Hey guys,

I haven't been very active on this forum lately, but right now I'm on a bus with nothing else to do and the traffic is sorta crazy, and I'm fed up with sleeping. So here it goes.

25bb deep, we min raise and villain calls. Flop comes A72r.

What is our plan? If we bet, how much should we bet? Please reply as detailed as possible, and I will share my thoughts later on.

Against a reg, betting 30 regardless of what we have, good size for a bluff on the dry board and we still have room to get stacks in by river if we choose to do so.

Against randoms I will bet 30 as a bluff and 1/2 pot for value, small difference but the extra 1/2 bb of vaue is nice.

Cbet 1.75bb otf, 4.5bb ott, and within 1bb of a psb otr

less or more ott to make it a slight overbet/underbet otr but it likely wont make enough of a difference to matter.


Why 1/2 for value vs a random? I think its prob best to almost always bet .75bb even vs fish. Let them float with a (slightly) larger range catch up to us a bit or (maybe) induce more c/r spew, and its not like we're not getting it in anyway vs worse Ax and similar hands.

Does anyone have a differing opinion on bet sizing they would like to share..?

Wrote couple of stuff, but realise then f.ck...there are guys who read this forum, and I battle with them...
In regwars this can be a more interesting spot, but cannot share my thinking process :-/

Readless (vs weak player) just bet 40 imo (don't wanna factor in that he might call b/c of the 30 size). Vs a few reads, if villain is a fit-or-folder just bet 30.
Vs tighter postflop player I don't think we can barrell that much (more like this if he doesn't 3b much), he'll have some 7x, Ax, better Kx. If he's a little bit curious, and have a larger flatting range in this spot we can barrell off all streets

Bet entire range on the flop I have no idea how to split ranges with different sizes so just use half pot, continue about half of the time averaged on all turns, shove about half of the rivers because you can :-P

Thanks for the replies, guys.

I'll start by pointing out two things:

a) Betting our whole range on this flop is likely a mistake.
b) We need an overall plan for flop/turn/river, not just the flop plan in a vacuum.

Is it totally readless? Or at least we know if it's a winning player, BEish, or losing? Avg bi?

If I'd be total readless (well wouldn't at least would have sharkscope ), probably just cbet-3barrell.

Vs lower limit BEish-winning (only if he's not a pretty decent winning player over a bigger sample, and his abi is at least half of the BI of the lvl we're playing), just barrell off also. Vs massive loser, I'd barrell off on good turn+riv (like Q, 9. K isn't that good, he can peel one with Kx), otherwise just try to get all of his chips in easier spot (obv cbet at least, but wouldn't continue a lot)

Some reasonable flop arriving distributions: http://i.imgur.com/M6bz17a.png

They will rarely have a pair and our bluffs will keep their equity so I don't see why we can't bet almost our entire range here. We can continue with roughly half of those hands on the turn, which won't necessarily mean our turn checking back range will be weak, so hopefully we will have nice looking river distributions (polar vs bluff catcher?).

Well, let's say we are playing against a mediocre/decent reg at $60s or $100s. Since he is mediocre/decent, he is a winning player.

Sure, we can c-bet almost our entire range, but often times that's not gonna be the most +EV play.

If you are c-betting close to 100% of your range, why are you doing so?

I can't prove to you that it's the most +EV option. I'm just speculating but if your distribution is much stronger than villain's as EDVis shows and the board looks somewhat static, then I figure you will win more chips by value betting (and bluffing) frequently.

Yes, this is a static board, and our distribution is gonna be stronger than his too. However, that's not a sufficient argument for value betting and bluffing with most of our range on the flop. If we did and he noticed it, we will get floated or attacked back a ton and there's nothing much we could do about it.

There are cases where we can get away with ~100% c-betting, often on a static and dry board. Unfortunately, dry A-high boards stopped being one of them because people don't give up as often, and there are better options for us.

Agree with Mela that vs a competent player you should be checking back some hands as your range distribution is better than his but not enough that we would want to bet our whole range. In practice, betting our whole range is most of the time the better play I would think though.

Betting t30 on this flop with your whole range is an exploitative play, the board is on the static side sure but think about all the overcards to the 7 that have decent equity here (i.e. it's not extremely static). A good player is going to take advantage of this and float with a ton of hands (correctly since you bet so much air).

That's a good point. Yes, if we bet t30 with our whole range, good players are for sure gonna exploit us and there isn't much we can do about it. We are 25bb deep, so it's not like he cannot have TP+ at all, although we are gonna have a lot more (hence range asymmetry).

That said, can you name a few hands that you think are better off checked back vs. a competent player, but better off c-bet otherwise?

And to those who said betting t30 or t40 on the flop with ~100% of our range, what is our plan on the turn if he flats? What are the turn cards that we would be inclined to barrel on, and what would be our bet sizing?

