I hope this question isn't too theoretical for LLSNL but I'm curious what your Cbet strategy would be here. Do you bet your entire range, do you bet all the tier 2 cbets? Do you bother having a real check/calling range here or are you really unbalanced toward folding when you check?

1/3 live. Hero has been at the table for an hour or two playing standard tag, hasn't shown down many hands. You don't know a lot about villain but he seems like loose passive rec player. He plays a lot of hands and is somewhat sticky.

Effective stack is 100BB.

Hero opens the HJ 4x with a range of pairs, ATo+ QJo+ 56s+ J9s+ A2s+ Villain flats the CO and everyone else folds.

Flop is Kh7h5c

We arrive at the flop with 238 combos of hands. I would break the hands down into categories. Tier 1 cbets are ether value hands or good semi-bluffs. Tier two cbets are hands with weaker draws or hands that are betting for thin value/protection.

1. Tier 1 cbets (78 combos)

Sets-9 (maybe check raise KK?)
Overpair-6
Combo draw-1
Gutshot-2
Top pair-42
Flush draw-15
Pair+draw=2

2. Tier 2 cbets (76 combos)

88-QQ-(30)
22-44-(24)
AT-AQ bdnfd
QJ bdfd
7x (6)
5x (6)

When it comes to a hand that has no pair and no draw, would you rather be betting a hand like AQdd or TJdd. AQ is ahead about half the time on the flop against his range and can improve or just be good if he calls TJ needs to bet to win but does really poorly vs his calling range and won't often improve.

Until I have solid reads, I don't c-bet OOP unless it's for fat value. Usually TPGK+. On this runnout, I might go TT+/Kx+

Absent any information about villain I would bet sets (occasionally check/raise), over pairs, combo draws, top pair and better flush draws. I check the worse end of the draw and see what villain does. QQ-88 bet sometimes and check sometimes. Bet 7x rare, check/call sometimes if the hand has backdoor potential otherwise give up. Give up the rest to a bet. This is rather tight and unbalanced (in that my check/call range is narrow and weak) but I have found that it's bad to get creative OOP against an unknown opponent.

Villain won't be entirely unknown for long. Just an orbit or 2 will give me an idea how many hands they plays preflop if nothing else.

I think your general approach of limiting cbets until we have some reads, especially OOP, makes sense. But when we're HU, I'd recommend routinely also cbetting flops that hit a stereotypical raising range and not a stereotypical calling range -- rainbow flops with one high card, paired flops with a high card even if they're two-tone, etc.

Obviously game conditions matter a lot, and perhaps your games feature lots of IP floating and postflop shenanigans, but I think you're going to find a lot of LLSNL players call pretty loosely pre (esp. IP) but are then willing to give up a lot post.

I generally cbet anytime I think the flop hits a stereotypical raising range, anytime the flop is hard to hit for a stereotypical calling range, anytime I think V is fit/fold post, anytime I think V will call the flop wide and then play fit/fold OTT, and anytime I've hit my hand with either a good pair or a good draw and don't have a good reason not to bet.

I tend not to cbet when we're multi-way unless I've hit may hand. I tend not to cbet when the flop hits a caller's range hard (7TJ two-suited, for example), or when I think V will play back too much. I also often check my made one- or two-street hands when the flop is dry. And I tend to check big hands that have sucked all the air out of the board.

As soon as you divide the table in positions and think your HJ is an Okay spot you gonna lose in this game. I stop here because that's gonna take me hundredths of pages to reveal why that's absolutely wrong from your way of understanding. You know one thing but the reality is different and I know what you know and what you think about this.

Now, what will you lose in EV if you would eliminate ATo, AJo, QJo and some more midges I suspect may be in there .. ?

@ Case2...

I sorta painted with a broad brush. I guess in actuality, I do c-bet more loose than stated above.

I actually figured that was the case. It seemed awfully tight for my impression of your play.

I think you bring up a good point though. It made me realize I'm not being sufficiently positionally aware in my cbets. Obviously, I'm aware that I'm out of position, but it isn't something I explicitly factor in my cbetting decisions, which is a mistake.

Would you be more likely to bet QQ or 88?

You might want to check out the COTM on c-betting.

QQ simply because there are more ways villain can turn up with a worse single pair by river. Hands like JJ/TT are not going to give up to a single bet. Flush draws like AhJh are calling flop and have fewer outs. It doesn't make a huge difference though because if called on the flop I'm almost always going to check the turn. There are too many KX hands in villain's range to play this strongly unless hero catches a set. Hero needs to take advantage of generally passive villains and try to get to a cheap showdown.

Thanks for the replies so far. On a sort of a related question, I was looking at Janda's example of an OOP range as the PFR on a Ks9d7s board and he uses a lot of his gutshots and back door flush draws as bluff cbets and uses bottom pair and middle pair mediocre kicker hands as his bluff check raises. Is there a reason for why he leads one type of hand here and uses another as a check raise? Is it because the low pair has more SDV so he doesn't mind it checking through as much?

I would guess it's because gutshots and BDFD can give him the nuts and are fairly concealed. Those hands can yield stacks vs 2P/sets, even TPTK. Mid-pairs can't earn stacks so perhaps he sees more use in them just taking the flop down immediately when there's some FE. I mean, when someone calls your flop c-bet IP, they usually have TP or close second minimum. From my limited personal experience, 99% of 2/3 games and below don't require an intricately balanced flop continuation range. Even in the 5/5 games I currently play, I haven't really needed to balance my continuing ranges OTF vs most opponents. In LLSNL, I think balance is way overrated. In games where 30bb/100 is an attainable winrate, it'd be a mistake to play anything but exploitative.

