MegaGrinder

In this very hand villain actually folded and I have no glue what he had. I also edited the original post to make results visible.

I somehow had the feeling that in these hands when I actully have the nuts and try go get it in with full pots, villains are folding quite often. Somehow I just decided to bluff with intuition and it worked.

I still cannot say if that villain folded a boat or if he had something else. However I was quite unsure if I did it right and obviously people recommend to be more careful with these.

For getting value I recommend betting smaller.

VPIP 90 player with aggression factor 40 is likely to bet also trips here. That kind of player is also less likely pot control turn with A8.

If he bets I think that he mainly has trips (there are morr combinations for trips than there are for boats) or air.
If he checks he has usually weaker hand than trips (like one pair)..

Against small bet therefire you can raise-fold. Against pot-sized bet just call.
Against check bet small like 25% of pot to get value from weak pair of aces.

Edit. First I didn't pay enough attention to flop and practically red the hand from turn. Given the flop CR and it's effects to flop ranges I would not raise-fold. I would still call against any bets at flop.

Against tougher opponent i would call half pot bet and fold to full pot.

In GTO i guess that here the solution is mixed strategy between calling and folding against pot sized bet.

By betting full pot with a range of straights and nonstraights villain can make you indifferent for calling. This is if you check. I would be curious though if in GTO you should value-bet still small and fold vs raise, thats also possible.

Given the tendency of loose passive players, the main feature is that they dont bluff(raise enough but call too much)

If you lead you can easily play against a raise. However even if villain was at FD he can still have some value in his hand and can call 1/3 pot sized bet. And against a raise you can easily fold.

Uf you chiose to check, you can still fold to bet, but now the situation might be different. I think that against check even loose passive player will sometimes bet there with missed straight draws. Therefore by betting you might win more against his missed FD s without showdown value just by diacouraging him to bluff his GTO share. So by leading we can make hin underbluff even more and benefit by that. This combined with the chance that he has some kind of showdown value (like two pairs) leading is in my opinion line for higher EV.

Watched that video and liked it, despite the fact that for the low and midstakes player it is not applicable. The rake will eat the extra money we put in already in blind.

Janne played 25/50, where rake has absolutely different role than it has in plo 1/2 when it comes to blind defend.

But I liked that I got a recommendation. That's nice!

What do you think that is villains bet-fold -range here?

My reasoning here was that 99 would have preferred to raise at turn instead of calling there and then leading onto river. I think that EV for 99 is higher if he raise at turn. Then villain can still raise or at least call with hand that he thinks that is alive.

Then when he just called and decided to lead in turn, I deducted that he has a hand that he wasn't happy to go AI at turn, but prefers to get value at river. Only 54 or 67 (for straight) (maybe 62 or A2 for non-nut straight) are hands that I could imagine to play like that.

95 is even easier to exclude as that hand is very vulnerable and should definitely raise. That would loose only to one 99 combo (+ two sidecards)

So I excluded 99 away by the fact that there is more optimal way to play 99 in my opinion. Blocker would reduce 99 (or 55) combos from 5 to 2, but the logic that he is not supposed to have there 99 remains still the same.

But of course I need to be very careful in these as all you players whom I respect are suggesting not to bluff here.

both. just sometimes you want a villain to call and sometimes you don't.

Therefore when you block his continuing range you need to adjust according what kind of reaction you want to get

Calculating things is time consuming at first. But then I only need to memorizes what kind of hands are over certain thresholds.

The idea of being specific in calculations also help in sensitivity analysis . Then I can see that what kind of hands are sensitive to the changes in our assumptions.

I assume that hands like KK72 , and 6543 ss behave very differently as one could call 3bet but but KK can not for example

I assume that Kk is sensitive against 3-bet but not against callers.

6543 prefers to win preflop, is slightly ev negative in SRP and plays bad multiway but can defend against 3-bet.

