Turn C-betting Math

On the turn, you frequently have to decide whether to continue with a medium to weak made hand or draw or to give up on the hand. When you bet the flop and your opponent it calls, it usually means they have a pair or some sort of draw. Most of the time when you bet the flop it takes your opponent’s air out of their range unless they are particularly loose or try to win every pot. Thus when you bet the turn as a bluff, you have to get them to fold a marginal made hand or marginal draw a good percentage of the time to win the pot. My turn c-bet success is only around 35%, so I don’t expect c-betting the turn with total air to ever be that profitable, but I am interested in finding spots where this is appropriate.

Usually when we c-bet the turn as a bluff we have some chance to improve to the best hand, whether we are betting a pair or a draw. Say that we have a 4 out draw like a gutshot, and we are planning to bluff the turn ⅔ of the pot. We get to see a river card 90% of the time. So we have around a 1/12 *.9 chance of winning at showdown, so .075% equity. .075(1-X)% of the time we are called, we win the pot of 2 ⅓ plus around 1.5*.65 for our value bet, X% we win the pot of 1, and .925(1-X)% of the time we lose ⅔. My equation is Y=outs/46 * (1-X)*3.3*.9 + X - (1-outs)(1-x)*2/3. Solving, we learn our bluff has to succeed only 26% of the time to breakeven, compared with 40% for a pure bluff. If our bluff succeeds 35% of the time, we win 11% of the turn pot, which would be around 1.54 big blinds if the turn pot is 14 big blinds. Out of position most of the time we check we are going to end up folding on the turn. If we check in position, our equity is 1/12 of the pot and we can expect to win around an extra half pot bet on the river on average. My equation is outs/47*1.5. In this situation our equity is 1.75 bbs. So if our bluff succeeds at least 36% of the time we are better off betting, if we win less than 36% of the time we are better off checking.

With 2 outs, our breakeven point is 34% out of position and 38% in position. With 3 outs, our breakeven point out of position is 30% out of position and 37% in position. With 5 outs, our breakeven point out of position is 21% and in position is 34%. With 6 outs our breakeven point oop is 16% and in position is 33%. 7 outs: 10% and 31%. 8 outs: 3% and 26%. 9 outs: 0 and 26%. This model makes two big assumptions - that your outs are always going to be good and that you will be able to get value from them with a decent frequency. The equation is more complicated when there is a possibility of valuecutting yourself on the river, so judge accordingly. In addition, the more outs you have the less likely you are to be able to get value on the river since you have to have a more obvious draw, so my equation is not completely accurate.

I would expect my c-bets on the turn to get more respect in position than out of position. When we are in position, our opponents are more likely to check raise the strongest part of their range on the flop, so their turn checking range is a little bit weaker. Out of position, we are likely to have a lower success rate for our c-bets. After checking my statistics though, I found that my success rates are very close - around 36% for in position and 34% for out of position.

So it is safe to say that usually when you have at least 5 clean outs, betting on the turn is usually better than checking out of position and close in position, assuming that our bets are successful around 35% of the time. With 4 outs it’s usually better to bet out of position and close in position. With three outs it is going to be worth betting a majority of the time out of position and in position it’s close. With 2 outs it is close out of position and a majority of the time you should check in position.

These are interesting numbers to me. I definitely bet the turn less than some regulars, clocking in at around 45%. It seems like the more often we bet the turn the more times our opponent is going to have to pay us off, so in a close spot like if we have 2 outs to a set out of position and we expect to get a decent number of folds then we might choose to bet. When we have a draw to a gutshot or better we should usually bet out of position and in position it is a little close. Let me know what you think and if you have time make sure my results are accurate. Thanks for checking out my blog!

A few things about that equation:

1. Figuring out when its b/e to bluff a draw doesn't take into account that when your IP (or OOP against someone passive) you can profitably check back a draw and have a ton of implied outs on all our outs. Luckily this is easily fixable by figuring out the rough EV of checking back, then use that instead of 0 as the break even point for how often the bluff has to work.

