robinfromthehood

It is not like you need 5bet bluffs

Just want to check why this is the case. Is it because we're assuming we can never 5b / fold (because we can't 5b small enough) and when talking about n-bet 'bluffs' we're just talking about the hands that we will fold if we get (n+1)-bet?

So you're basically saying that any hand in our 5b range isn't a bluff - it's just a hand picked to have good blockers that we would otherwise be folding?

Indeed! Thanks for the tips Kalupso. Really interesting point on it being like an UTG v BTN 3bet spot - had never thought about the two spots as similar but I guess the ranges are super similar a lot of the time. Cheers!

That all makes sense - thanks for the response!

Janda does mention that it's a mistake to not flat 3bets / 4bets. I understand the logic - if we only 4bet or 5bet we have to defend with a wider range than if we also flat 3bets or 4bets.

BUT the big sticking point for me is getting started with playing 4bet pots OOP - it's not something that I've ever had to think about. Presumably with the low SPR it's pretty straightforward and I can run some scenarios on CREV but I'd be interested in watching in videos on the subject. Have just searched and found this (http://www.runitonce.com/poker-training/videos/calling-4-bets-oop/) and this (http://www.runitonce.com/poker-training/videos/calling-vs-4bets-part-1/) which are both Elite Pro videos... anything from the Essential Pros that you know about?

Of course that's assuming the villain has a wide BTN steal range

If he's nitty on the button, he won't be folding to 3bets as much or having to call with such a wide range.

In that instance I can see why it clearly makes sense to make an exploitative adjustment a 3bet / 5bet a narrower range.

So your thinking is that the EV we gain by 3betting extra hands isn't sufficient to make up for the EV we lose when we 5bet hands that aren't in great shape versus the villain's 4bet / stack range?

That's always been my gut feeling but what about all the times we don't get 4bet (which is the majority of the time if the guy has a narrow-ish 4bet range).

Say the guy has a (standard) super wide opening range for the BTN and we are 3betting the 18.4% range. If he's not 4betting that much, either 1) he fold to 3bets way too much and therefore we will be printing money because of the amount he folds or 2) he calls 3bets with a really wide range and whilst our 3bet range is wide, we still have by far the stronger range and will expect to have a good EV for our range postflop.

Seems to me like when you weigh up the (fairly rare) occurrence that we get it in with poor equity versus his range against the majority of the time where expect to make money versus his folds and calls, it might make sense to 3bet / 5bet the much wider range?

Agree that his range is super polarised and on the (small) number of value combos he can have... but I'm not sure about how many combos of air he really has.

I guess it's automatically close because we only need 5 combos to break even... BUT how often does he really XC the flop with hands like AK,AQ,KQ?

It's interesting because he definitely has a ton of combos in his flop range and he only needs to XC >5 but... does he ever really XC them on the flop?

Don't you think by 4betting we just end up bloating the pot and then often seeing a board w/ overcards vs a villain who could easily hit any part of the board (presumably) and whose tendencies we know nothing about?

I'd be flatting here 100% so interested to hear more of your thoughts!

Interested to hear what the bottom of your calling range is in this spot?

I think I agree about betting the turn with draws... but does it make a difference whether we have the NFD or a lower FD? Is there more value in betting turn with a lower FD because villain has more FD combos himself in that spot (because he's going to continue with way more NFDs than lower FDs to a flop raise) and will fold those hands on the turn?

Also interested to hear a bit more about the river being unbalanced... do you mean we don't have any bluffs to balance our value bet in this spot?

I think you want to be looking at WTSD and W$SD together because there's definitely two very different versions of a villain with a low WTSD:

1) Low WTSD and high W$SD suggests villain doesn't get to showdown much because he fold a ton of mid-strength hands (hence the high W$SD - he rarely calls when there's any chance he's not ahead).

2) Low WTSD and low W$SD suggests villain doesn't get to showdown much because he's barreling like crazy, winning lots of pots without showdown (but also inevitably getting caught a fair amount, leading to the low W$SD).

I'd also expect villain 1) is likely to have a fairly low aggression factor, whilst 2) will have a super high aggression factor.

Now I think about it, you could actually make a case for 3-barreling both villains a little more than average... villain 1) for the obvious reasons - he just folds a lot. Villain 2) for a less obvious reason but also pretty strong - he's so aggressive that when he's not betting / raising it's pretty likely he has a mid-strength hand at best.

So yeah - maybe a low WTSD is actually a reason to 3-barrel some more than average regardless of the villain type. But either way there's definitely two pretty definite villain types with low WTSD.

I think that's a really good point about our perceived range - unless you've got some kind of history with the villain, your 3rd barrel is always going to look super strong (because you just don't see 3 barrel bluffs that much).

