From the days when I played “ABC Poker,” my aggression frequencies have gone down significantly. I think like many others, I just cbet dry boards mindlessly and gave up on most turns when called or barreled randomly.

As I’ve been learning to construct my ranges more intelligently, I’ve found it difficult to maintain aggression in many spots. One of the reasons, I’ve noticed, is that it’s not easy to incorporate unnatural bluffs into a range on the fly.

For example, in the GTO+ solution for a 432r board, we’re supposed to bluff some of our middling air hands (J9s, QTo, etc.) as a LP raiser versus the BB. I’m wondering if anyone has any general advice on differentiating between when we might want to check and give up with certain low-equity combos versus bluff with them.

Obviously, some boards have more natural bluffs than others, so we can use this as a signal to when we need to look for air balls... but #1, I’ve noticed that solvers like low-equity bluffs even on boards where we have plenty of natural bluffs, and #2, how do we choose our combos without overbluffing or being exploitable to counter aggression?

I would like to know too. I think the solution lies in using an rng if you're playing online or using a pattern with the suits. But you have to know the frequencies you're going for in certain spots.

i think the question youre asking is based upon a false pretense. Nothing it does is an airball. Youre perceiving it as such, because you havent yet identified the pattern responsible for the line.

Taking your examples at face value: Betting j9 on 432 isnt an airball, its betting overcards. betting j9 on q24 isnt an airball, its betting a double top pair blocker.
an air ball would be barreling 96hh 3 streets on AKQK2ddssc - no blockers, no equity = airball. something im 99.9% sure you'll never encounter.

Theoretically, it is possible to construct a perfectly balanced strategy that involves choosing your bluffs "randomly" ie blasting 96hh on AKQK2 at a precalculated frequency.

however, doing this would
-be incredibly difficult to execute in a balanced manner, as youd have to memorize an inhuman amount of frequencies for every hand in every situation

-completely forego any +ev effect of choosing your bluff hands based on blocker/removal benefits.

So, yes, you can choose "airball" bluffs randomly and if done at a proper frequency, would be OK. actually implementing this strategy would be ridiculously over-complicated and ultimately sacrifice the +ev of card removal effects.
you're most likely not witnessing any airballs, you're just miscategorizing whats actually happening.

These are just off the top of my head from the examples you provided:

Both hands have overcard draws and those overcards are likely not to be in villain's continuing range, so when you hit top pair it's more likely to be good.

There are likely many better raggedy high card hands in villain's flatting range in the BB that will fold for one more bet, thus the hands benefit more from bluffing. Note your opponent's may not call the bb with the same range or the sam frequency as the equillibrium strategy here so adjust accordingly. This also addresses a key point about solutions in that they are interdependent so examining the other player's range and actions may give you insight into why the bettor chooses these hands.

Finally, it's possible but maybe unlikely the hands are just a result of the abstraction techniques the solver uses. This flop may be "lumped together" with other similar flops where J9s and QTo are bets. I would assume looking at the frequency they are bet and their EV may lead you to discover if this is the case. Again I doubt it's the case but is a possibility.

I think it’s about your bet fold range; if you only bet value hands and strong draws then the opponent can exploit. Gotta have a bet fold range so might as well use very weak draws to bet fold.

One can c-bet xx but one doesn't have to even when the opponent's call is more telling and makes it possible to c-bet like any two.

To be able to continue with bluffs, one needs either backdoors or/and overcards to continue or represent hits on the turn (and river).

KQ Txx c-bet is better than a KJ Qxx c-bet considering the outs and the turn overcards. In PLO, one thinks about outs similarly and c-betting Kxx with AQJx needs a bit more something to comfortably c-bet or check back even heads up. Other than that, one is betting with "air" that might or might not be okay.

C-betting/donking T8 or so on 9xx makes sense in both games if checking isn't better.

The bigger aces (and KQ, KJ perhaps) routinely check back in GTO+. Ks blocker might prefer a c-bet (like As in PLO), or it has a backdoor also.

Checking back KQ, KJ 8xx w/o backdoors looks fine to me but QJ and less, even w/o a backdoor, might c-bet as it has draw outs to barrel with. This could go down to 7xx, 6xx with relatively lower overcards but I haven't looked into it. Pio has checked up to 100% of his range on some low flops.

