Just saving that compilation, pure gold, thank you very much

3-bet pot strategy when checked to OTT

I'll first list a couple notes before looking at examples:

- Equity denial is a real factor here. We want to deny villains equity and also avoid putting ourself into spots where our equity gets denied.
- We mainly want to bet small with our betting range because of us being slightly capped, especially in the overpair region.


Example 1
OOP bets flop small, IP calls, OOP checks turn
J882

Value:
We mainly bet all our good hands for a small sizing. We have plenty of small/medium PP's that want to bet for value and protection vs overcards. Even JT and QJ wants to bet most of the time. It just makes sense for our range to bet smaller because we don't have overpairs other than low frequency slowplays. We also only have the suited combinations of trips and that's not too many combos.

Draws:
We mainly bet small because of above reason. Earlier I made a note about us wanting to avoid getting our equity denied. This case is different and we can quite safely bet most of our FD's and SD's because an optimal villain will cbet turn very often with the FD instead of check-raising. I think the reason why optimal player in OOP chooses to bet almost all FD's is that there are not many other natural bluffs with decent equity to choose from. So we don't have to be worried about us getting x/r very often to get our equity denied. We also block the small frequency FD x/r combos when we have the hearts ourselves. T9s is mixed almost 50/50 between bet and check, probably because of the lack off heart blockers.

'Pure' bluffs:
Our pure bluffs include a lot of broadways with a heart and lower frequency bets with broadways without a heart. KQ is bet the most with or without a heart because it has less showdown value than AQ and it blocks some combos of KJ and QJ that OOP will check some of the time. A9s and ATs is bet pretty often too because they block villains most likely x/call hands like 99 and TT.


Example 2
OOP bets flop for 1/2, IP calls, OOP checks turn
9732

Value:
Again we mostly bet a small sizing with our betting range. For the same reasons as in the first example. The top of our range is bet pretty much 100%. We have a lot of hands that benefit from protection vs overcards. Hands like JJ/TT are bet almost 100% of the time and PP's down to 66 bet at least some frequency. 7x is bet somewhat often and 9x is bet almost always. 9x will always stack off in equilibrium vs a x/r so IP player is not afraid of having to fold top pair, this is probably a bit different in more passive games.

Draws:
Ok so this is a spot where both players start to apply the concept of equity denial. It's not the only reason for both players not wanting to bet all draws, but it's a good way to think about it and probably more intuitive to applying it in-game. OOP will not cbet all draws on the turn, because then OOP will be heavily overbluffing. OOP will mostly bet big or shove good draws, but can't do that with every draw because of overbluffing considerations. Now OOP checks some worse FD's with the intention of calling a small bet/folding to a bigger one, and checking good combodraws and draws that block our bet/call range like KThh with the intention to x/r all in. It's a very good strategy by OOP and we should start checking back a lot of our worse flushdraws that don't have enough equity to call a x/r. So we bet mostly the FD's we can bet/call and check more often with hands that can't do that. That's flushdraws though. With straight draws we have less equity than with a flushdraw so we are not risking as much if our equity gets denied by a x/r, so they become great candidates for bluffing higher frequency.

'Pure' bluffs:
Again we bet our broadways with mainly 1 club or a heart, 1 club combos being the more frequent combos we are going to have here. AQ is the broadway combo we check the most because it has showdown value. Almost all KQ one club combos are bet OTT. These types of combos are great at blocking OOP's x/r and x/c range and are also fantastic combos to fire again on the river if the 3 flushcard hits.



Don't have time to do a A-hi texture example now but will probably do one later. But in general we want to bet more polarized on the turn when checked to which means we mostly bet bigger with a narrower range.

GL at the tables!

Will do! I'll look into some recording software to use. How long should the footage be? Oh and I forgot what your discord name was, Im sure I have it, I know I added you. cheers

Read all the theory posts. You do an awesome job of explaining the relevant concepts explicitly via the use of language. Most of this stuff I already implicitly knew, but it's hard to write it out clearly like this. Switching from wordless intuitional knowledge to explicit written words/concepts that flow is very hard.

