StuZero

like 1/2 pot, I want our opponent to raise rather than flat here as we flip with AQ so Im happy getting it in.

I think if we led pot then he is more likely to flat the flop, but a small bet often will get raised lighter here.

I find that when a FD misses, people call light. So I wouldnt bluff this spot.

I quite like leading here rather than CR as we take initiative, and if we get raised then we have a strong enough draw to shove, where as if we CR we often get called rather than raised and that makes the turn harder to play as the pot is bloated and your allin equity drops.

Do II really want to be aiming to get money into what is currently a small pot with what are dominated draws?

I would check through and play the turn. He plays a lot of Ax and will almost always check to you on the flop (they always do as they feel you will only continue with an ace).. He wont fold a PP here so your just betting to take out hands you beat.

Hi Phil

Id be interested in how to deal with sticky opponents with insanely wide ranges when Im OOP. Id like to know when to 2 or 3 barrel with a air type hand like AQ (which does beat things they hold) What type of boards should I give up on and what type should I bet on?

For example if I hold 66 on Q97r should I bet once, twice or 3times THe guy is likely to call the flop and turn with any 7 but then I guess I dont know how to figure out if the third barrel is profitable.

"As played, I suspect him to have a weaker ace and he is raising as he doesnt want to get re-drawed."

I think he would raise bigger with a weaker hand in that case.

Min raises from fish are usually the nuts

In order to call this bet you need to be right almost 100% of the time

So are you 3betting to create a large MW pot or are you 3betting to fold out everything worse than JJ?

If he is loose then he probably wont fold which means the SB will likely call.

Flop and turn bet should be bigger, its a drawy board which means your c betting range is stringer and thus a bigger bet is appropriate.

River Id bet 1/2 pot and fold to a raise. I dont think people raise the river bet a s a bluff very much but think we find ourselves in a wierd spot if we check.

The Td pretty much completes all the draws here so he is unlikely to have many hands that he actually needs to bluff with on the river as virtually everything now has SD value

Thanks Aleksandra

could you please post a link to actual articles that deal with preflop calling ranges because Im looking at the descriptions and they all look like 3 betting preflop or postflop plat where as I am looking for preflop calling ranges. Thanks

are there any articles about optimal preflop calling ranges?

It seems that everything is centred around raising preflop and very little about what GT says about calling.

Yeah, unfortunately fish do play weird sometimes. You cant take all of the 2 pair or set combos out of their range but their range is so wide that they could have anything so all of the strong stuff is dwarfed by the stuff you beat.

He probably feels like a genius but THB you could have had a set or AK or be on a draw that he is letting you see cheaply.

You played it just fine.

Also if the Ah were the Ac and the 4h were the 4c (FD still there but now he could have Axs) then yes I would shove because he wont ever find a fold with Axh (TP + FD)

he is probably on a FD (they usually are and is trying to set a cheap price.

That said I wouldnt shove here Id Probably raise to $4.80. He might fold a FD to a shove but will almost always call a bet that's a little under a shove.

If the flush its on the river it would have hit anyway and these guys sometimes even shove their last $1 into a $10 pot as a bluff when they miss.

So I wouldnt shove but I bet something thats close to a shove.

I think whats happening is this. GTO is really just showing you what the 5 bet game looks like, then for the 5 bet game to exist the 4 bet game must already be in place, for the 4 bet game to work,, the 3 bet game must be there. If someone isnt playing the 3bet game and is just 3betting AA/KK then you exploit that by folding and the 4 bet and 5 bet game cant be played..

I wish I could edit these posts because I keep thinking of stuff after I hot the post button.

GTO isnt something that you necessarily want to do, its just something that you want to understand.

If you have a good understanding of GTO then you can compare your opponents strategy to GTO and that will show you where all his leaks are.. and then you deviate away from GTO to exploit it.

The reason top players play close to a GTO style is that if you are playing against someone like Durrr or Mr Galfond, then if you have leaks, they will spot them and adjust so you sacrifice your winrate and play close to GTO just to be in the game. I dont know how Phil Galfond compares to Durrr, but I would guess that there is very little profit to be had by either of them in a game. In theory, if they both play perfectly then their winrates are both zero against each other. In a 6 max game, Phil isnt making money off Durrr or vise versa the money is coming from the other people at the table.

Durrr is obviously a famous example and a player known for his manic moves at the table, but I have heard stories about him where he plays Nits in tournaments and instead of 3betting 4 betting and shoving rivers and so on, he is just sat there folding because thats the way to exploit someone who is overly tight, he isnt sat there thinking, "this guy only ever 3bets AA / KK , I have A5s so Id better 4 bet to put some bluffs in my range otherwise he wont call if I raise."