The probabilities that we end up in any of the followinga are not that hard to calculate or relember

-We win outright
-SRP heads up OOP
-SRP heads up multiway
-Multiway pot
-3 Bet pot

Then when we know the probabilities and ranges we are going to be against we can do quite nice analysis for given situatuons. It is actually much less complicated than it looks at first.

Thanks a lot for the comments!

All criticism and ideas are much welcomed. When I decided to put the effort to really systematically study the PLO I felt pretty overwhelmed when I started to create a studying program. PLO is such a complex game, hard to understand perfectly and very difficult to memorize.

I have several hundreds of thousands PLO hands all in all, and somekind of thinking for the game has developed during the process.

Then what I have in mind is a little bit the same what Richard Gryko does in his videoseries Spots (even though I have only seen one two minute teaser). His idea is to study very specific situations and do very detailed study for them.

Here is an example of very detailed study I did once for NL about defending blinds. I knew exact expected values for every hand and every spot. Also my excel sheet was configurable so I could change the initial range while keeping the calling range as it was.

It took several hours to calculate this specific situation, but when I was ready I started to act much better in these spots.

For NL Texas I would have pretty good idea about what spots I should study and how to improve even further. It is combinatorically quite easy to solve and there aren't too many different hands. But in Omaha I feel absolutely overwhelmed with that approach, but still my target is somehow similar.

Still what I did learn while doing that kind of stuff for NL, I learned that the actual results in many situations where very faw away from what my intuition did tell to me. And the only way to find these was very detailed spot-study.

I am very sorry that my solutions for omaha looks quite rough at the moment and maybe a little bit too precise.

I will give one example how I was planning to solve UTG Open vs regular opponents.
It is quite easy to get the distribution of end states as we can still know the prelopstrategies that we assume that our villains are going to have. We can calculate the risk that somebody will 3-bet us, or that we will play against blind or that we will play in OOP in SRP or that we can steal the pot.

For Omaha it is impossible to get any exact starting hand charts, but what we can know is roughly the equity we need to have when called (not hot'n cold but the actual one)

And when we then solve the most common ranges and their weakest hands, I assume that we get some kind of a reference point. Then when we change the parameters in our models we can see how the situations are going to change. Shall we loosen or tighten given the tendencies of our opponents to our left etc.. It is very much work but it can be done.

And when it is done it will increase the bb/100

Back to more general topics

Still I am not only looking difficult spots that I can solve mathematically (or try to). Nowadays solvers are doing much more precise work than my excel and they can combine post-flop knoledge into the preflop strategies.

I am also curious about other kind of topics, like interpreting bet sizes in some spots etc. Or how to deduct that villain is going to have weak polarized range on turn with too much air. What kind of reads shall we take that we can use later (and how people have used those etc.)

I have some ideas but I am really unsure how well structured studying plan for Omaha would look like.

Hi Phil!

I founded in the beginning a hand that I would have played differently. You had KQ54 ds on the T95 flop and you decided to bet small. You explained that the flop fabours us so a small bet would do it.

I think that small bet is actully quite bad in that spot. We will not get mamy folds from much better hands and we open us for a check-raise.

We have two backdoor flushes so I guess that most turn cards will make the board even more favourable for our real hand or at least it will become to look more favourable for us. Like if the turn would be 7 which don't improve our hand our opponent might think that it did.

By delaying our bet/raise to turn I can see multiple benefits. It will look scatier to our opponent and we also can realize our equity better. We don't need protection to our pair of fives as most turn cards are more beneficial to us than to our villain.

Do you see any merit in that thinking and do you see that checking behind could also be good option there?

Basically if we assume that you play 30 hands per hour your edge has been over 30 bb/100. When combined with the extteme rake at live tables I would still consider that you are having a lucky streak.

I simulated 3 times banlroll development with edge of 20bb/100.

As you can see, the results will vary enough for this little sample, so that you can start to create any kind of beliefs.

In relation to blinds bad players do often bigger mistakes in deeper stacks, not vice versa. But you cannot play with same strategy when you are 400 bb deep than you play when you are 100 bb deep.

