With regards to simplifying flop strategy to only use one sizing, do you find that 50% pot bets are used quite often? Specifically, on a board like K Q 3 SBvBTN 3b pot, a solver would likely mix between small and big bets. Using only small bets (say 33%) gives villain too many easy continues in position with gutshots + backdoors, middling pairs with a club, etc. whereas betting large (75+%) makes it easy for villain to fold his marginal hands. In this case, would picking a sizing between the two and simplifying to only use 50% bets make sense? What sizing would you personally use in this situation?

In.. glgl

Let's go, mate!

best poker related post i've read in 2021 so far. yes, the year is still young and there is lots to come, but it's gonna be hard to top this. 10/10.

I'm not sure about that board UTGvBTN or UTGvCO. Betting polarized cant be that bad considering villain won't have all the 44 or JJ + it's very easy for villain to continue most of range vs small bet because most hands will have atleast 1 over and backdoors.

There is btw a huge difference between opening UTG and getting called IP than to open CO and get called by BTN. In a UTGvIP spot the IP caller can flat a bit "wider than normal" because IP wont get squeezed as often (since UTG range is already strong). But in a spot where CO opens, BTN has to be a "very" selective with flats because the blinds will squeeze aggressively. So this should in theory create a huge imbalance in COvBTN ranges, where CO will be at a disadvantage almost always opening a ~28% range and getting called by a pretty strong BTN range. So UTG gets to cbet more often than CO vs an IP call.

Np mate. That's not a very clear spot, and I might be wrong.

Kockar answered this well!

Thanks buddy :-)

Agreed.

Don't know if I'm just reading the last part wrong but not really following. Sorry

I'm just using the small sizing for range, because I think that gives villain more tough decisions with most of range. It's not like Qx+ or FD's would fold to any bet size OTF, and there aren't many offsuit gutshots with a that we would have to count towards a range we want to make 0EV between calling and folding. So the small bet size makes sense to me because of the huge equity advantage and the amount of middle PP's in villains range.

I don't really see a huge problem with simplifying to 50% sizing, but I think you should bet range if you do. I probably did the solves at some point but don't remember them.

Thanks :-)

Oh welcome back Giovanni!!! :-)

Oh wow! Thanks buddy means alot :-)

Week 4:


January:


Resultswise a pretty rough month, but nothing outside of the usual. I'm happy to face some negative variance right off the bat, because it forced me to get into really good mental game routines straight away. So I would say I'm standing on much more solid ground going forward! Really happy about that.

Not much more to say about this month. Excited to go into February and do my best :-)

GL out there!

Very nice volume Ship.

GL in February!

-9 BI seems pretty chill for a month. Feb +20 BI is my guess. GL and thanks for the valuable info posted recently.

Subbed I really like your presentation.

Thanks man. Aiming for 45-50k hands in the upcoming months too. But not going to punish myself for not reaching that kind of volume. Over 30k hands and I'm satisfied but obv very happy with 40k+.

Yeah it has felt like a breakeven grind pretty much. Thanks for the optimism and the kind words :-)

Thanks buddy :-) Welcome

Great volume, is your main volume 50nl zoom? GL for Feb!

Thanks, GL to you aswell! Yeah 50z only right now. Will eventually split volume somewhere else but not sure where yet.

EDIT: I'm such a whale when it comes to finding edges outside playing well and preparing for a session. Seems like I have a hard time putting brain power on finding better games or sites with better net rake etc. That's why I'm still just grinding PS. Every site seem to have their downsides and nothing has really nudged me anywhere else yet. 50z is relatively soft anyway.

Seems a bad stretch month for you. GL in february. NL100 is waiting for you

Yeah man pretty rough month. I don't see myself as a top tier player anyway so great variance is to be expected whatever I do. This month could have been much worse if I had let variance get to me. Usually hard to stay disciplined and play your best when every session puts you into tough spots where it's easy to make errors. And when you start making stupid errors you might end up in a shitty spiral.

