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Against fish in general I think you are much better off just betting this kind of hand yourself. You can lose value against fish a few different ways like- them having generally tiny betsizings or checking back turn once you have given up the initiative and check call and probably other ways too. Obviously if the fish is a maniac who will just blast off big bets for 3 streets with 100% of his range then your line will be better but I don't think it's best if you don't have that read.

As a side note, when I do try this k/cl line with something like AA here I think it's best to have AcAx so that when the river run out above happens he doesn't automatically get out of jail free with his 0% equity bluffs.

I also do not like the 3bet preflop. It seems better to call I think. However as played I think the cbet is also a mistake. Presumably AJ is towards the bottom of your 3betting range preflop(?) and given that you have no real backdoors to speak of I can't see the bet showing a profit unless this LAG is overfolding this board which seems unlikely to me. Cbetting AJs with a backdoor fd is fine I think but this combo I would just checkfold on a pretty unfavourable flop.

I really dislike the preflop 3bet. IMO it's is pretty much a hand that should only be 3bet oop when you have a read that the opener folds too much to 3bets. In this case without any such read and pretty deep we really shouldn't expect to get many folds at all preflop which means that we are going to go to a flop a high % of the time, oop, with lots of money to play behind with a hand which is very tough to play postflop. Not a good situation to put yourself in. So I think you can probably defend this and do slightly better than folding long term or you can fold and that is fine as well, but 3betting this without a read on villain's responses to 3bets just puts yourself in a bad situation unnecessarily.

As played preflop I think postflop is fine except you should probably be sizing a bit bigger with your range on both flop and turn when this deep.

Hmmm. Made the note on the wrong villain at 25:55. I hope that you didn't end up assuming some random regnit or something plays like a total nutjob. Would be very -ev :)

I was finding the JJ hand kind of interesting so decided to do a quick, rough, look into the combinatorics of it on the river. Assuming what I feel are fairly reasonable preflop, flop and turn ranges for Hero, our getting to the river and then valuebetting number of combos if we only valuebet trips or better here is pretty much going to be only 11. This would increase by 6 to 17 if we bet JJ on the river (I assume we squeeze QQ+) and decrease by around 3 if we check back 7x of spades on the turn.

Compare this to the number of missed draws we can have on the river which is ~20 combos if we never bluff with 5x and it seems we are in danger of being pretty unbalanced in terms of overbluffing.

Of course this estimate isn't terribly accurate since we will both semibluff raise some %, raise for value some % and we can squeeze Axss some of the time rather than overcall, but if we make a (pretty big) assumption that those will roughly cancel each other out then I think villain should have plenty of incentive to call with worse than JJ on the river. Unless we are very conscious of the fact that if we aren't betting for thin value we can be very bluff heavy even by just betting hands that don't have a semblance of showdown value.

Yeah, I really don't agree with that. Basically for all the reasons I said before about future streets being tough to play well. Why bloat a pot when we have a hand it is easy to make mistakes with and make those mistakes more expensive. The hand is clearly good enough to defend so just defend rather than 3bet for half thought out reasons

Seeing as several draws, that Hero could legitimately have, missed I would probably be checkcalling a reasonable range that is somewhat behind JJ I think. JJ,TT,99 fit this well I guess although they block T9. I wouldn't be checking as many hands like KK as villain seems to be on the turn though and I don't like checkfolding tonnes of my range when my opponent has lots of potential bluffs.

To be honest I think the JJ vbet on the river is kind of whatever with no big reads. If it's bad it's slightly bad. If it's good it's slightly good. So if you have some reads on your opponent then make what seems more likely to be the best play. If you don't have good reads then make a decision and don't worry yourself too much after the fact apart from taking a note if villain shows up with either a light call or a strong hand like KK.

I guess it's possible that we could push some preflop equity edge, but that's not the be all and end all. The hand doesn't end after preflop play and once we get to the flop we are stuck with a hand that rarely flops good equity to barrel with and that we can't value bet confidently either. If you need an example of how postflop playability should be somewhat important against villains that peel too liberally just look at what happened in the hand posted. Maybe he's donking complete air in this spot but are we happy about it?

