sirin

I have to be honest and say that I'm not without bias - I am a BRPC player and have been coached by Max and am now in the same study group.

But honestly, I've been a RIO member, on and off, since the site started, and this is (imo) without a doubt one of the best videos on the whole site.

Run it Once has an unbelievable roster of some of the best poker players of all time, which is an incredible resource, but this is a video that gives simple, practical steps towards improving your game, and that is, as a long time subscriber, very rare (there are lots of other great videos but unless you are already a very good player you have to read between the lines, which is a whole other thing).

Congrats Max!

Nice video Max, really well explained and a good mixture of theory and practice - Robin

haha yeah i realised just after!

Great thanks for the reply!

Also, a video suggestion: How to organize in game when betting a range like the IP with equal ranges on T95s in the video:

In game, I tend to pretty much always bet QJ and KJ, and only bet the 86 type hands vs weaker opponents.

Would love to see a discussion on the trade offs involved in these kind of decisions when playing against humans.

Great video thanks. I'm trying to develop the habit of summarizing things in my own words to help me to understand them better (inspired by this short article about Richard Feynman, FWIW : https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/347371)

If you had a chance it would be great if you could have a look and let me know if I've got it right, if not no worries!

IP.

When we are in position with equal ranges, all our hands to some extent "want" to bet. Our strong hands want to bet because weaker hands will call, and our weaker hands want to bet because some stronger hands will fold.

When ranges are exactly equal, we can't do too much betting, since both ranges have the same equity, and we can't use a big size for the same reason. We don't have any combos that are pure check backs, but we do show a preference for betting with stronger hands and stronger draws.

The thing that restricts us from betting all our hands is that OOP has the option to raise, which will lead to use folding out some hands which still have equity against his raising range. This slows us down.

As our range gets stronger, OOP has to be more careful with his raises. This means we can bet more often, and for larger sizes, both with our strong hands and our weaker hands, which benefit from being dragged along by the stronger ones.

The weaker hands benefit by getting more folds, since OOP has to be careful of the stronger range, and by facing less check/raises, allowing them to at least have the chance to improve on the turn when OOP does continue.

BOARD TEXTURE.

The above dynamic is true for all boards, however the degree to which it is applicable varies.

On dryer boards, the effect is more pronounced. The board will not change very often, so out of position has less opportunities to check/raise with hands which can improve.

As the board gets wetter, when ranges are symmetrical IP has to be more careful with his bets, since his strong made hands might not be so strong on lots of turns.

So with equal ranges on a wet board, he sizes up to disincentivize OOP from check/raising. He also benefits from the larger bet because it will deny more equity to out of positions range, while getting more value now with strong hands that may be forced to check back when the board changes.

Again as IP's range gets stronger, he can bet more often, even on a dynamic board, although the rate at which he can increase frequency and sizing is a little slower than on a dry board.

However, if we keep adding strong hands to IP's range, eventually it will reach a point where he can just bet big with his whole range, thus fulfilling the original "goal" IP had of betting all of his combos, which he couldn't do when ranges were more equal.

Nice results OP!

Citanul which videos did you find helpful for six max, if you can remember?

I don't fully understand this post - when you say "Ip can bet small OTT to controle the pot and avoid getting prob ovb river." what do you mean?

Avoid getting probe overbet on river? I don't see how?

Really enjoying these videos, and your videos in general, but it would be great to see some more difficult/less covered spots - stuff like bet/check/bet line, probe turn and river, that sort of thing.

Why do you think you can't beat 500z right now? You were beating it before right?

Seems like you have played quite a lot with regs that you don't have many hands in your DB on - is this because you deliberately purge old hands, or just because of your setup or whatever?

Crazy results! Really motivating to see that its still possible.

Good video as always. I'm also curious about this hand:

I take your point that he might well be leading too wide and playing badly vs a raise, but I'm unsure about the river strategy. Even if he probes too wide, he will still have lots of hands that can call the raise - pairs, flush draws, pair plus draws. So are we following through on blank rivers, and if so for what sizing? I know we can raise turn quite a lot vs this line, but by the time we raise turn and bet river, we are repping a fair strong range, and it seems like KT doesn't block a huge amount, but if we check it back he is going to win very often.

If you are following through on the river, what sort of size, I'm guessing around 2/3 - 3/4?

Makes sense, thanks!

Nice results, GL!

Sorry for the late question, great video. In this spot you say you would prefer to call Js9s and fold this one- I would have thought it would be the other way around - he should be giving up his flop "bluffs" that contain a diamond on the turn more since they block our c/c, c/f range, so we block his giveups therefore unblocking his bluffs, no?

