JackPozzi

I'd add that with medium effective stacks an interesting idea is to raise vs limpers about 10-12.5% of the effective stack to have a SPR of ~4-4.5 on the flop. That SPR allows us to have a two street game when we need it without overbetting too much (like a vulnerable TPTK on a drawy flop) or CB 1/3 and play three streets with bluffs and non vulnerable hands. So about 4-4.5bb is fine in this hand if you want that possibility.

You have to take players behind into account and adjust, obviously, and the limper's tendencies.

On the flop betting small or checking are valid options, as Mancuso said it's more about your overall strategy.

In theory you should be calling down your top pair unless you know that your opponent is overbluffing when he 3-barrels here. You unblock clubs and most of his straight draws (blocking 54 and 64) and block his most likely value, so it's a good call if you are playing a robust strategy.

The population probably underbluffs here and I suspect A-high boards aren't the more bluffed, but I'm not sure. I'd call top pair or better until I have better reads.

I can talk for ~50bb stacks: Variance is lower, about 60bb/100 standard deviation, so with the same winrate you will need less bankroll for the same risk of ruin. Personally, 50 half-buy-ins is fine for me (5,000bb), but winrate is a critical factor here.

And about winrates, you can sustain pretty good ones, similar to deepstack (as long as you play good :-P). Diego Ramírez, an Essential coach, had really good winrates (9bb/100 or so if I recall correctly) playing NL50-200 with 40bb.

But in theory deepstack poker should attain higher winrates, given the flexibility and more complexity of the strategies (more overbetting options for example that can induce more mistakes), and the ability to stack-off deepstack fishes, wich is a very important part of our winrate.

Midstack poker has some advantages: it's easier to learn (no 4-bet pots postflop, simpler postflop lines), also in single raised pots strategies are really similar to deepstack play (so you don't need to re-learn everything), and regs sometimes play pretty bad against a half-stack, specially preflop -many of them will think that you're a fish probably-. And you can move up in stakes a bit faster with less bankroll.

Yes, it's normal to pay about 10bb/100 in rake in micros. Some sites/stakes are a bit cheaper (~8bb/100), and others are more expensive (12-15bb/100).

Awesome post David, <3 for you.

I think it's a good thing to write down your decision making process, I did something similar. But I think you should take it as an abstraction of your real mental process, wich is non-linear and based on pattern recognition skills that usually run in the background (unconsciously). I mean, sometimes you just know what to do without consciously thinking about it, maybe you verbalize a couple of data points or variables in the hand, but the whole thing is on that "black box".

Our mind is powerful in this aspect, but it will fail -specially when emotions are involved-. You have to "train" it to look to certain things and evaluate wich are more important, so you can have an intuitive but well-trained process. That's where a list like yours comes into play, along with training away of the tables.

I have a similar process divided in three broad categories:

1. Looking for weaknesses (Profiling).

Here I look at my opponent's stats, the notes I have on him, trying to look for exploitable stuff in his game. I use profiling to fill in the gaps, using whatever population stats I have available.

Sometimes you can end your decision making process basically here, when your opponent/profile has a clear deviation, like folding too much. You look at your hand, wich is weak, then you bluff.

2. Strategic Framework (Ranges)

• Preflop ranges, Texture Analysis, Range Advantage. Evaluation skills basically.
• What are our preferred strategies on this spot (betting 100% for low size, bet polarized).
• What are the adjustments on our strategy to exploit our opponents weaknesses.

It's not needed to have a super defined mental depiction of our whole strategy here, it's more like "I'm going to exploit his capped range by overbetting here, and I'd bluff very frequently because he is likely overfolding on this texture". Something intuitive, we just have a few seconds to act, this isn't chess where you can think for a while.

3. Tactic Framework (Our hand).

Finally we decide what to do with our particular hand, and that's the important point. With the two previous points worked out, we will have a framework that reduces the options for your combo, maybe you only have one option so decision is made, but it's better to check it out a little bit to be sure, because you actually have a hand, not a range, and you really want to maximize the EV of your hand over everything.