I'm absolutely fine with hand 1. You definitely come across some villains who will check/call bigger pairs some percentage of the time there, but there are far more who auto cbet turn for value. So if we guesstimate that the average villain plays 20% of his combos of better pairs this way then we beat far more of his range than we lose to and this combined with your smaller sizing should ensure that you are a decent favourite when called. {Edit- You should probably squeeze pre if either player has slightly fishy stats}

Hand 2 is on the thin side as villain can be slowplaying some sets to raise the river, we now lose to AJ and we don't rep many semibluffs on the turn so he might think to fold a lot of his weaker top pair hands. That said I still like a bet but I might size down a bit to try to get wider calls.

IMO hand 3 is fine and I think will be better than checking at any point vs an unknown. Preflop and flop are standard. Turn I like the big bet as he can call plenty of draws and probably still never fold 7x. I don't mind check/fold(to reasonable sizing) or bet/fold on the river. 85 and 8Tss got there he could have some Qx, 6x but could also have 98, T9ss or 7x that he still doesn't want to fold. Overall I think betting turn is far better than checking turn but river could be too thin. I would tend to still vbet though. If we check most of his air hands have showdown value on the 9 river and would not need to bluff us so unless he gives us a good price that looks like he could be vbetting worse I prefer check/fold to check/call.

Generally it's a pretty clear defend in my opinion. We can't really 3bet for value and it plays really crappy postflop -> there aren't many boards on which we want to go for more than 1 street of value after 3betting.

The one situation in which I would definitely prefer a 3bet is if villain has a very high fold to 3bet stat. In that situation using the A blocker to 3bet bluff is going to be way more profitable than just defending. If villain folds to cbets a lot I can also see 3betting and cbetting aggressively being best. You don't generally ever get these reads after 123 hands though, and if either of these outcomes is your plan then I would definitely size my 3bet bigger. You really don't get much fold equity vs 5NL villains if you size smaller than 3x the open imo. Or if you expect to win the pot a high % postflop then you may as well force him to pay more to check/fold the flop.

Yep getting that price I would peel the flop planning on pretty much check/folding turn unless I hit.

His sizing is pretty interesting on the turn as I would generally expect him to bet bigger. Given stack depths he can't even get close to getting stacks in on the river with this flop and turn sizing. If you play with him regularly might be worth checking hand histories to try to find out if this is a sizing tell. But given no read I would stick to the original plan and not checkraise turn, barrel blank rivers on a hunch.

I think a 3bet here is too thin for value preflop. That doesn't necessarily mean you are unbalanced in your 3betting range preflop, it just means that you are choosing to 3bet tighter both for value and as a bluff due to the opener's position and overall nitty stats. If you do choose to 3bet and get 4bet vs anyone running 15/14 opening from UTG at 10NL then you are in a very shitty spot and to be honest I think folding is almost certainly the best option. You would be lucky if their range was any wider than QQ+. If they have a 4bet bluffing range at all in any position it is almost certainly restricted to late position dynamics.

I think the best line on each street was what OP chose to do as played. Probably check/calling river except against an unusually large sizing.

Quick question about the minimum defense frequencies starting at about 5:10. I was under the impression that we should not be ignoring the fact that the blinds still have to act once the Button 3-bets. Given that they will be doing the defending for us some % of the time shouldn't the minimum defense frequencies for ourselves be somewhat lower than what you stated at this part of the video from a theoretical standpoint. Although finding exact % probably gets a bit unclear given he could either realise some equity with his bluffs or make some postflop mistakes which will effect how wide we should defend I guess. And we don't know how wide the blinds will defend either so don't know how much that effects the profitability of his bluffs.

But anyway I was basically just wondering whether neglecting to mention the blinds was a small oversight or if I have got the theory wrong in my head?

I remember that royally tilting me in Fountainpark casino. They constantly enforced everyone at showdown must show. Really dissuades fish from making spewy river stations

Hi, what stakes are you playing at? There are some exploitative adjustments that I would recommend you to take if this is maybe 25nl or lower.

