You guys are doing so much work...wasting so much energy...on spots that you are creating yourselves. Full ring live poker is about keeping SPR as high as possible in most cases and bloating pots for face up value otherwise.

It sucks when you have to 4bet AA in a spot where one decent villain knows you're never bluffing, but that's not where your money comes from.

If you truly want to add spew aggression to your game, if you truly want to be cool and pull off insane bluffs and start having the image of a psycho, play in position and keep SPR as high as you possibly can, and when you get to river, shove your entire range, as long as your shove is greater than pot.

But really just play face up abc poker.

Watch highlight reels on YouTube of Tom Dwan on high stakes poker for basically the best educational media I've come across when it comes to live poker strategy.

Yep +1 don't spew in live poker... Even pros sometimes make mistakes of trying to get aggro against non-pros and end up spewing moderately or a lot. Think Holz spewed 5-6BI in one hr or so trying to bluff recs and fish. Funny thing is they knew he has a reputation of not bluffing lol... And they were still always like "**** it I cawl."

There is NO need to balance in live poker, especially 100% against recs and fish. There's a difference between having both a bluffing range and a value range (so people will give you action and know you aren't 100% raising/reraising without the nuts), and spewing by putting 20 combos of 4-bet bluffs in range OOP from the SB.

We obviously want to keep our non-ABC hands to a minimum. But if a shark is trying to get more than his 'fair' share of the action by isolating wider and taking spots from us that could be profitable, we can either keep the variance low at a small cost to our winrate or we can heighten it and defend our winrate.

I don't think i've popped off a lite 4b in a month but it still needs to be in the arsenal and discussed.

My thoughts on this hand are that my range is strong on this texture but my middle strength hands are very vulnerable. Since my range is fairly narrow by number of combos, I think I need to take a single action with my entire range rather than having some bets and some checks.

Between betting my whole range and checking my whole range I prefer betting since this texture will make it difficult to bluff catch on a lot of runouts. Though we often have the best hand with Ax here, ending the hand now is not a bad result.

Considering stack sizes, if I want to leave options open for me on the turn, I think a downbet is in order as it would put V to the most difficult decision on the flop and on the turn when our equities split farther. Betting too big puts us in a difficult spot with a low spr if V raises on the flop, or if V calls and we get to the turn.

What are you guys assuming for a 3b&fold frequency from a "beast", "shark", taking his "unfair share"?

I should say that my preferred method of dealing with "sharks" is to find a situation to call them down relatively lightly, not to "push back" with large preflop bluffs. They can take all the unfair share they want -- I don't care from which stack I get my chips.

4b them light from OOP isn't high on my list of goals for personal development.

When you say, "V1 is a solid pro who has position on me opens, and V2 is a beast, who has position on both of us 3b, I'm in the blinds", I am pretty much just looking for a nutted hand to continue with (whether I 4b or flat the 3b -- I don't 4b much at all). (If this was a tourney, I'd be much happier to mix it up.)

A downbet?

You do realize that a lot of our bluffs are most likely losing money or BE right? We have a bluffing range so that we do get paid off on our value range or to exploit someone who overfolds to preflop/postflop aggression. Cold 4-betting 12-16 bluffs against people who don't fold, are competent, has a pretty strong range, and have position on us is spew. I know this is not something you do often, but it is hurting your winrate.

+1. If there was ever a time for a "fold-pre" response this is it. This hand is interesting in theory, but should never arise in practice. As such, who cares?

Not sure why you even categorize this as a profitable spot being stolen from you in the first place, all you have here is a crusher isoing a shark. I also don't understand the relevance to WR by choosing to initiate a regwar via a once-a-month 4b bluff FTB. I'm not even sure why you would need a 4b bluffing range in 2-5 LFR... Unless it's part of a successful hyper-lag strat.

You make a good point we do have the range advantage in this spot, but we do block villain's bluff-catching range/stuff we are trying to fold out.

In regards to betting or checking our entire range i think the EV of splitting vs. doing one (betting or checking entire range) has to be same or better. I think you make a really good point again with deciding to bet our entire range here because most of our value hands are going to want to bet/we should have more value combos then villain... but it gets tricky because this is a 4-bet pot in a 3-bet pot i'm all for this type of strat on this board texture vs. this villain.

