Excellent article and thread; Thanks to OP and all contributors.

Good job! And that did clarify my previous questions. Now I just need to actually play the game...

**Sorry if this has already been covered, just finished reading the first post and am digesting**

First, OP, thank you for this. Very great post about pre-flop play.

IN your discussion about facing a 3-bet you discussed when to 4-bet. In essence, we should be 4-betting or folding against a merged 3-bet range and flatting against a polarized 3-bet range (provided the polarization is weighted more towards air than nuts). When constructing a profitable 4-bet range should we use a similar rule as we did for creating a 3-bet range? For example, against someone who 3-bets a merged range we should have a polarized 4-bet range, no?

Against a player with a merged 3-bet range I feel we have to look at 4-betting the same way we looked at 3-betting. As a result, we should probably assume a position of a polarized range but one that is tigheter than our polarized 3-betting range (since most merged villains have a tighter 3-betting range than 2-betting range).

Further, I feel the rules you set forth when discussing 3-betting could also be applied to 2-betting and will give us a incredibly concise understanding of when/how to 3-bet. For example, when playing someone that will often 3-bet or fold we should 2-bet a polarized range, correct?

This can get very effective because the top end of a polarized 2-bet range represents (for a lot of players) a merged 3-bet range which will have a lot of hands that you will want to flat with when facing a polarized 3-bet.

Cheers for the awesome thread, guys.

What are your thoughts on 4-betting when ~200bb deep? I feel like it's the new 3-betting, in the sense that you can do it with a wider range and can freely choose between merging or polarizing, as opponents ar flatting a bit more than when 100bb deep.

First of all, thanks again for the kind words. Glad to see this is helping people.
And forgive me if this reply is..."meh", I'm on my phone.

To summarize (for my ease):
- when should we have a merged/polarized 4bet range?
- how do we structure a merged 4bet range?
- how do we structure a polarized 4bet range?
- opening with a polarized range?


We are facing a 3bet which is merged, and are creating a 4betting range. First, I hope I covered this rule: "except when a bet is committing/all-in". In that situation, we can't fold air, so we might as well have the top of our range (when all-in, we are never getting raised...when committed, we are effectively all-in--but we will also be bluffing with air sometimes...so at this point, the rule kind of falls apart).

First, does a 4bet commit so much of effective stacks that you can't fold air? If so, obviously merge. There is a great article about types of hands to 3bet all-in when 25bb deep. It's from 2009 I believe, but still a phenomenal post. Basically, it outlines how, when widening your shoving range, certain types of hands have more equity than others against different types of players.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/58...ective-444194/
As for sizing, you can probably manipulate your opponent with your sizing based on the types of hands you have. It's a HU SnG trick, and while it seems exploitable...no one notices. Just a few ideas:
- shove big Ax instead of raise-call. Smaller Ax might not shove over the top, but it might call.
- shove small-mid PPs. Don't let JT think it has fold equity...
- raise-call monsters
- raise-call hands that dominate hands your opponent will reshove with but not call a shove (in a hu sng, stuff like KJ).

Is your opponent so deep that he is going to flat your 4bet more often than raise? Are you playing against isildur1?
Good luck structuring that.
Basically, I've never found any resources on flatting 4bets other than a few podcasts that talk about it happening 100bbs deep. This us because...frankly, it doesn't happen much.

BUT, I think research on this would best be done via PLO vids (particularly HU cash vids). The players do get deep enough for this to happen, and there are a lot of cool spots that it makes a lot of sense. Of course, NLHE doesn't have the same equity relationships preflop...but it can get you thinking.

Think about it this way though: the equity of the second nuts runs along a bell-curve. At a certain PSR, stacking off with the second nuts is -EV. Remember that when structuring your ranges. 500bbs deep effective, is KK a 4bet or a flat? What about 98s? AXs, etc? Generally, when effectively very deep at a FR table, I flat hands like K2s with aspirations to overflush a SC. Conversely, I am more likely to 3bet my SCs, because I want the PSR at a point where I can play my FDs hard. I can't do very well in terms of an outline here, because there just isn't much literature/vids/posts/hands where this dynamic is in place. But, basically, my standard range after a certain stack depth slims to either the nuts, or air with blockers to the nuts. There was a deuce-plays podcast which dissects a hand played by durrrr, eastgate and greenstein where durrrr abuses this concept with QT on a T22 board. I don remember the episode number, but I also suggest that for working on your deepstack game.

