff. The 12bbs would I think rep much more 3x.

And just generally, I'm not sure you want to prepare yourself to play loose-passive 1/2 players when you're designing range -- because ideally, you want to be able to move up and make more money playing poker.

The 32c hand was interesting with some flawed thinking on my part. I mixed the flop thinking the correct GTO strategy was to have some strong draws in my calling range. However, simplifying and putting pressure on my opponent might be the best strategy to capitalize when I hit my hand and increase my fold equity when I lack showdown. I made a pretty big mistake on the turn by not betting. I don’t think I lost a lot of EV but I need to be able to bet this hand for my overall range construction.

For the river decision, in game I felt that villain was very weak with this line. I went with the larger sizing to try and maximize from his Ax holdings but this line of reasoning is flawed on my part. I think the larger size allows at least half of the Ax combos to easily fold. I don’t think I get many bluff raises in this spot so I didn’t even consider that as a possibility. However, spazzy things happen and I just played a hand yesterday where I bet the river small and induced a shove from villain w/ A2 on a T88 A 6 board. So all that being said, I think I like a smaller 2.5-3x raise size to keep all Ax combos in and possibly induce some kind of spazz raise.

Maybe MDA shows a rarely fold, but the threshold for c-r straight flush draw is so much lower than any other hand that I'm willing to try -- my database shows an overcall, but it's only like 5% too often.

I didn’t raise turn because of stack size, lack of fold equity, and player type. I wouldn’t typically raise this spot vs. a weak passive Rec that is showing aggression, however, I am not sure if this is the right decision considering my particular hand combo. I don’t think we can go wrong by just sticking it in there w/ Str8 flush draws.

I just strongly disagree with the GTO wizard analysis here. Checking the nuts (the preferred line) is literally the worse strategy against a non-maniac. And if we remove the raise-reraise-4-bet nodes on the turn and river just completely disappears from the sim. It's based on the assumption that our opponent is going to rebluff 4-bet, 5-bet and 6-bet.

I am pretty clueless on monotone boards and only use a 20% sizing on flop. I have not studied any other bet sizing on monotone boards. They come up so in frequently that I have not dedicated much time there. I am clearly missing out on EV as Tyler pointed out. I plan to tweak my strategy here this weekend.

Tyler Forrester I would ignore the checking line as well on wizard with the nuts here or any flush rather. I was mostly just showing that A6o uses a preferred 2/3 sizing, so this is the sizing I would choose with A6c as well. There are also some OB going on at a low frequency, which I think performs well as a bluff but lose value with the nuts.

I am pretty clueless on monotone boards and only use a 20% sizing on flop

RoleTide I think most people are clueless on mono boards including myself. I think if you have a tight range from EP/MP and there is a flush possible where 1-2 broadway clubs are on the board you have to play very cautious. But when you have a wider range and can have flushes in your range as well you get to play a bit more normal. Or if its a low board like 8c 4c 2c now you still have all the broadway flushes in your RFI range. So you don't have to be as careful. Where the other player should be 3 betting a lot of suited broadways, so now you may actually have the flush advantage. I would just look to treat low mono boards and high mono boards differently rather than chunk them together as a 20% size.

So now we have RipTide, RoleTide, and Roll Tide LOL

Lol, I'm guessing the editors aren't American.

Thanks AJM for comment! I appreciate your input.

Thank you! I'm glad I could be helpful with the review on bluff-catching.

Hahaha, I try not to swear, but sometimes it's hard :). My parents were always sticklers about it.

Any king high flush here is worth stacks as our Q-high flushes (as least theoretically) so basically it just boils down to a count we have roughly 10 Q-high or better flushes here so we'd need to find which is roughly any Kc. (Sometimes we 3-bet some of them). The straight flush is definitely a big outlier and we wouldn't really worry about it until something like 570 times pot (18,000 dollar stacks or so) because the straight flush will happen in 1 in 570 times here or some given preflop calling ranges.

Thanks man! Glad you liked it!

Thanks emsterdad! Mostly, sometimes I get frustrated but poker is really just a math problem, so getting AAs cracked isn't something to get wound up about it.

Would you say your brain is wired like that or is that frame of thinking you have build around the years playing poker (seeing it as a math problem)?

emsterdad

So the way I view the job, is it's my job to a make series of rapid fire decisions that our substantially better than my opponents ( I pay something like $25000/100K in rake). I try to give myself feedback in game on the decisions and then it's absolutely mandatory to review the decisions once I have less time constraints to improve the decisions for the next day. And yes sometimes it's frustrating to blunder or to have 2-outer decide your profit for the week or month, but it doesn't really improve those decisions to get super angry or frustrated.

Randomly jamming because I'm mad or whatever doesn't cross my mind because it's clear from any level of analysis (pokerstove to HM2 to MDA to PIO) that those decisions cost me money.

I agree with emsterdad, maybe a mental game pointer opening section of a video or a full video on it could benefit a lot of people given your experience over the years.

Randomly jamming because I'm mad or whatever doesn't cross my mind because it's clear from any level of analysis (pokerstove to HM2 to MDA to PIO) that those decisions cost me money.

Tyler Forrester

I think from a mental game perspective a lot of frustrations are built up from losing and not knowing what they are doing wrong or they think they are doing something correctly and built up a bad habit over the years, but then when they face better players they start losing and just don't know what got them through the micro stakes was actually incorrect. Eliot talks about something similar to this in the A-game master class. I forgot the exact phrase but its something about knowing, not knowing, and not knowing what you know? I'll have to go and check this one out again.

Pretty far truthfully -- GTO is going to suggest calling/4-bet against a 10% range here, but our opponent is very likely to 3-bet closer to 5%, so without further information (like suited connectors being consistently 3-bet etc). I'm just going to play a calling range which is profitable against the top 6% of hands or so. This is pretty drastic strategy adjustment but is really pretty reliable against weaker players at smaller stakes.

Of course this makes bluffing super profitable, so he could react by 3-betting a bunch of weaker hands like GTO does when it slowplays some strong hands pre. However he's not likely to make this adjustment, because the typical player is hates being 3-bet with trash, so he'll make money against one specific 2.5 with this strategy and lose against everyone else.

Holdem Manager 3 for HUD and Jurjoin for the extra features.

The HUD stats are just hands/VPIP/PFR/3bet on top and RFI stats on bottom. I have since changed my bottom stats to be limping stats.

Textbook Raise -- low showdown high equity hand.

Pretty easy to bluff here given the line, so basically repping something bluffy.