Imo i'd rather check-fold on all streets and maybe bluff with something like the K or any

Notice that all those saying never to 4-bet light here or 4-betting light is spew didn't post any math. They never do in any threads, because they don't know the math. I'll bet each of them has never even made a single post w/ an EV calculation. Since they don't know the math, they can only get spots correct that are easy/straightforward (like if we have AA here), therefore they avoid any spot that isn't easy/straightforward. They have no idea how often Vs will fold to a 4-bet or how our equity matters, and they have no idea what the EV of a 4-bet bluff would be.

So here's some math using the ranges you gave for the opponents, OP.

If V1 opens 15% of all hands and folds everything but AA/KK, then he folds to our 4-bet 94% of the time.

If V2's 3-bet range is 88+, KQs, KJs, A10s+, AKo+, 87s-109s and he folds 88-99, KQs, KJs, A10s-AJs, 87s-109s, then he folds 56 combos out of 104 combos or 54% of the time.

If we block one ace, now he folds 54 combos out of 94 combos or 57% of the time. Let's also say he 5-bets KK-AA or 13% of the time.

The immediate EV of OP's 4-bet is now:

.536($71) - .06($145) -.13($145) - .27($145)= -$28.6.

But that's only the EV if we were to just auto fold flop even if we flop the nuts or pass on profitable postflop bluffs.

So postflop, we only need to win back and additional $28.6 to break even with our 4-bet. In other words, our EV on the flop has to be greater than +$28.6 to make our 4-bet pre +EV.

Our EV calculated on the flop will always be an unknown positive # (since any hand has a non-zero % chance of out flopping aces) and never negative (unless you play horrific postflop). Our EV on the flop if we were to just blind fold would be 0.

The combined chance of out flopping villain and making profitable bluffs should put us in a postflop situation of much higher than $28.6 EV.

Notice though that to profitably 4-bet light preflop, we must play well postflop and know when to bluff, check/fold, or check/call. If we 4-bet light preflop in this spot and then check/fold any flop except the nuts, we won't win back that $28.6 making the light 4-bet -EV.

Also notice that if V will only stackoff postflop with super strong hands (like TPTK+), then even 4-betting 72o with a plan of betting half pot on each street would be better than folding pre, since we win back way more than that $28.6 from our postflop bluffs.

I suggest that V2 3b&folds to Hero's 4b << 54% of the time.

E.g. you have 88 in his 3b&fold range, when it is clearly a +ev setmine at least. No "beast" is folding 88+ as played.

Also, V2 is closing the action. And then has position on H post flop. He's not folding to H's 4b that often.

So if he's calling 88 to setmine, then you mean he's folding if he doesn't make a set. Then the EV of our bluffs on the flop go way up though the immediate EV of our 4-bet pre goes down.

So what's the problem? We're 4-betting a moderate 12-16 bluff combos. That's only 1.8% of the time...

Given reads maybe we should be 4-betting light with way, way more combos. His 3-betting range is a bit too wide, so we should take advantage.

4-betting a range of only KK+ is leaving a ton of $ on the table and a huge disaster.

Are you a bot?

So V1 opens 15% (which is nonsense, more like 30%), and V2 3b him what another 15% (also nonsense, probably more like 8-10%) of the time, so we 4b, something like (5+1.8=)6.8% of the time...

0.153% of the time we make a disastrous error 4b or 2.25% of the time not.

A ton of $$$ u say.

Good talk.

None of those numbers make any sense...

30% open for V1 in MP? 15-20% is standard TAG.

I never said V2 3bet 15%...I gave him ~94 combos or 7%.

We 4bet 6.8% of the time? Where are you getting that. When I suggested we use 12-16 bluff combos that would make a total 4-bet frequency of 1.8%.

It's a ton of $ because it's possible a 4-bet light here with ATC is higher EV than folding and it looks like a 4-bet light with the "good" bluff hands is +EV for sure.

Btw, I take back my first post that OP's range was way too wide, made that before actually looking carefully at the range OP gave both Vs.

Now all you have to do is pin down sizing and print.

4bet a bit bigger pre, 165-175. We pretty much just have to check here. If he bets we are probably folding, vs a competant player it will be hard to continue profitably with this hand which is at the bottom of our range on this board.