On close spots you look at blockers and maybe rely on combo counting skills, and if you have some solver experience you can guess if the solver uses a mixed strategy or not.

The good thing about focusing solely on your combo is that when you don't have a well defined strategy framework, or you make a strategic mistake, you can still gain EV if your tactics are good. Maybe you value bet on a spot that you should check because you have a heavily capped range, but in low stakes you know, that strategic mistake is rarely being exploited so you gain some EV. Making a tactic mistake will always lose more EV.

Finally, these decision making skills will improve by training. Review hands/videos/forums and go over your process, filter a spot where you just learned new stuff, etc.

Also you can train particular sub-skills, like the many evaluation skills that we should use to play strong poker: opponent evaluation, range advantage evaluation, texture analysis and such. Drill yourself, combine different data points into your trainings, try to keep track of your progress. Also try to practice whatever is more important (= more winrate).

About your questions, I consider myself a beginner who wants to learn, but my two cents:

• Range advantage is a fuzzy thing. You can objectively evaluate impact (how much of a range has something on a board) and nut advantage in my opinion. Try to train these two things, and check solver's results. The solver preferred strategy is a result of this advantages, if villian is capped and doesn't impact much -> bet with high frequency, if villian impacts but it's capped -> bet polar, if villian impacts and isn't capped -> check a lot.

• Turn plans are complex, and I think that we can divide our work into different parts, and implement the patterns on our brain to improve over time. For example:

  • Flush card on turn lower our size.
  • Blank on turn incentivizes polar and big bets (overbetting frequently).
  • Certain overcards are good four our range (K tipically is good when on the lead for example), others are nasty.
  • Certain cards improve our fold equity.
    I don't think we should go into very deep strategic analyisis of turn play, at least when we are learning the "basics", but I think you can go a little bit deeper on your "tactic" analyisis (your particular hand), if you have a bdfd that CB the flop for example you may want to bet almost always when the draw comes (wich is something the solver does, although not always). If the draw comes but is a terrible card for your range, you may want to check some. I don't know, play with different hand types, check the solver but try to always exploit.

Well, I almost wrote I book. I've been thinking over this topic over the past few days, so I think investing time on writing this post helped me to organize my thoughts, and I also gained some insights reading your post. Good Luck!

David Alford made the fundamental point here.

You filtered for 3-bet pots? The 3-bet stat is on 100%. I don't use HEM, but in PT4 the previous investment is taken into account on the filter, it counts the net won or lost for the whole hand. That means that if you 3-bet 9bb preflop, you start with -900bb/100 on the flop, so -35bb/100 would mean that you win 865bb/100 after flop check.

If that's not the case, it doesn't mean that you have a massive leak. For example, if you exploit your opponents preflop by 3-betting wide because they fold too much, you may have to surrender the pot more often postflop, but you are winning way more preflop or when you cbet good textures against the right opposition. That will imply losing quite a bit when checking, but you're making more money on other lines.

Poker is complex, you need to take your whole strategy into account when looking for leaks. Don't assume you have a big leak because of one losing graph.

I agree about folding the river. Vs a more spazzy opponent I'd call expecting to see worse trips on his range.

This guy is probably never bluffing here, and he is probably never betting KQ/AK given the flush runout and our protected range. The only "natural bluffs" that he had flushed the turn. I don't even think that he has enough avaliable bluffs to make us wanting to call here even if he bets them 100% of the time, he has to be raising flop with a high number of AxQc, A4s-A3s and weak stuff, and we are blocking the Ac that may want to barrel off with (AcQx, AcTx)

I based my comment on the Pio preflop simulations with NL100 rake that are around and Elias Gutierrez's charts. In NL10 the worst hands to defend vs 2.5x are ATo/KJo/QJo, Samu Patronen was right, KTo calls ~30% vs 20% open 2.5x with NL100 rake on the Pio sim, I thought it was mixed but with a higher % of defense, so it's a marginal call (I guess it's ok vs mediocre opposition). QTo/JTo defend 18%-13%.

Folding preflop is better than calling vs 2.5x, I'd call KTo/QJo before JTo.