2. Your equation takes into account very little of all the "value" your hand has; it doesn't take into account implied odds for when you hit an out, or fold equity that you might have on later streets that allow you to profitably bluff. You can only estimate this, as its so bloody complicated.

I actually did take #1 into account, that's why I came up with different numbers for OOP and IP. #2 I was assuming that a river c-bet would get called with average frequency, but you are correct that I didn't account for bluffing opportunities. A more accurate way to do it would be to do it hand by hand, or with more specific situations.

Ah, I see. I misread your post.

Freeze Cards

A common mistake that novice players in NLHE make is not thinking about how future cards will affect the relative strength of their hand and their ability to make money from it. A freeze card is a card that can come on the turn or river and either give your opponent the best hand or make them value their hand less. For example, if you have a set and your opponent has TPTK, when a third flush card comes on the turn you will have a more difficult time extracting value on the turn and river. On a board with a lot of draws, if you have a strong made hand you should play it fast not only because your opponent could outdraw you, but they can put you on a draw and get it in light.

Another situation where it is important to bet because of freeze cards is when you have a pair where an overcard can easily come on the turn. If we have 98s on 832, then this is a situation where we wouldn’t want to check either in our out of position. A lot of guys will check behind on this flop because they are worried about getting check raised and they won’t want to overplay their hand. On this flop you can legitimately get value from lower pocket pairs, 87s, and an overcard float, so betting is a good play. If you check, then any card T or higher is going to make it so you can’t get most of those hands to call a bet, and that is 20/47 turn cards. If we get check raised, then it’s ok – our hand didn’t have that much value anyways.

Sometimes you want to give your opponents a chance to catch up but these situations don’t come up all that frequently. Fastplaying is generally the best strategy because when we do something like check raising the turn we tip off the strength of our hand too much; but, slowplaying can be better when you have the board locked up. Say we have AA on AT3r when we 3-bet preflop. Now betting goes way down in value because it’s very tough for our opponent to have a hand that can actually call or raise, but checking can sometimes induce a bluff or induce a light calldown on the turn or river. A key factor in this hand is that when we check we still are going to be likely to stack medium strength hands because the stack to pot ratio is bigger. On an AT3r board in a single raised pot, I would be much more inclined to bet to get a hand like 33 or AT to stack off; whereas if we check raise those hands might fold.

A common way that freeze cards can come into play is if the board has a 3 straight on it. If it is a nogapper, that means that there are 4 different ranks of cards that can make the board have a 4 straight, so about a third of the deck. If the board is especially likely to have a bad turn card if you bet, sometimes check raising can be a better option. Say we have KK on T98 out of position in a 3-bet pot. Check raising is a great option compared to betting on this board because our opponent frequently is going to bluff it and we have decent equity versus their felting range. If we bet and get called, more than a third of the deck is bad for our hand and we have to check fold or payoff very light.

When you are evaluating the strength of your hand you always want to be mindful of how the value changes depending on what the turn and river cards are. This is going to determine the way that it is most effective to bet the hand. If there are a fair number of cards that can come on the turn that make it difficult to get value from your hand, then betting the flop is usually going to be best. If there are a lot of cards that can come on the turn, then check raising the flop might be better than betting. Look ahead towards turn and river cards and the situations that they will bring when choosing your line.

What Boards are Good to Flop C-bet?

A few days ago I wrote an article about flop continuation betting and I was explaining what boards are good for c-betting. Today I am going to test those assumptions that I made with data from my own play. For reference, my flop c-bet success rates over the 350k hand sample were 46% overall, 47% vs. one player, 39% vs. 2 players, and 36% vs. 3 players. I am not going to filter based on my hand strength, although that could be an interesting comparison due to blockers.

A dry flop with a high card: I am defining this one as any J or higher with two cards under a jack. I speculated that these flops would be good to fire with up to 3 players in the pot as a bluff, and only get better with equity.