I just thought, that you try and use a GTO style against me and I adjust to exploit you then the weakness that I create in my own play may be bigger than the gain I get from exploiting you... but if you dont spot the weakness and adjust then Im winning!

@Ace. You cannot play GTO on your own. GTO shows how your opponent should play, and if he dosent p[lay that way then he is exploitable.. but you then have to deviate away from GTO to do that. So if a guy isnt 3bet bluffing you cannot use a GTO range against him.

GTO is a bit like this. You write down exactly how you play poker, then you hand me that piece of paper, I read it and then write down exactly how I intend to play against you. I hand you the paper pack, you read my strategy and then write down all the adjustments that you intend to make based on how I play. You then hand the paper back to me I re-read your new strategy and make adjustments to mine, write then down and hand it back. At some point we will end up with a strategy that neither of us can improve upon. That is GTO. Our winrates are zero because you wont let me use a strategy that causes you to loose and vise versa.

A GTO strategy is a strategy pair, it takes two people to do it, if I deviate from GTO then I can exploit you but at the same time I create a weakness somewhere else that you can also exploit... but you have to spot the weakness. If you dont spot it then GTO wont spot it for you.

Ace GTO is a purely theoretical concept. You can only play GTO against an opponent who is also playing GTO. Two perfect players playing an optimal GTO statagy have a winrate of ZERO.

If you are 4 bet bluffing against a guy who never bluffs, then he isnt playing GTO so that means you cant either.

The whole point of GTO is to understand where the balance point is. If you know what your opponent "should" be doing and what his range "should be" then you can adjust from GTO to be explotive, because you know he never 3bet bluffs and only 3bets AA and KK, you can then fold KK to a 3bet.

If a guy dosent 3bet bluff but 3bets a wider range for value, and stacks off with most of that range, you can then 4bet a slightly wider value range than is GTO, but you cant bluff because he wont fold the required amount for your bluff to work.

GTO, in practice, is pointless. If you were in a game so tough that you had to play GTO, run away as fast as you can because both players will, in the long run, do no more than break even.

If you know what your opponent should do from a GTO point of view, then you are in a better position to exploit them. If your opponent 3bets too many bluffs and you notice this over time, then you can counter that by putting in more 4 bet bluffs. GTO just gives you an idea of where the theoretical balance point is and anyone who isnt playing close to GTO can be exploited.. the trick is figuring out how, but if you compare a GTO range to your opponents actual range, then you can more easily see what it is he is doing wrong and what you should do to gain from that.

I think a lot of people think that its a cookie cutter strategy that can be applied to anyone, when infact its more of a theoretical concept. That said, as opponents get better they get closer and closer to GTO, because they are preventing their opponents from exploting them and at the same time their opponents are making adjustments to prevent them from being exploited. Which is why winrates drop the higher the stakes you play.

So really you have to turn this on its head, rather than trying to play GTO, try and figure how far off GTO your opponents are playing and then make adjustments.

Also its worth remembering that this is a MW pot, he may have called the turn with a 22, 33, 77, 88 and FDs thinking that the BB might also call and thus giving him a better price

If he is not likely to raise then cant we put in a small vale bet? He could sill have 22, 33, 77, 88 here. I think we should discount JJ and QQ a little, even fairly passive guys raise big overpairs on drawy boards at least some of the time

If we are calling with this type of hand then shouldn't we be raising the flop? Forget about turning made hands into bluffs, isnt the whole point of calling a 3bet with 78s that we can rep stuff on flops?

I admit that this is something Im only just starting to work on, but I really dont like calling the flop with this hand because we know he barrels and so we know we have to call but our hand is really vunerable. Would we better off just raising flops like this to fold out AX Kx Qx type hands and out 78 offers some legitimacy in that.

What would we do on a blank turn? do we call again and give him chance to river a scare card (that really does improve his range) or do we plan on raising blank turns? If thats the case then I guess we call the flop and fold to a scare card on the turn or raise a blank depending on what happens.

If we just call down, and an A,K or Q strengthens his range to the point that our life is difficult (it improves a lot of his range) then we have to be aware on the flop that this is going to happen on the turn almost 25% of the time and if we just plan on calling the turn then we know on the flop that we are going to be in a tough spot by the river almost 50% of the time. To me that dosen't sound like an intelligent way to play.

These days people seem to barrel a lot and that makes me think that calling down with a vulnerable hand isnt the way to go.

I think we either need to raise more flops or more blank turns and give up more on scare cards.

What makes me want to raise the flop more is that we know a scare card will come 25% of the time on the turn so we only get to make our turn move 75% of the time, yet if raising were part of our plan then we know right now that we can do it 100% of the time, whereas if we call we are down to 75%.

Is what I'm thinking fundamentally wrong? If so, why?