I'm sorry for just throwing these question at you guys, but like I said earlier, I will share my thoughts later on. I just don't want to jump to that right away.

ffs I typed a long post but something went wrong and i lost it.

shorter version with cliffs :

-Betting range to t35 cant be that bad on this board. Intuitive argument is that its though to balance our obvious checkback hands (hands like k6o) with other on this board were there is a lot of value in betting 7s and 2s for protection. Simulations also shows that betting everything is better then checking back hands versus what i consider to be a good defending range for bb. (Under the assumption that BB only calls and later streets are checked down)

-A strategy for BB that contains a lot of checkraising might however become a bit of a problem for betting everything

-best size if you bet range is something that finds the optimal trade off between betsize and fold equity as that works best for your bluffs. Something along the lines of half pot seems fine. If you want to finetune you probably need to target one the points in BBs equity distrubtion that contains a lot of mass and make it indifferent between folding and continuing, in this case i think some size that puts t9o and j6bdfd in a though spot

If you split ranges up between checking and betting you want to check most king high hands, some weaker 7s, and various hands with overcards to the 7(Esp those that dont hit straightsdraws on the turn often) so that you have enough board coverage on various runouts.

If you bet everything basic turn plan is to barrel quite often, any kind of draw, most low cards. You want to bluf more often with hands that dont block bdfds You want to checkback most low pairs and j-k hi hands . Generally lower turn cards are better for your range than high turncards so you want to bet those more often. Betsize somewhere inbetween the fraction of the pot that you bet on the flop and the fraction you leave yourself on the river. The lower the turn card the lower you should bet as you want to include more thin valuebets in betrange.

Exploititavely you want to consider how BBs starting distribution on the flop looks like, how many offsuit Ax does he flat pre, how much suited stuff does he jam pre. Most players float way too many offsuit kx(x<7) on this flop, those players you can barrel too dead on any non K turn as offsuit unpaired combinations make up huge fractions of ranges. If you have a read how well he plays versus flop check or versus
flop bet turn check that might influence how you should play

Good points icoon.

- I agree that betting everything can be a better play than checking back some hands, but if we start betting everything, his defending range should change accordingly. Did you take this into consideration upon building your model? Not just the x/r range, but x/c range as well.

- I remember I asked a similar question about bet sizing here a couple months ago, and I think we can go slightly bigger than the half pot in this spot, like t50, which might come as a surprise to many regs. For one thing, however, I don't really understand the logic behind 1/2 psb flop, 1/2 psb turn and psb jam river line that are used in lots of spots. It doesn't seem to accomplish a whole lot either as a bluff or value bet.

I'm guessing we'd want to check back the bottom of our air (that cannot turn into some equity on turn) and some nuts like AK,AQ,AJ,2P (depending on how much air we check back). I don't think we should expect a lot of c/r on this board as a competent reg will most likely c/c Ax if he flatted some pre (as he probably should given how many bluffcatcher combos we have with K high OOP), so I think we should still bet K high to fold out equity share/very thin value. Given this range I think it makes sense to bet something like t35-t40.

As for your questioning regarding the 1/2, 1/2 shove line that a lot of people use as standard readless vs the c/c x3 line, I think it has to do with people folding too much "backdoor equity" on flop and capping themselves to bluffcatchers by the river, vs which we want to shove our value+bluffs (or bet smaller with some thin value for maximally exploitative option of course). Also has to do with people being lazy too :P

-I assumed a defending range that I think is good vs a 100% half pot strat. It includes any two overcards+bdfd,k8o+ and kx+bdfd,qx+bdfd. I dont think bb can start floating much more hands but thats something thats open for debate. The more you start floating the more often im gonna bet the turn with a wide range (fairly small). How will you exploit me? The model is not perfect ofcourse because i assume hands are checked down on later streets but its not that terrible of an assumption. (The hands that we would consider checking wouldnt be good barreling hands so we'd check them behind on the turn. In reality this means we realize less than 100% of our equity because we can face a river lead, but if we check we also realize less than 100% for the same reason. Of course if you start calling flop much wider than i think you should it becomes bad for some hands to bet). Like i already said it also depends on how you think both sb and bb should play preflop. (Dont want to go into much detail about this)

Btw i agree with your more general impression that we should not cbet everything on most boards, change the texture to k72r or ajthh and i 100% agree betting everything is bad, just think that on a72 its actually quite good to just bet everything as bb just doesnt have enough strong hands in his range to do much about it .