I understand what you are asking and there's no easy way to train that skill. After countless hours studying and playing poker you start to get a "feel" for how your hands rank in your range and naturally know when a dubious bluff should be bluffed or not depending on how many other bluffs you have.

Any sort of range practice excercise will help you with this, there's some solvers that let you practice this sort of stuff, playing around with solvers in general help too, but simply playing a lot is great too
There's also this page which was kinda dead last time I checked http://rangevsrange.pythonanywhere.com/

OPs question is way too nebulous but this is basically it.

Particularly, categorizing anything as "air" on [432]r is silly, take two reasonably narrow ranges and on that texture I bet there are few if any combos with less than 25% hot/cold equity.

If you're taking about river strategies then "air" just means "bluffs" in that context and the reason some "air" is bluffed and other "air" isn't almost always comes down to blocker/unblocker effects and/or hand range considerations (how far down in range the bluff candidate combo is).

Pick the air hands that have blockers to future made hands. Example: if the board has two spades, barrel air with a spade with the intent of bluffing river if the draw comes in. If the board has 2 to a straight, same thing, barrel air that has a blocker to the straight. On a rainbow board barrel off with your backdoor flush draws etc etc.

You're never going to get perfect ratios down, nor should you try to, but using this method will ensure you always end up with bluffs.

but then you block the draws youre hoping he folds, and unblocking his made hands. iirc in phil helmuths book youre advised against this, as your play would be most resembling that of the JACKAL

http://autoconconference.com/phil-he...t-poker-table/

Not sure if troll.

Shouldn't those considerations just flow through to the equities of each combo?

In other words, assuming we have a strategy that calls for barreling (as a bluff) the combos you described, aren't we barreling those combos precisely because they are our best bluffs precisely because they are our highest equity bluffs precisely because of blocker effects?

And yes I know the difference between EV and equity.

One can look at how many draws one is partly blocking and then come to conclude the opponent has many solid callers.

The plus outs barreling player is not a Jackal, though, as it/he doesn't really think in those terms.

The story of NLH is to bluff with the missed straight draw when there is also a flush draw if putting the opponent mostly on a made hand or a flush draw.

Not sure how good it is to represent the other flush draw in PLO when it hits the river when one missed the other flush draw.

It might be too nice if one could just opt the hand one has when bluffing the river, as there is a line one better follow before one gets to the river. A Jackal can make better river bluffs as so and a bot will do its best.

When one represents the nuts in PLO (with a major to significant blocker or two), it doesn't matter as much if the opponent then will have a solid hand more often, just that it can help if his range can have more draws also.

All of what's been said above made a good deal of sense... even if it is slightly convoluted... but then I just came across this result. GTO+ wants us to check behind OTT here BTN vs BB 40bb deep with some of our flush draws, while barreling with some of our lower suited connectors (3/4 which have ~3.5% equity).

Can this just be chalked up to equity preservation? The only issue with that is that BB has a virtually non-existent turn check/jam range. If not, I don't really see what we block, if anything, and GTO+ even likes 3-barreling 76s, 64s, and 54s.

In reply to my last post... it looks like BB's 3-barrel calling range OTR contains mostly A2-A8, so we are indeed somehow blocking BB's calling range.

I feel like you have to be some sort of clairvoyant super genius to think about this during play, though. And anyway what I don't understand now is why we choose some of these river blocking combinations over others OTT (i.e. we check 85s-87s)

If you bet half pot there with a draw that has about 17% equity, and villain shoves, you are offered 27% pot odds on your call. So you should be really careful because that basically wastes your draw.

The blocking reason is interesting on the turn and seems good to me. The 85s etc. not picked could be because there are already enough bluffs. It should help to not block some floats.

The GTO can be rather aggressive on range favoured flops/boards and that's partly surprising when the opponent also has a hit more often.

The protective bets are interesting to me, that's the part that is of use in PLO also and is somewhat known in both games before the GTO times also.

GTO(+) keeps some complete airballs in its range all the way here, that suffers from the lack of EV on the way to the river.