Also if anybody else has created a systematical studying plan, it would be good. Any material is appreciated!

Thanks for the hand.

For the flop I think that it is close.

Pros for flop bet

We need protection as most turn cards will be bad. Villains can also have a lot of weak draws that are too weak to call a bet 3-way, so by betting you are making villains to fold some equity. We can also gain a position in this hand if button decides to fold, which would be great.

Other things about the flop

Then this is counterbalanced by the facts you said. Only thing I would disagree is that you could always exclude nut-flush-draws with something else. Nut flushes will benefit a lot if worse FD's will continue. There is a chance that you have made hand, like top two and sb will have weaker FD. It is completely possible, that button choose to invite also sb to call while adding deception. I cannot say how often that would happen, but it is possible.

Generally I think that pros are weaker than cons, so I would recommend check-calling.

Turn

Also close I guess. One of the best cards for you, as 3 is not so likely to improve villains hand. Against draws your equity just increased a lot. I don't like check-calling again that much at turn. There are still a lot of favourable rivercards, but you are asking a difficult decision. By check-calling you let villain to realize his equity in much bigger way than you do by check-raising.

When you check-call villain has possibility to hit all the draws. And when a brick comes, villain can bluff some part of the draws by making you indifferent by calling with your hand. Therefore you are able to reduce your villains edge by check-raising. You also have some outs when you are called, so you should not be in absolutely terrible shape.

I still think that this is also very close between check-call, check-raise and check-fold. Even turn-cbet is quite close to these options in EV, but that is most likely the worst option out of four, as your fold equity for turn c-bet would be very low.

We are not that high in our range. And we essentially lack all the redraws at turn.

Therefore, fold the turn. And as played, fold the river.

How did it go?

What was your strategy? Did you feel that your strategy gave you an edge against the strategies of your opponents?

thanks for the hand! For sure you are not the only one suffering with the spot!

Basically you have 10 outs to nuts, but villain most likely block some of them. Especially if you are against straight, there is one out less. also two flush-outs will pair the board and that's tough spot again.

However K and A will give you two pairs which might be good.

How I see this spot is following:

For check call you are doing it for implied odds if the bet is reasonable big. You don't have the immediate odds against pot-sized bet as that would need 14 outs, while you have 9-10.. Your hand looks good but it is not strong enough to make money.

Against loose passive players I still like check-call, because implied odds are there. And they might also check back. By betting you will not benefit a lot becuse your fold equity isn't great. What would they fold now that they called on. flop?

Against tougher player we need more aggressive line here. Most regs don't expect you to check J9 there because fd came. So when you check they sense weakness. And therefore their betting range is most likely much wider than only nuts. Therefore personally I would often CR here. I might get some made hands to fold while I still have decent equity (25-35% when called). From 200 bb pot we will get 50-70 bb back (cost for us 20-40 bb) depending of their calling range. So villain needs to fold to CR roughly half of the time which is true I guess. Against some opponents it will not be true as many recreational players fold lot less than 50%.

Still at flop you can check-fold to avoid these spots. By choosing aggressive line your ev is dependent of your reads and you can make big mistakes there. Therefore it might be cheaper just check-fold the flop.

I have detected 2 leaks

1. Tendency to not respect enough raises.
   Especially when I have made hands and there are draws on board. The intuitive urge to call / reraise is much stronger than the A-game skill.
2. I overvalue sets already when hoping to hit them, especially for small pairs
   In reaality when money goes in and I have set, my equity is far from what it is in NL holdem

I think that I need to go through of multiple these situations. The urge to setmine or to call in order to hit will most likely remain. But when I have numbers to back up these decisions, I will most likely have easier folds in these quite clear situations.

I think that I will start systematically study equities in situation where I face a raise / CR.

I use the excel form I have created to see the effect via combinatorics.

Basically blockers will reduce the combos that villain could have the hand that you are afraid. However as you see here the effect is not that great and flop texture affects more than possible blockers.

