Scientifik

Well relative to position you would want to flat more IP than OOP regardless of rake. The reason your 3-betting goes up in a high rake environment isn't because of the type of players in the game but because you need to meet the MDF of a wager facing you.

The reason your 3-bet goes up with higher rake is because your MDF facing a bet remains the same however the increased rake will make some of the hands you would need to call with to reach your MDF -EV and folding has an EV of 0. Since folding these hands would leave you not reaching your MDF you now need to compensate for this by 3-betting more hands than you otherwise would if the rake was less to still reach your MDF.

This from my understanding accomplishes two things. Firstly when you 3-bet and win the pot outright you avoid the rake all together. Secondly the more hands that you raise as part of meeting your MDF the less hands you need to actually meet your MDF because you shift the burden of defense onto your opponent and force them to meet the MDF of your wager.

These games are pure blue line. Allow them to have the red line almost always.

Remember as the stacks deepen implied odds and thus reverse implied odds get more and more important compared to frequent showdown strength. These games are all about playing your hands to optimal SPR and to forget about balance because nobody will adjust at least not reasonably. Just plow money in there with value and keep it out when you missed. If you get to the river with TP and a solid kicker and you are checked to you would want to bet 1.5x with say the nut straight don't just check it back because 'You need to protect your checkback range" bet 1/2 pot and get that value. They will never notice you betting large with just the nuts and figure you are on a capped range with the 1/2 pot bet and push you off of it. They will just call you with all kinds of middle pairs, and stuff there is no way they should have. When you bet 1.5 x with just the nuts you will still get called with a bunch of TP solid kicker hands they should never call with no matter how dangerous the baord is. You can go for some semi-bluffs here and there but once called only keep shoveling it in with hands you won't mind playing for stacks with.

I also like the delayed c-bet in these games because of the rolodex fashion these low level players will think at. If you raise pre, get called then check back TP in position then a brick turns they check, you bet. You will end up getting called here by all kinds of shit that shouldn't have even called you pre-flop and wouldn't have called you on the flop had you just fired a c-bet. Third pair/ no playability, under pocket pairs, middle pairs etc.

They usually won't bluff against you in a check raising fashion either which means their continuing range when you're called will have tons of shit in it that is capped compared to the horrifically scary boards they will face down doing this which will allow you to check back hands you have no business getting to showdown with like say middle pair + flush draw that missed on river and also bluff many of your non showdown hands with reasonable blockers/ unblockers.

They have no concpet of what MDF is and simply won't process these spot further than "I have TP and I could be beat by hand XX I need to fold." Or they may be the type to fashion themselves a real smart player and even though they never read a poker book they think. "He took a sip of water so he has the nuts I fold!" or "His eyebrow twitched he's bluffing!"

They will simply raise all their nut hands usually ridiculously small or large with a Null Bluffing range. If small they think they will "keep you in" even if leaving in all draws for that price is laughable, if large they have some hand they aren't going to fold and want to save the anxiety of playing said hand against scary board cards they don't want to see coming. Either way tread with caution when check raised. If a large x/r like this comes just jam w/ the nuts and don't worry about how big the jam is compared to the pot. For the most part they just won't fold after they x/r.

Once you are playing a session and you won some decent sized pots red line style people will just assume because you keep betting large and weren't called down you had to have been bluffing the entire time. You will start to get called absurdly loose even by people that otherwise seem to play too carefully. This can sometimes even continue even after winning some all-in hands. I think it has to do with people thinking everyone will praise them for showing you up or something. I never quite figured out why this is just that it seems to happen a lot when I play at the cheap seats where I won a bunch of decent sized pots and didn't showdown.

The big thing to pull out of this is that these players are almost all of the non-thinking variety and that you should be playing your hands in a manner that maximizes value for your nutted range and pot controls hands you don't want to play for stacks. Give aggro-tards extra rope, unless you are facing an aggro-tard expect any x/r to be near nuts, expect your implied odds to be largely way better than they should be when you see any level of aggression on almost any street period. Villain 3-bet cold calling range about the same
as their regular 3-bet calling range which is absurdly wide. 4-betting range pre will be likely AA-KK and maybe AK and usually not even that unless they are an aggro-tard and then they will make it overly obvious and they will just plow it in there with something like 75 offsuit.

I like making that sort of play. First you fold out the maximum hands that you can with that bet which this hand should definitely want to do. You also make more out of the range that continues when you spike your T or 6. Both because you make the potential pot bigger but also because you strengthen your opponents continuing range on the river when you bet the turn large.

