gksrmf741

Yes.. to think back again lol you are right again. It seems like villain would flop flush+set too often and you could be in actual range disadvantage+positional disadvantage on the flop and checking could be the way to go. River bluff is theoretically supposed to work but practically often not-profitable especially when you're playing against value-oriented player(majority of the money will come from re-bluffing villain's bluff).

BTW i have no idea what i said inbetween number 2 and 3.
"I think while opening or 3bet range would change much from normal setting but you"
just ignore it

I actually didn't fully understand your comment.

But I'll just try to explain what I thought as best I can.

About buying position it's that if pot goes 4way+, you don't have to bet early at all as you can reopen the action later and act later after opponent reacts. Assume postflop players 1 is occupying (SB,BU) / player 2 is occupying (BB, CO). player 1 will generally not lead SB because you can first get information from how BB, CO plays and if player1 wanted to bet SB then he can just open the action for SB from BU by min betting. Meanwhile, instead of making conventional bettings, players 2 can choose to always check with BB, and min bet with HJ. By doing that player 2 is buying 'positional advantage'. Player2 forces player 1 to act BU and SB before player 2 can choose how to play his BB and HJ(if you want to bet with HJ then BB can min raise). So basically it seemed like player 2 had positional disadvantage(since BU is last actor), but by min betting at HJ, player 2 could hide his hand strength and force palyer1 to reveal their hand strength first.

In real poker setting, this strategy can be quite costly as min bet is not too small, around 10% pot on just open call call call pot. However hypothetically if infinitely small bet is allowed(like betting 0.000000001) then I think each player's strategy'd be trying forever to act last and just game won't work maybe. Think about it. SB checks, BB checks, HJ bets 0.0000001, saying "you bet first honey", BU calls, SB raises to 0.0000002, "No YOU bet first or give up", BB calls, HJ re-raises to 0.0000003(calling is giving up betting and deciding to stay in positional disadvantage since if HJ called player 1 will have the power to either re-open or end the flop action), BU calls, SB re-raises to 0.0000004..... and they'll do it forever. Maybe in such game nash equilibrium(GTO) won't even exist even though I'm not 100% sure(in NLHE heads up existence of GTO strategy is guaranteed because of finite possible actions, I think GTO strategy will just around same evn if betsizing is allowed to be very small as in normal NLHE there's no merit for just re-opening action. However in this octopus poker i believe it's possible that GTO strategy won't exist(if small bet is allowed))

It'd be very interseting

1. Name of the game will be still stealing the blind.
   Still you should be considering your position preflop. However now what really matter is how many opponents left behind you. I think the game should be played pretty similar, late position vs BB I think. Limping may be more viable strategy if you're holding BB yourself, but not sure about that.
2. Engage preflop loosely when you have monster(AA,KK..) behind, tightly when you have just decent card(AQs, JJ,..)
   I think while opening or 3bet range would change much from normal setting but you
3. You can buy the position on the postflop
   villain : SB,BU. Hero: BB, HJ
   villain and hero can always check with their blinds,
   hero as a HJ can 'buy' position by min betting on HJ with any hand
   villain as a SB can 'rebuy' position by calling BU and min raising SB.
   As you should invest quite much to gain positional advantage, It won't generally used I think? but if somehow multiway 3bet pot is made then it'd be very useful tactic
4. Blocker play will be the most important thing about this 8 card poker.
   preflop postflop blocker will heavily influence your decision. You'll open QTo early if you're folding few weak A,K as you'll have nice flops more often. You'll be only bluff catching when your mucked six holdings are decently blocking his value hands.
5. There'll be good 'combinations' of holdings that plays postflop well.
6. 2v1 dynamics.
   As 2, it's better to have hand such as AJo + KQo, we're getting value from our top pairs against single opponent. while as 1, it's better to have traditional good multiway hands such as pocket pairs and suited connectors.