• J high - 46% vs 1 player, 31% vs 2 players, 20% vs 3 players
• Q high - 51% vs 1 player, 51% vs 2 players, 33% vs 3 players
• K high - 51% vs 1 player, 49% vs 2 players, 68% vs 3 players
• A high - 48% vs 1 player, 44% vs 2 players, 44% vs 3 players

As you can see, the high card dry boards were all quite good to c-bet vs 1 player, and mostly good to c-bet vs 2 players. Since players are more likely to play hands with aces, the ace high boards got less folds than other boards. The jack high boards are more likely to get peeled by hands like overcards and middle pairs, so the success was lower. My hypothesis was correct for Q high through A high boards.

A low dry flop: I speculated that these are good to bet with any equity but not as a pure bluff. I speculated that in a 3 way or greater pot, these would be difficult to bluff at. I'm defining these as any board that is T high or lower that doesn't have any possible straights on it, and a limited number of open ended draws. My c-bet success vs 1 was 46% and vs 2 was 29%. My hypothesis was correct.

Paired flop: I speculated that these would be good to bet with 100% of your range in a 2-3 way pot. My c-bet success vs 1 player was 51%, vs 2 players was 44%, and vs 3 or more players was 52%. My hypothesis was correct, and it looks like in general these are good to c-bet versus any number of players.

Wet flop: For all of these I am going to filter out paired boards and I am going to break them up into a few different categories.

• Single suited boards - 45% vs 1 player, 38% vs 2 players, 31% vs 3 players. These are marginallly lower than my average c-bet success rates, but only by a little bit.
• Monotone boards - 50% vs 1 player, 42% vs 2 players. These boards look good to c-bet with air vs 1 or two players. My intuition says that they are better to c-bet vs. competent opponents than weak ones.
• 3 straight boards - Boards with 3 connected cards on them. They are unique in the fact that three different straights are possible. 29% vs 1 player, 36% vs 2 players. These are poor boards to c-bet as a bluff.
• 2 possible straights - These boards have 2 connected cards with a third separated by a gap. 37% vs 1 player, 33% vs 2 players.

From my analysis, it looks like my hypotheses were mostly correct. It is interesting to note that over my sample of hands, my c-bet success rate was extremely high. I would recommend doing this analysis over your own database to figure out what works in your games. Having this knowledge in your command will allow you to put more pressure on your opponents and cause them to make more mistakes versus you.

Good bite size information, good job keep em coming!

Turn C-betting by the Numbers

Success c-betting on the turn is typically quite a bit lower than success on the flop, mainly because when someone calls on the flop they usually have something or a decent chance to improve. Whereas over my sample of hands my flop cbet success was 46%, my turn c-bet success was only 38%. My river c-bet success is 41%. That means that players that I am playing against are relatively balanced on the turn and river in general – to make an immediately profitable play they would have to fold at least 40% of the time to a 2/3 pot bet. Let’s look at situations where you might get more or less folds.

Rainbow vs 2 tone boards vs monotone: On rainbow boards, my turn c-bet success was 38%. On 2 tone boards my turn c-bet success was 39%. On monotone boards , my turn c-bet success was 37%. At first glance it looks like our c-betting success does not fluctuate that much based on the flush cards on the board.

In position vs out of position: Out of position I would expect to have a slightly lower success of c-betting the turn, because our opponent can still float and put a move on us with a weakish draw, where out of position that wouldn’t be possible. In position, my turn c-bet success overall was 39%. Out of position, it was 37%.

Rainbow vs 2 tone boards vs monotone in position: On boards with a flush draw, position should be more valuable, so I would expect to have an added bonus from being in position on our c-bet success. In addition I would expect in position to get our c-bet raised more by strong hands, making their calling range on the flop weak. My turn c-bet success on rainbow boards IP is 37%. On 2-tone boards, it is 42%. On monotone boards, it is 39%. Out of position our success rates are 38%, 35%, and 35% respectively.