Flop is very good for BB (you), he has advantage, and MP should be checking very frequently, probably the best strategy for MP is checking range. The solver probably donks a lot on this flop.

Given that advantage we get to check/raise very frequently vs MP c-bet, specially considering that he's probably c-betting too often here, or maybe he's only c-betting the strong part for protection, I assume that an average NL10 player doesn't know a lot about his range disadvantage here. Two overs with a club may be candidates but you cannot start check/raising all of them unless you're sure that MP defends bad vs check-raises (folding too much & not 3-betting enough).

Your particular combo JxTc is not the best out there I think, I'd prefer to put all the gutshots before (A7s,K7s,97s) plus A4s (oesd), A8s with bdfd... (along with flushdraws and weak pairs+gutshot tpye) And offsuit overcards with bdfd I think should be check-raised a tiny fraction of the time on equilibrium, and I'd prefer something like AcJx, AcTx or KQ that hit more solid outs.

So I prefer to check/fold your combo. Check-calling is -EV. Also I'd like to add that my population stats show that on early position players tend to defend a lot to check-raises, they don't like folding. They fold more frequently on BTN for example, due to the wider ranges. Also his c-betting range might be strong as I said before. But against a foldy profile your line is ok I guess. The problem is that you don't know :-P

As played, on the turn your range advantage increases drastically, and your range is able to bet really frequently, your bluffs probably continue a lot, so with that in mind betting is fine.

After getting called, the problem on the river is if he folds an overpair (if he does just bluff 100%). Micro players tend to have very inelastic calling ranges (they don't fold overpairs), so I'm not really sure of the profitability of bluffing here. But if you do bluff you need to bet bigger IMO, you are betting here straights and some of the best sets for value so you want to size up. Your combo is not very good I think, you don't block value (sets or straights), you block some bluffcatchers (JJ-TT), and block some of his flushdraws. I feel like betting vs the average player is neutral EV at best and most likely -EV, so I check-fold and If I bluff I'd do it with better bluffs, specially pairs that block sets, you're targeting a strong range.

On equilibrium (I checked a similar simulation) MP has to fold some of his overpairs, and even some of his sets vs a pot-sized-bet. Do you think your average opponent does that? Because if he doesn't you're burning money.

The key here is that your line has marginal EV at best vs a micro player with a tight range (they don't fold enough on average), and you should just avoid that lines when playing micros and crush him for value. Vs wider ranges (BB vs BTN) bluff check/raising flops becomes more profitable. If you want to experiment with these lines, use them against the right profiles, you need some stats at least before putting money on the pot!

So:
Fold PF, XF flop.
As played, yeah betting turn is fine, ugly river spot with not enough info and probably not enough fold equity, XF.

I believe that population tendencies + some range reading are a better aproach than looking for equilibrium strategies on many spots like this one, and using balanced strategies on spots that we just don't have additional info. I don't have a big database but I have some filters for river bets and there are many underbluffed "data points" in his line. And every population analysis that I gathered info on (mostly from this site) have almost the same tendencies. So yeah, we do have some info on this hand:

• Bet size (pot) is underbluffed.
• EP continuation bet river is underbluffed.
• He is tight (recreational players bluff rivers more often). I'm not assuming that his VPIP is 6%, he might be running card dead and OP said that the sample size was small.

Then we can add up some info on the specific hand.
- PFR bets 3-way on the flop (bad for us).
- Flop texture is bad for his range, on equilibrium he should be checking with a high frequency. I expect 100% checking from a strong player unless BB is a fish -so he may want to deviate and exploit him with value-. That is bad for us, neutral at best (maybe he doesn't know any of this). But I'd only expect bluffs on this river from good agressive players or fish, and he seems neither.
- His river bet size is not correlated with a wide value betting range, like Tx or JJ. Smells monster to me, although that's a totally subjective opinion.

I think there are enough pieces of evidence that point to an underbluffed range.

The river raise is probably a large mistake vs a pot-sized donk bet. In my pool that size is heavily underbluffed when they donk. Also in micros there are a lot of players who take these kind of lines for value (like XC XC donk with a monster). And you don't have enough stack to fold out anything.

