maxderwayner

Obviously not every situation is a nuts/air situation. Sauce just says that by geometrical betting you maximize your opponents calling region. E.g. consider only 2 streets in which we either bet:

1) 20% and 20%

or alternatively

2) check and bet 50%

The pot in both examples ends up to be 2x when called. In both scenarios villain is calling around 65% of his initial range (1-alpha gives for scenario 1: 0.8*0.8=0.64 and scenario 2: 0.667)

This is particularly useful for nuts/air scenarios (polarized) because the weaker hands in his calling range will not draw us out. Thereby we prefer him to call 2 streets and extract the extra 20% from those hands that would otherwise fold to a 50% bet. Similarly in scenario 1 we collect those extra 20% when our bluffs are successful on the second street.

The key point is that he will end up folding the same number of hands in both bet sizing scenarios by the last street.

This is a toy game and in reality the free turn card alternates the calling range of course. But it just means that his calling range now consists of DIFFERENT hands, not of LESS hands. He will still end up defending the best overall 66.6% of hands.

Hope this helps

I am not sure whether I get your point. Obviously villain is not jamming AK here for value if that is what you mean. I am saying that once you play AK the way I would play most of my combos (check behind on the turn) you consequently need bluffs to be played in the same way. Otherwise you are not balanced. As a result, you need to check back some bluffs on the turn and not bet them. I would take 89 and T9 for this. On this river I would then0 as villian:
Catch: AK, KQ etc
Value jam:KK, 66, 67 (if I have it)
Bluffjam: 89s

I would probably bet 66 on the Turn though if I was villian and thereby only bluff 1-2 combos of 89 to balance KK which I always check behind on the turn. By having AK in our checking range, the BB cannot recklessly bet the river himself. However, since I assume the playerpool to bet AK 3 streets, it makes sense for the BB to stab the river wide. This in turn means that villain could potenetially be bluffing here if he is reexploiting the playerpool exploit...

Not saying that its likely, just saying that villain can definitely be bluffing. My point is to catch with Kx as BB because we block KK which is by far the most likely value holding of villain imo.

haha, no sorry if that wasnt clear. I am talking from villains perspective OTT. I would only bet AA, 66, 67 and some flushdraws on the turn due to the fact that this card hits the BB range so well but we do not block any Kx combos. Imagine were UTG with AK which is a decent part of our value range on the turn and get a check/raise.. that is quite ugly. Its a 2 street hand unless the BB is a station so we should check it back OTT to value bet/catch river imo. Consequently, we need to check some bluffs back on the turn in order to be able to bluff the river once the BB checks again as we want to balance our AK and KQs hands. (I would take 89 and 9T due to the reverse implieds and unclean outs). Once the BB leads the river, these hands are obviously the ones that we can consider jamming now as bluff. Thereby, I can see him having a reasonable number of bluff combos.

You could argue to put AK in your 3 street value range UTG but I think it is very difficult to get called by worse on the river when the BB has significantly more 7x than we do. Only works if we use very small sizing obviously. I prefer to use larger sizing than most MTT regs and make it 2 streets (Flop and River) which also protects our 88-QQ hands that often want to check back OTT.

Would you always bet AK 3 streets as villain here? I think the playerpool tendency does so but I think its bad because our checking back range OTT is super weak without it (unless we open KJo, KQo which I wouldnt do cause I believe its too loose).

vs UTG range of reasonable opponents it is quite hard to capture 18% of the pot postflop. The PF call is borderline but can be okay depending on how aggressive the opponent is. The more aggressive, the harder to realize our equity.

It is true that MTT play is very exploitative and thereby villian will probably bet the vast majority of his bluffs on the turn. In my opinion however he can easily have 4 combos of T9s which he does not want to bet on the turn as he has so large reverse implieds (flushes, boats, might even be drawing dead already). Same goes for 3 combos 89. He should generally not be betting this turn very aggressively with his range imo because this is the best card in the deck for our range after c/c the flop. Also, I think in a 1k FTOPS we should give a random reg some credit to know that he needs to have a bet/check/bet bluffing range (I would play most of my AK combos like this because its a 2 street hand, getting check/raised is ugly on this turn and we induce bluffs of 89, missed BDFD etc OTR). I think I would only bet AA, 66 and if I have it 67 here for value (no K blocker) and balance this with a few weak flush draws. The rest probably goes into the checking back range. he could even be turning some random turn give ups into bluffs on the river. if we seriously give him 22 in the range then he can also show up with so many other hands that he needs to give up a decent portion on the turn and now has the opportunity to bluff again. Especially since he can use the bubble for extra pressure...

Whether I fold or call here depends on the number of Kx that I defend preflop but we probably have enough to fold this hand. Were toprange but thats irrelevant since we have a bluffcatcher. Any Kx is a better bluffcatcher as Raphael said since some of them dont block potential bluffs and more importantly we block 2 KK combos which is a decent part of his value range. Similarly we can catch A6, wouldnt go much lower though as he could potentially be jamming a weak 6 here (if he opens 65s, 96s, 86s) to make Kx,TT-QQ fold and then we look like an idiot.

Long story short, I think the problem is not the non-existing bluff combos but rather that we have lots of better hands to catch.