Join Date: May 2010
Posts: 97
I think this is in the wrong forum, not sure if mods can move it, but you'll get better responses posting strategy in the strat forums.
In general, we don't need to worry about MDF vs flop cbets because we have either called a bet in position, in which case our positional advantage more than makes up for what we give away by letting our opponent auto-profit, or we have called from the blinds, in which case our preflop discount allows us to play more conservatively than otherwise. MDF calcs are more useful as an anchor, meaning we only need it to make sure our strategy isn't worlds apart from MDF numbers. MDF becomes more relevant on turn and river spots, and in 3/4bet pots, but I think it still tends to get over-valued.
As gregz41 alluded to, in many situations range advantage makes MDF pretty irrelevant. Ace high boards are a classic example.
Here's a hypothetical scenario that I hope illustrates this well. Assume your strategy is to always raise vs flop cbet with any flush draw. If you call a flop cBet and the turn brings three to a flush, it would be burning money to attempt a strategy anywhere near MDF facing a turn bet. Even more so if your opponent knows your flop flush draw strategy and is capable of overbetting the river.
I listened to a podcast with Matthew Janda (author of Applications of NLHE) recently, and he said the only time that MDF is critically important is when we bet and face a raise. Unless we can exploit our opponent by overfolding (because they bluff-raise too rarely), we must be very opposed to giving our opponent opportunities to auto-profit by raising ATC. If I remember correctly, he said that against strong and aggro players we actually need to defend at a higher frequency than MDF, because their bluff raises will have at least some equity. That being said, unless you are playing the HI events in SCOOP, you can comfortably assume that everyone is not bluff-raising nearly enough, and plan to overfold vs raises in most spots, unless you think a particular villain is frequently getting out of line.
I'm impressed by how much effort you put in to breaking down the ranges. This is rare to see, and you have a great future in poker if you are consistently willing to put in this kind of effort. Here are some thoughts (but I'm by no means an expert).
- At 9 handed table villain should not be opening ATo UTG. Unless he figures to have a significant postflop edge on table/button/BB, even raising AJo/KQo is pretty marginal at 50bb stack. Otherwise range seems good but probably drop 66 and consider adding every suited ace.
- Flatting off 30bb stack I'd drop AJo and add KJs,J9s,T9s. 98s/87s is a question of style/reads/the weather/moon phase/etc. but probably on the profitable side of marginal as a default, albeit fairly high variance. I don't think you need to be flatting 66 but some players flat all PP here on button and I don't think that's necessarily wrong, as long as you don't expect blinds to squeeze much. Not sure what your strat is with lower suited Aces but you might want to be calling A9s and A5s if you're not 3-betting them (I like them as 3bets personally). AJo could also be worked into your 3bet range. 3betting AJo,A9s,A5s gives you 20 bluff combos, which is a decent ratio to your 34 value combos.
- Villain's cbet size is weird and probably bad. As a general rule, on such a wet board, we should be inclined to bet much larger (and less frequently than on dry boards). Assuming pot is ~6.5bb, effective SPR is just over 4. If called, pot is ~11bb and SPR is ~2.5 on turn. This is a bad board to plan on betting once and giving up, and any hand that wants to bet the turn would strongly benefit from a shallower SPR. However, I'm very open to being convinced that this size has merits. Bet sizing is as much an art as a science, and there are so many factors to consider that I'm very conscious of my inability to definitively know one approach is better than another. If Fedor can bet 1/6th pot on the turn in a 3 way PLO hand and think that is the best play, then I must admit I know pretty much nothing about sizing.
- Defending 75% = defending 75% of 71 (87-16) combos. The 16 combos you can't have are irrelevant. So MDF says we should defend ~53 combos.
- I don't think you need many bluff raises at this stack depth, but if you want more I think QJs and KQss/KQdd are your best ones. Next best are probably the other two KQs and your 98s other than 9d8d. I wouldn't hate JsTs as a bluff raise either, but its probably better as a call. Just please please please promise to never bluff raise QJ if you are going to fold to a shove.
- In general in MTTs you don't really have to worry about being exploited post-flop as long as you aren't making huge mistakes. If you mainly focus on making every decision as well as you can, you'll naturally be relatively balanced. If you try to think about how the good regs might be exploiting the mediocre/bad regs you might find a couple of specific patterns to avoid, but until your fundamentals are really f'ing solid, it is mostly wasted energy to worry about being exploited.
Hope this helps, let me know what you think or if you have any questions.