Possible flush vs no possible flush: On boards that are two tone on the flop, I would expect the turn card being a third to a flush to reduce our c-bet success rate. When a third flush card comes, my success is 38%, when it didn’t come, my success was 39%, so it didn’t make that big a difference. In position our success rates jump to 43% and 42%.

High card to a low board: On boards where the high card is ten or less, I would expect if a face card comes on the turn, it would raise our success rate quite a bit. On these boards I have a turn c-bet success rate of 39% overall. When a high card came on the turn, my c-bet success went up all the way to 47%. On an ace, it went to 50%. On a jack, it was 38%. On a queen, it was 53% and on a king it was 47%. On cards ten or less, my success was only 35%. Having a high card on the turn definitely makes c-betting much more of an option.

In tomorrow’s article, I’ll go into more different board textures and examine their factors on turn c-betting success. From my analysis today it looks like having a high card come on the turn and being in position provide significant bonuses to turn c-betting success. Being in position was especially effective on boards that have flush draws on them. If you would like to see me examine anything in particular, post a comment and I’ll be sure to include it tomorrow.

Very good read again, thank you very much! You've made me check my numbers as my turn c-bet success is much lower (34%). What's you flop and turn c-bet%?

Great thread, thanks for doing this!

read them all and made some adjustments to my game, sweet!

Turn C-betting by the Numbers Part 2

In the first part of the article I looked over my turn c-bet success rate on various boards and turn cards. I’m going to continue with that train of thought here.

A high flop – I would expect these to have a good success rate from earlier positions and a lower one from later positions, due to the relative value of top pair. Overall my success rate was between 38-42 for all positions, averaging 39%. It looks like these boards are slightly better than average to double barrel as a bluff.

K high flop – My turn c-bet success averaged out to be 34%. I filtered for boards where no striaght was possible and the turn was still king high.

Q or J high flop – My turn c-bet success was 35% for these boards. Overall it looks like J-K high flops are good to c-bet on the flop as a bluff, but the fold equity goes way down on the turn.

Paired flops vs unpaired flops – I would expect to have higher success on paired boards because they are a lot harder to hit than unpaired flops. On the other hand, calling flop and raising the turn is a common bluff and value line for paired boards. On unpaired boards, my turn c-bet success was 38%. On paired boards my success was 36%. These looks like another situation where the flop c-bet narrows ranges significantly.

Turn cards that pair the board – Common thought says that turn cards that pair the board are the worst to double barrel as a bluff. On turns where the board paired, my success was 38%. When the board didn’t pair, my success was 38%. This seems like a pretty small factor in c-betting as a bluff.

Monotone boards that the turn brings a fourth flush card – I would expect these boards to be pretty decent to bluff on because it’s easy to represent the nuts. Over a small sample my success was 62%. However, my turn c-bet was only 17%. Overall this is inconclusive.

Monotone boards that the turn doesn’t bring a 4 flush – I would expect these boards to be pretty good to bluff on because most people are going to raise a c-bet with a flush on the flop. My success rate for river bets was 34%, so apparently these boards are worse than average to bluff. My river cbet success was only 20%, so it looks like these boards are bad for barreling.

Low boards where the turn doesn’t bring a high card – My success on these boards was only 34%, so it looks like these boards are not great to double barrel as a bluff.

Boards where the turn makes a possible straight – I would expect these boards to be worse to barrel because it gives many hands pair + draws. When the turn brought at least 1 possible straight, my success was 33%. When it brought at least 2 possible straights, my c-bet success was 29%. When it didn’t have any possible straights, my c-bet success was 40%.

Boards that bring a possible flush draw vs. boards that are rainbow – On boards that brought a possible backdoor flush draw on the turn, my success was 35%. On boards that were rainbow, my success was 42%. Similarly, on a single suited board, my turn c-bet success was 32% when the turn brought a possible backdoor draw, and on boards where the board remained only 2 to one suit, my success was 39%.

