I see all these posts here about how if you don't play a certain way you won't have enough strong call hands in your range or whatever. I don't see the relevance of this to MSMTT. I just don't see how anyone is going to pay attention to what your ranges are. You see this kind of discussion all over the RIO Elite and Doug Polk videos, and I am sure it is important to being a top HU high stakes player, but it doesn't seem relevant to most games, particularly MTTs.

You're right. It's just something fish say to sound cool.

this is probably not gonna end well...

I'll try and keep this short.

Betgo, stop thinking of it as SSMTT vs MSMTT vs HSMTT. Playing balanced ranges is just a necessary part to developing an advanced strategy and playing well. Saying "I see all these posts here about how if you don't play a certain way you won't have enough strong call hands in your range or whatever. I don't see the relevance of this to MSMTT."
This is just called playing good poker. If you start splitting your ranges in spots where you're opponent has a lot of very strong hands and you x/r/lead all you're good hands, then you end up with a lot of hands thay go x/c, x/c, x/f or x/c, x/c, x/c vs a very strong range. These lines are just going to be very expensive and you'll end up losing a lot of chips.

Now yes, you can take spots with strong reads and make a more exploitive approach and that is fine. And maybe those spots come up more frequently in small stakes mtts. But when you take a balanced approach, you get to win pots more frequently. Doug Polk has a video that explains this beautifully:

(Whole video is worth a watch, but specifically 5:15-13:45)


If you're basing your argument on this point of view as "I don't get why that is necessay at MSMTT", this is flawed. This is just an opinion whereas what Doug outlines in this video is a mathematical concept that makes you tough to play against.

A quick word on ambition. If, and it's a very big if, lets assume for a second you're right. That there is no need to pay attention to balance at MSMTT and you only need to pay attention at the HSMTT. I assume at least one person here has aspirations of moving up one day, so having discusions on balanced strategy will always be welcome and encouraged in MSMTT.

I have watched most of Doug Polk's youtube videos and I really like them. However, it isn't a matter of MSMTT. I just don't see how ranges are relevant except in high stakes games against the same regs who are adjusting to your play. For example, an online Sunday 500 does not qualify for this.

You need to take lines which appear to be something else. If you have a strong value hand, a marginal value hand, a draw, or a bluff, you want to make it look like something else. If thinking of things in terms of ranges help you do that, then it will improve your play.

However, I don't see the point in worrying about actually having enough of a certain type of hand in a certain range. Players in online MTTs, except at the highest level, aren't going to be adjusting to your play in detail. It is very different from high stakes HU cash in that way.

A range is a subset of hands that a player can have in a spot based on their actions before reaching that spot. Using that information seems very relevant towards making actions on which hands you want to use as bluffs and value bets. Similarly, you want to have an idea of which hands you have in a spot so that if you don't want to bet, you know which hands you can still have on later streets.

Please watch the part on levelling in that Doug Polk video I have posted earlier. He can probably explain why this is nonsense in better words than I can. You want to bet with a balanced range because it lets you win the pot more frequently and it is hard for your opponent to counter.

A good strategy involves having plans for hands in your range to take certain actions across multiple against the more frequent lines you are likely to face.

Well I would say vs. good thinking players you should be attempting to play somewhat balanced or else you become too easy to play against. For example in a spot when you only value bet the nuts and there is very few combos of nutted hands, but you bluff everything that misses...it's super easy to hero call because you have so much air. but it's way harder to play against if you are value betting all 2 pairs/low straights/sets/top pairs or w/e.

when playing against fish we should be taxing a max. exploitative strat for the most part and taking advantage of the fact that they will not exploit us for being exploitative.

let's say you min raise from 10 BBs on the button vs 2 fish in the blinds w/ AA...if they are clueless they will have no idea u only do this with AA and will over defend or jam wide or w/e
if you do this vs. a reg and they know you only do it with AA they will exploit you by making big folds or w/e. whereas if you jam your whole range there they will snap very wide because they know you will be balanced and jamming a tonne of weak hands there.

hopefully that is clear

Betgo asks a good question I think here and one that a lot of readers in this forum ask themselves without ever daring to put it out there! Personally I am trying to work on balancing my play and I do agree with what gregz says!
Nevertheless, while I think it is important to know and understand the concepts of balanced play, applying them well is a whole other story and I think there are many other important aspects of the game that you can work on between this "understanding gto" phase and "applying gto" phase that are more efficient in progressing. Of course, if you're up there already as a player, you' ll need to do the work to advance!...

