In a lot of videos I watch on you tube, especially polk's, people often mention balancing. Like check raise vs bet, limp reraise vs raise with AA, etc.

Keeping in mind, I normally avoid regs and seek out fishy tables with newbs and call stations. I generally take the most aggressive line with bigger bets in these situations.

Do you think balancing your game is over rated?

This has been discussed extensively in this forum previously.

Most of us agree that at this level, for the most part its more profitable to adjust to your opponents and not worry too much about playing exploitatively.

Here is Setsy's post on paper, rock scissors which covers the topic well.

+1

Not only is balance overrated at llsnl, but I think it is objectively bad. I make it a point to be unbalanced. Exploitation is the name of the game when people don't react to how you play. If you are flatting preflop with KK or checking clear value hands to be "balanced" you are 100% losing money. At most I will balance myself against the best 1-2 players when heads up because it actually serves a purpose in that situation.

Totally agree, great post.

Limon (LA cashgame legend) also have talked about this repeteadly in his podcasts and on his youtube videos. The game is about exploitation, both because our opponents is so insanely unbalanced themself in many ways and just plays their own cards in the way the want, but also because:

As he correctly states- most people simply dont pay attention to the game, and the vast majority for sure dont adjust their own game based on the information they get.

How often havent you seen a tight nitty guy folding for 3 hours, only to pick up KK/AA and 3 bet huge pre (turning his hand faceup basically to anyone paying attention)- and his opponents cant wait to stackoff with JJ or AK to him? Those kind of things happens over,and over,and over again.

Also FWIW: we have seen several posters (without mentioning spesific nicks) obsessed with GTO, fully balanced play, micro percentage equity and ranges- go broke and/or magically dissapear from the forum through the last 3-4 years.

If you try to copy Doug Polks high stakes approach in your LLSNL games youre gonna make your own life so much harder on yourself, and youre likely gonna burn off alot of money- maybe bust your roll or even go totally broke in the future if your unable to adjust properly and get the GTO/balance obession out of your head.

Balance has its place, even in LLSNL. It's just not a very big place, It's something you should only worry about if you have evidence that specific Vs are adjusting to you. Until they do, there is much more value in exploiting their bad play. Even once they do adjust, a few balancing plays for advertising every once in a while is plenty. You don't need to switch to playing that V with a completely balanced strategy all the time.

And yeah, Garick you have a point that its some exeptions- but they are far and few in between. Proven good winning players longterm, and especially when you play them OOP or HU is an expection where you might will benefit from a more balanced game approach, to avoid being easily exploited by a shark.

Even for me, playing against the same dudes in my underground game that i have logged several hundreds of hours with, the "balance" part needed in my game to still beat them is not a big part of what i do at all.

They still have their major leaks, and the essence of the game its still about exploiting those leaks the best i can.

A quick example: one of the whales that i have logged over 500 hours with at this point is a huge callingstation, and have troubling resisting gambling in big pots. I usually choose bomb sizing with my value 3 bets against him, because i know he is calling. He have doubled me up countless times when i have JJ+, because (shockingly) i always have it against him. Still after all this time and giving me alot of money, i can still bomb size it against him and get calls. Ive been folding for 3 hours,doesent matter. When he opens 5 BB and i get AA, i still just blast it up to 25-30 BB,only to get instacalled with whatever speculative hand he has. I pretty much dont need balance at all, even against a guy i have played this many hours with.

I don't think that my understanding of what balancing entails has any application in an LLSNL game I would like to play. There is no point in misrepresenting your range to somebody who isn't thinking about your range. Adjusting to their adjustments generally is one thing but balancing specifically is a response to something that really isn't happening.

You can make more money from very weak players by balancing as well as from regulars. For example, I played a hand a while ago where I opened in MP, got 2 callers in position, the flop came J84dd, checked around, turn is 7d. I bet, only button calls, river is a brick, I bet and get called by 66 because BTN (who is not a thinking player by any reasonable measure) expected me to "always bet a flush draw on the flop" which is precisely why I check AdKd and AdQd here.


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GTO doesn't apply to multiway pots because there is no strategy that can't be exploited by some strategy from the combined opponents. LLSNL largely consists of multiway pots with at least one fish (ie: a "protected pot"), so balance is impossible because pure bluffing is rarely correct. The main focus in these spots should be to maximally exploit the fish. If multiple bets go in with a fish in the hand, then if at any point they fold out and you're left against a thinking player, then you should realize that BOTH PLAYERS have narrow and fairly face-up ranges.

All that being said, it's never too early to put thought into what your ranges look like in certain spots, considering how to exploit yourself, looking out for strategies that even fish might use to exploit you, etc. I'd especially consider this in HU pots, even against fish.

There are a lot of fish who have strategies in response to a cbet on, say, a TT6r board that might give you a lot more trouble than how your standard TAG-reg plays this spot. Fish often correctly recognize that you're usually FOS when you bet this board as the PFR and try to rep the T, whereas weaktight regs are just waiting for 8+ outs before they do fancy raising stuff, so you have to consider what that means for your strategy. LLSNL is always littered with 3! hands where hero holds AK, because everyone (even fish) correctly puts people on AK when they 3!, so there is no right answer in all these threads because your hand's already face up. Etc.

It really is opponent/table dependent.

Against bad regs and unknowns, you can probably lean towards more straightforward without much heed for balance.

Against good or aware regs who know you well, playing straightforward might not work as well.

I typically try to take the most exploitive line I can given who (and the table) I happen to be up against.

Also, regarding the quoted part above, have you put in a lot of hours in your room? I suspect the more hours you play in it, the more you'll realize there are very few (if any) noobs, and that most of your opponents are regulars (not necessarily good regs, but just sayin').

GgoodluckG

I think it's possible you guys are answering a different question than OP is asking.

