FTR I don't think of myself as a fish. It is entirely possible I am a fish compared to the other regs and pros here, but whatever.

But I did manage to learn a lot in this thread.

The first thing I learned, which is again embarrassing, is that if a GTO pro balances their bluffs with their strong value hands in a truly polarized scenario where they win when their value bets are called and lose when their bluffs are called then regardless of the sizing of their bet they win the exact same amount on average. The size of the pot before they bet on the river. True I didn't literally learn this from what anybody said but I was looking to see why it was so important to balance and looked at both extremes (never called and always called) and saw that the result was the same. So I looked at other possibilities and it is always the same...

So what motivates an Overbet (OB) on the river?

Given that their winnings in any given scenario which is the Pot (P), it turns out that this happens more frequently when they OB than when they make small value bets. This is because they are forced to bluff more frequently in order to balance.

But its not by much.

A polarizing pot size bet on the river needs to be balanced only by 33% bluffs whereas the OB of 2x P needs 40% bluffs to balance. And a 1/2 P bet needs 25% bluffs to balance.

So why would a GTO pro go OB rather than just P? Really three reasons come to mind.

1) They respect their opponent a lot and see that they should have far more Bluffs than monsters in their range (like in this hand) coupled with the almost guarantee that Hero almost always has <= 1 pair. And as an extra bonus a K came on the river which makes any KX combo the top of Hero's range. So their opponent who is good recognizes the need for Villain to balance at 40% which makes their bluff catcher really good (see Eggs) or at least better than a P sized polarized bet.

2) Hero looks like a calling station.

3) 2*P is a lot more to win than P when they have the nuts or close.

Here is where I stick to I am folding. Fishlike thinking for sure. Guys like Cito are now willing to go 2*P always after ch/b/c ch/ch just because fish like me will always fold. But the thing that alarms me specifically on this hand is that the K on the river doesn't even phase Villain.

Given that this is Villain's first 2*P I am skeptical it is a bluff.

It still looks to me like a quick way to win a lot for Villain and assuming it is balanced then it is still a way to lose 2*P which plays hell on Variance.

I would rather check back the turn sometimes with a monster and induce a 2*P on the river if this is going to be Villain's go to strategy. But really I doubt it. From what I read this will happen extremely infrequently and probably not enough to gauge Villain's tendencies in a single session.

Still as I said before, I understand the call given OPs image and now also given the crazy amount of reasonable bluffs to choose from to get to 40%.

Mr Rick you forgot

4. They think there are multiple valid sizings so they flipped a coin or rolled a die or used a random number generator to randomly select amongst them.

It’s not like you came in and adding anything useful you came in and spewed and bunch of stuff about how the only way to avoid being dominated with kq means 3b it which I’m still trying to figure out what it means. Then said kqo is a pure 3b which I seriously doubt is true. I haven’t run a pf sim for this exact spot but I’d bet a decent amount it’s not a pure 3b (I could be wrong but doubt it)
So you aren’t doing any of us any favors with your strat posts imo

My charts state this spot as being a 33% vpip with 67% of vpip being a 3bet. But a v. high stakes and successful reg that I study with told me that he would vpip this around 25% (rng) and when vpipping would play it 100% as a 3bet. NoControl's comments weren't unreasonable

It's kind of tilting how 50% of the time these otherwise very interesting and very didactic spots devolve into minutiae of preflop discussions

BTW it's never a fold, you nit, and it's a fine flat or 3b with any number of exploitative reasons to do one or the other more or less, end of discussion.

Rarely ever have KQo in my 3 betting range to an UTG open so maybe I am a fish or something.

Wouldn't being so deep and being IP on everyone in the hand make us more enticed to just call instead of 3 bet? What hands are we exactly trying to get the UTG player to fold by 3 betting? Besides, by 3 betting wouldn't we be bloating a pot where we would be getting awesome pot odds otherwise to just call? Being a tournament though, 3betting actually seems a lot more reasonable the more I think about it.

What I am really stumped about is why the hero is leading on the flop? What hands are we calling preflop with that should have a lead on that board? A lot of the time we are going to flop absolutely nothing with hands like 98s or T8s where we are getting a cheap price to see a flop with a hand that can flop a lot of possibilities. So when you lead the flop, your hand doesn't really make sense unless you have exactly QJ or KJ, which is probably why you faced the overbet on the river in the first place. But really this flop is best for the UTG player imo.

The mistake made in this hand that cost the player 35bb, if he made a mistake in the hand, wasn't preflop but after the flop imo.

You've literally made a statement that completely contradicts extremely credible sources without giving an ounce of reasoning - it clearly isn't end of discussion.

And it's hardly a devolution to discuss an extremely important part of the hand since if you're getting preflop so wrong then you can be a wizard postflop and it means not a lot. Even if exploitative adjustments can be made re. opening ranges then they're entirely table dependant - you can't just make a sweeping generalisation about a major adjustment being fine regardless of circumstances

I just realised that this is 7 handed so it's played at a much higher frequency than I've been stating but is still only about 66% and still favours 3betting a majority frequency. This totally changes when we get to 50bb and becomes a 100% vpip and majority call, but we're 90bb effective. We're talking about a 5k vs a good player - not $100 donkaments where you may be able to force a passive V out of his equity by playing aggressively post

We also don't know if there any antes in the hand? This is a tournament...

Fine keep folding KQo OTB vs an MP minraise and feel good about yourself, see if I care

"My charts"

your "sources" are literally someone else's product you've purchased with nary a critical thought about what went into them

Do you even know what the assumed open range is for your IP defense charts?


But if you really, truly need more reasoning:

people can open ~22% from MP vs such a range KQ sheerly better than ~40-50% of that range and flipping vs ~20% and in damn good shape with position to boot vs basically everything else almost all of which is unblocked with the strongest stuff all blocked.

It's just not even close.

KJo is a pure VPIP there, KTo should mix in 3bs, A9o should mix in 3bs. Hell K5s is somewhere near the bottom there.

But there's really just not much room for reasoning why something is a VPIP it has to do with how well it survives through the tree, no amount of reasoning can supplant just having an idea of what's strong and what isn't by using a solver and running their own sims and KQo is way too strong to fold there

Massive and completely false assumption.

But I was treating this as a utg Vs UTG+1 spot based on nocontrols post and I didn't go back to look at positions. But yeah you and lol are completely right re ranges for the actual positions. My mistake for not going back and checking the OP

Yeah this is all super obvious and obviously I misassumed positions BC nocontrols post (I assumed) could only be referring to a utg1 Vs UTG spot and I hadn't read the OP in some time.

I don't think we need to be running our own of Sims for these spots since there is an abundance of solved stuff out there for basic spots using PIO and monker. You're not going to get a wildly different result by running your own Sims with these programs