I have leaks, many of them. Only thing I can do is to plug them to the best of my ability.

Thanks as always vrbik. :-)

Exploitative (theory) post #1: Considering overbluffing and underbluffing

I usually don't do this type of post. But I'll make one now because I have to start exploiting more because there are clear tendencies in some spots, that are even hard to spot yourself where you might be doing same mistakes in villains shoes.

I'll be focusing on triple barrel spots because this is where I'm leaking vs pool even if I have an idea of what's optimal. Hero is the one barreling, and we'll look at spots where we can have no bluffs at all and where we can bet all our air pretty much.

When ranges are really tight, you will often see solver doing stuff that looks insanely nitty, but in reality it's not considering what kind of ranges we face playing in tighter positions. I seem to surprise people all the time saying "no you should atleast mix folds in this spot", even better players. And if better players don't seem to get the idea, how would weaker regs be able to do it? And weaker regs are the ones you will be facing most of the time playing the stakes I do, that is everything under 100nl or even 100nl.

EXAMPLE 1: Underbluffing river (100bb stacks)
MP open, BTN 3b, MP calls
A72
MP check, BTN bet small, MP calls
A723
MP check, BTN bet big, MP calls
A7232
MP check, BTN shoves for ~1x pot

We should start folding Ax OTT. Even some AQ start folding some frequency, not even kidding. And what comes to flushdraws, almost every other flushdraw except KQss is folding. KQss has some showdown value and it blocks AK and AQ. MP shouldn't have that many flushdraws anyway so it doesn't affect ranges too much, but it affects them a little.

So since we "know" villains will call more Ax than they should (they will also call more FD's than they should, but there is a bigger effect of overcalling Ax because it's way more combos), we should be more weighted towards value and bet a bit more of our Ax combos than optimal, and bluff a bit less than optimal already OTT.

Once we get to the river, MP only has a bluffcatcher when BTN shoves with all other Ax than AK pretty much. And the best Ax call for BTN is ATs because it unblocks bluffs. MP should be folding A LOT of Ax, but real villains wont consider folding AQ/AJ, atleast most of them wont because it's close to the best hand they have OTR in terms of absolute value. So if we increase the calling frequency of these types of hands, we are basically never bluffing OTR as BTN! Remember that the missed flushdraws are a smaller portion of villains suboptimal turn calls than the suboptimal Ax turn calls. All the KQ/KTs/KJs type combos that would bluff in optimal just stops doing that completely and only bets value if villain can't let go of Ax type hands enough.

EXAMPLE 2: Underbluffing turn and overbluffing river (100bb stacks)
MP open, BTN 3b, MP calls
667
MP check, BTN bet medium, MP calls
6672
MP check, BTN bet big, MP calls
6672Q
MP check, BTN shoves for little less than pot

OTF/OTT villain is supposed to start folding 88-TT some frequency, also ALL the non Ahi flushdraws that arent combodraws OTT. Funny right? Real villains, especially weaker ones will call way more flushdraws and PP's OTT than they should in optimal, and It's gonna get reeeeally tough to call down medium PP's on something like the Q.

In optimal we should give up some missed flushdraws and combos with a in general, even if the river is a high frequency bet in optimal. But if we assume villain overcalls flop and turn, and arrives to river with too much crap, we can just go ahead and bet all air hands OTR and decrease our bluff frequency OTT. If we know villain is stationing river with all these PP's, we obv should give up more often, but I doubt they would call more than equilibrium would suggest on average OTR with these holdings. And all the missed FD's villain shouldn't have are just gonna snapfold. Our incredibly high betting frequency OTR is not only because of us bluffing all air, we just don't have a lot of air OTR in general since we underbluff the turn already because villain calls too many bluffcatchers.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just make sure you don't make the same mistakes as villain and that you as hero can increase your winrate by making some smaller and bigger adjustments based on these assumptions.

