paradigm24

Very interesting discussion. I'm a professional PLO player and small/mid-stakes coach and wanted to add my 2 cents. Students should always look for a coach who provides the greatest value to them per dollar spent. The questions thus are:

1. Does the best player = the best coach
2. Can a losing player ever offer significant value

Imagine a scenario: In 2006 rather than write the mathematics of poker, Chen and Ankenman had decided to offer private coaching on their theories to high stakes HUNL players. These guys were mathematics professors, not poker players. It's likely neither could beat a small stakes HU games, but they revolutionized poker theory. Can you imagine the value they could have contributed as coaches to top players. Their students would have been years ahead of their competition in terms of their theoretical approach to the game. Now I know this is an extreme example, but I think it demonstrates that the idea that someone needs to be a winning poker player to add significant value to their students is untrue.

I believe coaching requires 3 skills:
1. A knowledge or expertise in one or more aspects of poker
2. An ability to find weaknesses in your students' games (this isn't always necessary if the student recognizes a specific weakness or is looking for coaching in a specific area)
3. The ability to effectively teach and explain concepts to your students
(I'll also add that connecting with the student and taking a true interest in their improvement are important)

When hiring a winning poker player you often get 1 and 2, but the ability to explain effectively is often missing and in my opinion this is the most important part. There is no shortage of training videos across the internet from excellent players who are bad teachers. It would be like hiring a world class mathematician to teach you algebra. Sure they understand it, but it doesn't necessarily mean they can explain it to someone else.

Secondly, poker is a game that requires a variety of skill sets to be successful. Yes, as you suggest Koky, poker is entirely mental, but mental abilities isn't a single skill. Just because you are brilliant in math doesn't mean you have an incredible memory or can write beautiful poetry. Poker requires mathematics, psychology, adaptability, discipline, mental stability, and an ability to think quickly, just to name a few. It is perfectly reasonable that someone can have an incredible expertise in some of these aspects (and an excellent ability to teach it), but be severely lacking in others. Sure they may not be able to help you with your mental game, but they may be able to dramatically improve your understanding of fundamentals, mathematics, and theory.

Further, it is far from uncommon that the person with the greatest expertise in a specific aspect of poker are not necessarily the best players. Mental game coaching is a perfect example of this. However, it also applies to the mathematical and theoretical aspects to the game.

we always want the player to make the mistake.

Do the math on running it twice. Enter dead cards in an EQ calc to simulate what the EQ becomes when each player wins the the first board. I think this will make clear that running it multiple times has no effect on EV, only on volatility.

Just wanted to say that as someone who has had coaching with tom and who owns his book, Tom is truly one of the brightest minds in poker. Much of the advanced theoretical concepts that I currently use come from Tom's work. I can't speak to how this package will compare to other programs out there, but I'm sure that Tom can deliver incredible value to any student, well in excess of the price tag.

Against A8 or 88 you have about 30% EQ on the flop and 17% on the turn. You need about 48% EQ to profitably stack off without fold EQ on the flop and about 40% on the turn.

I think this is a pretty big leak, especially 170BB deep. When you c-bet into 2 opponents on an AAx board, you're range is going to include a lot of Ax hands. You should not expect opponents to bluff raise you on this board often, especially not with a pot raise size. I would expect that against most opponents you will be up against 88 or A8 very often here. Once you call the pot size raise, you have basically announced that your hand is an A (with likely 2-3 overcards to the 8) and your opponent still choose to pot it. When your range looks strong and your opponent still chooses to bet, you're pretty rarely getting bluffed. Sadly, this is a fold on the turn.

Flop: Prefer a check for the reasons stated by dovrha. Your opponents will continue very often (and sometimes raise) and being completely OOP, your hand isn't quite strong/nutty enough to want to build a pot.

Turn: Check to start is good and your ck/r sizing is fine. Given the stakes, you may be able to get away with a larger exploitative size for value expecting villains to have trouble folding flushes/sets.