I suspect you are the one that is supposed to bet more because you being the three bettor should have a range advantage even though your nut advantage is similar to the IP caller. Also you probably don't want to check back too much on that flop after 3-betting pre because it will leave you folding too many hands that do have equity like your AK in this case. Turning this hand into a bluff seems reasonable to me. You have 3 cards to the nuts 1 to a strong value hand and 6 outs to a solid showdown defense. I definitely don't like 1/3rd pot there though. If you are going to bet that OOP I would think even more than 1/2 pot would be appropriate. What sizes did you give PIO to choose from?

That's what I am saying that has to be part of the forum post. All the details that went into the PIO sim. This I don't think would bet too hard to do. example: 77-JJ, AKo-AJo, 45s-JTs, etc.. type format. What bets would be allowed by both players represented in the sim also.

All the Francesco Lacriola stuff. For PLO I would watch all the Nick Johnson vids. NLHE I like Henry Lister and Peter Clarke. Also all the Leszek Badurowicz mental game stuff.

These types of charts confuse the piss out of me honestly. I do the same mental flip flopping your do and confuse myself. I always think about it in terms of min defense frequency or bluff catching indifference. If you take a bet divide it by the total pot including the bet then that then take 1- that number this is how often you need to call so your opponent is indifferent to bluffing you with any two cards. I.E. $50 bet $100 pot 1-($50/$150) =.66. If you want to know how often you need to value bet with a given bet size in order to keep your opponent indifferent from bluff catching your bet you just take 1- their pot odds. I.E 1-($150:$50) or 1-(3:1) or 1-(.25)=.75

I don't understand your sizing here. Why bet 1/3 pot on this flop allow your opponent to continue with all kinds of draws profitably then barrel this turn hard. Why not check back this river then?

Why not bet this flop 3/4 pot - pot then check back the turn and bluff catch river? By the way what is your third stat? I assume 3-Bet?

1) Shrugs I almost only ever semi-bluff if I am playing live. I feel like the sloppy bet sizing and the fact that you have like 5 people in about every other hand with low SPRs prevents reasonable bluffing mostly. Because of the gap concept you need stronger and stronger hands just to open as more people limp which leaves a narrow and tight opening range to begin with. I've seen some people seem to sort of get away with a LAGish approach but to me it's like why not just take the low hanging fruit. People live have no clue and call way too much. Just push value everywhere you see it and look for those big exploits.

2) Janda's book should teach you this in the simplest and clearest terms I've seen it put in. The base concepts here where every other decision you make will spring from is 1-A which is otherwise known as the minimum defense frequency. This is simply the bet size divided by the pot including the new bet made. Example $100 pot guy bets $50 your action. you divide 50 by 150 which equals .33333. This is how often your opponent needs to win for this bet to break even assuming he will not win win called. 1- this number which is the variable A is .66666. This means you need to call or raise this bet 66% of the time or your opponent will be able to make this bet profitably with any two cards. If you defend at this frequency you should make the opponent INDIFFERENT to bluffing here

The other side of this which I believe is called 1-B but don't quote me on that because it gets rather complicated which is where you looking at the same bet as the role of the bettor. you have a $100 you think I want to bet $50 so you look at your opponent's pot odds and see how often they need to break even facing that bet. In this case you take $150 : $50 which is 3 : 1. You convert this to a fraction 1/4 which means they need to win 1/4th the time to break even which is .25 1- this number or B is .75. This means when you make this bet %75 percent of the time it needs to be for value and $25 percent of the time it need to be as a bluff. This will make the opponent INDIFFERENT to calling this bet to prevent you from bluffing.

5) & 6) Laciola is just hard to understand with his accent and if you don't have a GTO framework will be hard to figure out anyway. Start with the book. Learn about 1-A, 1-B, and indifference. Don't worry about actually achieving these things yet just understand them as concepts. As far as Snowie just choose any bet size that is similar to that you are playing. in your case use .1/.2 or even $1/$2. Snowie's solutions will not change with the bet sizes. Its all about the bet sizes in relation to the pot and relative stack sizes or SPR stack to pot ratio. Your bets in real life will look the same number wise just move the decimal points. A .06 bet will now just be a .6 bet.

I feel like on river did you feel indifferent to calling? If so this is probably towards the bottom of your calling range. Do you feel like this guy never bluffs? Then you should fold. When playing against a large bet like this use your read on the player and meta game you are playing in first and if you then feel indifferent use your GTO analysis. If you felt indifferent about it call is reasonable but I don't think you would be losing gobs of EV folding there either.