Yeah, but you don't adjust for hand strength so it doesn't really matter where you are in your range, right?

The way I see it (correct me if I'm wrong!) is that if we assume villain never flats 4bets, we only increase the EV of our line if we make our sizing smaller (because we just lose less the times we fold, win the same the times we get it in).

So if we aren't ever having our 4bet flatted, we just 4bet the minimum. However, clearly there is some % chance that our 4bet gets flatted.

I think it's also clear that there's some correlation between 1) our bet sizing and how often villain flats the 4bet and 2) our relative position to villain and how often villain flats the 4bet.

1) is definitely up for debate - I think it's fair to assume that with your sizing we're rarely getting flatted in any spot (which is what you're hoping for) and with a min4bet we're getting flatted a ton. We can debate how the villain's calling frequency maps to our bet-sizing between those two points for sure but that's pretty villain-dependent I would think.

2) I think will be a bit more standard across all villains - I think it's clear that the villain is much more likely to flat a 4bet when he has position to us. Given that in spot 1 there are two villains IP to us and in spot 2 there is only one villain IP to us, I think it's clear that we're much less likely to have our 4bet flatted by the SB, even if we bet smaller (but still larger than a min4bet).

So we're basically just down to considering whether the original PFR flats our 4bet - we're comparing the benefit of smaller 4bet size to the risk of getting flatted by just one villain.

So my question is whether the risk of one villain flatting still significant enough that we would give up the benefits of smaller 4bet size for the EV of our 4bet bluffs?

I'd be interested to hear whether the fact we're OOP to both villains in hand 1, OOP to PFR but IP to 3bettor in hand 2 makes a difference. Are you at all tempted to 4bet smaller in hand 2 because the most likely caller (the 3bettor) is OOP to us?

Thanks for the reply - makes sense!

I'm actually really interested in the idea of overbetting the turn. I can't say that I consider overbetting on any street other than the river, so it's something that I could work into my game.

Just to be clear - it's good here because villain can have lots of weak pair / weak draw / weak pair + weak draw type hands that can't stand any real heat but won't ever fold to a std betsize?

So what we're looking for is 1) a relatively dry board and 2) a board where the villain makes a lot of middling hands? So I guess specifically boards with a high card, middle card, low card and turns which bring them a little extra equity but not much?

Thanks for taking the time to reply dddog, much appreciated!

It is tough to randomize your action,
One way you could randomize a 50% weigth would be too 4-bet hearts and diamond suits, call clubs or spades.
Another way, a little more time consuming. Would be to use a RNG ( random number generator
RNG
I prefer to do it by feel and table dynamic, honestly allot of the time we put these ranges together as models. So that wont always be perfect and we will be deviating allot from our set strategy.

I've actually tried your first suggestion (basing your action on suits). I found it was a bit too much of strain on my (already limited) mental capacity when deciding on a line! Particularly when you're talking about an offsuit hand and picking a combo of two suits...

I've read somewhere about basing the decision on the second hand on your watch, which is kinda a cool idea (and would be relatively easy to apply, particularly if you used your PC clock instead of your watch...)

But yeah it's kinda minor thing given our ranges are going to be pretty fluid anyway, just interesting to think about.

With out it a astute player would be able to play perfect against us.
4-betting is great we need it in most cases to
Get value
Deny equity

Yeah those two reasons are certainly reasonable to me. I think what get's interesting is when you quantify the denying equity part. So, for instance, versus a guy who 3bets X% and has Y% of that range as bluffs (that fold to our 4bet), let's assume we only ever flat, never 4bet. How often does his Y% of bluffs connect with the board enough to get to showdown?

Although I guess we're not just talking about getting to showdown - by just flatting we give him the opportunity to barrel with hands that don't even connect with the board that well and sometimes get us to fold better hands...

I guess the more I think about it, the more that there seems there's probably a lot of value in denying the villain equity. It would be really interesting to try and quantify it... I guess you could do something as simple as seeing what % of the time his 3bet bluff range makes top pair + ?

The value of denying equity will increase as the villain's 3bet bluffing frequency increases. So I guess against guys who we believe to be 3betting us a lot in the spot it's even more important to have a 4betting range and be denying equity?

klamsauce, would you say that it makes sense to have those 'GTO' frequencies in mind and then tweak our actual frequencies based on reads / stats we have to suggest villain's range is weighted more towards bluff / values than a 'GTO player' would be?

The thing is that readless we can't really assume anything about villain. I mean yeah we can take a population read that generally regs aren't bluffing rivers all that often - would you say that that's a fair assumption to make here? Meaning we should tweak our frequency to call somewhat less than the GTO frequency would suggest?