In general look for clear spots against the right opponents to bluffraise the river. They just don't fold enough to river raises on average so you need a number of pieces of evidence to put a profitable bluffraise, for example:

• Weakish bet size (block to 70% or so).
• Line that is bluffed more often (like a probe bet on the river, for example).
• Opponent that bluffs more often, or value bets thin and can fold vs a raise.
• Then you look on blocker considerations.

It's really really difficult to come up with a somewhat balanced value/bluff ratio on any street, but thinking about what your check/raise for value range looks like is a very good thing to do.

On this board I'd have 75s usually but I don't have T7s vs CO 3x open. That gives BB some nut advantage in straights because CO shouldn't be opening these hands. Sets are also on our range (99 might 3-bet pf). So overall is a flop where we can represent a good number of very strong hands.

CO might be betting a strong range on these bad flop for him or maybe he's betting everything, we are readless.

QJ with two suits of the board is a nice check-raise candidate, so I like the check-raise It would be a mixed strategy on equilibrium probably, we prefer QJs with BDFD to check raise more often. The turn is a very good card four your value check/raise range on the flop so you should size up with your range. You also want to give up some bluffs here, your value range isn't wider, and your XhYh are good candidates for bluffing on that turn with the picked up equity.

In theory you cannot continue betting with every QJ here or you will be very unbalanced, unless you want to exploit. QhJh is a very good continue, and the solver (I made a very quick and simple sim) probably check-folds the rest of QJ, except for QJ with a heart, and specially with a spade that unblocks bdfd hands from your opponent. Your particular combo bets less than 7% on my sim. That means that betting and check-folding have the same EV, so your opponent will dictate wich is better. I don't know if the population overfolds in CO vs that line in drawy boards, so I'd go with a somewhat balanced play, and pick the lower variance option: check-fold.

If your opponent has a lot of pair+draw combinations that might fold the river as you said you want good equity hands because your commiting two barrels and all your stack. Turned flush draws, OESDs (QT,JT,7x), hands like 76 (low pair+OESD), you have plenty of better equity bluffs.

I don't think we should consider the "top of our range" argument against a 6/6 player (or at least pretty tight) on NL10 that opens UTG and 3-barrels a terrible board for his range on a 3-way flop, potting the river. He is more likely to never bluff or "valuff" (betting AT) than to bluff any two cards to exploit our high folding frequency. If he is that smart he should be checking this flop because is a very good flop for the cold-caller. There are some mindless barrellers out there, but there aren't enough of them I think to make that assumptions.

I guess he's almost never bluffing missed draws or betting Tx with that river size wich is clearly underbluffed by the population, so the vast majority of his range is JJ or better.

No, 10k it's not enough, it has a lot of variance although you're running pretty good and the chances that you are a winner are somewhat significant, but you can be a slightly winning player.

The standard sample size when you start making guesses about your winrate is about 100k. If your winrate is big (~8-10bb/100) you can take 50k I guess.

Overall, I think you should work on your game, play at least 50k hands and move up if you're winning and your bankroll supports it. If you don't have enough roll, keep playing and improving. The bankroll requirements are probably the best general approach to your question.

You can play with sample sizes, winrates and variance here:
http://www.pokerdope.com/poker-variance-calculator/

His neutral-low bet size on that sequence suggests that he can have a nice amount of bluffs on average, but the flop texture severely limits the amount of bluffs he has -also a SB cc range is more compact and impacts better on any board-, and maybe he is value betting AJ with that size, although the pool tends to be passive as you said. You are also blocking ATs/QTs that are potential bluffs.

Overall, I think his bet is probably underbluffed, so your call will range from clearly -EV to breakeven at best. I like the fold. I'd start calling vs a recreational player (wider preflop range, wider flop peeling range, more potential bluffs).