In the first article I pointed out that position and scare cards provide significant bonuses to your turn c-bet success. In this article, it looks like an additional factor is whether the turn brings a possible flush draw or a possible straight. Those boards have a significantly lower c-bet success. In situations where the high card on the board doesn’t change, it looks like turn c-bet success rates are significantly lower. Ace high boards look a little better to c-bet as a bluff than other boards, possibly because when someone floats on those boards it is with a hand with low equity.

In conclusion, it looks in the games that I have played turn c-betting as a bluff is a very strong strategy. Combined with the knowledge that I posted in my entry “Turn C-betting Math,” it looks like any time we have at least 3 good outs, we should be firing the turn out of position, and with 4 good outs, we should fire the turn in position. Currently my turn c-bet percentage is somewhere in the 42% range, so I am going to look into increasing that number significantly.

Over the sample, my flop c-bet was 72% and my turn c-bet was 41%.

5-betting Part 1

We’re not going to make a lot of money getting in 55 for 100 bb in NLHE games preflop… or are we? 5-betting goes way up in value in situations in NLHE where we have good fold equity versus our opponents. If our opponent makes a 4-bet to 20 bb versus us and we have 100 bb stacks, if we have 1/3 equity we only have to risk 34 bb minus our investment to win the likely 28 bb in the pot. That means our opponent would have to be bluffing 55% of the time on his 4 bet for our bet to be breakeven. This doesn’t sound likely, but what about situations where a player has a very wide opening range and a tight 4-betting value range? Over the next couple articles I am going to mathematically analyze 5-bet situations in NLHE.

The first step in my analysis is determining an unexploitable 3-bet shoving range to shove 100 bb over our opponent’s open without them having a good way to defend against it. If it is unexploitable for us to shove, then it must also be true that 3-betting planning to 5-bet with the hand will always show a profit, and our opponent’s bluff percentage is the profit. This is only going to apply to opponents who like to 4-bet or fold to a 3-bet.

I created a spreadsheet at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...EtDQzlkMk16cEE to solve this problem. Feel free to take a look at it and make your own adaptations of it. I’m going to list the discoveries I made for the opening ranges your opponent must have for you to show a profit by open shoving. To simplify the problem I did not take into account card removal. I also set the maximum calling range for our opponent to be 88-AA, AK, and AQ. These calculations are for BB vs BTN

TT- 3x: 24.5% 2.5x: 27% 2x: 31%
99- 3x: 32% 2.5x: 36% 2x: 40%
88- 3x:46% 2.5x: 51% 2x: 58%
22- 3x: 48% 2.5x:53% 2x: 60%
AQ- 3x: 32% 2.5x:35% 2x:40%
AQs- 3x: 27% 2.5x: 30% 2x: 33%
AJs- 3x: 42% 2.5x: 47% 2x: 52%
KQo- 3x: 51% 2.5x: 57% 2x: 64%
A5s- 3x: 50% 2.5x: 56% 3x: 63%

I wouldn’t recommend ever over shoving over an opponents 2-3x open, but these numbers provide a decent basis for us to formulate a 3-bet 5-bet strategy versus an opponent who frequently 4-bets. Next week I am going to look into how often an opponent needs to be bluffing for you to show a profit with 5 betting. With a combination of these two analyses I hope to come up with a great plan to defend against 4bets.

Bookmark post. Ty for making this.

I may be too tired but I don't really understand this post. I can't even ask questions... I'll give it a try tomorrow...

Anyway, I play at NL10 where people don't 4bet bluff at all...

not exactly true this

Well, 5/69 doesn't seem too much. Even if I miss a lot of good 5bet bluff shove opportunities I don't think people 4bet bluff more than 10-15%. On the other hand I 3bet less than optimal but even a good player won't bluff more often than 20%.

