Matt Ashton

If you could CR all-in it would be a much more appealing play but there are still a lot of tricky rivers with money left to play, CR gives 33 or 66 the best chance to get away from there hand and i don't think this is a spot where villain is likely enough to stab so potting it looks best.

I'm going to guess this is less to do with an absence of a limit background and more to do with O8 being a far more complicated game to look towards optimal solutions than any of the other limit games.

One general 'limit' concept here that i see(that doesn't just apply to limit) is keeping a wider less defined range on the bigger betting street(s) is advantageous, particularly in position.

I think the most important of the three factors you mentioned is board type..

Looking at it optimally...

On a HHH (H=High card 9-K) board, it is no longer a split pot game and so concepts closer to LHE can be applied, there is the incentive to wait for turns and protect the weaker parts of your range, but also the pot is going to showdown least often on these flops and they also have the narrowest continuing ranges, which are reasons for wanting raising ranges and the cheapest one you'll have is on the flop. I think the first factor is the greater one.

On a HHL (L = A-8) After this flop the turns that are most important are the high cards and board pairs as these are the ones where equities gain the larger disparities, on low card turns equities range on range have become closer and your wait till turn raise has gained less. On unpaired boards this means a straight has often come in or the board has paired, you have plenty of hands in your flatting range that have improved enough on these cards to raise, suggesting you should play the flop more aggressively more often with your stronger hands.

On a HLL flop, you are going to showdown very often and equities hand vs hand run closer on this board than any other. The cards that have higher equity fluctuations on the turn are high cards and low cards that complete a straight particularly one 6 high or less. You will gain more with hands in your range that can raise these turns, this gives more incentive to flat a dry set on the flop and not raise all hands including say 25 on a J43 flop.

On a LLL flop, going to showdown often again but equities are more static on turn cards, if you were both playing the same range, i think these are the boards with least to gain by waiting to raise turns and least reason to protect. If you were playing vs a much stronger range than yours on a certain board then you have a lot more hands to protect and playing more passively and waiting to raise turns seems more important on these flops, eg a 345 flop vs tight range.

Of course there is a ton of differences between all those boards particularly the LLL but i think its the best way to break them down.

So i guess the general idea here is wait for turns with hands that can gain a big equity leap on their best turn cards. Turns that complete a flush are also ones where you can gain a big leap and gain alot by waiting.

Equity range vs range is important too but its hard for me to think of too many spots where you're in position with a much wider range(that isn't already been defined by preflop) unless you're playing HU.

OOP, if you called in the BB vs an open then there is plenty of incentive to wait for turns on any A high boards because you're range is so far behind there range and plenty of reason to protect, so c/c the 34 on A62 flop or 99 on A92 flop and wait to raise turn. There is also a ton of incentive on HLL boards to wait with your high hands too, although that doesn't necessarily mean you should CR them.

Looking at it exploitatively...

Of course if they are barrelling into you too much on the turn you have more reason to widen your flatting(wait till turn) range. If they are well balanced and check a lot of turns(particularly board changing ones) then you have more reason to try and get your value on the flop.

You might also want to be exploiting there cbet tendencies particularly if its too high on boards bad for their range. I think the right adjustment is to raise quite a bit more.

On the flip side there is the raise flop and take free card on turn play that probably isn't too common in an optimal strategy but has its merits and gives more reason to raise flop with a wider range.

As for approaching this in an attempt to solve it in some way, i guess like virtually any other poker situation, look which hands play best this way and then build a range around it, keeping in reasonable semi-bluffs isn't usually too difficult in this game when you're flatting a flop cbet.

Matt.