imawhale26

Great video as always. Not sure if I would have considered over calling the flop in the 77 hand around the 22 min mark; I may have been inclined to jam right away.. as you mentioned, the flatter can easily be floating with 2 overs/backdoor draws etc. I think he more often has these hands than an over pair (I think he will raise most over pairs on flop). So really it comes down to the initial raiser and given your pre-flop explanation, it does seem like we could feel pretty good about 77s on this particular flop. Calling and assessing on turn does make sense as well, especially with the sizing/pot odds; and a shove becomes clear given the action. I am curious, did you consider getting it in on flop? 3 ways there are definitely a lot of cards we hate to see on turn. What are your thoughts on this line in terms of hand protection? Thanks again for the great content!

Excellent video! Would love to see this same type of analysis going over Small Blind vs Big Blind situations.

You say opening K5s utg is profitable/pre-flop solver preferred, could you elaborate on why this is so? I was always under the impression opening these types of hands utg was -EV.

So, is there a flaw in the math because you show 1160 pot before the reshove but shouldnt that pot be the blinds and antes which will be somewhere around 900-1000 PLUS the villains opening raise which is 80?? Im not trying to be a mean, I just wanna make sure im doing the formula correctly. In this example we would win the blinds, antes and his opening bet 69% of the time correct??That would be well over 1160. Super interested in answer. I may just be missing something as I am likewise definitely not a math guy

@10:45 - You are considering value betting river by overbetting (34s twopair). This seems not ideal to me because isn't his range pretty weak here after he checks behind the turn? If his range is weak (mostly capped), wouldn't we want to bet a normal sizing to try to get calls from most of his range? If we overbet, it would force most of his range into folding I would think. What do you think about this?

Hey Chris
@ 2:10 Not that I mind just shoving with 8s OOP but is it not better to 3b/call and try to induce a light 4bet shove when V has 32ishbbs and has room to recognize false fold equity?

Hi Dylan, thanks for the video!

On Hand 1 with AsKs, I have two questions regarding preflop sizing and how it relates to the opponents range on the flop.

You mention that your 4bet sizing is fine and that you could have even considered going larger otherwise we are giving the villain too good of odds to call.

1. Wouldn't we prefer to make it a size where villain has to call with the weakest part of his 3bet range and force them to play pots out of position with inferior hands?

Seems counter-intuitive to size up when all we are doing is getting them to fold the hands we dominate and/or prevent them from continuing with a range which will check/fold on the vast majority of flops and turns.

1. You mention on the flop that you are looking to target villain's AQo and AJo type hands with the cbet which I agree with but do you really think the villain is flatting these hands out of position facing the 4bet sizing you chose?

I would like to think by sizing down 3bets and 4bets especially in position, we allow our opponents to continue with a much weaker range and force them to play pots out of position which can only be +ev for hero.

On the other hand, I can also see how sizing too small and allowing the weak part of their range to continue gives us less opportunities to triple barrel bluff with our range advantage and relevant blockers.

Would love to hear your thoughts as an argument can be made for both,
Thanks!
-Whale

with 66 ~15:00 how would you construct a minimally exploitable range here? (use a GTO solver?, ha)...given his huge range advantage, would you just continue with like A2s, 99, 9x, (maybe 88, 77 some %?) and then just toss in some random A3s with backdoors and then like JTss, QTss type stuff?

Hey Tyler,

So with the AJ hand around 14:00 as played on this runout, what are your thoughts about leading river close to full range about 1/4 - 1/3 pot? What about like 2xpot given our huge range advantage? Been thinking about these spots a lot lately where we c/c oop OTT and river 4straights or 4flushes or double pairs and it seems like the vast majority of our range benefits from a small bet, obv being uncapped we dont have to worry about villian bluff-raising a ton and we force them to call a lot with hands we beat...but its also weird bcuz if they raise small OTR on like Kc2d3d5d9d after we bet flop, c/c turn and then lead small OTR, how can we ever construct a bluff 3b range?...idk kind of a rant, curious about your thoughts...you always have great content keep it up ty.

5b/j light, 4b/c wide, station the river more and bluff more...having high WWSF and redline can certainly correlate but one doesn't necessarily yield the other...playing styles that favor backdoor agression tend to yield more +redlines IMO.

@ 5:00 with 99, what do you think about leading ~full range for ~1/3 pot OTR?

I'm a little confused with the analysis on the 77 hand around 28min that the jam OTR seems standard. How can that river jam be good, without some exploitative read that villian is a total station? I'm having a hard time coming up with a bluffing range OTT that misses river and just a massive amount of value combos that hate this river and have to check. What do you think about checking near full range here OTR? That card just seems so much better for villian, and he should be turning a significant portion of hands he shows up with here into bluffs.

There are many variables at play, Its naive to claim its always -ev.