TBH, you're thinking about this ass backwards. I don't base my cbetting range on my hands. I base it on the board and what I perceive the villain's range is. In this case, there's no ace, the board is mostly disconnected, but there is a heart flush draw. I bet. He's missed with most of his hands and will likely fold to my perceived AK.

Great question and this is something I have been working on lately.

I think your opening range might be a little loose. It is hard to believe. But if you cut out say 44- and three suited aces you go from over 19% to under 17%. I think ideally we should even be folding ATo here (although I admit I open this in the HJ often with mostly passive weak-tight players behind). You could replace ATo with a couple suited gapper combos (say 97s T8s). This will give you greater coverage on more boards. As is your range is 40% Ax which is a problem.

On this flop if you cbet all TP+ and all q-high and below you will be cbetting 38% which is not enough. (In general I would check TP with mediocre kicker but it's not in our range here.) The next hand I'd want to cbet would be underpairs -- if we get called we're probably not good and we are not likely to improve. (And bonus, if we do improve we are happy to play a large pot.) Betting 44- takes us all the way to 46.5% (hey what if we just didn't have these crappy hands to begin with?) Better but still not quite enough.

So let's bet our next crappiest hands which are weak Ax. A8- not hearts brings us to 53% which is about a reasonable cbet freq. But again these are hands we could have just folded pre as well.

So let's look at how our bet range fares if our opponent continues. Top pair+ makes up 42% of that so we're probably ok on that front.

But lo, our checking range is vulnerable! 117 combos of absolute crap! Nothing better than second pair, not one hand that can sustain a second barrel! We should have some top pairs in it. So it probably makes sense to always check your weakest top pair at the very least whatever it may be.

So we add KJ, and that's... 12 combos. Hoo boy we are in trouble. We're also calling with all 10 NFD combos. Because ace high is probably good against two barrels nearly as often as second pair, but we've at least got 12 outs to improve. But TP and NFD is only 22 out of 129 combos in our checking range. Still we've got no choice but to seatbelt up with a lot of second pairs. By the way most of our check-fold range is ace-rag coming back to bite us again.

I only want to call one bet with less than half our checking range. TT+, AJ+, AhT, Axhh, I guess 87cc/76cc too. 45.74%. Pitching nearly everything to a second barrel unimproved. Not fun

Thanks for posting this and getting me to do some work. The takeaway seems to be that having trouble finding a balanced cbet range is caused by being unbalanced preflop.

Opening range is good, can probably add in 79s+

c/r kings seems bad, probably plays better as bet/bet/bet. cbetting 66/44-22 seems bad too, better to c/f

You do not need a c/r range as the pfr, you can play whole range as either bet/check call.

p.s trying to work this out is useless for live games anyway, you'll basically 100% of the time be playing against limp/callers ranges or 3+ multiway pots

I generally follow Venice's approach. K-high board that is pretty disconnected with a flush draw, head's up I'm betting most of my range. Definitely betting hands that missed. May check with weaker one pair hands, like 7x or 5x.

Well your opening range is too wide, so it's no wonder you're having trouble. There is no prize for stealing except for winning $4, and you're risking $12 or $15 to win $4 and you have to get by 4 live hands to do so. So in my opinion it makes no sense to do so unless you have good reads on your opponents post-flop and can steal from them frequently, or if you're on the button.

This confused me as well. Check raising makes villains range stronger, and it seems to make little sense to check raise btm pair, when we could improve to 2 pair and still possibly be behind. Whereas a gunshot can improve to beat any of villains continuing range. I guess Janda is thinking that villain will often 3bet his 2pair+, and in that case we'll fold our bottom pair. I think you make a good point about the low pair having some showdown value.

From a game theoretic perspective you should generally be looking to c-bet about 70% of your combos of which 70% are going to be bluffs or semibluffs.

This is if you're HU obviously.

3-way I'm probably c-betting half the time with an equal mix of bluffs and value.

And so forth. The more players you add the less frequently you need to c-bet your air.

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Also, there are two other dependencies.

Bet sizing. The 70% rule of thumb is for pot-sized bets (the sizing of the bets on the flop, turn, and river all matter).

This assume a perfectly polarized range, which is actually just impossible in real poker. No matter what our hand, we have some chance of being outdrawn and some chance of drawing ahead.

The other thing that matters (and matters much more IMO) is that we shouldn't really be trying to be anything like GTO at LLSNL.

Most LLSNL players call too wide pre. They either take those extra weak hands to showdown or they have to dump them on the flop, turn, or river. We should seek to get to and bet more where they dump their hands (or for value OTR). That can often guide us to cbet way more than GTO would suggest.

Other players play too few hands and have too strong a range OTF. We exploit there by cbetting much less.

I don't know what you're getting at outdonked. Are you saying your o/r range has to predicated more on the type of players yet to act, than the range you're willing to o/r with from the HJ? That I can understand.

However, if the 4 players left to act are typical Recs, I'll o/r with ATo as the chances of them having either AJ+ or TT+ are slim.

I don't o/r with any unsuited broadway cards, but I'll o/r with A5s & A8s+
Any 2 suited broadway cards, 75s+ & 54s+. The raise will be to $15 in a 1/3NL game with min $300 stacks for players yet to act.

This is in a casino that doesn't rake if there is no flop.

And I consider myself a TIGHT player & I don't play many hands UTG - UTG+2, so when I'm coming in for a raise they've seen me spend the majority of my time watchin' everyone else play poker.

Maybe I should track winrate from the HJ?

Your cbetting range and frequency -- which are independent variables -- depend on your desired bet size(s), flop texture, stack depth and position -- which are independent variables -- as well as villain's immediate and long term tendencies -- which are independent variables.

So it depends.

My advice: Instead of thinking about isolated incidents, think about how general changes in variables affect your general strategy.