Without knowing that my first recommendation would be to consider tightening up your UTG range. From your stats it does not look terribly different to MP. Of course you could be doing fine anyway with all your opens but it would definitely be worth combining all your samples (which hopefully is a large enough sample size to see some trends?) and then filtering each of the hands that are the bottom of your opening range. Check whether you are actually making a profit with these opens and if not start folding them. Even if you are only barely +ev with some of them it is probably best to let them go and leave yourself more time to concentrate more on spots that are clearly profitable or on increasing your number of tables.

There is not really any reason to find zoom softer than regular tables. At micro-small stakes you can table select hard to find tables that should be far more profitable than the zoom player pool, and then you can form reads on the weaker players much better as well. You may also find that some loose passive fish play slightly tighter at zoom as well and so aren't losing as much /100 hands.

The main positive points about zoom imo are that you don't have to deal with table selecting which can be distracting and it is easier to get more hands/hr. Personally I recently quit zoom where I was a solid winner and have started stacking up to 18 regular tables instead. My winrate has increased significantly while I am getting the same number of hands/hr. The main problem is that I mostly miss players' timing/hands showndown but when I feel these are important to see I can move that table out of the stack. Overall I think regular tables should yield a higher hourly if you approach them in the right way.

First read is that you are playing at a full ring table. The average villain you can assume to be more passive and less creative than the same stakes in the 6max player pool. I personally would consider it a major spew if I got in AQo for 100bb when I didn't have a solid read that villain was extremely aggressive in his preflop game. This line is likely to mean extreme strength from a villain at micro NLFR so just fold and be happy that you are making a good exploitative play the majority of the time.

I'd agree with you to some extent that most micro to small stakes NL players wouldn't have many bluffs in their range on this river given that the only real semibluffing hands ended up getting there (even if he probably has no 56s in his opening range). But that doesn't mean we instantly want to go for a massive exploit vs the playerpool when we are totally readless. Since Overbet56 thought we wanted to be calling 2.5combos of AQ to be unexploitable maybe we would want to fold all of the AQ instead to make a small adjustment to our range given we expect the average 100NL player to not turn up bluffing here much at all. You start thinking about folding AK here though and you are flirting with making a huge mistake if this guy's strategy is somewhat different from what we are guessing it is. When you have no information on how a player plays don't go for these kind of hero exploits but make small adjustments at the edge of your range that mean you aren't making an absolutely horrendous mistake, only a small one, when villain's strategy is wildly different from what you are guessing it is.

Well, seeing as you don't call 44 pre that basically means that the only times you have better than AK in this spot is when you have 77 and decided not to put in a raise at any point. As you are totally readless vs villain I don't see how it can be appropriate to fold river that massive a % of the time.

Yeah, I've never been an MTT player but from my SNG experience it's pretty staggering how tight you have to call off vs the one big stack when you are one of a few similar stacks. It might be interesting for you to run a sim where you are calling off vs a similar stack to you with the same shoving range to what you guess the big stack has here. I would expect it to show you can call a fair bit lighter than in this instance. Just mucking around with the ICM tools to get a framework for how different table stacksize dynamics effect your calling ranges will probably make you a tonne of money, although I guess these kind of spots come up way less frequently in MTTs than in SNGs.

Your range is extremely value heavy on this river runout. Unless you are somehow turning Jx/9x into a bluff you pretty much only have KQ to bluff with. Given this and the fact that he most likely has a 1 pair type bluffcatcher I think you should bet smaller OTR, 33%-50% pot.

Oh and a big +1 to Hustla saying bet bigger on the turn. His turn check/call range is likely to be totally inelastic no matter your sizing (within reason).

I probably didn't pay enough attention to his betsizing on the turn actually. It's so big we probably fold some of the hands I mentioned above on the turn I guess. But QQ is such a good hand relative to our range I think folding turn or river is overly nitty. Our sample size is so small that some of those stats will actually change marginally given his actions in this hand.

But lets be honest you don't beat 10NL by making marginal calldowns against TAGs. I'm not gonna find fault with someone who thinks it's better to fold turn.

