Ravzar

You have to find calls with marginal holdings at some frequency and how marginal you have to call down to the river and whether those calls really are making money anyway vs most people.

Dry boards like AK2r and T52r would be good. I think the difficulty I face and many people face is we call with some marginal hand on 223 like AQ or on AK2 with some Kx hand and then get into trouble on turns and rivers facing more aggression and it feels like we just call and have to fold a lot and just bleed money.

I would like to see the same video but from the perspective where we do not have the nut advantage once we have called a 3 bet.

Jonas I thought I understood you to say that the C/R range has a lot of weak bluffs on that board texture. If this were so, it should reflect negatively on the OOP player's equity. However, it doesn't seem to impact the equity of their range that much. The OOP player's range is quite strong because not only does a robust C/R range have pretty high equity overall, the bluff's have very robust equity in that they tend to make the nuts or air instead of bluffs that tend to make air or just pretty nice hands. You were making it as an aside point though I think, it's not so much about the merits of raising TP or not except insofar as your first point in the video that good players may do something because it works for their overall strategy and their ranges.

Want to play me say 2 tables HUNL at 50NL, 100NL or 200NL for an hour (or two) and make a video/hand history out of it? Not sure what stakes is the best fit for essentials. I might even check raise some top pairs for you (although I agree with you in the J6 hand, not going to check raise that!)

On the 942r board in CREV I think you are being led into error on the EV of certain flop calls in the SB because of the ultra small check raise sizing chosen. To such a small sizing, a lot of things are a call. You can't call a naked gut shot vs a check raise profitably if the check raise is to a more standard size.

His range also has more equity than you think. Consider a potential check raising range of:

A9, K9, 35s, A3, A5, 56s, 22, 44, 42s and add in say JTs with a bkdoor flush (I doubt people are check raising 99, 94s or 92s since that would probably be less +EV than calling and most 3 bet 99), this range has considerable equity. If you called with KJ you have less than 25% equity vs this range. The gut shots have 26% - 28%, not really enough for a call. 9T has 37% equity. The only one pair hands ahead of this range are A9 and TT+. That's just looking at equity, if you consider the robustness of the OOP player's equity, he has a lot of gutshot draws to the nuts in his check raising range. His range is super polarised between pretty nutty type hands and draws that either turn no equity or turn the nuts. The only addition to this is the A9 and K9 which make it slightly more mergey but at the same time these hands are really far ahead of any reasonable calling range. Once the guy can't profitably call you with gutshots (back to the raise size issue) and overs, he is stuck calling you with worse hands and traps so you get this situation that Will Tipton talks about of "Polar range vs bluff catchers + traps" which is a super common situation in HUNL.

Jonas I understand your point about the As9s hand on 2sKs7d5s to be that if you raise the turn and the river pairs the board, your range is going to be capped at a flush. I think this is an incorrect thought process for the following reason:

1. If we raise the turn we will almost always be checked to on the river by most villains when the board pairs.

2. If villain decides our range is capped and donk shoves the river, well it's still going to be +EV to raise the turn because he can't possibly be exploiting us. If we make a raise on the turn he can't call the turn in the hopes the river pairs so he can donk shove his entire range because he is putting too much money in the pot on the turn. Even if we always fold, there is only a 25% chance the board pairs (less if he actually has a set) so if he wants to stick in money on the turn with weak hands, he is going to be lighting money on fire the other 75% of the time. Therefore, he has to only call with hands with reasonable equity to a turn raise. When the board pairs we can expect him to check his flushes and two pair to us. To balance this he will end up having to check some boats which means he can't donk shove that often anyway.

3. It's better to get value now on the turn before the board gets scary. If we raise now he has to call with two pairs and sets and even some pair+spade or straight draw+spade hands. If we just call and the river comes a spade, most of these hands now check and we only get a bet on the river. If we raise the turn we get the opportunity not just for the turn bet but for the river bet too.

4. It's possible to make a turn shoving range if you have the appropriate amount of bluffs.

5. A raise works well for our overall range since we might like to raise As here as a bluff after checking back the flop. Some of the time we need to actually get to the river and have it.

6. Our range isn't necessarily capped. If we check back KK on the flop (a pretty decent play on this board, especially since we are checking hands like AsQs so he can't overbet the turn reckessly) or 55, we can raise the turn in HUNL with the plan to check back all rivers unless the board pairs. If we split our ranges like this, villain can't just go donk shoving flops recklessly.

Hi Daniel. Did you ever run the EV calc for the worst hand we should call here in the second tree vs a reasonable bluffing range? It would be a K but I am wondering what kicker. I think we have to be calling K9 but I wonder if K8 is a call? Any way you're willing to post/upload a copy of the CREV tree you used so we can play around with it on our own time?

Edit: I didn't bother to read properly. I responded to the situation where we had 99, we 3 bet, then got 4 bet. An interesting situation nonetheless so I kept that below. As for the OP, 4 betting is fine. Calling is fine. I think I would call vs an unknown player. If you think he is a lot better than you then perhaps you should just call. Small 4 bets are good though since you force your opponent to flat a lot. We don't know if he is going to do something silly though like ship AJ over the top etc. That's why I might prefer calling. If you 4 bet and he shoves we are probably looking at folding tbh. You just don't need to defend 99 in that spot if you make a small 4 bet and he ships. You don't need to defend that loose to be unexploitable in that spot. Whether calling is more +EV than folding (more than 0 EV) or not is a different question but I think in an exploitative sense if we don't know anything about the guy and we arn't going to keep playing him anyway since we admit we are a bumhunter, we should just probably fold to a shove.

Alternative situation with 99 if we were the one who 3 bet and we got 4 bet:

It's generally a flat vs a 4 bet. 99 is a bit too weak to ship. Your opponent's correct calling frequency to a shove, if he uses any sensible range, has you crushed. I always thought shipping over 4 bets to be an odd strategy. Where else in poker can you raise 8 times another person's bet with a non-polarised range? It really is very odd. A 5 bet shipping range needs to be very polarised. You could make a linear 5 bet non-all in range though and that's a reasonable thing to do.