Tir-X

I'm guessing you have an overpair? You didn't specify :D

Yes, pre 3bet is too small. Even 115 is small imo. I'd like 150-170 more.
Reason: live games more loose + you are deep.

I think the best strategy is to watch a few live plays and some GTO solver videos.
Take notes when watching, of everything you find interesting or leads you to more and more questions. (you can get to sort of the same conclusions by tagging questionable spots and also analyzing your play)

Based on those notes you can create a plan for yourself. What spots to work on first. Then you can search for that type of content and practice it, progressing through your plan. (which will inevitably keep changing as you build and progress)

So many things to unpack and think about in your videos.

No offense to other good creators but your content is what made me come back to rio and renew my subscription. Keep it up please! :)

Oh man, I am so glad I've stumbled upon this video. The way you built it up and explained everything... makes you understand and learn a whole lot more than what's the actual topic of this one is.
I'm just bummed you're not a cash game coach :D

Best video I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot :D
Thank you!

While I don't agree with "if you don't know gto, you don't know how to exploit", I do agree that it is very useful to know. When you're exploiting, a lot of the times you're exploiting player pool tendencies and you don't really need a deep understanding about what gto solutions would be, you just need an understanding of what is the kind of best ev line (which is not the gto line at all in these cases).

BUT... There comes a point where you encounter more and more of the kind of players that make you think "shit I don't know what he's playing this way, I have no clue how to play any of my hands against him". They're somewhat or well balanced, using different strategies than the before mentioned weaker players and don't really have the kind of leaks you can see, unless you are very, very good. And these days, unfortunately these moments come up playing even in a NL25 zoom pool but NL50 zoom for sure.

Against these players you will benefit a ton from studying gto. Just don't fall into the mistake of using or thinking about gto ranges when playing recreational players or very weak fishregs. That's a mistake I've seen a lot of micro/small stakes players do when they start studying gto.

I've made some calculations... I know the calculation is BTNvBB and should be some other pos vs pos, shoud've done OOP, I don't know why it's this one I did... not gonna change the outcome drastically... not in a godd way anyway. Hoping I didn't mess up anywhere:

• If we minraise from BTN and SB 3bets ~15% with a 10bb size, then he calls vs our 4bet shove with the top 4.68% (88+, AKo, AQs+), 100bb stacks, with this roughly 70% FE we would need 34% EQ against his calling range, not even calculating in the rake.

88 is 31.8%, 22 is 28.9% equity. It seems to me this would be negative EV, except if villain 3bets more than 20% or something. Even then it's like eh, sort of breakevenish. What do you guys think?

• Where am I sitting, do I have the best position on the fish?

• How deep is he, are we at least 100bb effective or are we even more?

• How good are the other players? All regs or some weak regs, nit regs, fishregs too?

• Is there someone who is too good and can take adventage of me? Is this person sitting directly to my left or not?

• How common is a good fish like this in your games? Is it gonna be every 2nd day or only like once a month?

• And as the guys mentioned, how bad/good is my B/C game? We're all different, some have solid B games and some have it quite bad.

Soooo many factors, impossible to answer.

MatoStar I believe he was referring to exploitative checkbacks by more complicated strategy (which I completely agree with that it is a higher EV strategy than just straight up range cbet against everyone).
Trough an example: On an A72r flop if you cbet your whole range, you'll make money, it's +EV because villain have missed with the bigger part of his range. But the question is: Is it the highest EV play wit all of those hands and against everyone? Of course not. The first hand group that comes to mind is strong hands that doesn't need protection and there are only a few or no bad turn/river cards for them. Let's say KK on A72. Will you make money with cbetting? Yes. Is it highly possible that checking it back will make you more EV against the population? Yes.

Therefore as Brett Banks said there's a lot of EV to be gained by realizing what hands you could gain EV with by not cbetting them - because most players can make mistakes OTT and OTR by bluffing or just calling you when they catch something. So as I stated before in this thread, I would checkback non-vulnerable and not too vulnerable value hands against recreational players and maybe even weak regs. Everyone that will probably make more and bigger mistakes if I give them some space, for the weaker part of their range that would fold OTF (which is the bigger part of their range and usually we want to make them make mistakes with the bigger part of their range).

So is it a confirmation that its not only more easy, but also more
profitable to cbet range on such board at nl2-10 ?

Yes, absolutely I would cbet 33% on an A72 flop even if I only have uno cards :) (not just from the BTN but in general) People very clearly overfold, especially OOP. And yes, it's even easier to play your let's say 44 as a cbet on this flop as it's quite vulnerable and you're giving free equity with a check.

