tompoker

My take on the river call frequency:

We want to stop villain from exploiting us with OOP floats on the flop. He risks his Flop call and river bet, which, neglecting any turn action, would lead to a river calling range of about 40-50%.

Considering the times that we bet the turn and he doesn't improve to a call- or raise-able hand should lead you to a 30-40% calling range.
Maybe someone wants to do the math on that one? :)

I don't understand why we have a "very easy value bet" on the river in the A8s hand in the beginning. Being in position we should be called at least 50% with worse, and I don't see how this is true here, considering we are UTG and the SB calling-range should be quite strong on the river. All AQ and many AK combinations are in villains range, the 2 ATs combos, TT.. AQ and AK do not always bet the turn either, since the 7 hits you more than him. Also, it is not certain that he will call the riverbet with JJ/QQ either.

Additionally, it is possible that he has a cr-bluffing range in this spot, which leads to us needing even more than 50% vs his calling-range.

What did I miss?

On another note, I do not understand what we accomplish with our turn bet when the 7 pairs. It's a wa/wb situation and we do not get much value from worse, which we can not get on the river unless a Q/K comes on the river. And when my thought process above is correct, we should not have 2 value bets either, making the turn bet worse in my opinion.

In some spots you chose a very large riverbet for thin value (AK and at least 1 more) which i do not like, as he has to defend much less vs a bigger bet and pushes your hand very close (or even below) the 50% mark vs his callingrange. I suspect you chose the size because that's the size you want to bluff with, but i think it is much better to bluff with the size you want to value bet thinly with and use that size for all betting hands for two reasons:

- Your range is already quite strong/few bluffs compared to different river cards

- the ev-change of your thin value bets when choosing different bet sizes times the likelyhood you have those hands far outweights the ev-change of your bluffs times the likelyhood of bluffbets.

I can't prove it, it's just my opinion that betting 90-110 into 160 in that situation is superior to betting 144 for those reasons.

Edit:

Actually i think i can at least prove that a smaller bet is better with this exact hand in a vacuum but i want to know your opinion first.

In the first hand example, you can not only cr a bit over 21 bluff combos (with 50 value combos), but MUCH more than that, maybe even more than 50. Here is the reason:

Starting from the river, our river betting range can and should be constructed in a way that makes him indifferent with his bluffcatchers, i.e. his EV of a call is the same as a fold which is 0, which means that he basically loses the whole pot every time we make a bet and he has a bluffcatcher. Now when we bet the turn, we can construct our range in a way that counts every riverbet as a "value hand", even though it is not an actual value hand, but as stated above, that does not matter vs his bluffcatchers. Therefore, our actual bluff:value ratio shifts more towards bluffs, which leads to a new ratio of 1:1 with common betsizes. The same principle transitions to the flop, leading to a bluff:value ratio of about 2:1.

Now that's the case when our value hands have 100% equity and our bluffs 0% equity and neglecting card removal effects and position. After crunching some more realistic numbers and approximate the disadvantage of being out of position, still without card removal, the bluff:value-raise ratio should be something like 1:1 to 1,5:1, which leads to 50-75 bluff combos in your example.

The fact that we need to be able to defend against a small 3-bet does not directly limit us in the number of bluffs in our raising range, but in our construction of it, which means we need to have enough hands in our check-raise-bluffing range that can profitably call a small 3-bet. On the other hand, it is not easy to pick hands to check-raise-"bluff"/call with, because many or all of such hands are also considered good check-calling hands. Maybe it is best to take some cc-candidates into a check-raise/call-small-reraise-range, like AT with the Ace backdoor-draw. This also enables us to hit more turn cards we otherwise would not have (or rarely) hit after check-raising the turn. One could argue that our range is so strong that we have enough value hands we can easily call a reraise with, but then our cr/call range becomes too strong.

On a side note, I really like your videos the most on RIO, even now with Ben Sulsky on board, as long as he limits himself to sessionreviews and liveplay. Keep up doing the good stuff.

Edit:

Additionally, if villain is very good and assumes hero is also very good, flop-3bets should occure very infrequently, because
1. hero's range is already quite polarized against which a wide calling range is better than a wide raising range, esp. in position
2. balancing another decision-subtree consisting of a very narrow value range is very difficult without creating an imbalance in hero's calling range.

Therefore, hero can eliminate one decision-subtree for a similar reason MP vs UTG eliminates the 3-bet option for certain stack-sizes and blind-structures and SB vs BU eliminates the call-option for certain stack-sizes and blind-structures.

Even if villain autoprofits with certain hands on a small-3bet, that does not mean he maximizes his EV that way.
The tendency of discarding a reraising-range is frequently observed in HU-matches of elite players against each other.

While it was a good live video, Ben's skill would be much better used
for concept/math-videos or HU footage, since those are the areas where
his approach probably differs the most from that of other good players.

And yes, offsuit to suited is exactly 3:1, the pairs do not interact with
that in any way, which was probably his reasoning for believing the
rounded numbers.

Regarding calling of 3bets:

To defend against a very wide 3betting range without being opened up for heavy exploits, you do have to defend VERY wide by calling. If you 2x and someone makes it 7x, it might be part of a GTO strategy to call K2o (100 BB), though I regularly end up with a K4o - K7o threshold. Calling J2s in the 2 -> 7 case could easily be optimal.

If my calculations are correct, they show that I can profitably 3x vs your limp 90-100% of hands against your initial strategy even with R < 1 (= 0,9) with position (+++) and initiative (+), minus weaker range (--) and bad playability with crappy hands (-) (so as you see, R < 1 is already generous), but you claimed that you actually suspect people raising too wide and lay out your initial strategy for exploiting this tendency.

If you would give me a limping-%, limp/reraise-range-% and limp/call-range-% (and possibly an actual range for the latter) that exploits a raising-range > 40%, I will show you my calculations with your numbers.

I am VERY interested in your proof of - or idea of proving that - letting 72o auto-profit preflop (including postflop-equity) is suboptimal in HU on the button. I also assume this statement is true and am basing my "GTO"-BB-strategy on that assumption, i.e. having a merged / semi-merged 3-betting range between 15-20% and folding about 10-15%, which forces the button to play only 80 to 90% with a minraise-strategy.

Another hand I want to comment on is the 84s on the left table at ~34:00. You bet about 90 in 140 on the river, and here is why I think this is not a good betsize:

We have a valuebetting range of weak to medium Ax and maybe KQ, which we need to bet smaller than 90 (can PM you the formula I use to find river-valuebet-sizes if you like), let's say 60-70, and a valuebetting range consisting of AJ+, with which we should bet close to pot, maybe even a small overbet. Of course we need some strong hands in our small-valuebetting-range as well to protect us from bluff-cr, for example Ax 2Pair (since it makes it less likely for him to have a strong bluffcatcher with the A and more likely he has a hand he wants to turn into a bluff). The stronger range should be balanced with bluffs which have more SDV, since there are more hands we have to get folds with (i.e. rivered lowpair). The weaker range with the smaller bet can contain bluffs with less SDV like our 84s, where basically any fold is a fold from a better hand, therefore giving our opponent good odds is not a problem.

Summary: I think betting ~60 with 84s here is superior to the 87 bet made in play.

I would appreciate feedback on this betsizing-concept.

In the first Zoom hand you hold 95s on the right table in the BB against a 2.5x open from the CO. You say it's an easy fold, but I had my doubts, so I ran the numbers: Even with a tight CO-range of 25% and a low R of 0.75, it is very close to a call. 96s is a call even with R = 0.72. Since it is so close to a call and it retains its equity well in a 3bet pot, I actually think it is an easy 3bet.

What do you think?