Polarizing your 4bet range is tougher, because we have to create two ranges:
- our stackoff range (likely a tight one)
- air

First, decide what hands you constitute as the fistpumps. Then, decide what ratio of nuts to air is the most correct. As a standard, I start 2:1 weighted to air and adjust to either 1:1 or add more air.

You are generally making a fairly small 4bet. IP, between 22 and 25bbs. OOP, probably 25bbs. Let's just say we are only fistpumping with KK+ and AK. That's 2.1% of total hands. Our opponent is pretty wild with his 3bets, but nitty with his stackoffs. So we want to 4bet a ton of air. We start at 2.5:1 with plans to adjust (note: this isn't optimal, but I can't maths, particularly in the morning). So we want about 5% of total hands as our air. What hands do we choose?

Our equity is irrelevant with our air--that's why it's polarized. But by far, the best types of hands to 4bet as air are AXs hands. If you have Ax, you cut the number of possible combos of AA from 6 to 3, and AK from 16 to 12. In the case your opponent surprises you with a flat, your hand will play pretty well postflop. He's likely not flatting any Ax hand other than AA, so any Axx board is probably yours. And there are FDs abound. So, just open pokerstove and add Axs hands until you get to 5%.

I beleive the last part of your question was about applying these general concepts to other spots, particularly when opening the pot? Obviously, you don't want to fold a +EV hand, which is why we polarize our 3bets. And generally, limping is incorrect, so at a FR or 6max table, it's best to just open as you normally would. However, there is one spot where you are definitely onto something: Super Turbo HU SnGs (and 25bb-13bb in ant HU scenario). Mers has a great video about limping hands like QT that play well postflop but cannot stack-off, and raising your stamped range and corresponding air like J3. This is against villains who are going to 3bet-shove a wide range against an open. Your stamped range, albeit light, dominates your opponent's. You can easily fold your air, and you can call a raise IP with QT or play a limped pot happily.

And, yes, this concept is easily applied other places when structuring ranges, but I'm working on a really big post that discusses this. I'll wait for that. Feel free to pm me.

Just getting to work now. Hope that answers your questions and is generally helpful. Have a great one.

Huuuuuuuuuuuuge help, sir. Really got me thinking more critically about both preflop raising (which is one of my biggest leaks) and I want the SPR to be post-flop and with which hands and how I can maximise value with them using SPR (very nice added bonus to the post ;-) ).

For example, when constructing my 4b air range to be when super deep it should contain a lot of axs hands and not many qxs or jxs. This is because when 2-betting you are much more likely to be flatted than when 3-betting, especially at the lower limits. Jxs and Txs, while having blockers to your opponent's flatting hands, have a great deal of reverse implied odds when playing super deep. This is not so much the case with AXs.

I think I'd be a little more inclined to include wheel type aces in my air range for 4-betting simply because if flatted we're adding just a little extra equity.

The last part of my post was more applying the rule to 4-betting vs. flatting the 3-bet to responding to the initial raise and what types of ranges to 2-bet with.

Essentially, when facing a 2-bet with someone who has a merged 2-bet range you should polarize your 3-bet range. When facing a 2-bet from someone with a polarized 2-bet range you should flat more.

When 2-betting someone who frequently 3-bets or folds you should have a polarized range
When 2-betting someone who frequently flats you should have a merged range.

There are, of course exceptions, largely dealing with preflop stacks. Also, it really depends on what your idea of a polarized range is for each level and position (for example, I consider A3s merged on the button when 2-betting but polarized UTG).

I will try to respond more in depth if I get the chance (working on finals right now). Your responses provide me with a lot to wrap my head around and I sincerely thank you for it.

Just realized bolded is wrong. Brain fart there

When you say 2-bet, you just mean a preflop open, right? And in what scenario?
In a FR game, there really isn't any way to open a polarized range correctly. Obviously, you aren't folding a +EV hand and opening a -EV hand in it place. The idea behind polarization is to maintain balance while protecting these marginal equity hands. For example, limping QTs HU against a villain who isn't flatting a minraise but often 3betting (with a range too strong to raise-call QTs). So we instead open a very strong hand and a very weak hand, because our weak hand has essentially the same equity as QT (because we are just raise-folding both anyway). In a full-ring game, unless you plan on incorporating limping into your game (which is possible, but usually not the best way to play) you can't polarize your open.

