Live £1-£2 cash game. Hero has £300 stack. Hero was dealt JdJc on the button.

Everyone folds till c/o player raised to £10.
Hero raised to £35 on the button.
Everyone else fold and c/o called £35.

Flop 9d7d4c
Villain check. Hero bet £40, villain folds.

Everything seems to be normal, but when I checked this hand on GTO solver, the solver suggested 60% check, and 40% bet.

Why give villain a feee card here? Is there any reason behind it?

When you have the Jd it blocks alot of draws that V can call you with.

Also this isn’t a board that entirely favors your range. If your just auto betting overpairs and checking back non overpairs you become very easy to play against. Or if your auto cbetting this board all the time its not good either so you need a balanced checking range.

That being said GTO assumes everyone plays perfectly which is never the case. At 1/2 live i would be more worried about how to extract thin value and maximize exploits vs population.

Worry about GTO at high stakes against good players that you're playing against repeatedly.

Against the average rando 1/2 calling station, a bet is close to mandatory here, they're going to call you with all sorts of ****.

Looking at this spot in GTO Wizard for 100bb and it is checking 25% of time and betting a mix of 33% and 50% the rest of the time. So not checking as much, but still some.

Some of what is going on here is you block some of the light calls and check raise bluffs that villain can make on the flop which you get value from. Like AdJd is mainly calling, KdJd, QdJd, JdTd are check raising a lot. AcJc is calling with it's backdoor potential. KcJc is calling or raising half the time and folding rest.

These are all hands you will get more value from that aren't present in your opponent's range, so his continue range when you bet is stronger and you get less value from it.

Also, the GTO strategy wants to have strong hands in every part of the game tree. If a lot of your range wants to check, then you have to check with some of your strong hands too give you strong hands to continue with when you check. Otherwise, your opponent could exploit you by making you overfold to bluffs after you check.

You also have more equity with this hand across diamond turns, so it is a good continuing hand across a fair amount of turns. But a hand like AdAc is going to check flop a lot more because it can continue across even more turns. If an A, K, or Q comes out, the value of JJ goes way down. With AA, there are never overcards.

So, there's a lot going on here.

- CO has nut advantage here.

BTN best hands consist of 99, 77, QQ, KK, and AA

CO best hands consist of 99, 77, 44, 97

If you were to just run those in an equity calculator, CO would be 75% equity. That's significant.



- CO should have a donking range in theory. That range includes all the sets and 2p at some frequency. So, his checking range isn't weak. Which in turn incentivizes us to check a decent amount as well.

Keep in mind, if your particular villain never donks, his checking range is much stronger and you're incentivized to check even more than the solver wants at equilibrium.



- You have more garbage/air in your range than CO. Btn has around 30% garbage where CO has around 10-15% at equilibrium ranges. So, we are going to have a very high check frequency on this board which makes it mandatory that we check with a lot of other holdings at a higher than expected frequency.


- JJ is a strong hand, but it's not one of your strongest in your range. As mentioned above, you will have 99, 77, AA, KK, and QQ here. So, JJ isn't as strong as one might assume.



- Having the Jd doesn't incentivize us to bet less. We actually bet more often with Jd here. So, that isn't a reason to check....blocking his calling range. A typically misunderstood blocker aspect.

What you do block (as mentioned above) is AJ, KJ, QJ, JT of diamonds that should be c/r this flop from the CO at a decent frequency.


Those are just some of the reasons you're doing a decent amount of checking. Also, ignore anyone telling you to abandon GTO at low stakes. While you may choose to deviate (you absolutely should).....you will be far better off knowing why the solver wants to do what it does.....and then deviating accordingly. Otherwise, you'll fail when you shot take at higher stakes.

Asking "why" is absolutely one of the best things you can do in this spot.

Absolutely! See lots of GTO nerd talk at low stakes when it’s so unnecessary imo.

This is good advice. Playing GTO at 1/2 live poker you will leave tons of money on the table. Now 1/2 on Pokerstars , then you resort to a GTO, balanced game plan.

lol @ blockers.

Check here because GTO is a defensive approach, and having overpair in your checking range makes it harder for an observant player to exploit you on turn and river.

GTO actually makes a lot of sense for most LLSNL players, because it would get them just that much closer to break even.

But by definition if you're losing, GTO is going to be a better strategy - that's true at any stakes.

Most people at 1/2 have no idea what GTO is, let alone play anywhere close to it, so that's why an exploitative strategy, in general, is going to be much better.

Think about it this way. If majority of players aren't using GTO like you said, what are they using in LLSNL?

ding ding ding, you guessed it, some form of exploitative. That's why people limp/re-raise, slow-play top set, shove all-in with draws, etc...

