I always see in videos where someone hits 2-pair or a straight or whatever on the river and the author will say you cannot lead with it because the card is bad for your range. If you do not expect the in position player to bet, should not you lead? If it is bad for your range, then maybe you will get more action. If you are in position on the river, even more so. Wouldn't you always want to be a strong hand, regardless of what is good for your range? This should also apply somewhat to earlier streets.You do not want your play to be readable, but it seems like maybe it has gone to far playing your range rather than your hand.

Its basically a top-down approach to poker. Trying to make the most money possible. Your trying to take advantage of weak players, and there is two aspects to this.

One is that if you play them "gto" or as if they are a good player, you could play the hand BECAUSE it is bad for your range. This makes sense vs good players or if you are just playing to be the best or something, not for money.

If you play as if trying to funnel money from the bottom upwards, as if you take the money from the lowest stakes, the winners move up and eventually your playing like a ladder where your the top rung then you should play your range because it covers bad players. Then it keeps you from being taken advantage of by good players. Thats it imo.

As for playing your actual hand, yes that matters but in GENERAL the right thing to do is play your range. If your playing 1 hand, there is no meta but its generally pretty much just top down meta like i explained.

You should bet hands that perform good as bets, you should only do things that are good for your range as long as those things are also good for your hand.

The reason you shouldn't lead with a strong hand on some cards that are bad for your range is that card is good for villains range, which will make him bet often, which increases the amount of money you make with your hand.

I under that, but I see it used when someone bets the flop as the preflop raiser and x/cs the turn on a dry ace high board, and then make 2-pair on the river. The river card may be good for the caller's range, but it is likely the preflop caller has an ace. The preflop raiser is much more likely to have AA/AK/AQ. So if the preflop raiser makes aces up on the river, it seems better to call, as the the preflop caller probably has just top pair and is not going to bet as a bluff because the card is good for his range.

It seems like what the opponent's likely holding are and how he will play them might be more important than whether the card is good for his range. In your holding is important. If you have a big hand you want to get value for or a hand that rarely wins at showdown, should not you want to bet whether or not the card is good for your range?

I assume if the is checked to you in position on the river, you are supposed to bet, regardless of whether the card is good for your range.

"what the opponent's likely holding are and how he will play them" IS what range advantage refers to.

Range advantage for your opponent is a quick heuristic that implies he is likely to hold a hand that will bet or raise. Range advantage for you implies your opponent is likely to hold a hand that will not bet or raise.

There's more to it but that's the gist of it.

This is just river value 101. Basically betting OOP depends on momentum, whether a scare card hits, whether you have a good hand that can get called, whether your block betting, whether you want to upholster your range when a good card hits independent of your hand etc.

Betting IP is just when you have no equity, strong range advantage with a good holding or bad one, betting large with the nuts when your percieved range is bad, bluffing in the same scenario if your playing back and forth etc.

This is just dependant on the board and st00f

So EP opens, u defend ur BB with 22.

Flop comes out AK2r

U check and he bets.

Now this is a bad board for your range, and ur opponent flops a big range advantage, he has: AK AQ AJ, AA, KK, u have a huge range disadvantage since u don’t have these hands so often.

Actually u have a lot of LEMONS.
U have many hands such as A9s- and some AJo ATo. These hands want to get to show down! They want to keep the pot small. But how can they get to show down when ur opponent knows ur capped with X/C line and so he can just bomb bomb bomb u?!

The answer is that u need a body guard to escort your Lemons to show down. U need a big monster hand in your X/C line so that if he tries to bomb bomb bomb u he runs into your body guard sometimes. The body guard is 22.

And how does A9 benefit from villain sometimes running into 22

GTO seems to assume that your opponent will notice any situation where you are unbalanced and take advantage of it. That might be sort of true in a HU match between top players. However, even if your opponent is an excellent player, is he really going to notice every time you deviate from GTO and take advantage of it?

