Villain is one of the better 100plo regs - seems aggresive and has shown some signs of brain activity.


We both block a 6 and the nfd. I think his valuerange is a lot of 5xxx, but he has tons of other random hands/draws as well. I think I will always be able to push him off his hand if a heart hits unless he has a FH, and I think we'll be able to make him fold a lot of 5xxx on straight completing cards as well.

Thoughts?





PokerStars - $1 PL Hi (6 max) - Omaha - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3

UTG: $100.00
CO: $51.26
Hero (BTN): $101.73
SB: $100.00
BB: $101.44

SB posts SB $0.50, BB posts BB $1.00

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero has 6 4 A T

fold, fold, Hero raises to $2.00, SB calls $1.50, BB calls $1.00

Flop: ($6.00, 3 players) 6 5 5
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets $4.00, SB raises to $8.00, fold, Hero calls $4.00

Turn: ($22.00, 2 players) 9
SB bets $15.00, Hero calls $15.00

River: ($52.00, 2 players) K
SB checks, Hero bets $49.66

I like it...... I like it a lot. Make the same play myself often....

dont like it, you have zero equity and your flush blocker is fairly useless on a paired board. You're certainly not repping a flush here when you call a c/r and barrel and pot the river

you are trying to rep KK with hearts, except the king on the river is the king of hearts, so you cant really have that
I'd 3bet flop small if I wanted to play back

It seems you only fold out some stuff like QQ5*

You have him worried enough to check river (or hungry enough to induce), but really it's only his very frisky plays on flop that is check folding, and so the river sizing is too large - as straight and bare 5 will fold because of your range rather than your sizing.

But it really depends on the kind of dynamic between the two of you. I have no idea what line is correct, but I think a bit of humble humility is required with giving up your BTN preflop here.

>better regs
>click c/rs flop
>mfw

To be classified as one of the better regs at 100plo really does not require all that much. Having a pulse & showing signs of brain activity is more than enough to qualify

I'm really not sure about 3betting flop. How would we want to play our value hands? I, for one, would never 3bet a full house or even 5xxx on this flop as part of a balanced strategy. I want to protect my calling range & keep his bluffs in. If we 3bet flop it's extremely hard for him to ever get stacks in with a bluff/draw, since he's drawing almost dead versus our value range. Therefore it makes sense to call my entire value range. Hence, it makes sense to float instead of 3betting.

think min r on BTN with this hand is not the way I'd play it, we want some FE as this hand is trash

TBH id fold pre, as semi compentent reg should make this hand difficult to make money with

This post pretty much implies that villain's check-raising strategy is riddled with glaring, horrific imbalances. As such, the "as part of a balanced strategy" line is out of place; "as part of an exploitative strategy" might have been more accurate.

This reasoning is very flawed.

1) You can simultaneously protect your calling range, get value from bluffs when you have a strong hand, and have a 3-betting range.

2) If villain is folding all of his bluffs to a 3-bet -- i.e., never 4-bet bluffing (and/or reverse floating) -- he is doing something very exploitable/exploitative, somewhere; and if so, "balance" considerations shouldn't dominate our thinking.

3) Villain's 4-bet bluffs shouldn't attempt to immediately "get stacks in". They should re-raise small.

In spots like this in general, I think it's correct to never 3-bet, as part of a balanced strategy, when the following conditions are met: 1) villain's value check-raising range is narrow enough that you can only 3-bet for (clear) value with 66+; 2) after calling, you'll end up having to fold unimproved 65 on the river some non-negligible amount.

That's the sort of justification you'd need to use.

Yes, definitely fold.

I havent played 100 in a while, so maybe things have changed, but I think if I dove into those games right now I'd start with 100% steal from btn, since it should be almost immediately profitable. I'd open to more than 2x though.

what if you raise fold-the turn? whats your turn range for raising? if i was in his shoes and got raised on my 2nd barrel id probably fold 5xxx and might even fold 56xx vs a tight opponent. A big factor of the play is what the opponent thinks about you

Don't like it at all, since villain is probably going to be shoving the river into you a good amount not giving you the chance to bluff. Plus you lose a ton when he check calls. In addition you have pretty much no equity vs. his value range. I think this double float is significantly -EV

Hmm, I'm still not sure I agree with you. These are my key points:

1. I base how I play my bluffs on how I want to play my strong value hands - not the other way around.

2. If I have a strong value hand on the flop (strong trips+) then all his bluffs are drawing very slim versus that range. For that reason it's extremely hard for him to continue bluffing if I 3bet, he absolutely does not want to get it in with a likely dead hand, and both floating OOP and 4betting OOP seem pretty ambitious.

3. Above is the main reason for flatting>3betting. Furthermore, I think it's increadibly much better for our overall gameplan to call; having a balanced 3betting range and at the same time trying to balance out our, otherwise weak, cbet/calling range is going to be extremely difficult.

