15/30

I open BTN with Ax, BB calls.

Reads: BB is aggressive.

Flop: T62 two-toned. Pot~4.5sb

I am c/raised. Common spot. Immediate odds: 7.5:1
I have an intuitive way I approach these, but wanted to refine it.

Q1: I have no hands that I fold to the raise on the flop. Is that a leak? (should I fold 100/8.5 ~12% of my range?)

Q2: Should I have a 3bet range on the flop? (And is it tied to never folding to a raise on the flop?)

Q3: Whats the indifference point of calling down mathematically? (Assuming villain fires 2 barrels, Im looking at 4sb to win 12.5. Ill be calling down 2nd/3rd pairs, delay raising top pair+, semibluff raising some, bluffing turn overcards sometimes. Does this translate to needing ~25% of my range reaching show down? On the turn, I get odds of 10.5:2. So I need to continue with 80% of my range?)

Q4: How do I mathematically account for adjusting my call down range on different turn cards? (e.g. offsuit 2 is better than flush completing 7). I can stove my equity with different turn cards and different parts of my range, but how do I mathematically integrate that to my calldown frequency?

Q5: How often should I delay value to the river? (Say I turn a flush. I 100% raise the turn. Is this a leak?)

What's the X?

I don't think we can approach it quite like you are trying to in Q3. I'm not positive but I think from a GTO perspective we have to look at the price you are getting on the turn, and call enough to make him indifferent to bluffing, then do the same when he fires again on the river. I think we have to defend slightly more than our immediate price suggests on the turn to account for the fact that his semi bluffs have equity?

You can't always make your opponent indifferent, nor should you want to. I could ramble about the topic for a while, but I've been there and done that already here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/15...rence-1421862/

bovada doesn't offer a 15/30 limit.

The updated question would be: how much of my Ax should I call down, and how do I determine that?

@pgcounty: i purposedly left it open for discussion. How does peeling all of them to the turn, folding all Ax that have no gutshots/pairs on the turn where x<10, folding more Ax on turn 8d/9d where we have no diamond.

Say the board pairs. I think calling down with x>=J is reasonable but don't know why. If x<T, Im unsure if calling down is a leak. If I only call down when I improve to a draw on the turn, those same turn cards improve my opponents (The hands I want to pick off are J8/98/87/97/54. They also might craise some QJ(

It's a guessing game. Put your opponent on a range and check out your equity.

sry, 20/40.

q1: no
q2: pretty much never on any flop
q3-5: too vague and would require a response longer than i'm willing to write.

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

379,170 trials (Exhaustive)

board: T26

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
98, 97, 87, T9, T8, T7, T6, J6, Q6, K6, JT, QT, KT, 65, 76, 64, 96, A2, K2, 54, 53, J8, *s*s, 22-AA	72.74%	274,673	2,275
Ah3c	27.26%	102,222	2,275

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

15,796 trials (Exhaustive)

board: T267

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
98, 97, 87, T9, T8, T7, T6, J6, Q6, K6, JT, QT, KT, 65, 76, 64, 96, A2, K2, 54, 53, J8, *s*s, 22-AA	88.17%	13,928	0
Ah3c	11.83%	1,868	0

Seems like I should just call down with any A until the river, then decide.

Q1. Not a big leak. What's the very bottom of your range? Q3s/Q4s/Q5s? If Villain always leads turn, you can fold the very bottom.

Q2. Have a purely strong 3b range if villain is spewy aggressive. The plan would be to induce a 4b, or induce a weak turn x/r. Have a bluffy 3b range if villain is capable of folding to a flop 3b. Otherwise, its common to flat everything.

Q3/Q4. Meh. No one but the most hardcore of GTO players will have these answers for you, and I don't think they are gonna spell it out for you. Q4 sounds very much like something people pick up based on feel/experience. Obviously Ahi looks much worse if a 7 and 9 peel off.

Q5. Never is fine. Few reasons to delay a turned flush. 1. Villain has way too many bluffs, and you want him to barrel bluff river. 2. Villain is prone to b/3b to river light, because he reads that you have no flushes. These are very rare cases. 3. You want more value combos on the river so you can have more bluff combos on the river. Moot, since villains never b/f part of their value range on a blank river.

