Gameking51

Great vids, keep it up!

@8.50 you say BB should raise with AT on the flop. To me raising most of the time seems really bad on this board, as a) he is going to have few bluffs/semi-bluffs to raise here especially in a 3 handed pot and b) it caps and defines his calling range. As played flatting got extra value from T9 (which should obv fold to rejam and flat 1st time), which would not happen if he had raised which is a side consideration.

@11:48 you say you don't like villains jam in a 3bet pot on 532, SPR 3 for dry sidepot. What should he be doing? He is absolute top of range with overpair + 2NFD vs your perceived range which is super unlikely to have connected on this board. Would you have led this pot if the short stack was all in pre? If no, why are you raising flop to 11 rather than calling, as it is a strategically equivalent spot to checking to the 3bettor.

More questions later!

@7:10

Is folding broadway standard here on the turn? I would normally call at least once vs a 1/2 lead.

@39.02

How should you decide the raise sizing, for instance what is your opinion on making our raising range ~ 115 on the flop. If our opponent responds the same to both sizings, then clearly we prefer a smaller size to make our bluffs cheaper.

Really interesting spot @26.25 you check back 9843 the 2nd nut straight on the river on Q65 9 7, because you said that you don't expect to get called by worse more frequently than get action by better. I found that very surprising because villain doesn't have that many T8xx.

I think our river range contains more non-straights than T8xx, so I was expecting a bet here at least in order to allow us to bluff more freely if not get value. If you don't expect to get value often though with a 9 high straight, it makes sense to check back here and exploitatively bluff more frequently than optimal on the river.

But I am curious if betting here is the optimal play or not, because if I hadn't seen you check back, I would think this is a super easy bet and not think twice about it.

Since villain c/r the flop, I was thinking the probability he has T8xx is less than 10% (I checked with odds oracle and its around 2% if he has a set, 5% with Asxs and 20% with 87xx). His turn action probably increases the conditional probability of T8xx, so around 10% is a fair figure to work with.

My hypothesis is that an optimal strategy in this situation is to bet all our 9+ high straights, and turn all of our 2pr- into a bluff. The best bet size will not be pot because this gives us a bad price on our bluffs since he also has a lot of 2nd nut straights, but we can extract value from a range of {straights, air} vs his sets/bluffcatchers.

I'm not confident on what each player's range looks like on the river, which is unfortunate as the optimal play will be very sensitive to even small % changes in range composition. I'm going to guess the range below for each player, but could be way off.

1 PSB effective. Board Q65 9 7

Villain's range: 10% nuts, 40% 2nd nuts, 50% sets-

Our range: 10% nuts, 70% 2nd nuts, 20% 2pr-

Let's define check back to be EV = 0. I'll also say villain will check range on the river, and always call with 2nd nuts to any bet size, and cr the nuts (ignoring cr bluffs for this model).

Let's consider if we bet 1/2 pot with our entire range:

Villain does not have a profitable call with sets- as he has 20% equity when he needs 25%, so lets say he folds all of them.

On our bluffs we risk half pot, and win full pot 50% of the time. so we gain: 0.2* (0.5*1 + 0.5*(-0.5)) = 0.2*0.25 = 0.05

We lose half the pot 90% of 10% of the time when he has the nuts when we would have checked back instead, ie -0.5*0.9*0.1 = -0.045.


By betting 9 high straights, we gain value from our bluffs, but lose value against nuts. If this trade off for this strategy is positive, then we are better off betting than checking. However betting nuts and air sometimes, is obviously a better strategy than checking. So even a positive expectation on betting the 9 high straight at doesn't make it optimal.

The net trade off here is barely positive (0.05 - 0.045 = 0.005 ie about + 0.15 bb), so it seems like checking back the 9 high straight is better, given my assumptions, and assuming my calcs are correct. This goes completely against my intuition.

@13.15 In the 4b pot with TT77ds when you flop a flush on Q65m, what are the merits of lead jamming? You mention that its also fine to c/c it off which would be my default play. You said it was to balance your range so you could lead jam pairs, but why is that desirable? I would expect villain to bet flop very often, probably 1/4 pot at this spr and I think it is a better strategy to crai as we get a small amount extra from his hands that completely missed that he is going to b/f.

I think leading would make sense if you expected him to always b/c his betting range and check back air, so the protection from leading pairs is more important than extracting a bet, but why is this a good strategy for our opponent? I think a 1/4 pot bet is profitable for him with range including his air.

Excellent video! I have a question about your "My Strategy" slide @
21:00. How frequently do you check turn, check raise river with a
nut/strong flush; this would be a large adjustment in my strategy to
counteract a frequent and large bet size otr. The downside is that if we
start checking some strong flushes then it will meddle with our
barreling range, and force us to barrel less with bluffs if we want to
be balanced. How do you view this trade off?

If we barreled all strong flushes ott and were to never CR river (even with med flushes for arguments sake), then the equilibrium on the river would involve villain betting pot and very frequently as you modelled. But by barreling we gain either value or fold equity ott with our strong flushes and air respectively, and can do so more frequently if we choose to not have a river CR range.

But checking turn sometimes with strong flushes protects our turn check range, as well as river range, and now the optimal bet size for villain is not clear at all if he is faced with a threat of getting CRed, whereas it was clearly pot in your example. So we force villain to lose some ev on the turn and river. 

What we really gain from having a strong flush in our river range sometimes, is that villain cannot freely bet large, as we beat both his value bets and bluffs, and forcing him to bet smaller means he must give up a lot of his bluffs. I think this is definitely worth passing up some turn barrel EV for, as we now retain/realise more river equity.

Also a slight nitpick on the same slide. Point number 2 says villain can exploit us by making a smaller bet size if we're over-folding. However this assumes our river calling frequency is inelastic, as we are only over-folding vs a PSB. But actually our strategy is not defined against another bet size, so it is not quite true to say that it exploits us, although I do agree with the sentiment since we are likely over-folding vs most bet sizes if we do so against one.

I will be a nit and point out a small mistake: you estimate our postflop equity with 72o vs a top 50% minus polarised 3bet range. They may be defending 50%, but since this is collectively, they do not have the top 50% of hands. The BB defends 38% and SB defends 17%, so as an approximation we should evaluate our equity against maybe a top 30% range minus polarised 3bet range. So our actual equity will be slightly worse than 30% with 72o. I know you made the point that this particular hand's equity doesn't change much when you alter the opponent's ranges, but it might make a difference in other calculations.

I really like your R concept, and it was cool that R = 72% was the break even value for 72o (did you rig it slightly :p).

Phil mentioned that he would go as low as J high flush for value and he explained that it is better to value bet thinly vs capped ranges, as they are unable to have a value (and thus bluff) raising range credibly on the river.

Sauce needs to call with at least 32 percent of his range on the river if he wants to protect himself against giving Phil a profitable bluff with any hand, and it makes sense to call with the top part of his range, which 9c4cxx definitely is given the line taken. You could say that Phil is polarised here, so it doesn't matter which bluffcatchers Sauce calls with, but he should still call with flushes rather than 2 pair/set (not that he has that many) as these block some flush combos making it more likely Phil is bluffing.