River: Because you only have about 2/3 pot left in effective stacks, your only options are ck, shove, or bet very small. Standard play here would be to check. By raising the turn with BB all-in, you've pretty much announced your hand to anyone with any hand reading skills. You shouldn't expect to be able to get any value on the river. However, against very bad players, you can consider betting with either sizing for thin value based on how much you think he will call with a K/J high flush. If you choose to check, you should probably fold to a bet from CO. CO's range is sets that slow played the flop to see a safe turn and flushes. In order for you to call a bet, you'd have to assume villain is either turning a weak flush into a bluff or vastly overplaying a mid/high flush. I don't think you can make either of those assumptions.

Welcome to the forum!

The open is light, especially with the deep stack behind you as you mention. Other than that, well played and well reasoned hand.

Maybe J + diamonds, maybe double pair with or without diamonds, maybe overplaying kk/qq w/ diamonds, maybe 7654 w/diamonds, maybe random spew, maybe KK3/QQ3/AKT3. Honestly, I don't know. Different players have very different tendencies on these types of boards. But, you have an SPR of 1.3 on the turn and are at the very top of your range, so are you going to fold? If he has JJ here, you're usually supposed to get stacked in a low SPR pot.

Under higher SPRs, I agree with you, but the turn SPR is 1.3. If you just call you will be facing a shove of ~50 into a pot of 115 on the river. You need to be ahead ~23% of the time and you will be at the top of your range. Absent a very exploitative read on villain you can't fold (diamonds may be an exclusion against an unbalanced player). If you are going to get stacked by the JJ/J3/36 portion of his range anyways, then as said you prefer to raise the turn. You get some value from 3's. Also, when you raise the turn your opponent will be getting ~3.5:1 making his diamonds & pair + diamond hands near indifferent against your hand (a very good scenario). Mathematically, the only way calling can be more +EV that raising here is if you plan to fold rivers, villain will continue bluffing rivers with hands he would fold to a turn raise with, or if there is some basis by which calling is significantly superior for your overall range. I don't believe any of those are true.

It is true that this flop is better for his range than yours, but that does not necessarily mean that you should start by checking. If we check, we are checking to give up. Since that is essentially a 0 EV play, if a bet is profitable, than we should bet. Against a tough opponent who will recognize that the board is better for his range and appropriately attack your bets by floating wide or light semi-bluff raising, you need to give up. However, your bet here only needs to work ~40% of the time to be profitable (and that ignores that we have some EQ/brrl opportunities when called, meaning your bet probably only needs to work ~33%) and there will be many opponents who will fold quite a bit more than that. Therefore, if your opponent is on the tighter side, you can still profitably CB here despite the board disadvantage.

This turn is terrible for your hand and great for villain's range. I would not expect to have much Fold EQ with a bet and your hand does not have enough EQ against villain's strengthened range on this turn to bet profitably.

I think this is definitely a fold on the river, and possibly a hand you can fold to the turn raise (especially if you think he's not very likely to play combo draws aggressively on the turn).

First, given that you are ~150BB deep, you can expect the OOP player to play more straightforward than at 100BB stacks. When villain ck/c, ck/r the turn with such a high turn SPR, he's very likely to have a strong range. Mainly sets, top 2 + draw, wrap + flush draw. Against that range, you're in mediocre shape at best and it will be somewhat difficult to play most rivers against aggro/tough opponents. When the 9 comes, it completes all the wraps and likely straight draws. Without a read that villain is capable of ck/r the turn deep with a much wider range than the one mentioned above, you can't call this river (even with that read, this would be a highly questionable call without a 10 blocker).

Also, I would increase the size of your flop and turn bet a little to around 2/3 pot.

There was no argument that you should always 3bet pot preflop. There are times when there is a logical basis for 3 betting smaller. This situation is definitely not one of those times.

Yeah not sure why you are using such a small 3B size here. Pot 3B preflop and then bet get it in on this flop

Stack sizes make this a pretty easy turn raise. After your opponent bets 27 on the turn, he has 55 left in his stack. If you just call the turn, are you going to be folding most rivers getting 3:1 when he shoves? So if you accept that the times villain has you beat, you are almost always getting stacked no matter what you do, then all you need to worry about is how to play most profitably against villain's hands that are worse than you. This will include some naked 3's and a variety of hands with pair+diamonds, all of which you vastly prefer a shove against (especially since you don't expect villain to continue bluffing when he misses).