Granted, there are situations where limping is okay...especially in a live setting. For example, 300bbs deep at a passive table, I might limp Axs in order to induce a lot of dominated suited cards to overlimp (allowing me to overflush people more often). If this is the case, though, I lose Ax from my 4betting range, which throws balancing that range completely out of the window. It also makes any Ax flop far less likely to hit me when I open (though villains may not understand that). In my personal experience, I can say that I've had a lot more success (even in the described scenario) just opening.

Basically, if you are going to open with the nuts or nothing, and fold everything in between, why wouldn't you just open the nuts and...all that stuff in between your open?
The reason polarization works facing a raise is because there is a third option: "call", which grants equity in its own. Raising ATC has a set value, and raising the nuts has a fairly set value.
When 3betting air, we are basically figuring this (for example):
- calling with the top 15% of hands will show profit.
- raising any two cards will show a small profit.
- raising the top 3% of hands will show immense profit.

Lets assign made up equity, just for the sake of argument. In this example, there are only ten different hands.

- raising hands 1 and 2 grants us an average profit of 8.
- raising hands 3-10 grant an average profit of 2.
- calling with hands 3-7 grant us an average profit of 4.
- calling with hands 8-10 lose us an average of 4.

This is because hands 3-7 are better than our opponent's initial range. However, once we reraise, our opponent's range becomes smaller. This makes it unprofitable to call a shove with 3-7, and so we only gain equity from the times our opponent folds.
Because this is the case, we might as well gain the equity from flats with 3-7 and use 8-10 for fold equity.
And even if we tell our opponent our strategy, shoving with 1-6 instead of 1-3 will not help, because our stackoff range dominates his light shove.


However, when opening, we gain nothing from folding 4-7. We just fold them. So instead of opening 1-3 and 8-10, we open 1-7 (or 1-10, or 1-3...it all depends on our opponent).

When choosing to 3bet Axs, the idea is that it is a part of the 8-10 range, which will NOT show a profit when flatted. This is why, when 20 tabling, I suggested using J3s-j6s, Q", K". Though they are not ideal in any scenario in which Axs is not a viable call (ie. Don't 3bet any Jx, replace it with Ax), none of the hands listed are generally going to be a +EV flat in a FR or 6max game (unless you are very deep, or there are other extraneous circumstances). However, those hands are usually right behind Ax as the best -EV hands to 3bet, so it makes your life much easier.

Turning made hands into bluffs should only occur when you don't have any air in your range (or your opponent is so nitty that a call is now -EV but a raise is +EV). For example, let's say you reach the river and your range is:

- busted FDs
- top pair
- two-pair+
- sets

You decide that your opponent is bet-folding for marginal value and you want to exploit him. You also believe he will bluff or value-own himself to make calling with top pair slightly +EV. So, raise missed FDs and two-pair+

The same situation, but there was never a possible draw. Bluff with top pair and raise two-pair+. Top pair is the bottom of your range, and you believe raising it will generate more overall EV than calling.

Same situation, again you have busted FDs. Your opponent is never bluffing, and calling with top pair is -EV. However, your opponent's stackoff range is incredibly tight, and you believe bluffing is +EV.
Instead of bluffing the bottom of your range, bluff with "the best of your worst". Just fold busted FDs and bluff top pair. Or bluff both. Just don't bluff missed FDs and fold top pair.

So the bottom of your range is dependent on so many things (even as small as your opponent's knowedlge of turn semi-bluffs, or whether he can valuebet thin, etc) that it's impossible to calculate exactly on the fly. All you can really do is set down "standards" from which to deviate, and this have quick estimates in the heat of the moment.

Hope that really clears up your question. It's pretty essential to understand what you gain from polarizing. It's not equity from folds (because you can have that with ATC, including the middle of your range), it's the equity gained by not pushing the middle of your range so hard that you manipulate your opponent's range into being stronger.