Thanks. I sure hope so :-)

Thanks and no probs Faz!

OBS is easy to use. Length doesn't matter really, as long as the recording includes some spots. 1-2h is fine. Yes I wrote something to you the other day. Good luck in the grind!

If I can't break down a spot to someone new to poker, do I actually understand it myself? It's how I like to learn. But you are right, it's challenging to transform intuition into understandable sentences or paragraphs other than "the equilibrium strategy is x" without following up with "because of xyz..". By doing this I find new dimensions to every concept and sometimes new concepts I've never heard of.

Thanks man :-)

Shoutout to Jarretman (2+2) / Help Me (YT). He posts 200z and 500z videos on YT on a weekly basis where he explains his thought processes. He has one of the best understanding of theory I've seen on YT. It's very difficult to do live commentary and go over almost all hands and explain the theory at the same time.

I've gotten a lot of ideas for studying just by looking at these play & explain videos by him. There is so much good free content out there it's insane.

I actually predicted you would say this or something similar. I know while this is generally accepted to be true, it's not always true.

Yeah Jarretman videos are super helpful, I've been watching them for several weeks and I really enjoy his breakdowns.

Yeah Jarretman is sick af. Him and peter chien who I believe is pitabread(some string of numbers at the end of the name) in the 500z pool.

Bencb typically plays MTTs but he can play 500z pretty well too. The free content is there if you know where to look

IN!

glgl

how come you chose pokerstars of all sites to grind on?

There is always exceptions. But generally it's 'easy' to know what the equilibrium strategy is without being able to explain why. I've been in this situation myself and seen other people in the same situation. This happens in the uNL forum every day. We rarely are able to explain the strategy perfectly, but the more we can explain in a specific spot, the easier it gets to navigate spots more globally.

An example is COvBTN4bet pot on Axxr. In equilibrium we range bet the flop and range check almost any turn. I know this is a viable GTO strategy but can't explain it yet. I know it can be because of concepts xyz, but really I don't know and it would be awkward to pretend I know.

Yep. He also confirmed my guess of him being handsome in another thread.

Is Peter Chien still good? I remember him playing 50nl or something back in the day when I first started browsing 2+2.

Yeah I've seen most of bencb cash game videos too. Also good content!

Thanks :-)

Like the UI, action and starshelper. I'll look for alternatives at some point.

I am still only half was through your session, but took some notes. Enjoying the strategy posts, keep up the good work!

and I just wanted to be a likeabyle player

Guilty of saying way, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay worse things on chat (and believe it or not, targeting recs 99% of the time) before apologizing for my behaviour and asking stars to give me a ban

Still a bit funny watching others lose their minds and do it sometimes.

Don't tap the glass.

You can always use those silly throwables. Some people get tilted by them.

Can I get in on this ?
Which software do you guys (cc @Shipnickle) use for pool analysis? I think you can't aggregate all player stats with PT4/HEM?

GL!

Do you have a hard time adjusting to different stakes or do you mainly look at things in terms of BBs?

No not really and I don't think there should be any big adjustment going from 10nl-50nl. You can expect a little bit more aggression for every stake you move up but the baseline strategy is pretty much the same with some pool exploits in there.

I always play in BBs.

Patiently waiting for the grind to be smooth sailing atleast for a while. Takes me 8 months to play what other grinders play in a month so gotta accept longer good/bad stretches in terms of time.

The best 'pool analysis' you can do in the micros imo is to just play tons of volume and use a HUD. You're not going to find any life-changing revelations from digging around in a DB that's going to make jumping from one stake to the other much easier

Trying to analyze different micro pools separately is not of much use I agree. But seeing how the micro pool in general plays different kinds of flops or how much they 3bet on average is of some use when you play unknowns. Usually we just assume "by feel" what the pool is doing but if you can quantify it it's even better. Does the micro pool turn made hands into bluffs? Probably not. If you can look it up in some way, do it.

