My guess would be something like a QT8 board, where the OOP range has QT, Q8, T8, and J9 in the cold calling range. Here if the BB checks his entire range his checking range may be too strong and the button might check back at a high enough frequency that donk betting some hands would have been mroe profitable than checking.

But even then it really depends on the PFR sizing and how wide each range is.

I can not find the formula to calculate how much we have to raise if villain opens x% from BTN or CO or...
example CO opens 25%, what is my 3bet range from SB or BTN?

thx

I dont think there is a defenetive answer to your question.

First if we asume you want to play a GTO style vs villain because you have not been able to identify leaks in his game...

Then

You must construct your 3B range so that your are indiferent to if villain he will conteniue or fold versus the 3B.

You should construct it so that there are a ratio of bluff/value hands in your range that are equal to the pot odds you offer him.

So your 3B range depends on the price you offer him.

I still have an issue with this statement. I currently see it this way:

While it is obviously true that the set of strategies that maximally exploit a GTO strategy will have zero EV vs the GTO strategy, only a small subset of those are unexploitable themselves.

Example:

Suppose we are in a situation where our GTO opponent shoves the river and suppose we are now indifferent to calling or folding with some part of our range, which will be the case most of the time. All calling ratios with this indifferent range are maximally exploiting the GTO strategy, but only one ratio is unexploitable and therefore GTO itself.

Calling too much with our indifferent range is exploitable by a non-gto opponent that value bets more than GTO.

Calling too little with our indifferent range is exploitable by a non-gto opponent that bluff bets more than GTO.

You are basically asking "How do we calculate the perfect counter strategy?" which usually isn't going to be close to solvable.

Here, a CO open of 25% seems pretty reasonable to me, so if I didn't know my opponent's specific leaks I'd just play as close to what I think is optimal as I can against him.

Loving this book so far. Afraid i can't add much of value as of yet, just wanted to praise the author for an amazing job.

Silly little question:

Any ideas about how to learn the recommended opening ranges efficiently?
Would take any suggestions happily.

I just bought your book. Haven't had a chance to get in to it yet. I am wondering if it's profitable trying to 3 bet light against tight UTG raises (10-12%)

I realize it depends on the player but I just mean in general against your average regular who is going to fold somewhere in the 60s

Ten25 - Look at the preflop section of the book. But keep in mind the book is based on GTO and whether or not UTG is opening tight is irrelevant to GTO play. Unless I misunderstand, what you are suggesting is basing your play on an exploitative strategy, which is obviously not GTO.

It's really going to depend on what limit you're playing and the regulars in that game, and I'm sure different people will have different opinions.

But for the most part I'd say if you are an unknown against a usual SSNL reg then you can probably 3-bet much too aggressively and still make money, since most people fold to 3-bets too much against unknowns. But you of course can't do this forever before they'll adjust.

Also be sure to read post 62 in this thread. Pre-flop is probably the most "updated" of any of the sections in this book, and it's also the hardest section to talk about from a theoretical perspective IMO.

I wouldn't spend much time trying to memorize them. Like most things you'll memorize things on your own if you use them enough.

I'd strongly recommend typing your ranges into flopzilla though (or the equivalent program) so you can analyze post-flop situations. Also, if you think to yourself "Hmmm, I can't remember if I like opening that hand against unknowns" you can just check flopzilla and see if you thought that's a hand you should be opening with with no reads.

Also keep in mind a lot of the close spots may involve mixed strategies.

some questions:

-sample hand 1. calller side, on the turn 53*0.6~=32 (not 30), but if you get rid of TT before for example it left us with 50, which will be correct
whyd you don't mention KQ at all on the river on the raiser side?

-do i need to somewhat redesign all the ranges cause noone at 100, 200nl ps betting 75% pot, but there's lots of ~61-67% of potsize cbet madness

On page 262 it says, "As shown previously, we'll want to use around a 1-to-1 bluffing to value betting ratio on the turn if our value bets are strong."

I can't find where this was said previously. Could someone point this out to me please? Thank you.

Hi Matt,

It is very likely true GTO involves mixed strategies. My question: is it ever correct to have multiple mixed strategies, ie multiple hands, in the same spot. For example, raising UTG with 87s and 76s half the time and folding both hands half the time. Now, wouldn't it be better to raise 87s always and fold 76s always? The only counter argument I could think of is board coverage. But this is inferior to hand strength, isn't it?

Thank you. Are you advocating 3-betting the entire range in post 62 100% of the time or only a certain percentage of the time for the weaker hands?

Another thing I've been wondering, should we be defending more aggressively than this against min-raises on the button since they need to work less to be profitable against us?

Is there a kindle edition (or any ebook format) of this book?

Yes... check the 2+2 store. Adobe DRM epub I think.

In hand #1 there are only 50 hands because of the removal effect of AK. You're right it should read 50 x 0.6 = 50, so I mistakenly put 53 instead of 50 but everything else appears right.