The only checks you should have are strong, non-vulnerable hands against recreationals (you want to give them a chance to catch up and/or make a mistake with hands they would otherwise fold vs a cbet).

Even if this is partly exploitable if someone would have a perfect
raising range as the BB i think like its very very rare in the micro
and its even less probably playing zoom

Agree.

Do you think it would be better to consider thoses micro player only
raise double pair+ as max exploit or to play a little bit more
conservating giving them no raising range ?

You're asking what range to give them on micro that they're raising with, right? I think if you're looking at the whole population, it's more fit or fold than not and they also like to just call with 2pair+ on a flop like this. So I would just give them some 50% weight of that 2pair+ range, very few bluffs and that's it.

Betting range is all right but in that case it's pointless to bet this big. Think about what your goal is with your bet (or even your check if you choose that, I would btw).

What you don't want is for him to continue with only stronger hands and fold out all the weaker hands. Therefore any action we can take to shift this even a little bit is better. So you can like write a list or something with different kind of actions as an exercise and write down how that affects the range he's gonna stay in the hand with. For example if you'd bet pot, he will most probably fold everything but an Ax and a Tx. If you'd bet 1 bb he probably calls with a bunch of air hands that doesn't even have a draw. If you check, his whole flop range will stay in the hand.

This is just a useful thing to think trough I believe, in order to have this kind of thought process. Based on the above I would check but betting small can also be around the same EV (25-33% pot). I still prefer checking, he can make bigger mistakes with hands that would not even consider continuing.

Not just those but in live 1/2 games it's very common for recreationals to limp and then call a shove as a shortstack with a bunch of hands which are ahead of us like KQ, KJ, KT, any Ax, any pocket pair. I've played 6 hundred hours of 1/2 in London right before corona and this is something I've seen a lot of times. So shoving with JT is a bit silly.

zinom1 Yes, and I believe shoving is not the most +EV decision. I've given my argument for it and you saying "bad argument" is not enough to convince me that mindlessly shoving 30bb preflop aginst 2 limps is the best we can do here.

Thanks for the vid Henry, I like how you approach and talk about spots, very useful.

I do have a question, at 14:55:
We're bluffing against no made hands with the 64 against a recreational. Do we need to bet 66% for that? I believe 33-40% but definitely under 50% would have the same exact FE. What do you think, am I missing something? (Fish called pre, we bet the flop and turn)

But then in comparison couldn't it be that the check/fold line is the highest EV of all? Coz he will checkback hands he would fold against a shove, we win against those just like when we shove (and the same goes for his occasional sd value).

This way we can say that shoving from our part only makes sense if when he calls we will win more than 50% of the time - like when examining if a vbet is really a vbet in a vacuum (as there are no other factors like he could makes us fold the better hand when checking etc, we can look at it just like that).

Would lead the flop with value. When it's multiway, coordinated and there's a fish, you're missing value checking coz the preflop raiser is gonna check it way too much.

River blocking vbet makes sense, I like it.

As for his range:
When you check and he bets he can still have some missed straight draws around the 8 and J and might bet an 8x but that's not very likely. His size changes this range a little bit though, the frequency of missed draws decrease as I believe he will bet bigger most of the times with those combos. So quite a lot of flushes in this betting range but with this odds it's obv a call, he might be betting those straight draws or an 8x, 99, TT sometimes.
When you blockbet he will always call with an 8x and almost always with a 6x, if you bet small enough, that's why I like the idea.

Could be some give ups that will fold to a river bet (not a lot, considering the board) but those will not bet-check-bet bluff anyway on this kind of board.

I like how you played the hand but river seems tricky. Only size against a reg should be a shove I think but what is he gonna call us with really? Especially considering that he folded to 4 3bets before he called this one and that he was izo raising, not opening (a bit tighter range).

• I'm thinking he can have AT, QQ, KQ and 55 that beat us (I put AK mostly in the turn betting range), maybe a T9s.
• What about the hands we beat and will call a bet? Maybe an AQ - If he bets it OTF and if he calls it OTR.

What do you think lIlCitanul about this range? Do you believe there is something I'm missing? Do you think AQ is in a high enough frequency there to vbet?

Seeing this I would not valuebet the river and funny enough, I might even consider a check/fold as we are very-very clear showdown value with the intention of check/calling the river so I doubt anything can bluff. Fortunatley AQ can valuebet and ofc I know that against a reg folding the very top of our range could be bad.

Thanks mate :)

Good point about the rake. As I'm not very sure about the vbet anyway, this can be a reason to convince me about the check.

