Learn2FoldEm

If villain has a high cbet and a high double barrel, you can assume he either has an exploitable fold vs turn check-raise stat or a weaker than average call vs check raise range. Once you know which one this is, you can then go ahead and check-raise a ton of bluffs or check-raise thinner for value.

FAO: DegreesOfFreedom

Yes, essentially.

My example was taken to be a toy game, or example to show that thinking purely in terms of value/bluff can easily become unstuck on earlier streets. If we bet, in our example EV (bet) = pot. However, if we check, we allow him the opportunity to realise his equity. But before we go overboard, protection betting all the time, you really need to understand the maths behind it. Betting will deny villain the opportunity to bluff the turn card, which is why I stated the assumption he never bluffs the turn.

As you will find out running simulations etc/doing the math, betting to protect vs checking to bluff catch is a function of their equity and their bluffing frequencies so don't just bet willy nilly because I told you to. I'm just pointing out, you will run into trouble trying to treat earlier streets the same as rivers where all hands can be clearly defined as value/bluff.

Also betting because 'we think we are ahead' is more dangerous territory. Suppose villain has a polar range on the river of [nuts,air] with 1 combo nuts and 99 combos of air, and we have a bluffcatcher. We would have 99% equity but yet it would be absolutely incorrect to bet.

I'm not trying to come down on you hard here or be critical but you have posted in a high stakes forum so high stakes reasoning needs to be assumed and applied.

As for your actual question. I would recommend thinking on a deeper level than reading numbers off a HUD and thinking that is enough information. You need to be considering the compostion of his cbetting range (i.e. is he polar, is it the top 60-70%, bottom 60-70%, etc, etc). Also, how does he respond to a check-raise, how does he respond to a check-call, what are his ranges in each spot and so on to really go to the next level?

What's happening is that you are essentially trying to make an exploitative play without enough information really. So what I would recommend doing here is using a progam like CREV, plug in your range for calling pre and then coming up with a solid strategy on such a flop and having a kind of 'unexploitable/balanced' default and then adjust the boundaries of this as more information becomes available.

However, what I think you really want to know on a simple level is 'what's better for bluffing, low or A-hi FD?'. And, as you'll find, it's probably more likely you will want to use the low FD's in your bluffing range first, rather than the A-hi ones. For reasons linked to what you have already stated but really, you need to be going beyond this.

To me, you're sat looking at your screen, see 'oh he has a high cbet, I must exploit. I'll check-raise.' and haven't really thought it through with questions like 'am i balanced?', because for all you know he might be taking an exploitative line of his own by bet/call'ing anything and everything with SD value while you spew away chips by only check-raising weak draws.

I think it's very dangerous to be thinking on earlier streets as either bluffs or value bets. It's not as simple as that, it works as a starting point but as you want to improve it will become clear there are other reasons to bet and folding equity is certainly one of them.

Suppose your range has 70% equity vs Villains range on flop, and he folds 100% of the time vs bet and never bluffs turn. You'd still bet right? And you're neither getting called by worse or folding out better in this scenario.

There's a lot of literature out there explaining this type of concept. Some people will refer to it as a 'protection' bet but again, if incorrectly understood, it can cause people to merge their range in unprofitable ways.

I think Mush could be correct in a lot of his assumptions. When check-raising early street boards, it is often the case that the calling range of the initial bettor fares best as the board develops as they have better coverage. I think high-mid stakes players have already realised this and against people who c-bet well it is likely a small check-raise % is best.

As for next big development. I think will be with respect to bet sizing. At the minute, people consider standard to be between 1/2-full pot. Whereas in the future there will almost definitely be a lot more overbetting, block-betting OOP, small bets to realize equity, etc.

I would have to say having Ac in your hand heads up isn't half as disastrous as if you are playing 6max. People have a lot more flush combinations Heads-Up and the fact it is with the 3c makes me think Ac3c is a lot better bluffing hand in this spot than say the KcQc which blocks a lot more FD's IMO. 6max I would tend to agree but not so much heads up.

I think that's assuming call/fold% can be expressed in terms of bet-size which I don't think OP is necessarily suggesting.

Daniel Negreanu for sure. High integrity, honest individual. Brilliant role model for the poker community. Always speaks well.