The 3b range you gave for V2 is about 15% of hands once you realize that V2 doesn't 3b T9s and yet folds JTs. No live player ever looked down at JT and thought, "crap, if only this was T9s so I could 3b here... Aw well... Have to fold."

Given your strategy (how profitable you think it is, e.g. you think ATC is good), Hero should be 4b for value with top ~5%, plus an additional "12-15 combos of lite hands" which I loosely called an additional 1.8%.

Point is, it cannot be disastrous if pass up creating a "$-28 ev" spot for implied odds post flop that only occurs about ~0.1% of time at most.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I do know the math. It isn't complex, it is algebra applied to combos of hands derived from range assumption and fold equity assumption. WiltOnTilt has a nice series on DC that teaches this concept quite well.

I would contend that the errors are both in range assumption and logic. (Range assumption from you or OP, I'm not scrolling up) ((logic that $28 can be "earned back" post flop. A better argument is "while this specific hand shows immediate -$28 EV, our overall range here is xx in +EV, which of course is the entire point of having a light 4b range"))


Those of us who have seen WiltOnTilt and Raptor videos have all gotten a little silly at first (like a kid learning a new swear word), but then we realize just how little FE there is in live poker, how value weighted 3b ranges are in live poker, and how low SPR is in live poker, and we go back to never 4bet bluffing ever and 3betting close to exclusive value.

Again, if you want to really experiment with fold equity and combinatorics, try to get to rivers more (with a chunk of money behind) and be very aggressive on them. It's an interesting realization in NL that most often the "strongest hand" a villain will have on the river is one pair.

Notice where Tom begins bloating this pot. This is a very common line he took, rarely did he raise flops with draws and he didn't 3bet light that much in relation to how much he spewed on rivers. Most often his light 3bets were still value oriented (guaranteed squeeze spots or something like a weak Phil Helmuth open and Tom otb with JTs)

The fact you think cold 4-betting ATC is even possibly +EV is absolutely insane. Your assumptions are usually off about how opponents will react, thinking they sould react this way, that way, or in a GTO way. This GTO nonsense of yours in every thread is completely unnecessary and a headache to see. I'm sure other posters feel the same but just dont say anything anymore. It is not even true GTO (your strategy is still exploitable as explained by some posters), and GTO is not needed for any type of live game except the nosebleeds against other pros. Same for online unless it's at least 500nl+.

I used OP's range with but made some assumptions since OP didn't provide perfect info on V's range. I.E. OP said V's 3-bet range includes some suited connectors so I just used like 3 combos of SCs.

Why would you know both opponents' ranges better than OP who has history w/ at least one of the opponents?

Also, you've actually just proved you don't know the math. I made an error I just noticed that you failed to point out. It's a big one:

We need to win back more than $28 postflop. If we win only $28 postflop, the EV of our 4-bet pre is:

=0.536*(71)-0.06*(145)-0.122*(145)-0.282*(145-28) = -$21 EV

That's because I assume we'd fold to a 5-bet from either player, and this happens ~18% of the time which gives us no opportunity to win anything back postflop.

We actually have to win back $105 postflop to account for the chance we're 5-bet and can't see a flop.

=0.536*(71)-0.06*(145)-0.122*(145)-0.282*(145-105) = ~$0 EV.

The logic though of winning back X amount isn't flawed though...and if a light 4-bet is +EV then the more hands we light 4-bet, the higher EV our range is.

OP, why don't you tell us how often exactly you think V folds to a 4-bet? I guessed 54%.

We risk $145 to win $65 so it only has to work around 55-60% of the time to be +EV (that's after taking into account our chance of outflopping them if they flat). OP already said one of the V's folds anything but KK-AA, which is like 95%+ of the time. So the main V has to fold like 70% of the time for them both to fold 55-60%.

There are players out there who would fold 70% of their range to a 3-bet. Alot of 2+2ers would fold over 70% of their 3-bets to a 4-bet. Someone else in this thread even said he's seen players fold QQ to a 4-bet (indicating a fold rate way over 70%).

The fact that you think it's impossible for V to fold 70%+ of the time is the only insane thing....

And I didn't post a single thing about GTO in this thread, but at LLSNL, against some players GTO does best and against others 2+2ers strategy (try to make strong hands and fold otherwise) does best. It's not useless...

How do you get 18% frequency for either V to 5b?