This analysis is not perfect and I tried to not make too many node-locks, I just adjusted calling frequency OTT/OTR for some combos I am almost 100% sure people call too much. Also left out the solves from the post, so you just have to take my word for it. If you wish I could share exact solves in the future when I make these.

Great post man

Regarding example 1 I checked my database sims for BTN 3b vs CO and I see that Ax are basically never folding OTT and even most of our FD´s continue (which tbh is somewhat unexpecting).



I have used GTO ranges, but this might have to do something with range differences compared to your BTN 3b vs MP.

Yeah I agree, folding Ax there seems very counterintuitive. After seeing your solve I checked in GTOWizard and their ranges and (admittedly weird) 3bet pot sizings don't have MP folding any Ax OTT. Could be a thing to do with the sizes they have for their 3bets.



I am grateful, however, for these posts, and I look forward to more in the future. I'd love to see your solves though.

Thanks guys, I tried changing settings a little bit to try and get close to your solutions. I did a resolve with more sizings and more "accurate" settings. Got a little different results than on the first one, but it's close to the same in both solves. Solver mostly wants to bet 25% OTF and almost only 75% OTT, which seem to be preferred sizings with Zenithranges and the rake structure. In this solve we start mixing in some calls with KJs, QJs, JTs, but not much. Main difference in my solve and you solves is that solver almost entirely wants to bet 75% OTT after betting small OTF (did you allow solver to use any sizings between 50% and 100% OTT?). And I think the people generally simplify to 25% IP on Axx flops. Obviously not folding Ax to a medium bet OTT, but like I wrote in the example solver bets big and not medium size OTT.

Let me know if there is some obvious error in my solve.

Settings:


Ranges: OOP


Ranges: IP


Flop strategy: IP


Turn strategy: IP


Turn strategy: OOP

In your ranges Ship looks like IP has several combos of A7s, A3s, A2s - i.e a huge two pair advantage.

It is hard to see the IP range that Kockar has used, but it appears to have reduced frequency of A7s & A3s, and no A2s.

I would guess it is this difference that creates the different strategies for OOP?

Yeah this should be one contributing factor. Seems to have a reaaally small flatting range too OTB so it's way more linear than the solved ranges from Zenithpoker. And ofcourse it's BTNvCO and not the actual BTNvMP spot.

But I think the turn sizing is very important here. My solve loves the 75% OTT when given many options to choose from. I would not fold Ax to a medium sizing either, only vs the big bet.

EDIT: People in my study group also solved this, and even vs 80% sizing all Ax call. But seems to be just like bossman0161 said. If we assume ranges without a decent amount of A2s, A3s and A7s -> All Ax should call even the bigger bet. Which is very good to know. I think the main difference with Zenithranges and other peoples ranges are the considered rake. In lower rake we are more polar when 3beting in this spot.

The solver sizing OTT in my sim is 66% (preferred one since small sizing is basically never used). The sim was done for BTN playing a 3bet/fold vs CO. A2s, A6s are pure folds in my ranges and A7s is a mix (BTN 3b vs CO).

Ok cool, thanks Kockar.

With similar ranges as Kockar and Trust use, it seems like all Ax call the turn vs a big 75-80% bet (and some flushdraws, but not even close to all of them), but a lot of Ax fold river to a ~pot size shove (~50% fold with the hand class top pair). Higher frequency calls are AK/AQ and low Axs type hans.

So the main points of the example remain the same.

Week 5: Continuing the slow start to the year


Things I'll be focusing on next week:
- Punishing myself less for slight mistakes
- Being more happy about the good decisions I'm making every session
- Turn and river sizings in-game
- Categorize marked hands further

Week 6: Another week another grind :-) Good volume, decent studying, solid game.


Looked at my database for this year and I've only had one session where I've won more than 3BI over ~70k hands. That's crazy to me considering how much effort I put into every session and the level of discipline I maintain. Not much I'd like to change about my routine or overall quality of my sessions. If I keep this up I'm sure results will come.