Another example would be Mers' ranges for leading very weak showdown hands (that have some sort of equity) on certain limped flops. For example:
Villain limps the BTN.
Hero checks.
Flop: J64

Note: we expect a lead against villain to be +EV.
We check:
Ax, Kx, and Qx, because there is some chance we just check down and are good, or turn top pair. Even if we CF these hands, we gained the chance that it gecks through. That's mild equity, but it's there.
And maybe we CC bottom pair, CR OESD and 78, so our entire checking range isn't CF.

We bet:
Obviously top pair and most value (unless check-raising some strong hands to protect those Ax-Qx hands).
And hands that have no showdown equity, but some mild chance of improving, like weak gutters, backdoor FDs, etc.

And we check fold hand like T2, etc, that are below our bluff-betting range and have no showdown equity.

Basically, what I'm saying is that polarization is generally about maintaining balance with strong hands while still protecting the hands you can show a profit with by playing passively. You can't win every pot, and your opponents will adjust too quickly if you 3bet all -EV flats, so we structure ranges to compliment our value-range.

okay, I'm out for now. Again, hope that really clears things up.

in4later

damn, i think about 2008 was the last time ive seen that many quality posts by one poster in such a short time span.

vv nice

Well, that's very kind. I really appreciate the kudos man.

Very good post thank you, i might have some questions for you later.

Posting to show my appreciation for an excellent post Ronin.
Very helpfull. TY.
(Rest of the thread look promising too)

Another amazing strategy post Ronin. I'd like to voice my lurker appreciation to you. Thanks!

great stuff here. ty

I pm'd Ronin a few months ago when I discovered this thread fearing posting in it would ttt for other ppl to c, realizing its quality stuff. really nice guy and great/interesting thought process in which he can communication to words very well.

Great post, didnt realize how much there was to 3 betting lol

Great article, it really got me thinking.

But I'm not sure how to apply all of this to my game and I have a few questions. I play Rush FR NL100, if it matters.

Let's use a hand I played this week to try to confirm that I understood the basics at least and as a lead in to my questions:

I raise AQo from MP and villain with solid stats puts in the 3-bet from CO. I believe this villain has a polarized 3-bet range based on his 8% 3-bet stat and some previous hands that went to showdown. Before reading your article, I would rarely call a 3-bet out of position even though I know he has to be bluffing a good amount of the time. Instead, I would 4-bet a fairly wide "value" range hoping he held one of his air hands (which makes little sense I guess... am I bluffing or trying to get value here? or am I just trying to finish the hand because I'm scared of getting owned out of position after the flop? but that's a whole other post). Either way I would fold AQo.

But now I realize that almost never calling allows my opponent to play perfectly pre-flop with all parts of his range and I shouldn't be so accomodating. So I call instead and flop comes Q-high, fairly dry. I check-call villain's C-bet because it's basically the same as pre-flop: if I raise he can ship overpairs and fold air, again playing perfect. Effective stack is about 80% pot on the turn which is a 4 and goes check-check. Now I think he either gave up or has very low equity against my hand (either he flopped a mid-pair or turned a bad draw that he doesn't feel has enough fold equity to bet). River is a 3 and I decide that check-call is my best move: he might still make a last-ditch bluff effort with air and really shouldn't fold an overpair.

Here are my questions:

1. Am I check-folding the flop if I don't hit? After all, he's probably C-betting 100% with the lead in 3-bet pots and I'm still ahead of that.
2. If villain bets the turn smallish, am I calling again and calling any river? Or ship the turn if there's any chance he's commited himself to a draw?
3. As played, should I fold river? One of my recurring goals is to improve my red line but I don't see that happening if I start playing a lot of 3-bet pots where I call one barrel with TPTK and then fold...
4. Doesn't this whole hand look horribly passive no matter how it plays out? I can never bet for value and I don't want to bluff with the best hand against someone who's probably bluffing at me... When my only value comes from calling bluffs and considering I might be passively paying off KK-AA the whole way, am I really +EV with this pre-flop call?
5. As the 3-better, do you have both "fold to 3-bet" and "call 3-bet" on your HUD and build your range accordingly on the fly?

Either way thanks for the article, I think I can at least apply it to situations where I'm in position against a polarized 3-better. Not sure I want to make a lot of out-of-position calls with medium hands though...