Is everyone missing the fact that the turn SPR is 1.5? Absent you have a read that villain is an ultra passive opponent who is never doing this without the nuts, there is too much money in the pot and too little left in stacks to fold the turn. Therefore your options are donk, ck/c, or ck/r.

Villain's flop raising range will include T9, some sets, some 2 pair + flush draw, and some blockers. If you check to villain he is likely to bet (pretty big) with that entire range. Since that range includes blockers, a hand that villain would fold to a donk, I think checking is a better option. Let's assume villain bets 2.70 on the turn if checked to. If you call, there will be about $9 in the pot on the river and you will have about $2.50. Are you really going to be able to fold the river if he bets getting better than 4:1 with the second nuts? Assuming not, then by just calling the turn you will still get stacked by T9, but villain may check back a set or top 2 w/flush draw that would have lost it's stack if you had raised the turn. Also, villain may fold on spade rivers. So essentially check calling means you still get stacked when behind, you win less from set/top 2 + flush, and you win less when a spade comes in. Pretty bad deal. So just jam the money in on the turn. (plus villain's blockers likely have an open ender, gutshot, or flush draw and may call off on the turn).

I will add that I do expect that villain will have T9 pretty often, but since the SPR is so low on the turn, you just can't get away from your hand. If stacks were deeper on the turn, I would likely advise a different strategy.

As for the rest of the hand. Flop, lead or check/call is good. I don't love ck/r, but it's not terrible. Turn discussed above. River as played is snap check call. Villain is jamming the nuts on the turn 99%, so you are almost always good. I also like texas's strategy of a small lead to get some value and still possibly induce a jam.

3bet preflop is fine, but not mandatory. As stacks get deeper, position becomes more important. So if you think that you are going to struggle OOP, avoid building pots preflop with hands that will suffer from playability problems.

Cbet is obviously fine on the flop. On the turn, you can make a 1/2ish bet to get value from a K and some protection from draws. A check is also fine, and is preferable against an opponent who is likely to stab here.

I do not think you can check fold on the turn. Villain will simply not have many hands that beat you. First, having raised from the CO, villain doesn't have in his preflop range a tremendous amount of combos of 22, 44, K2, 24 or even a loan 2 (especially after calling the flop). Second, while villain may slowplay sets and 2 pair on this flop (particularly KK), these hands can be discounted by 2 factors. The first is that an average villain is likely to raise some combos of sets on the flop and very likely to raise K2 given its vulnerability. Also, the rare 24's he has in his CO opening range will often have at least a gutshot here as well, pushing them toward a flop raise. The second and more important factor is that villain pots the turn. Given the fact that the turn SPR is 2, that is a pretty strange play for a person with a full house and I think dramatically reduces the likelihood that he has a boat here. I think you are more likely to run into combo draws here (especially hands that turned diamonds) and some spews. As such, I would just jam.

This is too loose an open preflop from UTG. I wouldn't open this hand until the CO at most tables.

You flop very well, with more than enough EQ to stack off against any reasonable stack off range. When combined with FEQ it is a very profitable bet call. That said, you really don't want to encourage loose floats with this hand (you benefit significantly from opponents folding 1 pair hands and your opponents are unlikely to make many mistakes on your good turn cards). For those reasons I would bet closer to 17 on the flop (or perhaps even pot).

As played, jam the turn. If you have any FEQ (and I think you should have a decent amount on that brick), you make a nice profit.

This is a pretty standard shove here. Checking back is going to put you into a really bad turn situation on most turns, so I don't think it's a good option. Therefore, I think you should shove if shoving is profitable. Given the <1 SPR, if villain folds ~45% here, you profit even with no EQ (you will obviously have some EQ against even the tightest stack off range) and if villain is never folding you only need ~31% EQ to stack off profitably. Depending on the width of villain's resteal range and to what extent he likes to 3B 3 broadway hands, I would expect villain to fold between 25-40% and your EQ against a s/o range to be close to 40% making a shove pretty profitable. There is also the question of how often villain will lead with his medium strength hands that want to stack off, however it shouldn't have much effect on the profitably of a shove since the more he leads those hands the more FEQ you will have, but the lower your EQ is against his calling range. It might be worth your time playing around in pokerjuice/propokertools to figure out how much fold EQ & EQ vs. a stackoff range you have in these situations.