Just calculate betsize*callfrequency and see which is highest for all of your assumptions.. You may want to do this for GTO frequencies as well as your exploitative ones...

If you are assuming his calling range is fixed regardless of bet-size then it's trivial to just shove? Is that what you mean? It's not very clear the way you've worded it. Sorry.

You are correct in that you should be using Game Theory to find default lines because without knowing the 'correct' play, you will not be able to know whether opp. is playing in an exploitative manner anyways.

It seems to me (I may be wrong), that you are a bit put-off with the mathematical/game-theory analysis that poker has become and you are maybe hoping there is a game out there where 'feel' is more important and needing to know a load of math and analysis is less important. Unfortunately, I don't think this is the case. Some games will be less mature than others (like PLO 5+ years ago) so play won't be as good but it will ultimately come down to the math and game theory..

Hey,

I don't think any player studies 'game theory' or 'GTO poker' for the sake of studying poker that way, nor is it necessarily optional when it comes to studying the game. It's not a stylistic thing where you can say 'ah, I've taken a different none game theory approach', it's relevant to everybody.

Players tend to study the game, situations, ranges, etc. from a maximally-exploitative viewpoint and as the game develops/progresses with certain exploitative adjustments it tends to converge towards a Game Theory optimal solution.

Like I said, it's not a case of saying I do/don't chose to play poker that way or with a game theory mindset. It's a reality of the game and it is true for any variant. The sooner this is clear, the sooner you will start developing your game to an advanced level.

So to answer your questions bluntly. If you are a top player and experienced with GTO, you will pick up other games more easily, yes, because you will be more fluent in analysing situations. And, as far as other games are concerned, GTO will be important in all of them as every situation that requires a decision has a GTO solution.

Hey Mush, have you tried looking in your own database and seeing how well you are doing with your borderline calls out of the BB? I.E. the bottom of your pre-flop calling range. The sample size may not be big enough so you may be better 'bucketing' them together and counting 67o~56o, etc just to get an idea..

there's literally 2 combos which have you beat using your assumptions, and a ton that you beat..

Having 57% equity against a range isn't an argument for raising. What's more relevant is how the equities/playabilities line up against their continuing range..

Hey Nick, how you playing 66/77/67s on this board?

Hey Matt, can you please elaborate as to why a bet/bet/check strategy is so effective against a villain that has a low raise turn % please?

It's completely dependant on villain's post flop tendencies. For example, if he open ships all boards where he completely misses, you are probably better calling with 100% frequency.

That's an extreme example but my point holds.

Yeah, it's fine. Remember, for EV(shove)>EV(call) your hand only needs to be good >50% of the time when called. So yeah, you'll value cut yourself a decent % but it's still the right play.

it's probably a spot where you will get folds but in order for EV(Bet)>EV(Check) he needs to be folding hands that beat JT rather than just folding and I'm not sure how many of these you think there are. It's a weird line from him. What did he have?

Both players are making money due to the blinds being posted pre (the SB plus the dead BB which you have assumed has folded). However, SB is making a loss for the hand as he posted the 0.50 SB and his strategy only generates 0.43.

To improve strategy versus a fixed strategy there is a Max Exploit button in the toolbar which should give you the best possible strategy versus a known strategy.

More information is probably required such as length of playing interval, etc. For example, if he's staking for say 10k hands his cut should be larger than 100k hands. (as a %)

Yeah, they may have the set combos, but they are really small %, I think the type of hands Ben is referring to are hands like TPGK which can comprise a decent % of their continuing multiple streets range

I think it would be very difficult to go from complete newbie to high-stakes pro within a year or two in todays games but there are smaller/mid-stakes players breaking through into the upper echelons all the time.

I think you've got to be in it because you love the game rather than thinking it's an easy way to become a millionaire in your 20's.

Yeah, I think when you are still playing 25/50NL there is a lot that can be learned before you need to buy these videos. They are very appropriate for people who spend a lot of time analysing/modelling their own play and looking for new/better ways to try and find 'solutions'. I don't see how it could be a 'bad' investment per se, and it's totally up to you on what you think your game needs right now.

Depending on what stakes you play is probably going to dictate what $60 worth of value is to you but I think they seem very reasonably priced. Especially given the fact he uses software and other analysis which I haven't really seen elsewhere.

check-call not an option?