The reason baluga whale recieved so much scrutiny when he brought this idea forward is that it's really, really hard to play this spot OOP. First, general thoughts:
- have enough hands to be able to confirm your opponent's 3bet range. RUSH is a great atmosphere for this, because you'll have a lot of repeat customers.
If you go to your HEM, you can actually look at a spread of hands known to be 3bet by opponent (and then filter for IP and OPP). You are really looking for Qx, Jx, Kx, etc. Hands like 34s are a section of hands that actually deserve a LOT of conversation IMHO.
But I'm on my phone...will try and get back to that.

Basically, you need to know your opponents ranges, or you're flying blind. It doesn't sound like you looked at enough here.
- does he 3bet QQ? AQ? AJ? TT-JJ?
Obviously, he's 3betting more than KK+ AK, but look at the hands he flats and the hands he 3bets (both IP and OOP).

- once I do that, I actually try to confirm by flatting something near the top of my range...obviously, AA is ideal, but that's a luxury. This will make your opponent less likely to barrel in the future, which makes AQ much more fun.

- as for playing postflop, that's why 3betting a polarized range is so great...the best way to counter it involves an incredible amount of effort. Ace high is the same as TPTK against a range of air or overpairs, so no, you shouldn't be looking to play fit or fold. There are a lot of options...but I can't say the best approach tbh. General thoughts:
- small donk bets.
Sounds fishy...but people react hilariously facing them in this spot. I know I do. You can start a dynamic with your opponent here.

Some villains will only flat overpairs,
But ship all air.

Some villain will snap-fold air and shove overpairs.

Or there is the CC. CR in the descried spot is pretty bad IMHO, because villain now plays perfectly. Our hand hasn't really improved against his range much, except against AK. But we have almost a lock against air, and he should bluff this flop 100%. TBH, I would also shove most turns against a flatter, especially if I gained any equity. Most people's ranges are so weighted to medium PPs here that get stubborn for one street an give up...and if you plan on value-shoving wide as well (which I would, if my value range was wide enough to allow), you're going to stay pretty balanced.

Sorry, I know this seems like a really poorly Steuctured answer--in walking home.
Basically, yes.
CC flop, CR turn IMHO. The only other option is to try and induce with small dominate.

But beware that this is going to be high variance. Get strong reads and start with a thin range.

great read

How do extremely smart players like you have no BR? Someone plz stake this guy, esp at the stakes he plays, or you dont like money IMO. If I were you OP, I would just go into the staking section and link these articles, lol.

Thx for the contribution, really well worded, and I def learned a bunch of stuff from this article (and the other in here but not gonna post in that one). This is prob my biggest leak, and you just gave alot of clarity to properly constructing 3bet ranges in diff spots.

I agree with just about everything, but want to talk a little more about constructing 3bet and 4bet bluffing ranges when deepstacked. I've heard alot of players talk about hands like Axs and Kxs as being the best 3bet and 4bet bluff hands because of 'blockers' and cominatorics and all that jazz. But it seems like whenever I'm wrong, and get flatted, I get into so many nightmarish spots postflop, that it just seems not worth it. I guess its a leak of mine, but I pretty much choose SCs most of the time when deepstacked, bc of the playability and disguise. I guess the way to better explain why I prefer to do this is bc we are often wrong in our estimation on how often someone will flatcall (esp live). Care to expand on this?

I also wanted to point out that often (esp live again) some of our opponents are so weak/tight, fit or fold type players, that it becomes massively profitable to increase our 3bet and iso ranges all across the board when deepstacked and IP, just because of the fact that we have such a ridiculous edge postflop and we just kinda want more money in the pot .

Thanks for the kudos. And, unfortunately, I'm still dealing with an offense I made while doing research for this article. I stole intellectual property while researching (used someone's HUSnG.com account), so I can't post in the staking forum nor be a registered coach. So my being broke is entirely my fault, and an extension of punishment for a really dumb decision.
Ohhhhh whiskey...

There were basically two questions here:
- Live
- Deepstacked

First of all, my 3bet game live seems to stray from the model a bit...but it's sort of not true. Against the same player (without any new reads), I may have a polarized or depolarized range. The reason for this is their betsizing...so few live players actually pay attention to even their preflop betsizing tells...it's probably my favorite part of playing live. There are a lot of regulars that I wouldn't be half as profitable against if they didn't raise 3xbb with all SC, small-mid PPs, 5bb with big PPs and 6bb with AJ+. I 3bet a polarized range against the 6bb, don't 3bet the 5bb raise and 3bet a SUPER wide merged range (like ATC...lol) against the 3bb open.