I don't want to hijack this thread and make it about indifference, Bob I have read your posts there more than once. I think most what you are saying makes sense for sure. I do think we can possibly still apply it in some spots, such as possibly this one where the check raiser will a range of pairs and draws, and we do have a bluffcatcher. I am a nl guy mostly but if I was trying to come up with a balanced check raising range from villains perspective, I would be aiming to make Ax indifferent by the river. That could be a mistake but I don't know a better way to go about it.

If we were to assume that we called a brick turn and villain will be balanced when he bets the river, I don't see what option we would have other than to call based on blockers and where we are in our range. I don't know else how to arrive at that conclusion except to call x percent of our range on the flop, turn and river, based on the pot odds we are getting.

Chocolate, I think giving him a range and trying to see how you do vs it is the best way. I've looked at a bunch of these spots with crev and the one thing that is probably obvious but really important imo is if he is checking raising all his pairs or check calling some. Obviously depends on ranges and if they are cr ing every gutter, but a lot of the spots I looked at even on draw heavy boards if the bb is check raising all his pairs, we wont have a profitable A high call down.

Seemed to me that indifference was at the heart of op's questions.

Why Ax and not Kx, Qx, or Jx?

I wouldn't worry about making any of these hands indifferent until I got to the river, where all bluffs are threshold bluffs out of position and all hands that can beat a bluff are threshold bluffcatchers. Since these threshold hands are numerous on the river, indifference matters a lot once we get to the river.

However, before the river, it's likely a mistake to make your opponent indifferent when there's more money to be won or lost. This is why I suggested that the op put his opponent on a range and check out his equity. This way, by focusing on making the most +ev play before the river, we can maximize our expectation.

Then, once we reach the river, we can worry about making our opponent's bluffs indifferent. Our junk hands that cannot beat a bluff no longer matter here. It's the hands that can beat a bluff that matter when it comes to making the opponent indifferent to bluffing the river.

Lets say we're the villain in this hand.

Q1: What do you think about the strategy of c/raising every pair+ and every gutshot, along with some decent A-hi's (AK/AQ)?

Q2: If this leaves too much of our range unpaired, how do we construct a range of what to raise?

Q3: Do we have to have a range of hands that we just peel the flop with? (Why?)

I'm on my phone so kinda tough to reply, but I'm not saying we should try to make certain hands indifferent before the river. I'm saying if we don't think about our flop check raising range, we might end up getting to river tons of hands that have to suddenly check and give up, or not enough bluffs on certain run outs.

As far as targeting handsome Ax to be indifferent instead of Jx seems really obvious to me, I dunno what you are getting at here.

As long as we get to the river by making the most +ev play available, these give up hands don't exist on the river.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/15...stion-1563365/

As for not having enough bluffs on certain run outs, I don't think this is a bad thing because any time our opponent deviates by calling >0%, we gain.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/15...river-1552410/

Jx can beat a bluff just as easy as Ax, assuming the flop check raiser makes the usual semibluffs with the best draws available.

I will read through those links later, but how could the give up hands not exsist? Suppose we think its gonna be +EV to check raise pair, and any flush draw on that flop. Without looking at any ranges, if we have every suited combo in preflop range, I'm sure we are gonna be way too bluff heavy on the river if we check raise all of them and never give up.

As far as targeting A high hands instead of something like J high, he has probably already folded Q and J high by the river no? On lots of boards J and Q high will be the bottom of our own bluffing range. Also I get that on some boards J high will beat our semibluffs but he should be folding his worst bluffcatchers unless they block our value range. Seems really silly to bother discussing this though.

The point is that there's this notion ingrained in most limit holdem players' minds that Ace high is the hand that you want to make indifferent on the river, when the reality is that it depends on the starting ranges involved, the flop, the ranges that continue past the flop, the turn, the ranges that continue past the turn, the river, and the hands that call and fold on the river. Just because most players have this notion that Ace high is a bluffcatcher and King high is junk, that does not make A2+ the group of hands that can beat a bluff. On the board from the op, I suspect that check raise bluffing with Qx and Jx is really bad. This means that the check raise range on the flop will be (hands better than Jx) and (98, 97, 87). This means that Jx is part of the group of hands that can beat a bluff and it's thus a bluffcatcher which must be accounted for when calculating how much of our range we should call or fold on the river according to the indifference principle.

let's say we cbet J9s with a backdoor flushdraw on the flop, get check raised, and we peel.

turn 2o

checks through.

river A

big blind bets.