It's actually very interesting and sounds fun
The strategy must change depending on how much app is willing to catch collusions(if they are at least trying, you may avoid using button minbet strategy postflop). And also how much collusion is prevalent on the scene(if still decent amount time you're playing against random individual opponents, strategy need a change). I don't think I'll play game myself ATM but I'd like to join the fun, PM me if you'd like to discuss strategy and stuff.

You're correct,for some reason I thought it was 0.5 pot lol. Why did i think like that? It's little more than 0.75pot and you should get a fold more than 3/7 of the time which'd be >43%, actually even more because of rake we are risking 1.80 to win around 2.21 and looks like it's ~45%.

It's true that your hand is nothing else but a bluff catcher
So if you think villain is playing value-heavy, you can fold the hand.
However, If I were to be playing against you and I know you're folding Qx on this board run out, I'm triple barreling you every time as it's a super weak fold.

betsize is approximately 0.33, 0.66, 0.75 each street
You're under-defending your range if you're defending too much less than 0.750.60.57 = ~0.26(26%)

In terms of pure strength of your holding, the margin will be around weak 7 (76s, 74s), which means we are either calling/raising anything better than that. Where is Q9o? Q9o'd be around Top 12% of your range at river. So basically if you're calling every better hand than Q9, you're still defending "less than half" of what you're supposed to be defending. This opens a great opportunity for your opponent to bluff you out and this can be potentially very big leak if you're always playing your marginal hand like this blindly.

+)

Well we can consider some blocker effect additionally.

I believe it'd be good to choose blockers such as A5,K5s,A4s,A6s(+65s,54s) as good calling/raising candidates, (A is better blocker than 4 for both raising and calling because his value range is less about 64 and more about AA AQ)
and in that regard you can give up some bad 7's such as 78,79,7T,7J and FD blockers maybe

++)
Regarding that BU's opening size is pretty thoughtful, I don't think BU'd be the worst player in the room. And if BU is not the fit/fold type player, that kinda river is spot where aggressor tend to be overbluffing. Frontdoor FD,Backdoor FD,68s,89s,96s missed and only 64 completed its draw. You didn't raise the flop against relatively small cbet, and turn as well, so your opponent is less worried about you holding monster hand by river. Increasing betsize is pretty suspiscious as well for me. But since I wasn't playing the table myself, I wouldn't comment too much in exploitative persepective.

I agree with folding preflop, but don't mind calling. I'd be calling Q5s and Q4s is not too far away for BB defending range vs 2.5x open from cutoff.

consider raising flop/turn, but call is also okay.

at river while I'm not 100% certain but I'd say it's not the best move theoretically.
you don't want to lead the river unless 9(you have a lot of 9 that IP doesn't have) comes.
8 and T can be tricky.. I'm not sure.
However as long as you decided to bluff that's a good choice as it blocks KQ QJ QQ Q8s
So I wouldn't say it was the worst bluff while i wouldn't do that mostly.

But still, it's really good to keep making rational analysis of the player tendencies and make plays that's our of norm with your logic. Believe in yourself and keep trying those 'bad moves'! *It's just unfortunate that he had 8, you don't expect your bluff to get through always. It's successful bluff if if succeeds only 1/3 of the time in your case as you are risking 0.5pot to take down pot. I agree with you that generally(not always) A8o'd be good checking the flop if without Ac + it's bad hand to raise preflop.

preflop:
at BU I think offsuit KJ is better folding. Multiwaypot you won't be able to extract value from your hand unless you hit the straight. Also at CO vs UTG+1 open TT is too loose hand to 3bet. However if you're saying that he's going to 3bet TT because you know him and you know the table, then yes I respect your read.