For JT9 UTG opener is more likely to have straight even if you had QQ blockers than he is to 654 when you have 0 blockers.

But by using blockers you can automatically balance your bluffing frequencies and choose the most profitable spots. Many other factors will determine bluff profitability much more than single blocker.

Here is one example when we have two blockers and want to know the odds that one opponent would have nuts.

This is pretty old-school and not as accurate as using pokerjuice, but actually using excel is much quicker!

So if I know that with blockers one villain has nuts only once in 7.6 times, I can happily 2-barrel pots if I think that they fold everything else but nuts. By knowing this I also know that 3-barreling OOP against somebody who always calls with nuts is catastrophy 3-way, but not actually bad 2-way (because they float with more hands which they would then give up)

I will contunue another 15 minutes of the same video.

The last part was actually very useful learnigwise, despite the fact that I was only able to go through one hand. Nick responded to my comments and even gave them some merits.

Whenever you find spots in the video it seems to be good idea to comment them under video's commenting section. This will strengthen the learning process a lot.

Lets list few more spots where my play would have been different.

KsQcTc7d 3-bet from button vs cutoff raise after UTG has limped.

I think that the equity disadvantage combined with mediocre playability is not compensated by our position. I haven't really yet listened the comments, so I am curious about the reasoning.

Nick:

Generally this should not be a 3-bet hand and if I am 3-betting this I am generally 3-betting too wide. But this is max exploit. I think that I can get away with this.

I think that it is pretty close whether or not that can be compensated by position and skill edge. Especially because rake will eat 10% from villains calling as a rake. I would only do it if opponent plays fit/fold and does not check-raise.

Hand 2 - Suprising preflop fold

There was a hand at 13 minutes where short-stacked UTG limps and nick folds a hand J887. I wouldn't have folded it, so I decided to take a closer look.

I assume that limpers limp wide here without the top range. But of course limping range could be also many other hands. I think that this is still better spot to get money in than last 3-bet spot, but fold is not a bad play especially given the rake. If we limp, we are getting multiway. If we bet, we are against short-stack, which would stick with any pairs. So we don't benefit that much when we hit really strong and because we have a pair, we don't hit that often than we do with 4 different cards hand.¨

I think that this is close but probably a good fold even though I wouldn't have folded this.

Conclusion:

Maybe I should tighten my range against limpers too.

Hand 3 - Shocked

T864, 3-bet vs short-stack (40 bb) loose opener

Against 50% range we get only 43%. Given the possibility that blinds have excellent hand, this becomes just way too loose to my liking.

Equity edge is too big, fold equity is not high and short stack will not most likely fold if he will catch a piece of the flop. I just cannot see how this lines is +EV especially after the massive rake. Let's hear now the reasoning.

Nick: I think that this was a mistake. The reason was that I saw how wide he opens it. I did hand vs range analyze and decided to ask again within the video comment section. Let's see.

Conclusion from the method:

I really like the way to watch the videos and do the analyze for the situations. I have enough time to think with such an accuracy that I don't have while playing. While multitabling, I have maybe 5-10 seconds for these decisions and now I can spend several minutes with the details.

I hope that the pros won't get angry for me asking too much or questioning their decisions. For me this is just a method to learn via finding differences in the logic and reasonings.

At 20:30, you 3-bet with T864.

Even against 100% range we are behind. Against 50% range we have around 43%. PSR if called is just over 1. Isn't this just overlag and fishy way to put money in, when we are behind! Or do you think that villain really plays so fit/fold, that we can somehow get away by playing with so big equity disadvantage?

If we think that he has 50% open range, hand vs range looks like this, while overall equity is 44,2%

Isn't the idea of widening 3-bet ranges against fishes to bet more when we have equity advantage. So like 3-bet tight vs bad players and 3-bet wide vs good players. This because good players will fold more to c-bets and we benefit more from deception and our fold-equity is higher both at preflop and at flop.