4. Since I don't want to 3bet anything for value, I also don't want to 3bet anything as a bluff. My gameplan does not include 3betting paired boards unless I have specific reads.



I think the above points are pretty clear, but perhaps you could clarify a bit?

ifs, I agree that having no 3-bet range can be correct.

But the point is: as you've described it, your motivations for not having one are exploitative.

You definitely can have a 3-bet range as part of a "balanced strategy", as long as the SB's value range is wide enough.

Good.

Okay great. But this, literally by definition, means that the strategies involved are not "balanced". The SB is either 1) bluffing too infrequently to begin with, or 2) folding too much to 3-bets.

Why would having a 3-betting range necessitate a serious weakening of your calling range? You wouldn't 3-bet every "strong trips+". You'd also trim a lot of the weaker bet/calls from your range. Your calling range would remain roughly the same % [5x, boats].

Why not? You consider "strong trips+" to be a "strong value hand" in this spot, meaning that you're assuming the SB is x/r-ing for value with a lot of bare 5x worse than A5. It sounds like you can gain a lot, potentially, from 3-betting some of your more vulnerable boats.

Not all paired boards are alike, or even vaguely comparable. 655tt is worlds apart from KKQr.

I'd argue the opposite

Well, no, I don't necessarily agree with this. If you know you have lots of equity when called you can bluff a lot more. If you're OOP and either drawing dead or opponent has blockers, then going for a big bluff is inheretly less profitable - either if works or it doesn't! And when it doesn't work, you have no backup and are pretty much dead in the water. Compare it to betting flop and shoving turn with a draw in a 3bet pot - even IF you get called you usually have between 30-40% equity. Since you have no backup bluffing is inheretly less profitable in a sense, which should lead to fewer bluffs.

Even if we only 3bet some % of our 5x it still significantly weakens our continuing-range.

Given our BTN range I'd imagine we have 5x+ less than 15-20% of the time. Even if we calculate with the fact that our cbetting range is slightly stronger than our entire range, I still don't think we have 5x+ much more than 20%. (Obv these numbers are just arbitrary, haven't figured out how to do sims yet, could be off but it doesn't make a huge difference).

Given that we pretty much never want to 3bet hands such as AA/KK/nfds/pairs+fd etc, since those are crushed by the value-part of his range that continue vs a flop 3bet, we leave all of those hands very vulnerable by 3betting some % of our 5x. I'd say they are already vulnerable as it is without us constructing a 3betting range, but not much can be done about that (without sacrifising what i'd say is pretty clear exploitable EV vs avg player pool at 100plo).

I don't like the sound of "trim a lot of the weaker bet/calls from your range". You're implying that we're sacrifising parts of our bet/calling range in order to construct a 3betting range. This puts even further pressure on our 3betting range to deliver since it now has to carry the EV of those hands that we are no longer able to bet/call, since we don't have enough protection in that range.

It's true, we lose some value when we have A5xx or 65xx when he has 5K98 or similar that he wants to get in. I believe that EV is weightened up by the other benefits of bet/calling that I went through before. I don't think the EV is huge though, by having 5x ourself we block half the 5x combos, and a hand like A5xx doesn't have K985 drawing dead anyways. But yes, sure, some value is lost in this specific scenario.

Well, even so I'd say the argument stands. Imagine getting check/raised on KKQ as the BTN. I'm not sure I'd have a 3betting range here either, I'd imagine he either has the nuts or some sort of Qx blocker. Whenever he's bluffing, he's drawing close to dead vs our value range, and whenever he has value, we're probably close to dead ourselves. I'd cbet/call my bluffs/hands such as AQxx , and i'd cbet/call my value hands. I don't see any merit to having a 3betting range on KKQ 100bb deep as part of a balanced strategy. Same reasoning goes for calling vs raising IP on very dry boards in 3bet pots for example. Obv there is a huge difference 100bb deep and 300bb deep, 300bb deep I'd definitly construct a 3betting range on paired boards.

It's true that the SB should have fewer semibluffs than on, say, 742r. But the SB should still have quite a lot of them here. Fewer != near-zero.

You know, in the static multi-street PvBC game, the polar range's bluffs are drawing literally dead. 0%. Yet he still has a lot of them on the earlier streets.

Question for you: Roughly what % of a balanced check-raising range consists of "bluffs" in this spot? Just ballpark it. You don't have to be specific; one of "less than 50%" or "more than 50%" will do.

The bolded is wrong.

Let's just stick with your 20% 5x+ and 80% non-5x numbers. You might decide to continue with roughly half of your c-betting range (if that seems low against a minraise, note that the presence of the BB means we should be continuing tighter than usual).

These numbers will be arbitrary like yours -- I think that's fine, because the argument is taking place in conceptual territory atm.