FWIW, everyone in LLSNL think they are using exploitative strategy of some sort.

Is it better for 90% of players in LLSNL? No.

Sure, and getting closer to GTO could also be expressed as "Fold more preflop and mix up your play postflop so you're not so damn predictable." That would at least be a start that most small stakes players don't want to do.

A full ring small stakes game where everyone plays close to GTO pre isn't going to last long anyway. Who wants to sit and fold hands all the time, only to pay huge rake the few times they get into a competitive pot?

(Oops, I meant time charge. The house gets a turn in this GT game, and they respond to so much stellar preflop play by time charging all the games instead of raking them.)

So we already start off on a non-remotely-GTO foot. Of course even the sharps should now play looser than GTO preflop because our opponents have huge postflop leaks. But even playing perfectly GTO post would only make our opps lose less, because of
their extreme looseness.

Threads like this aren't too bad because asking "why" GT indicates a certain equilibrium can help advance our understanding of NLHE theory. But what do you do with that understanding?

So yeah... The amount of attention given to solver output vs. to improving at live reads is exactly backwards. The latter will absolutely, tangibly add money to your bankroll, and not just one day at higher stakes.

E.g. counting frequencies at the table... as a practical tip to improve observation.

FWIW I'm enjoying GTO Poker Gems from Sweeny and Jones.

Nobody can possibly work out live exact GTO - nobody says I'll call/3bet A7s 60/40, but 20/80 for A6s or whatever the weird mixed strategies that solvers come up with, but what GTO Poker Gems does do is give some of the principles and strategies that GTO tends to lead to. I found it useful.

So, one thing I'll point out here, since we're trying to get into the "why" behind theory and taking lessons useful for our own game, is that people seem to be missing something important.

Namely, we have already had a post in this thread saying that a solver wants to bet sometimes and check sometimes.

So if we force the assumption that the solver is actually GTO (we shouldn't be, but for our purposes it's a good enough assumption), then what we can conclude is that betting and checking are both "admissible" strategies, i.e. GTO plays them both with nonzero frequency.

And if GTO plays them with nonzero frequency, that means both betting and checking have equal EV against an opponent who is playing GTO. (To be really specific, I'm saying checking is tied for the most +EV option with the bet sizings that GTO includes.)

So in this spot, the "why" that matters for us is, when our opponent is not playing GTO, which action is more likely to gain EV to match our opponents' deviation?

This can't be answered without knowledge of our opponent. But I think what matters for the OP's question is, as others have said, this hand is not strong enough that you are passing up on a lot of value when you bet, compared with the possibility of inducing a bluff on a good turn. So if you think your opponent will not bluff if you check back, then sure, bet more than the solver says. If your opponent is going to call wider than GTO says they're supposed to, then sure, bet more than the solver says. If your opponent is going to raise you with a range that doesn't include a lot of bluffs, so you have an easier fold than you would in theory, then sure, bet more than the solver says. But it is also OK to check back to get closer to showdown and put your opponent in a spot where they might bluff at the wrong time.

Doesn’t this just describe about every spot?

No. There are times when we are going to be high enough in our range that we can’t miss a bet. There are times when our hand is so bad that betting is spew even in theory (or when we have a longshot draw and really want a free card). There are also spots where betting at a bad sizing is worse than checking. There are all kinds of spots where we can end up at an inadmissible part of the game tree.

Oops, I forgot how literal you read things. Doesn’t it describe just about every spot “that has nonzero frequency of checking or betting?”

Which one would imagine is a large majority of situations with a reasonable opening range while IP. In other words, one could simply read your interpretation of solvers as simply doing whatever you like as long as it’s one of the nonzero frequency options (bet sizing aside)…and that’s just about every spot that one would even consider plugging into a solver.

In that case, it’s not just about every spot; it’s literally every spot. That’s a mathematical consequence of how GTO works. If GTO is mixing strategies, that means any strategy in the mix has equal EV against GTO itself, and the frequency mix is designed to prevent opponents from deviating from GTO to exploit us, NOT to avoid losing to GTO.

It’s not the same as “do what you like”. One reason is that we can deviate to exploit our inferior opponents.

I don't play 1 Euro- 2Euro cash games, but in most of the live cash games that I play (5/5/10 NLHE or 5/5/10 bounty which plays similarly to 10/20 NLHE with antes), I would cbet JJ in 3bet pot BTN vs CO at almost 100% frequency on 9d7d4x flop.

Solvers might spit out recommendations that have some checking in these spots, but I think that cbetting JJ overpair is much higher EV than checking back against most live Villains. Most live Villains are bad at poker, and their biggest mistakes usually involve making bad calls.

Why shouldn't we give the Villain a chance to make a bad call against our overpair?