Against bad players we need more to play with our hot-cold equity because they don't fold enough. Am I missing something in this logic? Because in my opinion the conclusion should be the opposite.

This player opens very wide but doesn't fold. I wait until I have a hand which has equity advantage and then I punish him for being too loose. But you try to outplay him and punish him by believing that post-fold you have enough fold-equity vs him to justify that?

First, please remove the results. You can still edit it and seeing results might affect to the comments. But in the moment of decision we don't know the results, so suggestions should be given without that knowledge.

About bluffing

Pros

Your villains seems to have some kind of drawing hand there, maybe pair + overcards, overpair, two pairs, pair + guthost. Also backdoors are possible.

Ace and Three won't really help him too much and two pairs where one is ace will most likely lead in turn. Generally your opponent should be quite weak.

Cons

Your line lacks some credibility if you bet. Which made hands would you check behind there? Straights never, two pairs + straight draw maybe (but would you value-bet these in river?) So your bet will look suspicious against a range which is also weak.

Regardless, I most likely would bluff as my showdown value is not very high there.

Your reply made much sense!

So the issue with betting IP small here is that it is too suspicious? However this is not that much the issue as you could have supernuts, like set and straight what you also would like to value smaller to get more calls.

Thanks a lot for the reply also!

I must disagree here with Phil Galfond about the best line when it comes to flop bet. To disagree with him feels weird and really challenge my self confidence. But I cannot get rid of my thinking, so I try to explain why I can see a better line in my opinion.
I try to write a lot of details so these arguments can be corrected if necessary.

I see well what you want to achieve with betting and that there are worse hands which will pay often enough. But I think that instead of trying to extract the maximum value from hands like KK99 we should try to maximize the value against his complete range. This includes also other parts than these paired hands

From his range, the big part are hands which miss the flop completely. And this is the part of his range that flop-bet won't extract the maximum value. This part also could easily try to bluff at least once if we check the flop.

If the opponent pot-controls his pair of kings, we still have two rounds to extract value by betting ourselves. By betting only turn and river if checked behind at flop, we can get almost the same EV against this kind of hands.

But if he has nothing at flop there are two ways how we can get more money.
1. He tries to bluff (which we can call at least twice)
2. He can get a pair and decides to float to our turn bet
(3.) We can prevent him bluff-raising for instaprofit and making us to fold (This one is not that clear, as he can still 3-barrel bluff, where we just cannot call

With the equity breakdown card by card I wanted to show that regardless of turn cards, the range-vs-range equity remains pretty much as it is. Therefore we don't need protection, because turn-cards won't really change the situation. That is very unique spot, where we can check and let the villain improve a little to get more value.

The value we can miss by checking is from hands like QQJJ if K comes (And we can also loose to hands which will get sets (But we expected these hands to call anyway, so against turned or rivered sets, we would lose anyway)

Increased value against his air compensate the reduced value against his made hands by choosing more passive line. This is how I see it, but I am happily corrected if that is not the case.

Just how I would see this hand in position is following.

This hand most likely did not hit the opponent. He can have A4, but most likely not. A4 is just a piece from his range. Sets are even more rare so this is the spot, where his c-bet range is weak. Maybe it is not very weak against my average calling range, but it might be too weak to call a raise. This is where I smell a good spot to bluff. Let's say I would have called with JT87 with one backdoor. Instead of folding I could easily raise that hand in that spot.

I don't say that other players in PLO 25 or PLO 50 or PLO 100 will see the flop in a similar way, but best players at these limits are also tough. By frequently c-betting these like you do, you at least create an imbalance in your range, where your overall range becomes weak.

Basically what I didn't like with your bet, is that it would be very vulnerable against bluff raise in a spot, where bluff raises will be quite frequent at least when you climb up in stakes. It still can be the best play at PLO 50 against your opponent but thinking about being balanced cannot do too much harm especially when we still can deviate from balanced play to exploit passive villains by purpose!