I see what you mean now, you were talking about a pot size OTR. That would be an overkill and would make fold hands we need in the calling range. But villain had a bit more that half pot left, so it was basically between 50-60% pot size shove.

But it might be thin here even like that, I can get behind the check as CrappyTimeSlot said. And Mudkip made a good point too about the rake.

RaoulFlush Doesn't matter if Hero has x amount of bluffs in his range or not. In regards of valuebetting or checking is more EV OTR. This is exactly a spot what I was referring to before, when I said there are spots at smaller stakes where people mess up the thought process with trying to implement some kind of solver/gto based stuff.

The only thing that matters is villain's range OTR and what he's gonna call with. He's not gonna think about our range in the classic way, in the same way as a reg does, therefore how we play the rest of our hands here doesn't matter at all. His decision of calling or not will mostly be based on his own card and emotions. By emotions I mean a wide range of things like he could be the kind of player who has a huge ego and just can't fold any weak pair. Could be someone who is always afraid of the better hand so folds stronger hands (not too common). Could be an emotion based on previous experience like winning a big pot with a bluffcatch a week ago, that's gonna be a positive emotion paired with calling light... You get what I mean.

Point is he's not gonna consider our range in a classic way but rather based on his own emotions and stuff that happened to him in the past and how he usually interprets those things. Everything considered, fish is gonna call you pretty light most of the times.

I like the idea of this valuebet, I play it exactly the same. Wouldn't say it's super easy, feels kind of close but the idea itself and that Hero is thinking about this is a very very good thing. Whether or not in this exact case it'll be a small +EV or BE or a small -EV, I don't think that matters and it's also hard to say. I feel like it can be a small +EV.

This1s Pok$r Of coure man, more input is always good. Even if we disagree, it's all good :) Very often the truth lies somewhere in between and these opinions of others are the ones that help one to soften those edges and change those views a little bit in the right way.

My point of view comes from my experience. I've made it to beating midstakes without learning GTO at all and in the past 11 years I've also seen a lot of students and fellow players, coming at poker in so many different ways. And I just believe that most of them who delved into GTO at smaller stakes were wasting time with solvers and could've used that time for much more valueable stuff - again: given the stakes and the player pool they were playing at, understanding GTO can be very useful from a certain point of a poker career. I just think most players jump into it too early therefore they miss a lot of other stuff.

Also exploitative strategy goes hand in hand with gto. How can you
exploit properly if you don't know how someone is deviating from
theory?

It's not deviating from GTO that is a mistake or a leak. You say that GTO is useful because you know when to deviate. Actually, at smaller stakes you should always deviate. There is almost no spot when you should play even a near GTO range at a decision point, otherwise you'll loose EV. That part only comes when you're playing against someone who doesn't have many leaks or as you said, is playing in a way where you find it hard to decide what to do, so you can't make more EV than GTO based play because they won't make mistakes and the situation is not transparent. In that case, sure, GTO will help you. But at the smaller stakes the player pool's tendencies are so transparent, easy to read, easy to gather, therefore those situations occur much less.

Makes sense to ask as it matters a lot when considering someone's opinion, I get that :)

My main stake depends on the site. I play mostly NL200 and some NL400 but it's softer than let's stay stars. On Pokerstars I play NL100 and some NL200. If it's stars zoom, I would probably only be breakeven on zoom200 and only be able to win at zoom100. That's harder than normal tables obv (I play some zoom50 and zoom100 sometimes, even zoom25 when I'm just trying out stuff so I know it's regheavy).
Been playing for a living since 2009 and coaching since 2014-2015. Also had a few years off cash game, I was playing spin n gos.

You're adding good and useful thoughts to hands around here so I'm sure you'll have no problem climbing back up the stakes :)

Just check/fold the flop and don't worry about being exploitable. It's gonna lose more money than overfolding your range a little bit here and there.
Not to mention the mistakes one can make on further streets after cbetting this board.

As for your question: No, don't start squeezing hands that hit on this board, especially not just to be more balanced. That is not the way to beat NL25/50/100.

Checking a lot if not all your overpairs is absolutely fine here against a regular. Although, as you mentioned, with that gap he will be a bit of a weaker regfish kind of player. And that brings me back to the point that in this case we shouldn't be worried about our range distribution and being exploitable. Might sound silly simple but just play your hand and your villain.

I honestly don't get why anyone playing on stakes under NL50 or NL100 (depends on the site) even touches a solver.
So pointless and just f*cks up the kind of thinking that should be applied on those stakes.

The GTO perspective does not matter here. Not one bit.