I don't think that your line reps value particularly credibly on this river. While we could possibly have raised sets (maybe some 2 pair??) for value on the turn given what we perceived as weakness, we almost certainly wouldn't have checked back flop with them on this board. Would betting ~80% pot be your standard with AJ here? It would seem pretty optimistic to me.

Also I think that we have enough showdown value with JJ here that we occasionally win vs some kind of flush draw. There are probably some other bluffs you get to the river with that would be better using when you do decide to follow through.

Although I haven't worked on these kinds of things like others in this forum have I would guess that the river is better for villain's range than ours (especially as we have no read on what he does with boats) and that should probably make us less inclined to be betting it in general.

Any read on aggression factor and 3bet vs LP steal?

I'm assuming we are CO vs BB then.

Assuming he's not a total nit postflop it is pretty tough to reason a fold when we don't have stronger than QQ that often at all. That said your standard TAG 10NL player isn't likely to go off on a 3barrel bluff when it is very likely we have an overpair to the board or at least a hand with showdown value. There also aren't many draws that he might want to barrel turn with depending on what his 3bet range looks like.

Overall QQ is just a hand that we're gonna end up calling with. If we want to exploit what we are guessing is a tendency for him to not be bluffing here you should start with the 66,8x,99,TT,possibly JJ that you might get to the river with before doing anything as extreme as fold QQ. Otherwise you end up only calling the very rare times you have a slowplayed set (now boat) or slowplayed KK/AA. This is a miniscule portion of your getting to the river range. I'm definitely not one of the GTO/CardrunnersEV fanatics but even I have a problem with folding virtually all of the time on the river when getting 4:1.

It's actually a real positive that these fish are so loose and agro in the early stages of hypers. They are frequently committing ICM suicide at all sorts of times including the bubble. You can really nit it up (relatively speaking of course) and just be making money off them flipping garbage against garbage. A large part of my edge, when I played these for a little while, came down to turning down some clear Nash shoves in bubble situations when I knew that the opponents would be calling suicidally wide.

Imo the common consensus is that hypers make for a far better hourly these days (depending on the stakes you are playing and your winrate). I have no knowledge of the traffic for 9man turbos, but at $3.5/$7 stake hypers you can load up as many tables as you can handle and without game selecting expect on average 1 good reg, 2 regs that are barely winning players along with 2 huge losing fish. With this line up you can expect to achieve somewhere between 3-9% roi depending on how much work you put into learning good shoving/calling ranges by position, by stacksize and by proximity to the bubble(oh and by opponent types as well). These rois aren't far off what you can expect in $15 turbos in my experience (the top end of that range is possibly not achievable anymore) and given the much higher volume you can put in at hypers I think they would be my clear choice if I had to go back to SNGrinding today.

Another point is that I think 18man turbos are a better choice than 9mans but probably not majorly.

If you have a real preference for 9mans over anything then I'd say stick with them for the moment but you should be aware that the earning ceiling for them is very low at this point. A bunch of the most successful 9man turbo grinders ever have transitioned to other formats as there just isn't much to be made there.

Thanks for doing this much analysis. I definitely need to work a lot on these tools to improve where I draw my lines in terms of stacking off. One query - does the range you give him for c-betting exactly correspond to his preflop range? I'm sure that even someone as seemingly crazy as this would have some portion of his preflop opening range that he didn't cbet for pot into 4 players. You may have accounted for this already and I haven't realised where (not entirely sure what 25%6h refers to). I'm thinking there may be a few more value combos he calls with too but almost certainly nothing major. One thing is certain, I need to better familiarise myself with these programs.

Great. Thanks for your advice. I feel like I'm starting to think in a more organised manner about PLO ranges already!

Oh really. Those are other hands that I would feel very uncomfortable checkcalling flop with. Maybe I'm a huge PLO nit. I would have thought that with so few nut outs I'd end up checkfolding turn incredibly often vs a perceived strong range. Or are there some cards that don't improve us that we'd end up stacking off anyway.

Cool, so you think it's likely enough that they raise/call vs the click it back sizing with stuff like QQ that that is better overall vs the chance he has an overfull and calls with it against the big size. Thinking more about it, it does seem to be superunlikely that he does somehow have an overfull here, so I feel like I'm coming more around to your way of thinking.