Yeah good point - I guess it's kind of a minor thing because an A turn comes so infrequently. However I don't totally agree that the villain needs to figure out anything in order to exploit us - he can do so unintentionally if he's barreling A turns a lot for some other reason, right? But yeah, it's not going to happen that often + we have hands that can call down already.

What's the bottom of your range for continuing on that flop? If we think his range is two-pair + and GS, AT-A6 are all equal, right? AQ is better because it can turn a two-pair that counterfeits AJ, AT-A6 can all turn two-pair which counterfeit A5 (but not AJ). He's rarely (?) check-raising in that spot with a bare top-pair.

So AQ is an obvious flop call. I'd be calling flop with AT-A6 but then kinda unsure with those hands on the turn. I'd feel like if we're calling with all those hands OTF and then folding them all on the turn, we're going to be folding a lot to turn barrels. So I guess we'd need to call with some of those hands OTT too... but they're pretty much equal! So shouldn't we theoretically be calling with all of them? Maybe I'm missing something...

What's the bottom of you guys' ranges for calling the flop here?

Is there a benefit to having some AX hands in our flop calling range to ensure that we can call barrels on A turns? So calling with hands like AQ w/ a two-card backdoor flush draw? Guess if we're calling with that hand then that's the bottom of our range?

I agree that we're unlikely to get 3 streets of value with this hand w/out improving, which is why I said above that I like checking too.

However the more I think about it, the more I think that the fact the board is two-tone could make some difference. Do we prefer to get our 2 streets of value on the flop and turn on two-tone boards? Or does it not make that much difference?

Couple of questions...

We're entirely uncapped = the top of our range is the nuts (or pretty much the nuts, ignoring 42). Is that right? Just not clear on what that means!

When you say there's no need to play back because we have one of the worst hands we can have, are you saying that we should be bluffing here (the limited % of the time we should actually be bluff 3betting) with hands that are better than 54s but would still otherwise be a fold to the raise?.

I'd be kinda interested to see what our best bluffing hands would be here.

Also, on board coverage: I'm not really too familiar with the term. When you talk about 'covering' a board you mean that we have hands in our range that connect (strongly) with that board, right? So maximising our board coverage is maximising the % of boards that our range can connect strongly with?

If you guys have any videos / resources on board coverage that you've found useful I'd love to learn some more

These all look like interesting spots that I'd like to hear more about BUT I'd like to dig a bit deeper on spot 3 in particular.

Couple of questions:
1)
what factors determine whether you're 4betting AK/QQ? I tend to think that even if you're intending to 4bet say 50%, you're almost certainly going to actually tend to take one of the options (4bet or call) way more often than the other. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's hard to randomise your actions, right?

2)
I've experimented with not having a 4bet range at all in this spot. My thinking is that our value range is super narrow (AA-KK, sometimes QQ / AK is 34 combos max) and so we're not going to be able to include too many bluffs combos (as we don't want to be exploitable vs a 5bet, obviously).

I kinda think of the main benefit of having a 4betting range as being able to bluff hands that you'd otherwise fold. If we're not able to bluff with many combos, that's a limited benefit.

I think of the benefit of calling with our entire to be that we now have AA-KK in our flatting range, making our range stronger and providing 'protection' (not sure if that's the right word) for the rest of our flatting range vs the 3bet.

To me, the benefit of flatting > than the benefit of 4betting, which is why I've experimented with not having a 4bet range in that spot. However I definitely feel like I'm missing something - are there other reasons for having a 4bet range that I'm missing? I know you mentioned denying equity above... is that enough of a factor to swing it?

Yeah my bad on this... I misread the river and didn't see we had 2-pair.

Assume the river is an 8 - then we're at the bottom of our range, right? You guys folding / tempted to fold then?

Yeah I agree...
betting > checking with 99 > checking with 77

Makes sense! Interesting idea as the majority of my flatting range is PPs. I guess they're not too dissimilar - you can call on plenty of boards (ones with <= 1 overcard generally), not be stuck to your hand if the villain bombs the turn and can also win big pots when you flop a set.

Do you think a mix of Ax and PPs would make sense for a 3bet flatting range?

I agree with checking, specifically for your second reason - I like to have hands that can call the turn and river.

As played we end up needing to call turn and river... but now we've got something close to the bottom our range, right? I'm guessing your value-betting range on the flop doesn't go much lower than A7s?

I agree that the river is close because he can just turn up with random hands, but I don't hate a fold with this hand (given it's the bottom of our range). Anyone agree?

I think if I'm checking the turn in this spot it's going to be with 99 because then I block his TP combos.

Curious to hear what other hands you guys would be donking the flop with?

KatonBond, what's the logic for AX suited being a good hand to flat vs a 3bet when UTG? Curious to hear your thoughts - I struggle with 3b defence ranges!