If you pay attention to that one, you'll probably be able to really increase your bottom-line...

As for deepstacked...the reason I didn't get into it is mostly because I don't have much experience. General logic to put-together:
- You can generally flat a wider +EV range, so your polarized range gets kind of silly.
- Hands that usually benefit from a low SPR (suited connectors) actually fall into the category of Xth nuts. According to generally adopted theory, "The equity of the second nuts works on a bell-curve related to stack depth". Pretty intuitive if you think about it---if you have 1,000,000bbs, it's pretty easy to fold the second nuts when your opponent shoves. If you have 10bbs, top pair is fist-pump territory. So, now we want to manipulate the SPR with these hands, to make them easier to play postflop.

Basically, there were hands that we couldn't flat earlier, but can now. And there are hands that we could flat earlier, but should raise.

Further:
- Your stackoff range is obviously going to be tighter.
(Clearly, folding KK 500bbs deep shouldn't be the sickest thing in the world)
Thus:
Your stackoff range is like...AA. So either:
- Never 4bet
or
- 4bet a very slim, polarized range.

If you watch Durrrr play HU, you'll get a good grip on how to play your 4bet game. He rarely 4bets, but when he does, it's either the nuts or something like 45s. I'd just pick two baby SCs (not Ax, unless you can't flat it profitably) to match with my AA.

(Sorry--only half the post finished. I just had a minor blow-up trying to get money online...)

Also just one other question i was thinking about:

when we 3bet a merged range, say OOP, and get 4bet shoved on, are we happily folding the bottom of our range even tho they are "value hands"?

for example, lets say that we are playing against a loose/bad opponent who likes to open-raise, and we expect to call alot of 3bets pre, but isnt likely capable of a light 4-bet shove from what we've seen so far (pretty much a fish by this description). We are on the BB and villain is on the CO. We 3bet AJ or 88 as part of a merged 3betting strategy, with almost no bluffs, since we expect to get called very often. We get jammed on and have to fold. Now based on my description, we're clearly behind his preflop range here, but we've sacrificed an opportunity to play postflop against an inferior player.

Wouldn't it be better against an opponent like this to have a very very tight 3bet range such as AK+ JJ+ (basically the value portion of a polarized range except without much of a bluff portion)? Based on your article, we know that if we have a +EV flatting spot, then we should prob not sacrifice that, so which principal prevails here? Should we be 3betting a merged range in this spot since we expect to get flatted alot by a weaker range? or just flat pre and put more money in the pot postflop where our edge is greater?

Absolutely. It might suck, but we 3bet because we believed our opponent would call with worse, and raise most of his better hands. Our opponent has raised, and there's no problem snap-folding. Maybe making a comment about how we had 72 or something...I dunno.

But I certainly wouldn't 3bet 88 against someone I believed would call very often. I would prefer a SC much more. 88 is best 3bet against someone we believe to 4bet often, with the intention of 5bet shoving.

So your question is...
- Villain plays poorly
- Villain will flat a lot of 3bets
- Villain will sometimes 4bet like...the nuts

I have no issue 3betting hands that will have his flatting range dominated. This sounds like a great spot to 3bet KQ, AJ, etc. We're going to get called by dominated hands.

We don't want to 3bet our SCs, because we're likely going to have a more +EV spot flatting with them. However, if he is going to flat with a dominated range when you raise broadway hands...why not?

agreed.

So just to clarify, bc I might be a little confused, not by the concept but more the exact ranges your talking about:

With regards to this:


I know that a polarized 3bet range should generally be widened on both ends (both value and bluffs) as villains becomes more agressive/likely to 4bet shove wider, so 88 certainly could be in the value portion of your 3bet/get it in range. But wouldn't it more often be part of a merged range?

Like say for example, JJ+, AK and a few SC's make up a standard polarized range against X player. Wouldn't a merged range contain more value hands like AJ+, KQ, 88, and very few bluffs? I guess I just don't know what a good merged range looks like, and how that should change when were playing OOP, bc I certainly understand that 88 is hard to play in a bloated pot OOP.