Other than that yeah I like full pot 4-bet here. Otherwise this looks fine to me. Another thing I like to do in some of these spots is 1/4 pot that turn this does two things. If you get raised there significantly you can fold the turn with confidence saving you lots in these spots because the players in the metagame are almost never bluffing the x/r turn unless they are an aggrotard and if you know they are then just adjust accordingly. I also feel like there are a lot of people at $10 zoom I'm ACR so it's $10 Blitz to me will just blast rivers like that when the board is awkward and you bet once then started checking as if you can't have any of the hands that would wreck them but will instead play like a sheep if they see another bet from you no matter the size.

You bet Polar IP largely because you have a range of hands that have better EV calling your opponent's bets than raising for value. Most of the hands in this calling or capped range can't profitably call bets OOP so when you are OOP you protect the equity you would have to give up on some of these hands when folded by turning some of them into bluffs thus giving you a more Linear 3-betting range OOP. The rest of the hands that you want to raise for value IP would be exploitable by your opponents overfolding however if you had no bluffs. Because a large number of hands which play better as calls IP than raises would lose EV if you turned them into bluffs by 3-betting them leaves you with having to use hands which you could not profitably call IP but have some good playability postflop ie. (good blockers on a lot of boards, good implied odds, etc). These "Bluffing hands" have to have an EV>=0 though otherwise they would make superior folds.

I don't know this isn't the worst played hand I ever saw although jamming the river is bad. X/C and X/F at some frequency is probably best. The Ac blocker should lean you towards X/C more often than X/F. Ultimately use those reads though. If you feel indifferent call it. If you feel like he never bluffs anything or isn't that stupid that he is firing weaker Ax hands then just fold.

The wheels fell off the cart long before the river though IMO. Given the flop and the fact that you are the 3-bettor I like 1/4 potting that flop instead of 1/2 potting. This allows you to mix your betting range and your checking range protecting both without capping your checking range. The A is better for you than it is for him and the rest of the board is largely inconsequential.

He has more flush draws but he will also have more total whiff hands. This will also give you better pot control which is where the awkwardness begins on the turn with the $1.00 pot. As played you get to this turn and the pot is $1.00 you have to consider before you bet that you are in danger of making a large pot where you may have to make a hero call or fold river don't let him put you in these positions for large pots be in those positions for smaller pots.

The other thing you could have done as played after the 1/2 pot flop was polarize this turn and consider a large bet like pot or more. Once he calls the flop his most likely hands are a weaker A than you or a flush draw since you have the Ac he can't have top pair and a flush draw. This puts his range in an awful spot. Once you bet $2.11 - $2.60 here he either has to over fold his range or call with a fair amount of Ax hands which you smash either way you win and if he refuses to fold his flush draws and doggedly calls you down with just a flush draw great put a rec tag on him and value bet him large every chance you get.

1) Casino games are a joke compared to online. If you can beat like .05/.10 online then you will crush pretty much any $1/$3 - $2/$5 game live. So yeah it's not your imagination.

2) Get a GTO basis to your game. I feel like GTO to poker is like BJJ to MMA. You don't have to specialize in that play style exactly however if you are going up against people with some GTO understanding and you have none you will get crushed tin can.

3) Read Mathew Janda's book Aplications of No Limit Holdem or something like that. The first book he wrote not the sequel with the advanced content you can skip that one Snowie will be better than that.

4) If that book feels like too much try David Sklansky's new book The Theory of Poker Applied to NO-LIMIT. Hell read it either way it's Sklansky.

5) Watch theoretical videos here on RIO by Francisco Lacriola. He has a bunch of content here on the essential plan which I think is fantastic. At first it will make your head swim but after you start to understand the content in Janda's book you will find yourself understanding what Francisco is talking about and you will pull some real power out of that content.

6) You NEED some sort of training software to get your head around this stuff unless you are some sort of idiot savant or something. Don't think looking at 5 hands a day on a piece of paper is going to cut the mustard. IMO Poker Snowie is the way. I don't have subscriptions to the other software so I can't speak on them but Snowie is invaluable for practicing your understanding of these concepts and analyzing your game inside out at a pace that's reasonable. Plus it's much simpler to get your head around how to use than PIO and such. I also like how it tells you the EV of the plays it reccomends and other plays it doesn't so you can use this to get extra creative in spots you think you can exploit people in.

Hi Darren Great video!

Have you found any data correlations using these reports such as flops with good or bad equity realization for our opponents being good candidates for check raising for example?

Also do you know if there are any places where people upload these csv files so people can download them for spreadsheet analysis?

Thx for your time!

Great video! On the hand around 27:14 where you are talking about using an overbet on this board because the queen is good for our range. Three questions. First how big would your overbet be 1.5x pot? Also when using an overbet on this turn instead of the size you did choose How does this effect your river bluffing frequency and value combos? I assume most rivers you would bet large again with your value combos so you would need sufficient bluff combos to be balanced. Would this be a good candidate or a bad candidate as a bluff on most run outs after taking an overbet line on the turn and getting called?