For instance, if we call 9% of our stack and only get 3b 10% and win 23bb most of the time we hit a set its close to +EV. If we assume we win chips in position postflop (villain doesn't cbet, villain bets 357r and c/f turn, villain makes mistake of some sort) then it starts to become +EV.

Yeah I think its the worst option because it will be hard to realize equity versus this villain. It's certainly not standard but I'm not sure its pretty awful.

I just realized I was using Att to steal in my HUD instead of RFI. If you look at his PFR stat and RFI stat and contrast it becomes obvious there is something wrong. Let's ignore the fact that I got penetrated by my HUD and assume for the purposes of discussion Villain has a 60% RFI and is RFI from mp1 25-35%

yeah, bet the turn for sure, river too

b/c or c/b, never ever b/f here w/o a sick read

really depends what you make of sb's cold call range pre...if AA and KK are in it, combined with the fact that a "nit" reg 3b the EP open, i think you can even make a pretty strong argument for just folding the flop to the first $250. like, does MP even have JJ and TT in his range pre?...also would matter what type of player utg is, obv if hes some drooler that would matter

Hand 1: bet big, probably like 1.1x-1.4x pot ott; you wanna start polarizing now...bomb non ace river

Hand 2: bad turn, so many combos have you crushed...having the Kc is moderately important as it blocks him having some flush draws, (you said he's loose, not sure if he has like K9, K8, K7cc etc) but i think turn is a fold

The model assumes all players play ICM aware, right? So if half the players are not ICM aware we should be calling way tighter and shoving tighter than the model suggests if we are relatively short, yes?

Hey Zach, Good video. I agree with your analysis on most of the spots. I seem to play a pretty similar style.

The spots where I differ:

I wouldn't have vbet QQT on the river that aj/j9/98 got there. A reg is likely to lead that spot with a straight but I think fish are less likely to lead(particularly with 89/j9). Also, I think its pretty ambitious for him to be calling with K7 on the river (while in theory K7J>>KQ versus your river range, that's not what the fish is thinking).

I like the ch back with 756 versus zumba. I think that checking back 756 is the most +EV play versus the type of opponent who will turn lead with weak draws and rep AA/KK when the 7 or 5 pairs. Also, I noticed you seem to vbet pretty thin but decided to snap check back the 75 on the river when I thought it was pretty close.

Cya on the tables, where I shall be exploiting your thought process :D

In the KK5dd hand when we have QJo no diamond you think that a 55% cbet is +EV. Can you please elaborate/break down this spot? Intuitively, I can't see this cbet being +EV.

My thoughts:
-His range is something like: 22-JJ(d), a8s-aqs(d), Ato-aqo(d), tjs,tqs,kts,qjs,kqo,kjs,kqs
-Hes going to be folding something like 5-15% of his range.
-We have ~20% equity versus his continuing range.
-We have poor playability and visibility-- Do we barrel a A OOP? It hits his range almost as hard as ours.

I think you're overestimating how strong the average 200nl live player's range will be in a spot like this.  It might be the case that THIS specific villain will be strong here always, but we definitely don't have enough information to come to that conclusion.

We're missing a bit of info on Villain.  But being that its a 1/2 live game I'm going to make some assumptions.  It's very unlikely Villain is a high level thinker.  With no other information I think his flop leading range can consist anything from the nuts to naked Ax to Qx/Jx and even some total bluffs and just about everything in between.  I would discount KT a bit bc he'd c/r sometimes.  I'd also discount his bigger 2 pairs and sets bc they would often raise preflop and also c/r rather than lead sometimes.  His turn range is pretty similar but I'd imagine most of his pure bluffs drop off here (and there probably were only a few in his flop leading to begin with).  Once he checks river I expect to have the best hand a very very high % of the time.  The average 1/2 live player is just going to bet again with all of his stronger hands the vast majority of the time.  I'd bet in the 100-120 range and expect him to tank and randomly click call or fold with all of his bluff catchers and only occasionally call with better.

Villain is betting roughly 2/3 pot so we want to defend roughly 60% of our flopping range on the flop, correct?  Seems like JJ is going to be right around the bottom of that range here.

Are you guys saying that Villains preflop range hits this flop particularly hard so we should be under defending?  Or are you saying that villain is unbalanced with his cbets so we should be under defending?

Hey Felipe

What are your thoughts on leading the turn in the KQs hand at the start of the video?

fwiw, I very much enjoy the webcam.  I find getting all the non-verbal cues helps make your commentary better.

- maximally profitable play against non-optimal-playing opponents incorporates GTO - AND exploitative strategies

My understanding would be that maximally profitable play is 100% exploitative.  Vs a non-adjusting/non-optimal opponent there is absolutely no reason to construct any GTO ranges in theory.  In practice we might want to construct some GTO ranges because even though we know that villain is exploitable, we don't know exactly where he is making mistakes and/or how to exploit them.

So in theory the most profitable strategy against a non-GTO opponent will always be 100% exploitative, but in the real world we may want to approximate some GTO strategies in spots where we are unsure of our opponent's strategy.