The hand examples and ratios/frequencies throughout the book are just designed to give you a general idea. You'll need to defend more aggressively against a 61% CB than a 75% CB, but that shouldn't be a problem. If you played around with Flopzilla and tried to design a range against a 75% CB, then you can just loosen up a bit when facing a 60% CB. Likewise if you assumed a 60% CB when playing with Flopzilla and your opponent bets bigger, you can just defend a bit tighter.

It should be in a few spots, but the first one I found is on page 145. It discusses how if you need to bet the turn 70% of the time, the river 70% of the time, and 70% of your river bets need to be for value you need 34.3% of your flop bets to be able to value bet the river.

If you've already bet the flop and you're on the turn, then you'll just need to bet the river 70% of the time and 70% of your river bets will need to be for value. So approximately (0.7)(0.7) = 0.49 or 49% of your turn bets should be able to value bet the river.

You of course need to keep in mind this is just a model and the frequencies will change based on how much equity your "Value bets" and "bluffs" have on the turn (and again, those terms won't work perfectly when hands don't have either 100% or 0% equity). But in general a 1:1 ratio is usually a pretty good starting point if you're writing out your range and trying to figure out if you're bluffing too much or too little.

Ehhhh.... I'm going to get in trouble if I say something like "equity is more important than board coverage." That said, if you've read the book or watched my CardRunners videos you probably know I'm very comfortable with missing on certain board textures provided they're not very common. For example, my big blind flatting range vs a button open misses pretty badly on 8 high or lower boards and I think that's fine (since those boards aren't common and weak pairs aren't especially valuable here anyways).

It's almost certainly GTO to have multiple mixed strategies in your range at once. It's very common to see very good players 3-bet a subset of hands 50% of the time and call 50% of the time for example.

I could easily see it being correct to sometimes fold 55 and sometimes call 44 for example. There may be very little difference in hand strength, and if you have all your 55 and none of your 44 then you're a bit too weak on random boards with a 4 and a bit too strong on random boards with a 5. I would put no effort into worrying about anything like this though, but just know you can use multiple mixed strategies at once.

I don't use a default mixed strategy pre-flop. There are a few spots I think you can go either way and then I just pick what's best based on what I think my opponent's tendencies are.

By default I use a very aggressive 3-betting strategy and would 3-bet all those hands readless.

If the button min-raises you need to defend more aggressive than if the button raises bigger.

Thanks a lot sir!
some more if you don't mind

Can i profitable add some low sc's (or pp's?) in my coldcall 3bet range? like so i can value and also bluff raise some low boards? Or i need to always use overcards as bluffs and big overpairs/part of sets as value part? because in this case like despite our range is pretty strong, we're always capped on at least half of the flop textures. maybe we don't need cc 3bet range at all?

Also there's a some good story teller at the very high stakes
He have about 3% fold bbtosb. Can you really play with such a range as a part of overall strategy and be unexploitable? seems pretty insane at the first sight

As mentioned in the book, 8 and 7 high boards are pretty uncommon. 6 high boards and lower are just straight out rare. So I don't think it's necessary to worry too much about defending with hands that specifically hit on these types of boards.

I sometimes call 3-bets with low pocket pairs and suited connectors, especially if I'm on the button. Here is an interesting exercise --- "what hand is better to flat a 3-bet with in the button against a BB 3-bet? K6s or 65s? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?" Feel free to post your answer to this (and anyone else as well) and I'll try to respond. My guess is most people think 65s>K6s and it's not close at first, but once you find yourself trying to argue the merits of both I imagine your opinion will start to change.

I tend to care less about having a "capped range" than most players and then the longer I talk to them I slowly convince them (this of course doens't mean I'm right though). Unless we're reasonably deep (relative to pot size, not starting stacks) AND there are multiple streets left to act AND my opponent is capable of overbetting I just don't really worry too much about having a capped range. Sometimes you just get a flop, turn, or river that sucks for your range and that's life. If I was worried about my range being too weak on certain flops I'd probably just slowplay more KK hands rather than just AA tbh.

If the SB is min raising, defending near 100% in the BB may be GTO.

im trying to find equilibrium strategies for flop turn river play for hero and villain

example.
Hero raises utg w 14% and btn flats w 12%
Flop A85r.
Hero's flop strat is to bet w 88,55,AK for value and (KxQy,99,9x8x,77,66)@100,(KxJx,KxTx,QxJx,QxTx,JxTx ,Jx9x,Tx9x)@75,KxQx@25 as bluffs
Hero x/c w (AxQx-AxTx,AxQy,AxJy,AA-TT,8x7x)@100,(KxQx)@75
Hero x/f 33/44

I figure that since this board hits our range so hard we should bet stuff like J9, QT as well to inc in our bluff range.

What I am trying to find out is how to find the optimal equilibrium point of play where both players have no incentive to deviated from their strategy

Say in this spot, hero bets pot and villain needs to def at least 50% (?)
but then Heros range is so strong on this board that even if he bets ATC from his range we cannot def 50% profitably (?)

I am a bit lost here.

If Hero's range is much stronger than Villain's then he may be entitled to betting his whole range, so the whole indifference argument collapses. (I'm not saying that this is necessarily the case here.)