I have been telling people and even put it out in one of my most recent videos on my youtube channel "Navonod on NLH" that polarization is one way that players can wield their positional advantage. And, in fact, playing OOP does not allow you to polarize ranges without being punished.

While this struck me as intuitively true, and it seemed to hold up to my bit of minor analysis and scrutiny, I've never heard anyone else put in that way before and I have been wondering if I maybe made a bit of a mental misstep in calling polarization a "positional edge made manifest".

I know that, pre-flop, we don't always want to polarize our 3 bet ranges (for instance) when we are OOP like from the blinds vs a LP steal attempt. Because our opponent who has position on us can do things to punish us like, well, hitting the call button against our bluff heavy range or opening a polarized 4 betting range (if sufficiently deep). But if we are in LP and face an open raise we can 3 bet a polarized range exactly because our opponent can't just call with more hands and go post flop with a wider range against our polarized range because he is out of position and should do more 4 betting or folding against our 3 bets (which means he will be 4 betting against our nutted value hands or against our lighter hands and both of those seem bad but maybe not as bad as playing a pot OOP vs an uncapped range when he himself would have a capped range).

I started rethinking my statement when I thought about the way we normally want to construct a flop check raise range.

I, personally, feel like we should def be check raising a polarized range any time we do want to check raise some % of the time on a given flop. I mean, it wouldn't make much sense to get super aggro with the middle of our range right?

So, is it the case that a good player who understands just how to exploit a polarized check raising range actually can do damage to you by just calling wider and polarizing a flop 3 bet range against your polar check raises?

Or did i just misspeak when I called polarization one way in which positional advantage is made manifest?

I think it's pretty fair to say that you can't get away with polarizing a 3 bet range when you are OOP pre-flop but is this something more about the way players should respond to a 3 bet when they will be going to the flop in position? I know i like to polarize my 3 bets when my opponent is OOP because he will either be calling too often OOP and allowing me to realize all my equity and take advantage of my position and uncapped range OR he will have to play 4 bet or fold against a range that is all very strong and very weak hands (neither seem particularly attractive options).. but is this actually showing us something about how position allows us to play more hands profitably (in this case by not wasting hands that make good flats by three betting them and by 3 betting some hands that are not quite good enough to flat call with)?

Does this idea, that we can polarize an aggressive range pre-flop when in position but can't really get away with that when we are OOP carry over to post flop play? Or not?

If my opponent was to start check raising a polarized range on the flop can I exploit that by calling relatively decent hands and 3 betting a polarized range?

Or is that not really "exploiting" as much as it is just "playing poker"????


Should my OOP aggro ranges be more linear and my in pos aggro ranges be more polar post flop? And is this due to the positional advantage allowing more hands to be played profitably?

I don't feel that I'm qualified to provide a definitive answer on whether 3b should be polarised or linear OOP, but here is some food for thought.

In toy games where hero has a perfectly polarised range of 100% equity and 0% equity, and villain has bluff catchers only, the solution doesn't change whether we are in position or out of position, i.e. there is no positional advantage. Would it naturally follow on that the more polarised our range is, the less position matters?

In my opinion, the advantage of position is that it effectively allows us to control the amount of streets played postflop, i.e. we can check back flop, turn, or river with our hands that are too weak for 3 streets of value and not get punished for it, whereas OOP this is not true.

My conclusion based on these is that we should be 3betting more polarised OOP than IP, with the probable exception of the SB, who risks getting squeezed by the BB when calling a middling range.

I don't think there is a particularly strong relationship between position and polarization, other than the fact the player in position is more likely to bet a given street, and it's usually a betting range - not a check-calling range - that is polarized.
Pre-flop, I believe optimal 3-betting ranges are neither totally polar or totally linear, but there is more linearity for OOP 3-betting ranges (especially in the SB, where there is hardly any flat-calling). Post-flop, betting/raising ranges usually (but not always) get increasingly polarized as the pot gets bigger and you get closer to the river, whereas the caller often has a breakeven bluffcatcher or air (and seldom the nuts). The OOP player, however, can take the betting lead (by donking or check-raising) at some point, and he'll typically be polarized (and/or have a range advantage) when he does so.

To put it another way, my understanding is that - generally speaking - aggressive actions (bets and raises) tend to be made with polarized ranges (i.e. strong value hands and bluffs), whilst passive actions (checks and calls) tend to be made with more condensed/capped ranges (i.e. mid-strength bluff-catchers, mid-strength draws). An OOP player can seize the initiative, as it were, by check-raising in order to threaten a 'polarized' shove on a later street (with the effective nuts, or a missed draw or airball), but it rarely makes much sense to play for stacks OOP with a mid-strength hand.
It's usually the case that the final post-flop bet (e.g. a river shove) is made with a polarized range in order to maximise profit with the nuts and make the potential caller indifferent/breakeven to bluffcatching. You can usually make this "final bet" whether you're in or out of position, although an OOP player won't have the chance to check-jam the river with a polar range if the IP player checks behind.

nah;
the reason the toy game works that way is because there is no chance of having to play OOP for three streets after getting called.

It's true that in a PURE PvsBC situation position is more or less a non factor because the bluff catcher has no incentive to bet in or out of position and will always check to the raiser or check back if checked to (Pvs BC = Polar vs bluff catcher) where one player has just nuts and air and the other is capped and bound in such a way that he beats all of the polar range bluffs and loses to all the value hands.