You're right that against many opponents you won't have a lot of profitable opportunities to 5-bet light. The point of this analysis is to figure out the best way to exploit people who are both opening wide and getting it in with a tight range. If someone opens 50% from the button, gets in his top 5% of hands, and 4-bet bluffs 10% of the time with their other hands, that means that they are 4-bet bluffing almost 45% of the time. Given that fold equity we can get it in a fair amount lighter than if they never bluff in that spot.

Betting for Protection

Betting for protection has a negative rep in the poker community. The concept of betting for protection is betting to fold out your opponent's share of equity in a pot; i.e. you bet and they fold a gutshot instead of checking and giving them a chance to hit. I was recently reading the book Easy Game, and the author Andrew Seidman claimed betting for protection is a consequence of betting for value, not a reason for betting. I'm going to provide a mathematical argument for why betting for protection is very legitimate.

Say your opponent has a gutshot on the turn. They have 4 outs to the best hand, about an 8% chance to win on the turn. So if the turn pot is 17 bbs, then their share of the equity is 1.1 big blinds. However, their 8% share of the equity is worth more than 8% of the pot. When they hit the gutshot, they can value bet on the river for 2/3 pot and it ends up costing us an extra 11 bbs. So really their equity is 8% * 1.66 - so 1.8 bb's. So their equity including their turn bet in a percentage of the pot is 13%. Say they have a 9 out draw and you plan to call a river bet no matter what card comes - now the value of their draw goes from 18% to 30%. Overall this is a moderate difference, but not necessarily enough to get you to bet solely for protection.

But what about if they have a gutshot on the flop and we plan to pay off turn and river bets when we check back? Assuming the pot will be 7 bb on the turn and 17 on the river, that means we have to pay an extra 17 bb to reach showdown. Now their 4 outs on the flop will be worth 24 bbs when they hit on the turn: 7 bb for the pot and 17 bb of value bets. They are going to hit their draw about 8% on the turn, so the value of their free card can be expressed as 8% * (24/7), so 27% of the pot on the flop. Say they have 6 outs, then it is worth 41% of the pot. If they have 8 outs, the free card is worth 54% of the pot. You might be giving up more than you realize when you check the flop back with a medium strength hand.

Let's say we bet and our opponent has 6 outs to the best hand. Our opponent might fold with only 6 outs, but if they call they are putting in 5 bb to win 12 bb, so they are getting 2.4:1. Since we already determined our hand was worth 2 bets by checking the flop planning to call turn/river let's say that when they hit they collect our turn bet, but when they miss they fold on the turn. So when they hit they win another 12 bb about, so their implied odds are 24:5, so about 4.8 to 1. Their odds to hit the turn are 7:1, so by betting we take them from having a situation where they are entitled to 41% of the pot or one where they have to either fold or make a -EV call. That means we are earning 41% of the flop pot versus their hand or more if they decide to call. In a 7 bb pot, this is 2.9 bbs, so that's a great result for us.

Betting for protection is an important factor in determining what the best line for your hand is. The value of protection is higher on the flop than on the turn because the implied odds given to your opponents are better. When you start giving your opponent free cards you are giving them not only a chance to win the pot if they hit but also a chance to extract value bets from you. To make this a profitable trade-off you need to be pretty certain that they are going to bluff on future streets in a way that is advantageous for you.

Utilizing Poker Software Effectively, Part 1: Your HUD

If you have experience playing live poker, you know it’s hard to keep track of the specific styles of one person playing, much less a whole table, even just playing one table. It’s especially difficult when you haven’t played most of the players before. Fortunately for online play, a few years ago Poker Tracker was created, and a little while after Poker Ace HUD. Suddenly playing more than 4 tables became a viable option because software was able to keep track of the minute details that poker players didn’t have energy to. We all know that the more hands of poker we play, the more money we will make up to a certain extent. Crucial to playing more tables effectively is having the right information in your HUD.