flop:
I believe call is good. Raise is also an option with the intention to give up turn/river (you can continue bluff with T that has suit different with any suit on the flop(if flop is QhQdTs, JcTc is good to continue barreling as it blocks QcTc)

turn:
Bet is good decision. although I'd say it's better using bigger size. If you had AQ,QTs,TT on that spot, would you really be betting that small? Still I understand your intention, so if you think that play will bring you profit, then you can be keep playing like that.,
Facing raise, it's really tricky. In position generally, you want to have hand that has no showdown value but "more potential" than marginal calling hand that you'd bet and try to take down the river if OOP players check the river(floating). However in this case, KJ is not a good hand to call as it has less potential than marginal calling hand(weak Qx) while also working as less effective blocker than Qx. If he really doesn't have TT, holding a Q is really important as it blocks around half(on QhQdTs flop, Qc blocks more than half, Qs blocks less than half) of his value range, so I think you're folding your draws and calling with Q. If he has TT, then you're still only calling with Q, because in addition to blocking decent portion of opponent's value range, against his value range you don't have many outs(against FH drawing dead, against AQ drawing 4 cards, (KQ) 8 cards). Also even though you hit your outs you are not really confident about your hand. Meanwhile if you're holding something like QJ we draw to more comfortably strong holdings, more often(against TT drawing 7(1+3+3) cards(QJ3), against QT drawing 5.5(3+1+1.5) cards(JT3), against AQ,KQ drawing 6(3+1.5+1.5) cards(JT3). So Qx has even more potential than KJ on the spot. So it looks like fold is correct play.

river:
If called on the turn. Fold is good, Qx is better as both bluff catcher and bluff raise.

*If you ask me can he be ever bluffing in that spot, well of course technically he can, he can do everything you know. He may have 84o. But practically, I believe people are underbluffing with that line - if only you bet bigger. Players do like to bet - check raise with big holdings as it's always cool to play 'it' tricky, but there're less number of people who are tricky enough to balance it out with bluffs. However, what could've happened in this specific situation is that good Reg just stabbed the flop and gave up the turn, and smelled weakness from your small betsize and took down the pot. So I think regarding he's good regular player, he could be bluffing against your small betsize.

RIO randomly auto-edited my comment little bit(numbers and indentation) but hope you have no problem reading it.

Oh man I forgot about turn. I was mainly talking about river decision. Yesterday I thought call is good without giving much thought. But after reading your comment I'm really confused. I feel like call is a bad option now. I'm not really sure but I'd tell you what I'm thinking.

-Reasons to fold the turn
1. AK has very bad showdown value.
Unlike many situation where river go check check and AK can win with A high, in this spot we are already losing to a lot of turn bluffs(pairs that's been turned to bluff). If diamond misses, I think he shouldn't be checking back river with hand worse than AK.

1. Only 0.9 pot will be left to be played on the river + one hand FD has less potential than two hand FD
   Yes you were correct about implied odds. We don't have enough implied odds. If we hit the flush, our correct move'd be leading out fair amount of the time. Even though we shove(around pot, we generally expect to be called 50% of the time), we'll get called less than 33% of the time due to us blocking fair amount of his calling range(nut flush). and we should be get called more than 66% time at least to make our turn call profitable, under the assumption we will get 0 EV when we miss the diamond. We will pick up some EV from check-raising river when we miss the FD, but it will be never enough especially considering only 0.9pot is left to be played.

=> these are reason to fold/raise the turn, when we're assuming both players are playing good and balanced.

1. Average player would be underbluffing this spot.
   As said before, often average villain would be a person who's less likely turning his pairs into bluffs to be balanced, regarding level of villain is coldcalling 95s at BU against UTG open and calling 3bet. This means he'll be more often holding real hand, and this means generally he'll be less likely to fold against our raise.

So to sum up, I think solid decision is raise/fold on the turn, and practically it'd be a good idea to mostly fold. However you should be still raising time by time, as we can't be 100% assured that bluff shove will be not profitable against this player(he may be value-oriented when he is betting but could be still overfolding his value hands, who knows).

P.S. I think on the flop OOP small cbet with wide range is a good idea. range of 3bettor is strong but the strength of strong hands are majorly mediocre(overpairs). So we want to put pressure but don't push it too much, acknowledging that IP player has more strongest holdings(flush,set). It'd be hard for him to call with a lot of non-flush suited broadway and that will deny decent amount of equity.