Back to the balancing theory, I think the very good posters on this forum usually have to respond without any read on villain, which forces he response to be as balanced as possible. Nevertheless, you need to adapt your "balance" to your opponent. If your opponent is just never going to fold on this river it is absurd to balance a bluffing range adapted to your bet sizing (The smart videos on balanced strats do take that into account, but some of them just assume all your opponents are gto machines)

So what I am trying to say is that once you' re taking ranges into account I would reason that it's more important to understand your opponent's one and to understand his tendencies (and yes a small sample can give you important hints) than yours, because any balancing you're doing needs to be skewed towards villain's tendencies. And the further away his tendencies are from gto the more important it is to adapt our game plan! And it just so appears that ssmtt and msmtt random players do differ vastly from gto play!

And by taking that reasoning one step further, I think maybe in a msmtt group it would be more important to challenge OPs to find out and describe any read that they can on villain rather than trying to see if I should bet this flop if I have the ace of spades rather than the ace of hearts. And I'm not saying that it's not useful at all, just that other less explored things im the forum might be relevant! Like only "std villains will cbet too often, but this one maybe doesn't" can have an impact on your decision, more than the ace of spades.

Fire at me at will! ;-)

Right, but if there are regs in the BB and they think the miniraise is only QQ+, you should exploit that by miniraising a lot to steal until they adjust. Playing MTTs, it will take a while for them to figure out what you are up to. So even against good players, you should be trying to represent rather than to be balanced. This is not a long HU high stake match.

You want to do make plays that appear to be the opposite of what they are against ordinary regs who are not familiar with your play. You don't want to be readable, but you don't need to be totally balanced to be difficult to read.

Hey, if you can find exploits that don't involve having a range of bluffs and value hands for a particular betting line, then great. But in my experience that's easier said than done. '

Sure, you're going to run across the obvious exploits (the guy who never calls a double barrel, the guy who defends his blinds poorly) and we should absolutely be looking to take advantage of them. But as we come across better players, those obvious exploits are much harder to find. That's why I agree with the notion that we need to be in spots where our getting our opponents to fold ~= getting our opponents to call.

What I really have problems with is saying we need to protect our calling range or whatever. If we don't call with this, we won't have enough strong hands in our calling range. You need to worry about the current hand, not some range for some hypothetical other hand. That is important in a HU match, but not in MTTs.

Yes, you generally don't want to take a line that is only bluffs or only big hands. You want your opponents to misread your hand, or not be able to make a read. I agree with that part.

The bolded has nothing to do with being GTO, it's about being aware that we're going to play multiple hands from a certain position. Not only is it midly interesting, but you actually improve as a poker player in doing it. If the bolded is your main problem, again, it looks to me like your referring to spots where a player is taking a different line with the best hands he can have in a spot to the weaker hands he can also have in that spot by raising the good ones and just calling the weaker ones.

I'm not denying that raising has merit with good hands, because you get value from hands that continue and it allows you to work in some bluffs which can fold out better.

However, by calling with the good hands, you improve your x/c range and you'll find your range out of position is able to x/c down more. This means that the entire range of hands you can have in a spot will do less x/c, x/f and x/c, x/c, x/f. These lines both lose money and to counter that, you will want some hands that call down and win at showdown.

Betgo, I say this is in the nicest possible way. But the way you're approaching this is really outdated and if you want to progress as a player, you will need to start to think about things in terms of ranges. It should interest you knowing which hands you want to go for three streets of value on the flop with, or what hands you are going to triple barrel off.

I like this post.

I'm not necessarily on team balance in the argument balance vs exploit. But saying "I don't understand the importance of balanced ranges" is, well, kind of daft.

Possibly terrible thread ends up interesting thanks to people

The biggest problems I have are 1) I don't see how we should worry how we play effects our range for something else, whether it is our calling range or raising range or whatever. Our opponents aren't going to know. This isn't a HU match.

2) It isn't our range that needs to be balanced between bluff and value hands or whatever. It is our perceived range. The other players don't know exactly how we play. Again, this isn't a HU match. It just needs to look like a bluff when it is when it is a value hand or whatever. Your actual range doesn't have to be perfectly balanced.