Ideally in your HUD you want to have the pieces of information that you have to reference the most frequently while playing a certain player. For example, having the RFI, raise first in, for each position of a player is extremely useful because it helps you determine preflop how you should play your hand. Having VPIP/PFR is useful because it lets you know if someone is a weak player or not as quickly as possible. Having stats like W$WSF and 4-bet % in your HUD is less useful because they are more subject to variance and difficult to interpret.

I would recommend starting off with a basic HUD, and building on it gradually as you get more comfortable with it. Having a ton of numbers isn’t going to be useful if you don’t have the skill to reference them efficiently yet. Start with the basics, like VPIP, PFR, 3-bet, Fold to 3-bet, fold to steal, C-bet, Fold to c-bet, and the RFI for each position. As you get more hands on your opponents and get more comfortable with your HUD, add stats like turn c-bet, fold to turn c-bet, aggression frequency, etc. If you are playing on a site that allows street-by-street HUD, take advantage of that. I recommend color coding each stat based on the range of values of the stat that you think are tight normal and loose. I avoid having anything but numbers in my HUD because it makes it more cluttered, and if I am just getting used to a new layout I have a guide to my HUD near me.

I’ve played with my current HUD for a couple months now. Here’s what I have in my HUD. First line: VPIP, PFR, 3-bet, fold to 3-bet, fold to c-bet in a 3bet pot, fold to steal. Second line: RFI EP-SB. Third line: Cbet, fold to c-bet, turn c-bet, fold to turn c-bet, aggression frequency. Fourth line: 3-bet vs hero, fold to 3-bet vs hero, limp fold, raise c-bet, fold c-bet to raise, fold after checking as PFR. When I have to make a decision, I know exactly what stats I am looking for so I like to have the most commonly used ones in my HUD, then the others in hte popups. Don’t copy my setup if you’re not grinding a ton of tables like I am though – start off with the basics and add more as you go.

No Limit Hold’em is a game where similar situations come up very frequently, so having the right information to play correctly in them is quite important. You want to be able to classify your opponents into different categories so that you can adjust your game plan accordingly. Stats often aren’t going to be definitive evidence that an opponent is employing a certain strategy, but they will definitely indicate what your opponent is capable of doing. Mastering stats is at least half of developing reads on people when playing many tables. In the next part of this series I will focus on building pop-ups for your HUD to organize the information you have about your opponents efficiently.

5-betting Part 2: Breakeven points BB vs BTN

Playing in the full ring games on Merge made me realize that 4-betting on the button is now a popular play. I was really surprised by this because it is so hard to balance a 4-bet bluff range when you have a narrow 4-bet value range. Add this to the fact that you’re opening a really wide range and it isn’t a favorable situation for 4-betting. Watching a video this week reinforced this idea. A coach said that you have to stay one step ahead of opponents by 4-betting light from the button, and he showed a hand where he did that with J9o. I think this is at best a really mediocre strategy and at worst a decent leak. Let me explain why.

Say our opponent opens up from the button 40%, 50%, or 60% of the time. When facing 3-bets, they 4-bet a wide value range like 99-AA, AQ-AK, call with some speculative hands, and 4-bet bluff when they suspect their opponent is getting out of line. I simulated this scenario with three hands, 77, A2o, and A5s, for opening 2, 2.5, or 3 bb. The number I was looking for was the percentage of the time an opponent could take a nonvalue hand and turn it into a bluff before I could shove each to at least break even. With 77, the amount of the time they could bluff with their non value hands before my shove would breakeven was between 5% and 12%, with the most important factor being opening range and second most important factor being their opening size. With A5s, they could bluff between 7% and 15% of the time. With A2o they could bluff between 10% and 21% of the time. Mainly my point is that when your opponent is 4-betting based on table dynamics and not their opening hand, they are going to tend to 4-bet way too much.