As WM2k said, he could be taking a weird line with JJ or worse if he's not the experienced player. But yes - I agree with that generally QQ is just as good as JJ on this spot as they neither play the role of value-blocker nor bluff-blocker.
I was saying in terms of how much we should be defending our range in order to not get run over by our villain's potential bluffs. I thought it'd be a good idea to call just little more than 1/2 of your value range and in that regard the borderline is somewhere in your QQ.
If we are talking about blockers, I think good blocker decisions are: call with 88(block 87s), fold KK(block K7s), fold AdAs(blocking A3s, A7s while not blocking A5s).

AcAh is good to call as it blocks both of A5s, but others are little tricky. They block one combo of A5s while blocking A3s, A7s.
One interesting question is, if you're villain in this hand, is it a good move to shove 5 or better on the turn? I have no clue... while being still open to the idea of shoving, I wouldn't do that personally at the moment because I think there's still merit on splitting the aggression into two streets as stack left is not too small. I'd raise smaller and shove river. However, I think shove's not the worst play, and if we're doing it it's better to do that with A5s than straight or fullhouse because A5s is hand that's worrying the most about getting rivered by draws. And thus I think AA except AdAs is working as heavy value blocker while blocking bluff lightly as well and so all good to call.

JJ definitely has value at the turn and you will be able to barrel one more if K/Q/T/9 comes OTR. I think you can make turn bet even bigger with the intention of checking back the river if different card comes out. SB should be calling with A highs such as A3s, A7s, A8s, AQ, AJ, AT. Otherwise SB is undercalling and you'll be printing money with bluffs. While folding JJ is tough decision, you do have FH, straight, and 5. and so against such big raise, you can comfortable fold JJ. QQ will be marginal calling/folding hand.

Yes call is correct.
You should think about your turn value range.

Would Kx be value hand on the turn? Hardly, it will only called by king or better,
If only SB was following Kx could be the value hand that could be called by weaker hand pairs. But it's important to note that BB was coming along as well. BB's second call on the flop is basically saying "I have hand that not only beats BU's bluff but also beats SB's calling range... or FD", which would be at least K.
So you cannot extract value with your Kx on the turn, so your value range on the turn'd be
AA and 8.
On the river, theoretically correct play is call, BB's call is good thing because if SB was bluffing we'll most likely win against BB's 888KK. However AA is bottom of your value range and thus you're not going to raise with it.

However, practically,
1. SB won't be balanced at that spot. If SB is balanced, SB is turning flush or king into bluff and people don't do that usually.
2. will SB be overvaluing his king on the river? hardly likely. Try to think in SB's shoes, you called 3way pot twice with just king, and would you be worrying about value that you'd miss on the river and lead out? Maybe, if SB is not focusing on the game, but not too often.

There's no conclusion for these thoughts, but I believe call is most solid option and raise is least favorable option.

how it played is just OK. Turn lead, check-call is both reasonable. I believe It's correct to be more passive on both flop and turn because villain's flopped a lot of flush, and a little bit of straight and sets that makes you AA-QQ weaker. Turn is like the worst card in the deck for your range as it connects with everything that only villain has(99,88,87s), while you're range wouldn't be improving. At river he hits ace with bluffing AKo, maaaybe AQo so suffers lack of bluff card in which your correct response is overfolding. You should be having some AA and flush at river, but it's true that AK it high up enough in your range while still marginal. Also don't forget to consider river check-shove option, you're blocking nut flush.

On the other hand, what I'd like tell you here is that if villain'd be at least balanced(so that the call will be profitable with our nut flush blocker) then he should turning his pairs(67s, JTs, QTs, KTs) into bluff as he doesn't have too many offsuit FD draws(AKo mostly, AQo hardly they even hit the ace at river). You can overfold if you think villain is not capable of turning ThKh into bluff at turn/river.