I don't use PIO personally so I am always a little confused about the bet sizes it suggests. When it says B16 or B40 as an action does this mean bet 16 or 40 percent of the pot?

You say here that we should call 3-bets less than theoretically correct OOP because of rake effect
which seems perfectly reasonable. Does this also mean that we should be 3-betting wider in position than theoretically correct to put our opposition in the same sort of jams? Or does this simply force us to increase our 4-bet range in defense of this?

On the AQ hand where the flop came KJ2 3:00 and you advocated for a large bet OOP. How do you feel about a check raise option here seeing that we should have a range advantage or at least a nutted advantage and we have good blockers here to hands that may want to continue? I also feel the times when our opponent does continue here and we do happen to spike the T that we also have way better implied odds than barreling every street because we strengthen their continuing range with the check raise.

:( another good content creator gone or now elite. Good luck with your next venture.

Oh well before I saw this I sort of thought that hands that we checked and called which had a greater EV than leading out were essentially functioning as our bluff catchers. After watching this unless I misunderstood the material only hands which are indifferent to calling or folding can be classified as bluff catchers. Assuming I understand this correctly if we meet our minimum defense frequency partially with hands that have some EV when we check and call then we need less hands in our range that have zero EV as a call and thus need less bluff catchers assuming of course that a bluff catcher can only have zero EV when called.

Oh that makes for a good question then I guess. If you have hands in your range that maximize their value by checking and calling vs betting does this mean that you need less bluff catchers in your range that have an EV of zero? Or does this just mean that our opponent was unbalanced with his value betting range in the size they chose?

This was a good video thanks a lot. More of this stuff please. GTO concepts broken down and then related to real gaming conditions and exploitative thought processes. The concept that the bluff catcher could only beat my opponents bluffs and never his value combos was something I always struggled with before. This never quite made sense to me until it was broken down like this. I always kind of thought "What does it matter if my bluff catcher beat some of his value combos that just makes it a better bluff catcher doesn't it?" Now I see that that wasn't actual bluff catching but merely calling a hand that maximizes it's EV better in my calling range rather than my betting range.

The idea isn't to make money vs Snowie. The idea is to stay within a tight EV range of Snowie on every given play when it evaluates your EV. For instance say you play Snowie and you win 3 buy ins within say 200 hands but it says you played at beginner level it means your play sucked that session despite the "result" of money won in buy ins or if "snowie folded to my 3-bet or 4-bet every time I 3-bet or 4-bet". In contrast if you lost 5 buy-ins in the same span of hands however you got a world class ranking in the end this means you played well that session and are probably learning. I guarantee if you chose to play 100% of hands or come over the top of Snowie every time you won't learn anything and your evaluation at the end of the session will be beginner.

I only wish they would make a Poker Snowie for Omaha.

I am a big proponent of Snowie. It has helped me learn a lot about GTO. I read Applications of No Limit Holdem by Matthew Janda then I applied the concepts in there to my playing against Snowie. Then I thought about Snowie's feedback about my play in the context of GTO. Essentially why does Snowie want this hand in this part of my range? Then I started to look at when Snowie would tell me I am wrong for making a bet because it liked a check better but I wanted that hand in my betting range for whatever reasons relevant to my thinking at the time like I wanted flush draws or straight draws in my betting range in that spot for example. I would then look at the different bet sizings to find out that I lost EV by betting say half pot but maybe double pot was only within 3/100 of a BB difference between checking there so I would remember to use that sizing for those types of hands in spots like that. I then would actually intuitively start to use two bet sizings in a lot of spots I used to use only one and think about balancing both of those spots with different hands in my range thinking about which hands had the best blockers for bluffing with which bet size and etc. This training tested my new growing knowledge of GTO and helped me learn those concepts way faster than I would have learned them just reading the book previously mentioned or I think using something like PIO where I would just have to look at a bunch of graphs and try to absorb all the answers then extract their meanings all on my own.

Thx Great Video. The hand toward the end of the video on the left where you have AhQd9h7s and you decide to pot bluff on river. Is this a good bluffing candidate because of all the blockers to the T or more so because we have the Q blocker exactly? It seems to me every card in your hand blocks a T combo partially so I couldn't tell if you ripped the bluff because of the effect of having all the blockers or if it was blocking the Q specifically.

How do you feel about a quarter pot bet sizing on the flop instead of a jam on any of these spots where we 4 bet someone OOP?

At 10:40 where you were talking about the strength of the Ah9h8c7s. How do you feel about the same hand double suited? From the hero's position in the cut off would that hand then be a raise preflop?