If your opponent defends correctly it's better to open 3bb IMO, but in microstakes the average player drastically underdefends his BB and with not enough 3-betting, so I open 2.5x as a default with something like 60-70%, or more (100% basically) if I have some specific stats on his BB vs SB fold to steal, they don't adapt much to the open raise size (I checked in my database) so you're stealing money very cheaply opening 2.5x. If my opponent defends ok I'd open ~40-45% with 3bb size depending on his agressiveness pf and postflop.

On the flop you can bet, you can check-call and you can even check-raise vs a nice stabbing opponent. The important thing is your overall strategy with your whole range.

On the turn calling is fine. I can see reasons for folding as ChaoRen123 says, but against a player that can bluff here should be an OK call.

On the river you faced a pot sized bet, and no, that's not better for you because even though his value range gets tighter, the population don't bluff enough when using these big sizes. My standard strategy is to fold all my pure bluffcatchers (like your hand). Your blockers aren't that good, 56s/75s would be better blocking the straight + sets if you were to call optimally.

This is a hand where you invested all your stack with a weak hand without knowing exactly why, with a reasoning process that is very assumptive, and I you ended up making a very large compound mistake in my opinion.

Firstly you checked the flop because "you can go either way" and you bet the turn "to deny equity" (protection). Is much better to bet the flop to deny equity and for protection, because that flop is very good for your range, if you bet 100% for a small size you woudn't be very exploitable, and the population defends much worse than optimal (too many check-folds with not enough check-raising). So vs the pool your hand is a pure bet on the flop along with your whole range. Sure, checking isn't a big mistake, but you are adding unnecesary complexity to your strategy if you mix here. Keep it simple and gain EV.

On the turn your hand works better as a check, you have good SD value and you want to be bluffing with worse hands. Betting isn't a big mistake though, he is probably overfolding here so betting everything is an ok exploit.

Then after the turn check/raise you wrote that he "represented nothing". That's 100% assumptive, something you believe but cannot prove. Certainly his line is a bit tricky/weird but the data shows that turn check/raises are heavily underbluffed. You have a really weak hand with virtually zero equity vs his value range and if he is bluffing some he will probably do it with high equity semibluffs, you will lose some % of the time against those. So yeah, that's a fold, you need to have very good reasons (reads) to call that.

On the river Villian overbets, and you made another big reasoning mistake. On your turn line you wrote that "I don't expect from population from bluffing rivers a lot", then you faced a big bet on the river, and argued that your hand can call or bluffraise. If population isn't bluffing, you cannot call, and you cannot bluffraise. Some data:

• The turn check/raise + bet line is underbluffed.
• River big bets are underbluffed.
• Population has very inelastic calling ranges, they aren't folding vs river raises enough to consider bluffing.
• You have a very weak hand. You block the nut flush but that's about it.

I'd call that if he is a fun player. You will see some 2x, but that line contains enough worse Kx I think, and the occasional flush draw (that you don't block). That sizing scheme represents some holding that wants to end the hand right away -2x should be discounted for that reason-.

Preflop I'd consider folding vs unknown, his size is kinda big and 3-betting ranges are tight-ish and linear on average in microstakes. Being deeper than 100bb might be a good reason to call though.

I'd check/fold flop, he is very strong on that board. I guess flatting is -EV even if he bets 100%.

As played your hand might be a breakeven call at best on the river, probably a fold because I think that bet is underbluffed, he has to be betting AQ a reasonable amount of the time, and also he is checking on the turn with a bunch of better hands potentially (AA,AK,KQ and slowplays KK,JJ if he 3-bets pf with it). The result is a healthy value range and just a few potential bluffs.

I'd only call if I know villian is a fishy spazzy player that continues on the turn with all his draws. I'd fold otherwise, the big size is generally underbluffed by a large margin, and I don't think this is a board texture that gets bluffed very frequently.

But if he's a fish I'd block river expecting to get called by 7x, any PP and A-highs, and fold to a raise.

In general, the pool -including regs- overfold to turn probe bets, so attacking checkback ranges is in general a very good base aproach. There would be some exceptions of course. A very agressive player checking back a dry flop like Axx is kinda suspicious for example -I expect him to bet all his air-, and I don't expect that many folds on the turn, but maybe he overfolds the river so two barrelling with hands with equity might be very profitable.