What do we do with J9s? We can beat a bluff such as 98, 97, or 87, all of which make some sense to give up with in the big blind's shoes some fraction of the time or else he'd be bluff heavy on the turn. We hold a bluffcatcher, albeit a weak one. So where do we draw the line on which hands to call on the river? We must look at our turn checkback range and see where this hand falls in the range of hands that can beat a bluff, if we want to make our opponent indifferent to bluffing. The junk hands that we chose not to bluff with on the turn do not matter here. The hands that matter are those that can beat a bluff. It may be that J9 = KQ in this spot if our opponent bluffs at the rate that would make our bluffcatchers indifferent. Which brings me back to the question: why Ax and not Kx, Qx, or Jx? If the answer is that Kx and worse cannot profitably call the turn, I guess I can get down with that. However, if Kx is a fold on the turn, then what's to say that Ax is a profitable call?

I know it's a total mind ****, but as long as we get to the river by making the most +ev play available, junk hands do not exist in our range. We may give up and or fold them as we see fit because doing so will be 0ev.

I agree that if we never give up on bluffs, that we'll be bluff heavy on the river. I prefer to give up with the hands on both the upper margins on the river and lower margins on the turn because these hands can win a showdown or these hands cannot continue to bluff profitably, respectively.

It's my fault for being dumb and not seeing that the board had a flushdraw. All of what I wrote assumed a rainbow flop. Sorry.

However, the inclusion of Qxs and Jxs flushdraws in the big blind's flop check raising range simply changes the question. Why Ax and not Kx? Why Ax and not 2x?

Im not sure if I understand the crux of the question. 2x > Ahi > Khi. The reason Kx is a worse bluffcatcher is because it doesnt beat some of the Ax in villains range (or better Kx). 2x likely has 5outs or is beating all unpaired hands.

On the notion of equity, part of the problem is figuring out villains raise tendency, which is guesswork. So I wanted to understand the balanced approach if I were the villain.

The point is that Kx, Ax, and 2x are all bluffcatchers, as well as better hands up to your strongest hand that you'd calldown on the flop, turn, and river. Sometimes, like on a rainbow board, this might include weaker hands too. This is your river range after calling a turn bet. The more strong hands you have in this range, the stronger the threshold bluffcatcher will be. The less strong hands you have in this range, the weaker the threshold bluffcatcher will be. To figure out the threshold bluffcatcher, you look at the price the bettor is getting on his bluff. In the hand from the op, facing a turn and river bet in position after the flop check raise, that's 6:1 If you fold 1/7 times with your bluffcatchers, then the big blind's expectation on a bluff will be exactly his investment, or 1 big bet. If you have some hands in your range that improved to raising hands, then you include those in the calculation, but you leave out hands that can't beat a bluff.

Got ya, I have no problem with any of this. Never meant to imply I think we should have junk hands in our bluffing range that will be -EV. Only that we should think about our flop check raising range and make sure we are going to be able to be fairly balanced by the river. I'm not good enough with lhe theory to know how often we should be shutting down on each street. We obviously need a bunch of semibluffs on the flop, slightly less on the turn, and less on the river. Some of this happens naturally for us when our semibluffs turn into made hands. I know personally I tend to continue with my bluffs on the turn a ton, and then I give up quite a bit on the river in an effort to be balanced barring some sort of read. I'm not sure if this makes me exploitable or not, seems like my opponents don't have much incentive to ever fold the turn with weaker bluff catching hands given I'm either forced to shut down a lot, or over bluff the river. IMO its a lot easier to process this stuff in nl where ranges tend to be more polarized.

I've done some crev sims that are similar to this hand where I am the check raiser, and have tried to find a range that gives him a zero EV call with "a bluff catcher" on both the turn and river. As you pointed out that might not be the best way to approach the situation, and focusing more on equity is probably better.

Q1: Im assuming you want to check raise the flush draws too?

Q2: What percentage of hands is standard for BB to defend there? I plugged in something like 68%, and then had you check raising the range in Q1 including flush draws. That was about 55% of the total calling range. 37.5% pair or better, 3.5% AK AQ, and then around 13.5% draws. I really don't know but intuitively this seems ok from a balance perspective.

Q3: I think we definitely have hands that just want to peel. I mean we know we have to defend way more than 55% on this flop, and lots of the hands we don't have in that raising range don't want to fold the flop. I think we need some pairs in that peeling range, or else decent opponents will just rape us every time we just call. I don't think we are supposed be sacrificing EV by playing hands in a less optimal way for the sake of our overall strategy, but if both lines are close between CC and CR, we should just call some stronger hands to protect that range.