This is not to even mention that getting in a hand like 99 or AQ to a 3-bet is by no means a snap decision. It can range from slightly profitable to terrible depending on your opponent. I ran the equity of AQo versus the range 55+, A2s+, AQ+ and it has 47% equity. That means that if I am 5-betting with a 10% range, your 5-bet call is going to have the equity of 94 compared with 77-82 if you fold. Worst case range and your opponent is not 5-betting light, your equity is 35%. That is why AQo plays so much better calling versus 4-betting. The only time you should really be 4-betting AQo is if your opponent calls a lot of 4-bets and you are planning to fold to a 5-bet, or you have a really solid read that your opponent 5-bets a ton. 99 fares a little bit better, with equity ranging from 37% to 53%.

If your opponent chooses to call with the hands 99,TT, and AQ, then their ability to 4-bet bluff without being exploitable goes way down. Now with 77 their bluffing frequency can range from 3%-8% before we should shove, with A5s, it should range between 4% and 9%, and with A2o, it should range between 6% and 12%. If you have a decent read on when someone is likely to 4-bet light, like the first time you 3-bet them in a session or the second time you 3-bet them in a row, then it is really easy to take one of these hands and show a massive profit by 3-betting and 5-betting it.

I would be a little careful when 5-betting light. The numbers that I used for breakeven point were the numbers after you make the 3-bet. For the play to be profitable overall you should have decent fold equity on the 3-bet, or excellent fold equity on the 5-bet. If your opponent has a very low 4-bet frequency, which you can use the stats 4-bet range for the position and also 4-bet vs hero, then 5-betting light goes way down in value. You will know when your opponent is 4-betting too much – it sticks out when someone opens a 50%+ range and 4-bets frequently. Use these guidelines in addition to the open shoving ranges I provided in part one to plan your strategy versus players who 4-bet bluff from the button.

Dating as a Professional Poker Player

I have no idea why a professional poker player would want to date, it’s clearly -EV. There’s something to be said for balance in ones lifestyle… I guess. But if you’re like me, it’s something you still want to do regardless of the EV of the situation. It’s easier to get dates if you have a great social network already, but what if you’re like me and you just moved to a new city and you spend most of your time playing poker?

Let’s put in perspective how girls view poker playing as a job. It’s not something that is gonna get you girls, but some think it’s pretty cool. Others are going to hear you play poker professionally and think it’s a glorified way of saying you’re unemployed. Regardless, it’s going to be the other things besides poker that are going to help you make a connection with a girl, and poker is rarely going to make or break you. One advantage to dating that poker offers is flexibility in schedule, so you don’t have to worry as much about logistics.

The bigger hurdle for dating as an online pro is the nonsocial nature of the job. Spending a majority of your day on the computer at home is not going to put you in many situations where you meet people. What I did is I used online dating websites. I actually found them to be pretty fun. It’s important when you sign up for a dating website to have realistic expectations: the ratio of guys to girls on the sites is quite high. The girls get many messages and reply to few, so you have to expect a lot of failure. It is very possible to get a lot of dates off the sites though, and the amount of success you have is going to be highly related to the amount of effort you put in. In my opinion, it’s best to approach these sites as a way to have fun instead of trying to find a girlfriend or trying to get laid. Otherwise, you are setting yourself up for disappointment and frustration.

From observing my friends’ experiences in dating, the biggest thing you have to do to have success is having a realistic idea of what you’re looking for. You’re not going to find a girl who is hot, smart, motivated, and not crazy; furthermore, if you do imagine how much interest that girl gets. You have to figure out what the most important qualities you are looking for are, and be willing to compromise on the other things. If you really are picky and won’t settle for anything but the finest girls, then you have to accept that you are going to be single most of the time.

To attract appealing girls you are going to need to be an interesting person. Poker isn’t going to help you much but it won’t really reduce your chances of success either. Having other things going on in your life besides poker is going to be crucial to both increasing your chances of meeting girls and being appealing. Although I don’t think having a lot of dates or having a girl is +EV to your poker career, I do think it will help you increase your satisfaction in life and help you cope with playing poker professionally in the long term. Let me know if this is a topic that you’re interested in, if so I can elaborate on my experiences and give more specific tips.

busto?

Dating is -EV for this thread