Regarding turn sizings, I came to the same results, the solver wants to bet big and extract value from IP's capped range, so overbetting is pretty common on balanced strategies, specially in blanks. Also, the average player overfold to big bets in my database (and is probably a very common tendency across most pools), and I estimated that my bluffs gain more EV when I bet bigger given the folding tendencies vs different sizes (80%-150% pot), although I need more data. In this case the max exploit is to use a big size and bluff everything.

Playing OOP with iniciative is tough indeed.

In this particular flop texture I'd check the flop with my whole range. We don't have many 9x preflop, and BTN has some -it's difficult to put him on a range but they usually cold-call a bit too much considering the high rake structure-, also we probably don't have much of an equity advantage (maybe we are behind) and we are OOP, so check.

A TTx texture for example would be much better because now we have all the ATo/KTo/QTo/JTo (and BTN isn't cold-calling those hands very frequently) so we have a more nutted range and better equity so I'd bet my whole range for a small size.

Said that, betting AdTd is not a bad play in isolation, but strategically speaking I prefer to check all my hands and have more control of my range on the next actions.

As played, the turn is a bad card for our range (good for him), so checking is in order and I'd play it the same although that pot sized bet hurts.

BB's line is pretty strong, and heavily underbluffed on average, specially on very dynamic boards, unless he is a spazzy fish. You hold a bluffcatcher so I'd fold vs the turn check/raise. Same applies on the river, with the addition of facing an overbet.

I also think that checking back the turn is way better than reopening the betting and increasing the size of the pot, there are many bad river cards, and most donkers like to donk...so you could face a check-call turn + donk river on a bad river card and if you call you will end up putting 3 bets with a medium top pair on a very drawy board (and it's UTG vs BB). Checking allows him to bluff the river with his missed clubs/air, and bluffcatching vs a medium sized bet on a river blank would probably be +EV.

That 1bb continuation bet makes me think that he is probably a recreational player, and these guys have a really wide range and many worse hands shoving the turn, so that's a snap call.

Well, theoretically your hand could be a mid/low frequency bluff check/raise on a balanced scenario, but:

• The average player probably doesn't overfold vs check/raises on early position (my Zoom10 pool fold like 35% or something like that), so your bluff check/raises aren't that profitable.

• Your opponent uses a decent biggish size on the flop, so he is probably wheighted to a value-heavy range, I think that tendency is pretty common.

So I'd just check/fold that combo, you can use higher equity semibluffs.

As played, check/fold turn is fine, and on the river I agree with Jbarez, you should overbet on the river (if you bet), your opponent is pretty capped there. Your hand I think is a potential bluff theory wise, but the key is not if the solver bets it, but if your opponent is going to overfold if you bet, considering all the busted draws on the board, your line wich on his eyes might be weird and draw/bluff-heavy, the fact that he's on early position so he has a lot of potential bluffcatchers and the tendency of the pool of calling top pair or better no matter what, although I have no reliable data on the folding tendencies of the pool vs this line.

I'd bet turn, if he's passive and showdown bound betting will have better EV than check-calling because he'll check back most of his potential bluffs/semibluffs. I like blocking river too, with that read he'll call plenty of one pair hands.

As played I think you should fold river, most of the draws got there so he has just a few avaliable bluffs (and he's betting those with low frequency assuming he's passive). You beat some potential value bets but I don't think you'll be good enough vs a passive profile given that he has a lot of better value here.

You can filter your position preflop (EP, BTN, whatever) and your relative position in Filters/Hand Details/Player Position.

So for example if you want to filter the hands where you open EP/MP/CO and got 3-bet by IP player and called, would go like this:

• Player Position Preflop between 1 and 3
• Actions And Opportunities / Preflop: Raised First In (on).
• Actions And Opportunities / Preflop: called 3-bet.
• Hand Details: Player Position Flop: OOP.
• Hand Details/Number of players: Flop: Between 2 and 2.

That would mostly filter what you are looking for, but I think it would include some multiway preflop sequences like EP OR, CO CC, BTN SQZ and you calling with CO folding.