Playing good poker in an MTT is playing against the players. It is not playing like you were playing in an extended match against a top player. I agree that some of the range and GTO approach helps you think about things better. However, to take it to an extreme, what if you tried to play GTO in a live $2/5 cash game? Would that really be the optimal approach? Poker is about adapting to your opponents, not playing against a perfect opponent.

I have dealt with worse, but you are taking the approach that your approach is correct and anyone who disagrees with you is an outdated donk. This just shows the weakness of your argument.

I do appreciate your courage posting strategy in MTT forums with a coaching listing. I haven't seen many people doing it lately. There are like 1/3 as many coaching listings in MTT/SNG Coaching as when I advertised there.

I asked why would you make a play that loses chips in order to balance your range for future play when no one is paying attention to the details of your play. Then I get personal attacks from a former moderator on an advanced site that allows personal attacks libel and so on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9niXdLT5D8

Check out around minute 2:50 for an explanation of GTO, poker, and solitaire from a donk with outdated thinking.

Adios

I certainly wasn't expecting this thread to escalate in the way it did! Once home, I will respond to what has been said. A line has definitely been crossed.

I have no idea what happened, just meant that it's nice that there's discussion to a very trollable original post.

Kind of a shame, actually. I think you can have a reasonable discussion about *how much* we should be worrying about balance at low-to-mid stakes.

But I think saying that it doesn't matter at all flies in the face of a lot of strong poker theory that's been developed over the past several years. It's a provocative statement and should expect to be challenged.

Betgo made a comment after his last visible post calling me a scammer amongst something else I won't comment on. This comment has been moderated but I'm not sure how long it was viewable.

I have not been in contact with betgo via pm. I do not know which ex moderator he is reffering to, or have any knowledge of their exchange over pm.

Calling me a scammer is not on though. Betgo has never received coaching from me in any shape or form and is in no position to comment on the quality of my coaching. Last night, before reading this, I thought that this thread could turn into an interesting balance vs exploitation discussion.

I think players should train considering their entire range and balance. The goal in poker is not to be stuck in small or middle stakes forever, but to progress to high stakes games. One is not going to make to high stakes games without considering range versus range play and thinking.

Training and understanding balance is different than saying balance is needed in every hand in every situation. If you don't know where the line of "balance" is even set, how can you deviate to exploit mistakes.

I don't participate often in discussions like this but I just wanted to thank you for keeping it civil and providing interesting food for thoughts as well as quality posts - god knows this forum needs it.

If you make statements that balancing isn't important at this stakes or that, then you most likely have a problem with the definition of balancing.

To be honest, I always thought balancing meant finding multiple identical or near identical spots over the course of a game and being careful not to play the same way each time. And against quickly changing opponents in a large mtt field or non observant players at lower stakes that becomes irrelevant because 'multiple' never happens.

It's not that at all.

Balancing simply means that we can unexploitably run one bluff for every two value lines. Not doing so reduces our expected value from the game quite substantially because we're reducing the frequency of hands we can profit from and furthermore making it obvious that we only bet value lines, allowing any player (at any stakes) to adjust.

And that 2:1 ratio isn't some random thing. Watch doug polks video.

At least I think that's what balancing means. Could probably use tighter definitions and some discussion on inflection points.

Yes, and you are the one who crossed it. You made a personal attack. Most sites would not allow that.

I was not being serious calling you a scammer, but you are of course aware of the campaign that Stealthmunk conducted making hundreds of posts attacking my coaching and so on, calling me a fraud, scammer, professional coach, and so on, despite the fact that I had crushing stats in my main coaching area. You presumably know I was referring to that calling you a scammer. That kind of talk is apparently totally acceptable on 2+2.

I cannot totally redo my game and approach because ranges are the latest thing. I have a winning approach, which a can adapt, but not totally redo. Maybe some of your students who are just starting out can play according to your formula. I learned old school. I still limp and vary open sizes some. Everyone got away from that, but those were an effective part of my game, so I am not giving them up.

You have an arrogant know it all attitude, that there is only one way to play.

I went through a similar business with Stealthmunk, who launched a campaign against me, claiming I didn't understand ICM. Now you claim I don't understand ranges. What I am really good is playing against people taking a formulistic approach.

Obviously, I agree with having balanced ranges in general, but IMO it can be taken to far in MTTs. What I object to is worrying much about keeping your calling range or whatever strong, when your opponents have no idea what your ranges are and are not going to adjust at all. When you 3-bet or raise the flop or whatever, of course you should have somewhat balanced ranges, and at least not be readable by a decent player.