The question you guys are answering is, "Should I open up my range for the sake of balance?" I think the question the OP is asking is, "Should I mix up the way I play my good hands?"

OP, if that's what you mean by balance, then the answer is not no; the answer is, it depends.

I think we still want to play our strong hands in a way that exploits our opposition best, but we should be open-minded about how to do that. An example (mentioned in NLHT&P) would be if you pick up AA in EP and someone has limped in front of you. You'd normally want to raise, but occasionally it can be OK to limp behind. In LLSNL, though, you're not doing it to balance your play; you're usually doing it because there are aggressive players in MP or LP who have been taught that they are supposed to punish a string of limpers by raising. I've played in a lot of games like this.

I think for issues like this, the key is to recognize whether you're in a passive or aggressive game, and also whether your hand is such that you need to deceive people to get max value from it. If you're up against passive fish, you should usually be doing the betting when you have a good hand. There is no need to miss value solely because you think it's theoretically correct.

Sure, that may be the case- and what you described in the bolded is basically exploitative play in a nutshell: we deviate from our "normal" open raising line with an overlimp in an attempt to exploit certain players leaks of always raising the string of limpers, or that they isoraise the string of limpers with too wide of a range.

Balance, wich is the term used in the OP is something different though- at least considering my definition of the concept.

There are 2 kinds of balance. There's balancing your range, and there's balancing your play.

Balancing your range is what most 2+2 posters (I assuming including you) usually mean by "balance". But I think the OP was trying to ask about balancing his play. The examples he seems to be thinking about are having a hand you know you like and balancing how you play it, not deciding what to do with a marginal hand.

You should mix up your play when the ev of one play is the same, or very close to the same, as another play. For example, when facing an UTG open from a tight reg, we may determine that the ev of 3betting QQ is the same as the ev of calling with QQ. Therefore, we should sometimes 3bet and sometimes call in that situation. We don't mix up or play solely for the sake of being tricky, although that is a byproduct.

To me, those are both balance, and they aren't really separate. Balancing what you open with and to how much, balancing how you play when going for value, and how often/how you play bluffs. They are all forms of balance. Further, I would argue that you aren't "misrepresenting your range" when you make an odd play for balance. You are actually changing your range. If you open 92o, even occasionally, from MP, guess what: 92o is in your MP opening range.

And this is the danger of making plays just for balance. They are usually -EV in a vacuum and are only a good idea because they are supposed to generate more EV in the future because they keep your V from having a lock on your play. When your V isn't paying much attention to your play, or is paying attention, but isn't changing his play in response, these balance plays don't generate future EV, as he was already going to do that anyway. So why waste EV now?

Now if you are doing weird things to exploit your V(s) now, and they also cause confusion later, hey, bonus! You're not doing with a goal of balance, but it might end up giving you a similar effect without sacrificing any current EV.

true.

I just don't agree with this. I think definitions should be precise. This way seems backwards. Like you start with the answer that yes, balancing at LLSNL is a thing, then define it so broadly (any counteradjustment) as to make the conclusion correct. Nothing comes of this besides yay, everybody is right. I would maintain that if your opponent is not thinking about ranges (or frequencies, as far as the balancing your ranges/balancing your play distinction) then anything you are doing to adjust to his adjustments is better described as something other than balancing. Take the example where villain doesn't think hero will check back a flopped flush draw. You know he thinks you're going to zig. The response is not to be balanced. The response is to zag. Hero's (wp nh) line, as well as the other implicit stuff like never going bet/bet as a bluff when a front door flush turns after you check flop, etc., is unbalanced by design.

Right. That's exploiting, not balancing. That's what I was talking about in my second para and was not calling it balancing. I just said that as a bonus, doing something unusual as an exploit can also cause similar confusion about your range in future hands. But in this hand, you are doing it because you think it is the most valuable option now.

You don't balance for future EV, in my opinion. You balance because it makes your strategy more profitable against a reasonable counter strategy that your opponent may well use. For example, if you only ever 3bet AA, an opponent may choose to always fold to your 3bets. If you balance this range with some small suited connectors, you will be able to get those folds more frequently, making this play +EV in a vacuum (for the SCs) as well as inducing your opponent to call with hands that are behind the value part of your range, increasing their EV too. If you are using an unbalanced strategy, the chances are that balancing it makes money in a vacuum against all but the most static of strategies from the weakest of players.


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Dont over level yourself. Most live players will play fit or fold so you should play accordingly.

How many times have you seen this line-
villain flops a set or two pair on a rainbow board, x/c, donk jams river when a draw comes in or they boat up, and then fold it face up

Bolded is a bit strong & overgeneralized, imo. For instance, balancing our 5b range in a typical 1/2 game by default would be a terrible idea, because the vast majority of opponents will have little-to-no 4b/f range against us w/o history even if they're decent. There are many situations in which being completely unbalanced is optimal because our opponents are completely unbalanced.

Being balanced against initially unbalanced opponents is only beneficial in the cases where the opponents are getting enough data on us to see that we're unbalanced and adjust. (Edit: and then, of course, there's the issue of whether they're even able to adjust correctly.)

Balance doesn't make money in a vacuum. Balance doesn't exist in a vacuum. Out of sheer morbid curiosity, how do we figure the balanced 3betting range is magically going to get folds with the suited connectors and more value with the aces at the same time?

^The idea is that it expands their continuing ranges somewhat, but not enough to make 3betting SCs -EV. (Reminds me of this classic post.)

Garrick has this by the neck. It has it's place, but only for the regs you know are paying attention to how you can play various holdings. The fish/customers you should rarely balance against, just decide what line pays off most often in each scenario (thin value vs max value, are the stations, do they fold too much to standard c-bets, where are exploitative folds, etc.)