Generally if you have no basis to know whether villain is overbluffing or underbluffing in a situation, you should try to call GTO. You block an ace, block no hearts, and the king paired, reducing the combos of AK and KK. Also, given his very wide preflop range, he should have a lot of air here and only needs to be bluffing a small portion of it to be overbluffing. For those reasons from a GTO perspective, you should be calling. Given that this player sounds bad aggressive (and likely overbluffing as a consequence), I think it becomes even more of a call

Capturable EQ (goes by a lot of different names) is basically your EQ adjusted for advantage or disadvantage in future betting (also known as Ex Showdown Value). To precisely calculate it, you would need to do exactly what you said, tree diagram out an entire hand to determine your expected EV (In multiway pots, this is next to impossible). Capturable EQ = Expected EV/Current Pot.

You can still get good estimates of Capturable EQ, by thinking in terms of your EQ + or - an adjustment for whether you have an advantage or disadvantage in future betting. Basically you'll have an advantage if you have position, your hand is nutty, and you have a skill advantage (ability to make more profitable decision than your opponent). Another way to think about it is in all the ways the hand plays out who is more likely to make more/bigger mistakes and realize their EQ profitably.

You are right on the 33% EQ thing. You do need more to be able to call a flop & turn bet. I still think your hand will have a sufficient combination of EQ and Ex Showdown Value to call at least the flop raise.

Tom is brilliant and he has one of the best theoretical poker minds out there. I know he has some free samples of his books on his website that are worth checking out.

Preflop: I would generally lean toward 3B this hand, but a call is ok. It would mainly depend on my view of CO, the blinds, and MP. The looser/worse CO is the more I would favor 3B, the worse the blinds & MP are, the more I would favor a call. Also, if MP is tightish and likes to L/R AA/KK, we'd more likely call. As far as Zach's comment, I think it's somewhat inapplicable here for 2 reasons. 1. AKQ5ds is one of the best possible ABBx 3Betting hands, and 2. In live games, opponents are far more likely to incorrectly stack off with dominated hands in low SPR situations regardless of your perceived range and your hand does a fantastic job of dominating other pair + draw hands.

Flop: On this wet a board, 5 ways, with an SPR of 6 you have almost zero chance a bet takes down the pot. More likely you get raised & s/o with ~42% average EQ. Overall a bet/call is profitable, but probably not very. (The exception is if you think it is very likely 2+ opponents will stack off if you bet, then you have a very profitable bet s/o). On the other hand, you are in position with a 100% nut outs. You have a huge playability advantage. Given that, I believe checking back will be more profitable than betting (with the exception discussed above).

SPR 13: I think this becomes much closer between a bet & a check and primarily is based on the likelihood you will get raised. Since it's an SPR 13, the chance you get raised should decrease from the SPR 6 situation, but since it's 5 ways on a very wet board, I would still expect it to happen reasonably often. Regardless, I think I would still prefer a 50%-60% pot bet (designed to build a pot and push EQ when getting called multiway), intending to call a raise. Remember that to call a pot raise you don't need 33% EQ, you need 33% capturable EQ. Since he will sometimes have combo draws that will pay off when you make the nuts, many live players can't fold sets, and you will occasionally be able to profitably bluff straight completing cards, you should have more than enough capturable EQ.

Lastly Range Play: Don't worry too much about having balance ranges, exploitative play in loose live games is almost definitely going to be the most profitable strategy.

I apologize. I was not aware that propokertools could provide next street equity distributions in multiway scenarios. Just tried it and it looks like it can in HvH or HvR.

The math I was discussing is only possible for HU situations. To precisely calculate whether you have a profitable call requires that you can graph your EQ distribution across all flops. I don't believe there is any tool that can do this for multiway situations. Just google donkr plo for the article series.