But I agree that you should use notes and HUD to the max with decent sample sizes. You can pick a lot of stuff from these players just by seeing 1 or 2 showdown hands. Spotting overbluffing/underbluffing or polarized/depolarized ranges in different spots can be done with seeing 1 hand.

With "pool exploits in there" I mean for example the fact that people at the micros (probably even higher up) don't turn made hands into bluffs often enough, so you can just overfold in some specific spots.

I'm bleeding BB's in these ante games on stars from OR EP and picking up multiple callers and going post MW OOP. there's alot of disparity between these flatting ranges and the odd premium thrown in from time to time.

I try to change my RFI to hands that play better mw but other adjustments are required.

I know MW (esp OOP) betting frequency drops dramatically, but it's hard to realize equity when villains float flop ALOT! Usually for stupidly big sizings and get sticky w/ X/R and double float air just to jam rivers. In general I tend to just play "my game" and strive to play solid sound fundamentals but I'm definitely bleeding here! Any advice?

Thanks

I feel you on this one. Playing vs IP cold calls is tough generally because we are often at an equity disadvantage. But pool is passive enough and cold calls more hands than they should so you don't have to have as much range checks compared to a pool of strong players. We also get to realize more equity in a weaker pool, so you should be happy about that. If they float a lot instead of raising you will realize a lot of equity btw, not the other way around.

Generally I would say you can cbet more often than vs a stronger pool multiway (vs a strong pool we range check alot or bet small). But you need to choose hands that have some decent equity, unless the texture is dry as hell like K23r or TT2r. Also if you find yourself pure opening 22-55 UTG or 54s-98s you should stop doing that unless the table is filled with big whales that will stack off every time you hit a set or a big hand.

- Open a bit tighter in EP if you open the hands I mentioned
- You can cbet a bit wider than normal (for value and bluffs obv) because people have weaker cold call ranges than normal
- If you play weaker players you can get away with using exploitative sizings for sure. Bet big with big hands and smaller for thinner value and bluffs. Just make sure they are weak before overdoing it.
- I don't think you have to adjust your preflop sizing too much. I still open 2.5x from every pos except SB. Don't know if this is 100% correct in ante games but my general understanding is that you don't have to start going 3x or 3.5x because of the ante.

So far we haven't talked at all on discord. Dude is busy playing football manager every time I see him online.

Limiting the amount of discord contacts for now.

I posted a 2+2 link on an earlier page with instructions how to do it in HEM :-)

Yup. All I was saying is that by playing tons and seeing tons of showdowns, this is a very efficient way to gauge whether people under/overbluff spots, what they do with their non showdown hands, whether they turn stuff into a bluff or not, etc. I can't see how looking at anything in a database could help with this sort of stuff. I'd say the DBA would be better for seeing pool RFIs, f23b, 3b, etc.

I've dealt with this problem a lot having put a lot of volume in on apps over the last couple years. What my coach and I have decided the best approach is from EP/MP you need to look very closely at who/what sort of player is in MP/CO/BTN and if they're loose/cold call happy, whether they're a whale or not, you need to play extremely nittily. Like you can't open A5s from EP, 66s from ep is a muck, ATo is a muck, KQo can be a muck. And then on some table lineups you open all of these hands. The key is to adjust A LOT and tighten right up when you're going to get cold called IP a ton.

If you're on a reg table with several very loose players direct to your left, it's totally fine to consider finding a different table because you're not going to make a ton of money on this table being forced to play super tight and being oop postflop a lot.

Yeh this is solid advice and something I need to remember to implement just sucks for slowing down volume, but at the end of the day if there making mistakes we benefit but it's a rare scenario where there flatting everywhere & everything and getting ****ed by rake and our winrate is also suffering