All call:

Call: 20% 5x+ / 30% non-5x. (40% 5x+ overall.)

3-bet and call mixture (lowering the overall defense % to 48):

3-bet: 2% 5x+ / 4% non-5x. (Non-5x might actually be too low here.)

Call: 18% 5x+ / 24% non-5x. (Weaker 5x+ on average, but 43% 5x+ overall.)

This objection doesn't really work, because that's what always happens when you have a raising range, anywhere. It isn't unique to this situation.

It's a trade-off: 1) You have to continue a lower % in general -- some of the hands that would otherwise be slightly +EV calls become folds. 2) Some of the hands that are +EV calls perform even better as raises.

In simple terms, you have a raising range when you think that the category #2 gains are greater than the category #1 losses. You don't have a raising range otherwise.

You don't think you gain enough from having a raising range in this spot. That's your objection. That you're "sacrificing" parts of your calling range, or that your raising has to do better, isn't.

Well, the reason I presented KKQr as a counterexample is that it's a board where optimal strategies are probably 3-betting 0%, or very close to it. I was implying that you're treating 655tt too much like KKQr -- i.e., not acknowledging the dynamicity of 655tt, assuming value ranges are sufficiently wide.



Oh yeah, one more thing: if all of the SB's bluffs are drawing dead against the BTN's value 3-betting range, as you seem to be suggesting they are, the SB is choosing the wrong bluffs! The SB's bluffs shouldn't be drawing dead even if the BTN's value 3-betting range is only 66/65.

With regards to his bluffs, what I meant was that it's hard for him to continue bluffing once we 3bet flop, not that it's hard for him to have a bluff when he check/raises!

He's OOP, and have close to zero equity with his avg bluffing range (even if it contains some doppel-pairs!). Yes, sometimes he will 4bet/fold or float OOP, but I think we can both agree that he is more likely to continue bluffing verus a flat. As he should.

I'd imagine a reasonably balanced check/raising range to be around 40-45% bluffs. I do think this is key, in my opinion we lose a lot versus this part of his range by constructing a 3betting range - too many of his bluffs will fold to a 3bet, and too many of his bluffs will instead be succesful when they barrel.

Right agreed, I think it'll be harder to quantify this properly without going in-depth. We can agree that having a 3betting range sacrifises some part of our calling range, you seem to think the EV of having a 3betting range weighs up for that EV, I am doubtful. I think we'll have to leave that at that. Perhaps you can build a somewhat balanced 3betting/flatting range (although you'd leave your calling range withouts nuts if you want to 3bet stuff like A5), but I think it'd be significantly tougher to actually balance in game.

I guess this is where the differencies come from, I don't think the difference in 655 compared to KKQ is big enough to warrant a 3betting range. It's not AS way ahed/way behind as KKQ since 5xxx has some outs vs most part of our value range, but it's not too much.

right right, dopplers. I think a lot of people 3bet a lot of decent double pairs pre though, but yea sure, his bluffrange does slightly better than drawing dead vs our value-3betting range!

Yeah, I know. I don't think it's too hard for the SB to click-it-back with bluffs.

The SB should also give up with a significant % of his bluffs vs. a flat, on both the turn and then the river.

I think that is too value-heavy to qualify as "balanced". There aren't many non-5x+ hands the BTN should continue with against such a range, even to a minraise -- assuming, of course, that the SB follows up on future streets as much as having such a tight range allows him to.

I'm not completely sure. But I think the case for a non-zero 3-betting frequency it is a lot stronger than the one against it.

The BTN would be using a mixed strategy with 5x+.

I don't disagree that it can be a good practical decision to 3-bet 0% as a default in many spots like this one.

I think it's a compromise, though. The rationale I'd use wouldn't be "I'm 3-betting 0% because it's theoretically correct to 3-bet 0%", but rather "I'm 3-betting 0% because the gains of building a 3-bet range are marginal at best, and it's worth neither the effort nor the potential exploitation that I might open myself up to".

That's our impasse: I think the difference is pretty significant. There are radical differences between even KKQr and KK2r.

Mediocre overpairs mostly.

An actual serious poker discussion going on. So happy

have not read the discussion so far yet (will do because it looks interesting).

from my point of view, the question would be, does your opponent think you would value bet a straight/flush on the river with this sizing ? or would you go for showdown ?

if i am to bluff i'd rather have a (balanced) flop 3b range than take this line (but really depends on your play style and his perception of it)

Bad bet, I think. He raised the flop and bet the turn, so much strength to give up on the river to a blank. A check there wreaks of check/call mode and you'd think he'd put out a blocker bet if he couldn't call. his range is stronger than you give credit here IMO. Yeah he'll give up a 5 some times but the nature of the hand will entice villain to call, it's very close though.