• I'm fine with the idea of folding preflop if villain is that nitty as we're always going to be dominated
• Flop was a necessary call
• Turn should be a fold as he already doesn't have much that you can beat (nitty 3bet range, now he's SB so it's probably even more linear and he's probably not gonna be the barreling type with air hands)
• River should be a very clear fold

1) Leading small if we already know that villain tends to bet big is a good idea. However, I expect a lot of raises from this kind of player but who knows, he might call and let us buy our equity with our betsize. Gotta try it.

2) Raising would be a terrible idea. You made it clear that he is very nitty. Not much you could get to fold, maybe AK and who knows if he even raises AK preflop or if he would cbet, or if he would cbet this big. All together: Not a lot of AK there.

3) I believe you were sure about this one but yeah, obv we have to fold on the turn.

You should be more inclined to play looser on zoom tables as the population is more nitty, compared to normal tables. They are folding their BTN and also their blinds more often so pay attention who are the nit players and sometimes you can make big adjustments in your opening range, even from EP, because of who is behind you.

I wouldn't be concerned about postflop differences. There might be some smaller ones but it's not gonna be very significant. Except that when a fish plays zoom poker he is going to be tighter and can fold easier than on normal tables. Makes sense as on normal tables they get bored. The're usually playing 1 or 2 tables, that's slow action and after 30 minutes of not having good hands even the not too loose fish can go crazy and call you down with 2nd pair or try some stupid bluff. This is the stuff that is gonna be way less frequent on normal tables. So I would say in general players will be a bit more fit or fold postflop.

The best way for yourself to be able to answer this or similar questions:
Think abou what hands he can be betting the river with. Naturally there will be two types:

1) Hands that are betting for value (I'm not saying villain necessarily knows the reason why he's betting, it doesn't matter here)
2) Hands that are bluffing

The first part, the valuebetting part is also going to be two kinds of hands:

a) Value hands that beat you
b) Value hands that you can beat

So in this spot just write a list of all 3 types of hands that get to the river as played and can make this bet. This is kind of like the "pen and paper type of setting a range".

1a) Quite a lot of hands can beat you, he might bet two pairs or even a QT, KQ, and of course straights, sets. Lots and lots of combos so we already know we will need a lot of combos in the two other groups if we want to call.
1b) Nothing (in case a bottom pair bets, that kind of counts as a bluff - might happen sometimes but we can easily see without any range software that it's not a lot)
2) Literally nothing. You cannot find a single combo that was a draw on the flop and didn't improve (KQ, QT, KQ). The key is that players will not bet hands like JT or T9 (showdown value hands). Only sometimes and it's not gonna be enough.

So it's a clear fold imo and thats the thought process you should be using when considering a call OTR. I hope this helped, GL!

The distribution seems absolutelty fine to me.
Of course there's a big range of what can be good. You could be more loose but you don't have to, might even say you shouldn't be yet! First thing is putting other things in order. So RFI is all good.

Huge overplay, you don't need and shoudn't be doing stuff like that to beat the stakes - and tbh it's not a good plan postflop overall, no matter the stakes.

Check flop. This is a good flop for him, look at an average UTG range. Almost anything can call. KQ, AQ, pocket pairs... Even AK will float. If you're thinking "okay but I'll get him to fold those"... Don't follow that instinct, it'll cost you a lot of money. He has a reasonably strong range, flop has low fold equity and you don't have backdoor draws = give up.

F*ck solvers, you are playing against a fish :D

I'd bet for value OTT, I know it might not look standard for first look, but against a fish with a ton of draws and backdoor draws, even with worse pairs than ours... You have a very clear valuebet against the range. (Btw check/raising could make sense for the same 'getting the most value" reason - it depends, if you have info that he's an active fish who will bet most of the times, you can go for a value x/r, but standard is vbet turn against an unknown fish)

The adventage is that he can't checkback and realize free equity and that you'll be the one sizing, not villain.

Played like this I would call the river, there are more than enough missed draws and backdoor draws (and maybe like a 5x occasionally) next to the few Kx and bd flush he can valuebet.

River call eff. meaning:
- 1 means your river calls are breakeven
- less than 1 means you are losing money with your river calls (you'd be better off if you would've folded all of them)
- higher than 1 means you are making money with them

If the number is too high, that's an indicator that you might be calling too tight, folding to too many bets you should be calling (and therefore losing them sometimes). The question is how high is too high. I suggest looking around on your stakes, if you have a reasonable sample size on any of the good regulars. Check their numbers to get a feeling about yours. It's hard for me to say what's too high because the stakes, the different player pool can matter a lot with this stat.