I def understand why it could seem like it would at a glance, but it does not follow that a pr-flop range should be constructed in a polarized way intentionally when OOP.

The reason a player in position can afford to polarize a 3 bet range pre-flop is because it is generally not good to call three bets out of position and take flops in 3 bet flops with a capped range against an uncapped range OOP.

The reasons its better to use a depolarized range pre-flop OOP than a polarized range is because; the way to beat a polarized range is to NOT play 4 bet or fold against it, just call more often. When IP you can call wide and go to the flop with a positional advantage against a range that, if polarized, will contain a bunch of junk.
think about it, if you knew for a fact you would be called you would DEF 3 bet a value only range right? Of course, because your bluffs have no fold equity and because you will need strong hands to content with villain's positional advantage and because your strong hands get value by raising and getting called pre-flop.
If you knew for a fact you would only be 4 bet or folded to then you would play a super polarized range because your opponent would be making mistakes by playing 4 bet or fold against a range that is all nuts and bluffs. If villain knows you're polarized (nuts and bluffs) he would call more often to avoid raising into the nuts AND keep your bluffing range in going to the flop.

Because good players tend to play more 4 bet or fold OOP vs a 3 bet good players polarize their 3 betting ranges in response.

Because good players call a lot in position facing 3 bets from OOP (if deep enough), good players know to play a linear value injected 3 bet range in response to their opponent's not folding a ton and not 4 betting all that much.


So, as for trying to create a polarized situation when OOP because there is no positional advantage when ranges happen to be in a PvsBC distribution is not gonna work.

Yes, when it happens that ranges are PvsBC it negates the effects of position
however
you would be bleeding off too much EV pre-flop by trying to force the situation by 3 betting a polarized range pre-flop

This is my understanding, let me know if it seems right and if so tell me if it seems that there actually IS a connection between polarization and position;

Why is it that we can get away with a more polarized distribution when we 3 bet from the button in some six max or ring game?
1) Because we will want to and be able to flat call a capped and bound middle strength range that is made up of speculative hands and hands that are ahead of the openers 2 bet range but not ahead of an openers continue vs 3 bet range.
2) We want to 3 bet our hands that are ahead of the openers continue vs 3 bet range and since we will be 3 betting these strongest hands for value we can mix in some number of bluffs for balance.
(that means we want to be 3 betting the top and bottom of our continue vs open range and flatting the middle, ergo, we are polarizing our 3 bet range)
3) Our opponent cannot simply flat a ton of hands and play us from OOP because, well, it sucks to play a capped range OOP in a 3 bet pot against an uncapped range. So, basically,.. there is nothing villain can do to stop us from doing what we want to do and polarizing our 3 bet range.
4) good players know it is not good to flat call often OOP vs 3 bets. Therefore good players will tend to play very 4 bet or fold against an IP players 3 bets.
5) If we knew for sure that our opponent would never flat us and would only play 4 bet or fold then hands like ATs and KJs would be ~ A2 and K6 when we 3 bet them because we will never be taking them to showdown or even to the flop (they will either win via fold equity or lose via getting 4 bet) so we would have no reason to "waste" a perfectly good flat calling hand as a 3 bet when we could just use some blocker containing bluff instead
6) If we knew our opponent would play 4 bet or fold then we would just 3 bet the hands we would happily continue vs a 4 bet with (maybe something like QQ+ and bluffs depending on positions) and some number of blocker containing bluffs.

Basically it seems to me that we always WANT to use a polarized range to be aggressive with and a bound and capped range for calling
HOWEVER
If our opponent is able to call us often and is not at all limited to or incentivised toward playing a very re-raise or fold strategy then he can punish us for polarizing our 3 bet range.
HOWEVER
A player who is OOP simply cannot just call more and go post flop often and really ought to play more raise or fold against us which not only ALLOWS but actually INCENTIVISES TO use a polarized range for him to run his 4 bets into.
AND
A player who has position on us CAN use his position to flat us a lot and this not only makes it bad for us to be polarized (because our value range is more face up and the rest of our range is junk that sucks to play OOP in a 3 bet pot) but makes it good for us to have had a linear 3 bet range because a linear range would have hands that dominate many of the hands in the middle of IP's continuing range
THEREFORE
The player in position has a number of reasons that he wants his OOP villain to aggress with a polarized range. The player in position wants to continue with a polarized range. The player OOP hates when the IP player is polarized but can do nothing about it at all.

And so it would seem to me that if players had to act on their hands simultaneously or there was in some other way no positional advantage to be feared heading to the flop then aggressive ranges would tend toward the poles of nutted value and bluff and passive ranges would be more speculative/marginal hands
but in reality the player in position can just really punish the OOP player for being polarized and there is nothing the OOP player can do to counteract his IP villain from polarizing against him.

And polarization allows us to play a greater number of hands overall by way of efficiency (not wasting anything).

And being in position allows us to play more hands profitably

And...

POLARIZED AGGRESSION RANGES ARE ONE WAY A POSITIONAL EDGE MANIFESTS PRE-FLOP!!


What do we think about that??



I want to see if we can agree on that and, IF WE DO, would it follow that the same applies on a street by street basis post flop?

Please let's discuss this I really think i may be on to something here and if so it could have some far reaching implications (like polarizing a check raising range being exploitable and actually pretty bad!! and that would be odd indeed)