I think the best way to estimate the profitability of your call is to use your preflop pot share (EQ*Pot After Call - Call Amount) as an estimate of your profitability. You would normally adjust your EQ upward or downwards to compensate for postflop playability (Realizable EQ), but here I think your bad relative position and your hands good low spr playability should about cancel out.

Also, despite the low SPR, relative position still matters a bit. The most common postflop scenario is SB checks, BB checks, CO jams, and you have to make a decision. On your marginal flops, you'll be in a more difficult spot with BB still behind you. Also on your very strong flops, when you call CO's jam or lead out, you allow BB to often easily escape with his marginal hands. Your right that given the low SPR, these aren't huge factors, but they still will reasonably affect your profitability.

There are a bunch of articles (including within the donkr series) that explain how to calculate the profitability of calling a 4B. It's somewhat math intensive, but very doable. In the particular situation, calling is definitely profitable.

"MAYBE BN shove air, like KK4??? QQ4? I don't know"

Either BTN never shoves without a 9 and you can fold, or BTN may shove with KK, QQ, etc. and you call. If you don't have any idea how wide villain shoves, try to call GTOish and AA4 is definitely a call.

Jd9d is absolutely in his range and makes a lot of sense. I'm just arguing 1. That against an unknown .05/.10 player you'll run into other hands (whether bluffs, overplays, or random non-sensical spews) often enough to call given the odds you are getting, and 2. Not to fold the absolute top of your range without a very good reason.

For all we know, villain is a maniac, someone new to PLO who over values hands, drunk, or just a very bad player. I've been teaching a friend to play at these stakes recently, and I've seen some absolutely awful and bizarre play. To assume competence, understanding of relative hand values, and hand reading ability for many of your opponents at micro stakes is I believe a mistake.

It's a very disciplined fold, but I don't think you should be folding here. On the river you only need to be right less than 30% of the time to profitably call. Against a player that you have no information on at .05/.10, I think it is reasonably likely that he could overplay a weaker flush (especially since its backdoor) or the nut straight, or possibly be spewing with something like a set, 2 pair, or another random hand. Without a very good reason, I simply don't think you should be folding the absolute top of your range.

As far as the rest of your hand: Good check on the flop, good check call on the turn. I think your river sizing is fine, but is a bit player dependent. Against a player who is unlikely to fold J9+, I like your sizing. Against a tighter opponent, I think I would use a smaller size of 50-60% pot to make calls from straights more likely and possibly induce a raise from a K high flush or a bluff.

In general, on the flop and turn, it is best to make your bets (value & bluff) based on board texture. On wetter board texture your bets should be larger (70-100% pot) & on dryer your bets should be smaller (40%-60% pot, and on some board textures you can even used 25%-40% depending upon your strategy). Against weak players, you can differentiate the size of your bets, based upon strength of hand and specifically what you are trying to accomplish. Against good players this isn't advised as they'll often be able to gain significant info from your bet sizing and counter-exploit you.

On the river, bet sizing can be a function of one of 2 things. From a GTO stand point, your river bet sizing is a function of how much your betting range consists of bluffs. The more you are bluffing in a spot, the larger your bet sizing should be to make your opponent indifferent to bluff catching. While this is often the strategy used at higher stakes, I don't think it's best at lower stakes. Instead I think river sizing should be based upon the strength of villain's range and what you are trying to accomplish. Hope this helps.

thank you :)

Hey Stoomart. When thinking about constructing a range in a situation, the best thing to do is to think about what hands would really want to do "x" in that situation and then build a range around in. So if we were considering building a range to small lead in this situation we'd ask what hands want to small lead. Typically a small lead can accomplish one of a few things:

1. Induce a bluff/light raise when we are strong
2. Get value from a weak range
3. Cheaply take down the pot on a dry board
4. Help us see a cheap turn card

Without going into too much detail, I would argue that none of these are applicable in this situation given the board texture, that we are up against 6 opponents, and it is a low SPR. I think our strong hands would vastly prefer to lead out large or ck/r, expecting to get called/raised almost always anyways. With our weak/mediocre hands, it's just way too likely at least one player has something good so we are never getting folds and almost always getting raised.