Been doing a lot of work recently on constructing GTO cbet defending ranges that would prevent villain from being able to profitably cbet every hand in his range. To my knowledge, a rough number of 40% fold to cbet is the target to aim for to achieve this vs. 0.75 pot-sized cbets and so far I've been getting my stat down to about 44%.

The thing is that, empirically, villains do not cbet 100% of their preflop opening ranges but usually around the 70% region or so. My question is, does that mean there is no need to defend as high as 60% of our preflop calling range to a cbet? If so, what would be an acceptable % of our range to defend to a 70% cbettor? Does the fact that villain's cbet range being tighter and therefore having stronger equity overall have any significance also?

Sorry if there are fundamental mistakes going on, I'm not the best at game theory.

Thanks for reading!

So you need to defend 0.75 / 1.75 =~ 60% to prevent villain from cbetting ATC.

If he's not cbetting enough, you can exploit him by defending less - but realize this opens you up to exploitation through villain cbetting 100% until you adjust again.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does, thank you for your post.

Would there be a way to calculate the exact percentage of our range we must defend at the minimum on the flop to a cbet knowing that villain's cbet is X%?

AFAIK there isnt. Game theory assumes that villain will exploit your play as much as possible, to protect against this you make villain indifferent from bluffing you, to do this you call with a frequency of pot/pot+bet, I believe. This frequency is independant of villains play, because you are assuming villain's play is going to adjust to exploit you.

5 years later with new solvers and technology out I'm hoping there is a better GTOish c-bet defense strategy. This is the only thread I could find.
I'm trying to think of ways to factor in range advantages on certain boards and vs player tendencies.
I understand GTO assumes other player is playing GTO as well when giving our response but assuming population average is 60% c-bet these days and the board heavily favours the c-bettor like AK5r flop do you guys think it's pratical to add (*0.5 in extreme range disadvantage situation or *0.75) to the GTO formula to come up. I know it won't be GTO anymore when we alter our strategy to exploit the population so I"m thinking more in terms of just playing optimally.

Has anyone come up with a more optimal strategy based on equities on certain boards? I'm willing to pay someone with a solid understanding of GTO and ranges for coaching to help with this.

Plenty of spots where folding > 1 - a is higher EV than attempting to employ a MDF.

There isn't really an overall strategy someone can give you, because every situation is unique. MDF is next to useless on the flop. In some spots (e.g. where the board is good for your range and/or you're in position) you can/should continue way more often than MDF. On others you have to fold at high frequencies. Get a solver, or try out Snowie for 10 days and you'll see what I mean.

MDF is a great excuse to become a solid calling station haha.

On a vacuum, would say that mdf can do more harm do your game than good, on most of the games running at least. Maybe my understanding is poor still, but it is my impression.

Ok cheers guys.
I'm learning how to use a solver.
I imagine the biggest leaks of players these days are poor defence vs c-bets in general.
I play MTTs with antes in play sometimes and most people c-bet flop 40-60% pot and overall population folds to flop c-bets 50%. Seems super exploitable eh I wonder what the best MTTers overall fold to c-bet % is.

my bad usually think of it as 1 - bet/pot+bet.

The assumptions for MDF are that

1. Ranges are symmetrical
2. Equities cannot change
3. Investment in the pot is equal

A good starting point is to think about defending the BB and facing an UTG cbet on AK2. Consider if the MDF assumptions hold and if not what that means for you cbet defence strategy.

+1


So yeah, you need to adjust your mdf when ranges are different.

The concept of mdf is just right tho...