Whereas Js9s blocks his spade combos, which should be more likely to continue since they can fold out our diamond backdoor floats, no?

Maybe I'm thinking about this wrong though, would appreciate some feedback!

Cool video thanks. Two questions:

1. You mention that we should be 3betting when our cbet gets raised BvB, and that the player falls far short of the "desired frequency". What sort of frequency should we aim for?

2. You note approvingly that the player uses the depolarized double barrel sizing OOP. I have a small bet in my sims for when we are OOP in 3bet and SRP, but IP I only use the 66 and 150 sizing usually (I use the "add line" to have a 33% size on turn after calling a flop check/raise).

Does this seem like a reasonable simplification? I know the 33% is used sometimes as a barrel size IP in SRP but it seems a lot more complicated to implement, and OOP I can see more benefit (pushing our equity advantage without having to either polarize or go into c/c down mode allowing him to bet a polar range), whereas IP we can check back the hands that like to bet when they are OOP.

Hey sauloCosta10 , thats funny that the stats are so rare. Its over a sample of 73k hands on Stars and 888, 200nl - 500nl. Since I posted I played a bit more and the Won at SD dropped to 56, so maybe it is a sample size issue.

Cool video. I am a winning player with a WWSF of 49, went to showdown of 29, but my Won at Showdown is 57.

Since the other stats are decent, does this suggest my problem is more related to not bluffcatching enough?

At 16.00 you say its worse to have the Ah because it has bad blockers to his value range - I can't figure out why.

Unless its that it has good blockers to his flush draw bluffs, therefore making value more likely?

I was also surprised to see AQ check back even when the river betsizing isn't huge and our range is protected by all the nutty combos so its not like we get bluffed off of our hand with his c/r.

At 19.40 the board is K85s.

You say that this is a high frequency small sizing board for cbetting, because we have a lot of equity with our strong middling pairs, and we have all the AK and overpairs as well. All of which makes sense, but why then is Q63r not also a high frequency/small sizing board?

I know that the 1/2 pot sizing is preferred on Q63r and some boards like that but I haven't quite understood why its true of Q63r and not K85s.

Is it that we are less inclined to put more money in on a suited board since so many turns are difficult for us?

I totally follow the logic of putting people in situations they are less likely to have studied by using less common betsizes, but I'm not sure I follow your conclusion - surely using the flop overbet, to take your example, will mean we have to be even more careful to try to mimic a GTO strategy.

To put it another way. Lets say we use an "unusual" cbet size - say 120%.

We know that our opponent is less likely to be familiar with the response to this size, therefore he will make mistakes. I agree with this.

But his mistakes will fall into one of two categories. Either he will continue too often, or he will not continue often enough.

The more unfamiliar the betsize, the more pronounced this effect is likely to be.

So the sizing will induce mistakes, likely large mistakes.

However, we don't know which of these mistakes he will make. Some opponents will call too much, others will fold too much.

If they call too much, then we capitalize on this mistake by making more money with our value hands.

If they fold too much, then we capitalize on that mistake by making more money with our bluffs.

Since we don't know which of these large deviations our opponent will make, it becomes extra important to make sure we have the correct ratio of value bets to bluffs, so that whatever mistake he makes, we exploit.

So we're back to trying to come as close as possible to mimicking the PIO grid.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do this, at least in theory, just that if our flop strategy is designed to cause villain to make large deviations from optimal play, but we don't know in which direction he will deviate, then we really have to be extra careful to be "balanced.".

Good video thanks. At 35.30, you open AT on the button and choose to check back K63s vs the rec. You say you don't think trying to take down every spot like this is the right approach vs this type of player.

I would see this as a classic spot to cbet range, especially vs someone with a wider range - we can give ourselves a great price to get folds from lots of J8 type hands which have decent equity, and he can also check/call worse.

What am I missing? Is it that the player will make more mistakes vs a check back, and if so in what way?

Welcome back!

Just a heads up - I haven't ran preflop sims myself but I've modelled my ranges on other video makers who have, and if I'm not mistaken the calling range in that SB 3bet vs BTN flat spot is just insanely wide. 63s, for example, isn't generally an open on the BTN, let alone a defend vs 3bet. I've seen people say that the pre-loaded solutions in GTO trainer aren't great, I suspect there are some weird parameters that would change things a lot there.

Great video thanks.

Any idea roughly when the NL version will be released? Are we talking weeks or months?

Sounds great! Will there be a NLHE version?

Great explanation thanks.

Yeah I know that's the case in general, I suppose I was just surprised on this specific texture, I would have expected the fact that we have more two pair plus than villain, and more backdoor draws, to make more of a difference, compared to vs BTN where he has all the same strong hands as us, as well as pretty much all the same draws.