IveBeenJuicing

I often find this kind of false logic coming up. Just because this is the best hand you have in a given situation doesn't mean you should always call it off. If villain is never bluffing, then this is an easy fold. Why would villain ship his stack here all in on a bluff when it looks like you're never folding an ace?

I think the question here is, could he be value betting worse?

Assuming he's not value betting worse, and he bets pot all in on the river, you'd need to be good 1/3 of the time. Villain is never bluffing 1/3 of the time here by population or frequency.

I can highly recommend getting yourself a "W$SD when bet river" stat on your hud and duplicate it for pots larger than 100bb and you'll easily start to get a sense of when to hero fold.

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Understanding this spot from the betting point of view will also help you play as the caller. If say, for example, you find yourself betting on the river with a missed draw and you know that your range will have a lot of this air type hand in it, you'll obviously want to go larger, perhaps even overbetting. By going larger, you hope to make your opponent indifferent. When you're faced with a similar situation as the caller, and villain bets 1/2 pot, it's just so so easy to click call.

Hi Chris, it would take a book to answer these questions correctly and thoroughly but having found myself thinking along similar lines recently, here's my two cents;

#1 I don't want to read too much into your choice of wording but I'm not sure you always want to end up at the river with a "perfectly polarised range". If you mean to say that in a particular example, you end up at the river with an equal number of bluffs and value hands then how does your opponents strategy effect your EV and what can we do about it?

In general, when you have a lot of bluffs in your range (ie, this spot you're talking about) then you'll want to go as large as possible. I believe Steve Paul has made some great videos on this subject;

http://www.runitonce.com/poker-training/videos/bluff-value-ratios/

#2 Again, you're not looking to play a "balanced" range, what you're looking to do is be "unexploitable". ie not fold too much or too little. I guess what you mean is to say is play a "solid" range as opposed to "balanced" in this case?

If the optimal strategy is to 3bet 4% of hands (because all of these are profitable) does that mean that 26% of hands now have a - EV attached to them? Is this what you're asking? The simple answer here is no.

It may well be the case that 3betting 30% is proftable in these games - if villain is exploiting the population over folding (either pre flop or on later streets).

Because you don't often know what your opponents strategy is, you just end up defaulting to your "solid" strategy because you know it's not exploitable.

#3 In order to improve / tweak your set strategy one of the things you might like to try is deviation (especially useful if you have a set strategy / range). Let's say that your 3 bet bluff range (Hijack Vs UTG) is AJo & KQo and your question is am I 3 betting enough and what are the optimal hands? Just 3 bet 8Ts, 79s and 68s for say 30 occasions and test the results.

I honestly think the best approach here is to constantly test theories and ideas. Partly because no one is going to be able to give you definite answers and partly because everyone is going to have slightly different results.

A good place to start might be to ask questions. Vs (regs playing a solid GTO-esque style) am I;

Folding too much? Call slightly wider than usual and mark / review those hands as a collection and work out EV. Maybe when you're like "Ugggh, I think I would normally fold here but it's a really close..." maybe call 50 occasions like this and test how right / wrong you were.

Bluffing too much? Increase your bluff frequencies slightly when you're like "uggh, it's close, I think I'll give up here on this occasion but I would sometimes bluff" Mark the hands and see how you fared.

The more you adopt this kind of testing / tweaking strategy, the more you'll tend towards your optimal strategy for the games you're in.

37:11 limped pot; Q6o. I'd encourage you to just lead for value here on the flop. It's a limped pot, there's no indication villain will bet so you might as well just go for value vs fish right then and there. There are plenty of 'draws' he could put you on. It also makes the hand far easier to play. X/F the turn is far too tight, especially after you check it twice. I remember coming up through these stakes and limped pots are still relatively common. I did some work on my database and you can have a very extensive leading range for both value and bluffs.

Why are we betting flop? Is this value / protection? No pair folds and not many turns i would want to bet again on. If it's for thin value then I prefer betting 1/3 pot on this texture to get peeled by weaker Ax or K high BDFD floats.

You mention that you mostly 3bet A5s BTN Vs CO. What do you do from the other positions? You mention in part 1 that it was "disrespectful" (LOL) for someone to call with AXs vs early position - would you always just 3 bet them or sometimes fold?

This is one of the best live videos I've seen. How you can play 4 tables of Zoom, talk about your own hand, your range and what you would and wouldn't do with different parts of it, and articulate it so quickly, is staggering.

Hey Cameron - fellow Sydney grinder here too. Doesn't the fact he's deep make this a fine call. Surely being deep and IP with NFD make this far more of a playable hand?

For what it's worth...

My 3 bet sizings are 3x IP and 4x OOP. I deliberately size up OOP to ensure I play fewer pots OOP. Playing OOP sucks.

In terms of sizing, there's always a perfect bet size which is usually different from a standard bet size;

1) How will villain react? If it's 4bet or fold then I prefer the smallest sizing possible
2) If villain is never folding, I go larger for value
3) I may go larger to isolate more effectively

In terms of playing deep stacked, the concept of sizing up is more to do with implied threat and works better Vs weak regs. A Larger pre flop allows bigger bets on the flop and turn with the effect of weak regs folding a disproportionate amount of their range because they're not comfortable playing big pots with marginal hands / capped range.

Therefore, when deep, I'd prefer to 3 bet more and larger however hand choice usually switches from high card hands to more suited and connectedness that can make hands worthy of 500bb pots.

Rivered set of deuces. Do you ever check to induce in these spots from hands like KsQ

1/3 of the way through... why does the table display 0.50 / 1 but it's a 1 / 2 table? Are you running pokerstars through another program or something?