-If you develop a significant checking range in this spot it makes sense to go bigger with your sizing when you do bet. I agree that half pot half pot allin doesnt make much sense in general. I do think betting a smaller fraction of the pot on earlier streets make sense in spots like this though where you want to bet a wider range for protection reasons. If we would just bet with strong valuehands and blufs we would want to bet geometric growth of the pot, so same fraction on every street (At least when stacks are short enough that that means we bet under pot) If we start including more hands in between in our betrange to fold out equity we should start decreasing our betsize as that makes it cheaper with those hands. So in general we do want to bet a little bit smaller on flop and turn than on river but especially on turn most people bet too small. Mixing it up with more than just 2 (bet and check) betsizings in some spots (esp on dynamic boards) is very cool too but also difficult

If the only hands you check back are weak air and nuts, then i assume your plan is to valuebet with your nutted hands on some later streets and balance with the correct frequency of air, and give up with the rest of your air ,unless your air hands improve to somehting that can showdown. If thats the plan, when why not start this process of valuebetting and bluffing on the flop already? That way you can bluf much more often and force much more value from your nutted hands. (You could still just give up with some of the blufs on the flop if you dont have enough valuecombos to bet all of them). Checking back some nuts and some air to balance for mediocre hands makes a lot of sense, but checking back nuts to balance for air not so much.

As icoon pointed out below, I won't check back the top of my range for the sake of balancing. I will start checking back medium strength hands, and probably some air. If checking back medium strength hands leaves me with enough value and bluff hands, then it is possible that I might not have to check back air at all.

Mostly agreed!

- If you cbet 100%, I would simply start x/r'ing a lot, and probably float wider too. Which one I would prefer, it would depend on how you react to my adjustments. This is a spot where BB's range is capped and weaker because of the preflop action, but not significantly so that I cannot do anything about it.

- You are right about having a thick checking back range should lead to a bigger bet sizing, and I was wondering if it could be a better play than betting ~100% of our range with a smaller bet sizing. My intuition, backed up with some rough CREV calculation, tells me that these two strategies might be quite close in EV, and I wouldn't be surprised if checking back has a higher +EV.

- I agree with your comment on the board texture. K72r, AKT or the like would have been a better example.

- This depends on BB's turn donking range and the frequency, but in general I'm not too concerned with "protecting" all our hands on this board. In other words, there are certain hands in my range that wouldn't need much protection (more on this a bit later). Also, checking back on flop sometimes leads BB to bluff with total air that has very little equity, which can often outweigh the benefit of protection bet. I'm not saying that we don't need to protect our hands at all, but "protection" seems to be something a lot of players are overusing as an excuse without really thinking about it. And this, of course, leads to t30-35 c-bet on most boards.

- Fwiw, when I said I would check back certain hands, I would still be betting on flop quite often. It depends on what my weakest value betting range is, but I'd bet something like 65-70%, if not more. I will be betting bigger on flop though, and even if he continues with a stronger range, there's not much he can do about it on turn and river, so I don't think I would be missing out on a lot.

Yep! And this is the reason why I would start betting bigger on flop

I disagree with your reasoning that having a "thick" checking back range means we should go with bigger sizing. The sizing we should use will only depend on what hands we are choosing to check back vs bet on the flop and also what villain's range looks like. If we're very polar with our betting range on flop then yea it makes a lot of sense to bet big, but I don't think that we should split our range that way in the first place.

We could go on and on in circles at this point as I feel we're mostly just implicitly arguing about what kind of approach we should have, i.e. are we taking the gto approach here or a balanced strat that should do well vs a good reg. If we were to strive for GTO, then we would probably check back a little of everything (very small amount of nuts, some air and i'm guessing some K,Q high)and have tons of different betsizes (I would think something like potsize with some Ax combos and air, and then a sizing between t25 and t40 with K high, 7x, 2x, a very small amount of nut combos) while staying balanced.

I agree that in most cases checking back some nuts to protect air doesn't make much sense but on this board the nutted hands I mentioned that we could check back block hands that we want to get value from (especially AK), and we're also almost never getting check raised. But again here, we could just exploitatively check back the bottom of our air on flop and give up close to 100% on turn if we don't expect him to bluff/bet turn often.


On another note, if we don't expect villain to have much of a c/r range (he could have one but it's going to be incredibly small if he's somewhat balanced) while having a wide distribution like in this case, the correct approach is (obviously generalizing a bit here) to cbet merged because you're never sacrificing equity by cb/folding and you fold a lot of equity share in the process. I'm pretty convinced that not betting MOST K high combos here is a mistake in this scenario, however I think checking back a hand like QJ,QT,Q9 makes sense.

Edit: Just want to specify that when I talk about the check back range it would be an extremely small frequency (I have no idea what it would be exactly). I completely agree that given the BB distribution on this flop we should bet the vast majority (90%+) of our range.

Why? You can overbet turn and overbet shove river.

-Striving for a gto approach is the only objective way to argue unless we agree beforehand on some opponent tendencys that we wish to exploit.


-Agreed about the blockers thing. If we want to checkback some nuts here it makes most sense with hands that block most of the checkcall hands and if we need to checkback air it makes most sense with hands that dont turn into the nuts often and antiblock the checkcall hands.

-How come you are so sure about the king high hands, too hard to continue on the turn vs a lead with k4o?

-You can overbet turn and river but you get less value that way than if you bet all three streets. See multistreet polar vs blufcatcher toy games