Yes, you are right to a large extent. You shouldn't study solver strategies until you have everything else down imo.
That doesn't mean it's useless though. Being able to see one showdown from your opponent and tell he is off by some margin is going to help you exploit players.
You want to be that player that will notice situations where opponents are unbalanced and take advantage of it.

There are many useful things you can get from solvers. However, if the solver is doing things to balance ranges, that may not be the optimal play against humans who usually will not be able to exploit that your range is unbalanced, particularly if you are only playing a few hands with a particular player who may be multitabling.

If your opponent does not do the correct amount of betting himself then you should start donking almost all your strong hands. In optimal play range advantage and aggression will go hand in hand, so against a good player 22 will make more money by checking on AK2. However if you node lock villain to always check back then 22 will absolutely start donking, range (dis)advantage be damned.

For strong hands the goal is to get money in the pot. Strong hands are not used to "protect" weak ranges, when they are placed in weak ranges it is because that is how they get the most amount of money in the pot.

if we bet every time we happen to flop a strong hand on a board that is bad for our range then what do you intend to do when the board is bad for your range and your particular holding. Do you intend to sometimes bet when you have nothing and the flop smashes your opponent in the face. You gotta balance it somehow.

You are underestimating how much a human can exploit you though, but yes. You are not wrong in principle

I am not talking about ep vs. BB on an ace high flop. There are much more subtle situations than that where the solver solution will indicate and the videos and so on will say you cannot lead because the card or board is bad for your range.

I also question why you cannot make a certain play because it is not the solver's preferred line. I know it was 50 years ago, but Doyle said lead into the raiser (presumably often the 3-bettor) with a set. He thought that was the best way to stack them deep if they had an over pair or like AK on an ace or king high flop. If the preflop aggressor missed the flop or was bluffing preflop, he might play back at you anyway when you lead.

Not saying that is usually best now, but it is possible, and of course you can balance with bluffs, like anything else. You may be theoretically exploitable when you deviate from GTO, but it can also be hard to handle an unexpected line.

Theoretically, there are two reasons to range-check on bad boards:

1) Villain will usually build the pot for you

2) Your passive checking lines become a lot more exploitable


Here's a fun example where hero (OOP) should rangecheck on a 3339J river with a range of pure quads vs a nodelocked GTO solution. I forced hero to fold everything but quads on the turn, and locked IP to play the same way on the river. You can see the sims and discussion about it here:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...2&postcount=98

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There are always exploitative considerations. If they play too passively then your capped checking range won't get exploited, and villain won't build the pot often enough, which may mean you want to lead. The opposite is also true - you may want to avoid leading good boards if you think villain will play too aggressively, as your value range can get more value by check-raising or trapping. This is one of the reasons behind range-checking simplifications in EP vs BTN call scenarios.

In theory, this is right. Though, some of my reasons for c/c-ing vs. c/r-ing 22 in this spot has to do with balancing the narrowing/strengthening of his range vs. folding out his equity share.

If we c/r, hands that continue will be weighted toward AA, KK, AK (though with card-removal, AA and KK are less likely). AK, will more often call, and AA and KK will raise. A raise puts us in a tough spot with bottom set. Hands like AQ, AJ, AT will likely (or maybe) call the c/r, but because I have such a range-disadvantage, our c/r is going to be weird and confusing, and should raise warning flags for villain.

We are protecting/folding equity for KQ, QT, QJ, QQ, and the like. But I don't know how significant that is.

Because our set is so low, and we have such range disadvantage, and because I want to keep bluffs and weaker Ax hands in his range, I am usually c/c-ing here, with a possible c/r on turn or river, or continuing to call down if villain keeps firing, depending on the runout.

A lot is opponent dependent, and I'd find a little more reason to c/r flop against a bad agro player. But villain would probably need to be very bad/agro for me to choose a c/r over a c/c here.

While strengthening our c/c range with monsters to keep it less capped is absolutely true in theory, I find that it is also true in practicality vs some players, and not so much vs others.

Am I wrong?