If you play twice as many tables without your winrate going down by more than 50% then it's +EV to do so. Then the benefit of extra rake comes into it and if you're grinding on a site like Full Tilt which has a leaderboard challenge then doing this for a month or so may have some benefit.

BUT....!!!! I don't know anyone that can play 8 tables of zoom without it hugely affecting their game. Just the issue of timing out when you don't want to is enough. If you can 8 table zoom, you'd be better off moving up a stake IMO.

@Welcometothethunderdome He's not folding 100% of the time (obviously) but for the sake of comparing winrates vs hands that we dominate or would fold to a jam.

There's a comment suggesting we should flat OOP so we can play vs hands that we dominate but the reality here is that we don't win anywhere nearly as much playing "poker" as we do when we jam (vs those hands) and they fold. This can be verified by looking in your database.

If you're not comfortable 5 betting AQ in this spot (and knowing that villain has a very high 4 bet) then flatting pre is a fine strategy.

I agree that villain is never folding sets, of course not. But sticking it in hoping to get called by worse is also just as optimistic.

pre is more like that i dont want to coldcall

Why's that? Vs most people, 3 betting a polarised range and flatting some decent but not amazing hands is a very strong strategy. ATs certainly falls into that category. It would certainly help avoid the this type of situation where you flop top top but can't value bet because you've narrowed down villain's range too much by 3 betting.

why's that?

Why can't villain be bluffing? Surely we have to call here from not only a GTO perspective (we are at the top of our range) but also as played when the turn goes check check.

Surely the turn is far more questionable than the easy river call. Shouldn't we be value betting the turn 1/3 pot? He's never folding AK or JJ to a small bet there is he?

jamming that river is a bluff in an attempt to get a slow played set to fold. I can't see many Qx combos calling here AT ALL because not only is villain beaten by AQ, KK, AA but also by some 3 bet bluffs that made 2 pair, straights etc.

Very easy check fold here mainly because I don't expect too many villain's to be turning KQ or JJ into a bluff.

why bet bigger on every street? don't we want to keep hands like TT in the pot?

Definitely not. The only way you'll be able to see if villain has a linear range or not would be to see what hands he's 3 betting. If he's 3 betting QJs, JTs, AJs, 9Ts etc then it's linear. The % alone cannot tell you that.

Interesting spot. I don't like the combination of flop x/r mixed with small turn and river bets.

On the one hand you've x/r the flop to make the pot bigger but then end up betting quite small on later streets as villain's range gets stronger.

But on the other, you want to extract max value from KQ and can rep some flush draws on that board.

Reality is, there's relatively few hands that can call your raise and turn bet - some of which are ahead or chopping. But there a LOT of hands that will put money in the pot that will fold to your aggression.

Think of all the AX, KX, pocket pairs, that will fold to a x/r.

Not to mention, when you raise top top for thin value, what does your calling range look like? Pretty weak right?

Let's assume that he folds to a pre flop jam 100% of the time. 5 betting would yield a winrate of 1500bb / 100. That's going to be FAR more than flatting AQ OOP.

It might be worth taking a look in your database and looking at your winrate to see what it is in 3 bet pots, or even single raised pots. Playing OOP sucks pretty hard.

Given how agro this guy seems, I'd much prefer to get it in pre flop.

All that said, it's a pretty clear bet fold on the river. Especially if we think he has a lot of dominated hands or med PPs that would otherwise check behind.

Hi Gaucan,

It's pretty hard for villain to have too much air on the river. And not sure he value bets worse.

I couldn't help but notice that you decided to 3bet UTG+1 with ATs.

Is this a value bet? If so, isn't the flop a clear bet for value?
Is this a bluff? If so, isn't the river a clear fold?

Stats can be misleading at times... that 21% may just have been a whole bunch of passive hands that went to SD with no real action. It's kinda close but I think the default here would be to fold river without a little more of a solid read.

I can highly recommend customizing your W$SD stat to only include hands where the final pot was over 40bb. It would give you a much clearer idea about what this villain was doing in the pots he was contesting.

Interesting hand and good discussion - but isn't this just one of those spots where we should be thinking "we can't win every hand" ?

A) we don't know about villain's triple barrel range or bet sizing tendencies
B) we don't know if villain can fold top top.
C) we block some of his bet-folding range

His small-ish turn bet and large-ish river bet suggests to me that the J helped him. It's not a natural card to bomb with a one-pair hand as it looks like it hits your range more than his.

If I were going to raise over a triple barrel I'd need a little more evidence that it would work.

Big fan of these videos Paul. Concept, hand choice, complexity, explanations. I'm sure there are a lot of viewers (like me) watching these several times to get the most out of each point.

In terms of future video suggestions what about "what would you do with... AK" or choosing another hand that people regularly get stuck on - and have different scenarios such as 3 betting OOP and getting the dreaded J98 flop.

The other idea I'd love to see put into a video would be "what would you do.... Vs Villain"

Choose a hand such as 77 OOP on 824 rainbow and what to do vs different player types. Betting for value vs passive fish. Check calling versus maniacs etc.

Great video mate. I'm hooked. watching your others....

15:30 with KQ on QQX.

Given that you're both readless on each other, does it really matter that you sometimes flat Qx and sometimes raise Qx? When you're readless, you're pretty much playing vs population (wrt reads) and won't villain interpret your raise as Qx almost always?

What are your thoughts on flatting here with QX and give him the chance to fire bluffs again or value bet worse. By raising, don't we force villain to play perfectly against us?

At $10nl, you can't really justify the cost of the expensive hourly coaches however, I would certainly be willing to give you a free lesson or two.

I am a $100nl zoom / rush player.