Just read the above post. Mind suitably blown.

I think many posters in BQ and uNL forums would benefit greatly from reading that thread cover to cover

Sorry for the bad link. Glad you enjoyed the thread.

There is a simple bit in the middle, which is along the lines of g-bucks.
In a later post he follows with
This is a spot where we 2+2 posters see a bad PF call by a "fish" and fail to realize from that point on that the bad player accidentally plays perfect. I love the idea of recognizing that we don't just get to have all the bad-player's monies as even he makes a number of plays that are either good or at least not that bad. Sometimes, that spewtard is playing correctly given how much we have to fold.

Despite now having the start of a headache, the arguments between otr and lawdude make some sense to me. It's just the application where I (and most likely a lot of players) struggle, especially online where you have 10 seconds to make your decision.

To implement the optimal strategy (is that kinda what GTO means or is it an abstract concept?), you need to understand villain's strategy and range at any given point, and play perfectly or as close to it against that.

Lawdude uses his experience of playing against overaggressive players who will put in several bets otf without a purely nutted range as being the correct strategy to therefore make your money there. Whereas OTR argues that against these type of players their range will be likely stronger ott (where they will continue their aggression)and so adding bets there is more likely +EV as our range is also less polarised and therefore harder for villain to play perfectly against.

Is that anything near what they were saying? (obviously very oversimplified)

I'll give you the hint that one of them is really good at poker and the other likes to argue a lot.

Haha, yeah kinda got that impression from the other posters, altho it did stimulate some really well written strategy, albeit slightly above my paygrade

Here's my 0.02. What OTR is describing is that there are spots where you can't just raise with hopes of hitting a cooler vs. your villain where he spews. You have a hand reading opponent and basically have him nutted. However because of the texture of the flop, there is some level of aggression that basically turns your hand face up. By understanding that, you try to play your hands in a balanced fashion. In LHE it comes up that there are flops that you can't raise b/c you need to have strong hands in your calling range -- so much of the rest of your range wants to peel and you have to protect that.

The whole idea is to understand how your range plays the flop. How much information are you leaking. The modern high stakes HU specialist who plays LHE is constantly concerned about balance in this way. Guys like DeathDonkey and OnTheRail15 are coming back to the rest of us and suggesting that we try to play balanced lines as a default, and OTR has some explanation of how you actually make back the "missed" money from raising in these spots.

Thanks for the explanation. Makes sense.

I've got kinda conflicting thoughts on whether this is going to be useful at the micros though?

Part of me thinks, 'of course it is', as against villain's capable of thinking about ranges we are muddying the waters sufficiently to earn more $ over time against them, and against bad villain's they will station/spew in the wrong spot often enough anyway.

The other part of me thinks, we just don't need to play a balanced strategy against villains in the micros as so few are capable of looking further than their own cards, and the ones that do still play a straightforward game.

'Everybody' advocates playing an ABC strategy until maybe 50nl. So where does balance fit in with that? Or is it just something we should be getting used to doing anyway to ingrain the process for later in our progression?

Not something I've spent time researching so if this is not the place for this discussion, then I'll take some time and maybe make a thread as and when I understand a bit more/better.

Here's a hand for you. I'm not very good at NL, so apologies if this is a lousy analogy. I'm on the button in a 1/2 live game. BTN + 2 opens $7 (he's a professional 7 card stud player who you may know, and very good at poker). He's opening pretty wide in a soft game. We're both about $300 deep. I pick up AQo and decide to 3 bet to $15 for value. Flop is A72 rainbow. He checks, and I think as a limit player he's checking 100%. Put yourself in my spot and play my range here. Does my range have issues? Let's assume he has a 4 betting range and chose not to 4 bet (I'm not sure, but let's assume).

what's your range?
Tightish 99+, AJs+. AQo+, KQs?
Looser 77+, A9s+, AJo+, KJs+, KQo?
even looser?

It would be easier to analyze the tight one.

A cbet often just takes down the pot as our range is presumably strong and villain is less likely to have an Ace or a strong enough hand to call, especially oop. But, if we face aggression from villain on this or a later street we are suddenly less than happy with our TP. Same if we had TT-KK.

If we just check back flop though we can balance our range? Presuming we end up getting to showdown and show up with TP, then we can use that information to also check back other hands in our range later that are not so strong. Meaning we can get to showdown with weaker hands, or bluff raise turns more. We can also induce villain to put money into the pot on later streets that we may have lost by cbetting the flop because we have disguised the value of our hand.

Am I even in the right ballpark?

You're thinking of the right things. As an exercise, you might enumerate our range and see how it plays against his opening range. Assume he's played enough NL to have what you'd consider a standard open in a very loose/soft game. Once you figure out how you'd play each hand, you can sort of see how many value bets vs. how many bluffs vs. how many checks that intend to fold (if any).

Hey Doug. Your example is slightly unusual in the size of your 3bet, which is very small and, in consideration of how deep we are, will incline the BTN+2 to call with any cards which he would open. Was this your intention, to make villain's range OTF == his opening range?

It might have been 20, I don't recall. When I was typing the hand I was more thinking of a spot where our hand is somewhat different than our range. Also, the game is 1/2/100, so our turn or river bet can't be all ins, if that matters to your analysis. MelchyBleu probably remembers the hand more than I do.

I'll have to revisit this thread tomorrow.

Thanks Doug. Appreciate u taking the time to explain, and for making me think!

Think I'm gonna start reading some more LHE stuff, seems pretty interesting

Thanks for stopping by Doug. Good to see some strat content in a digest beyond the op

^^^ exactly this

yes, more people please post.

I've only just got round to reading this, but I'm so glad I did. The digests are always excellent, but for some reason this one seems like the best ever. It's really got me thinking.
I might even have another crack at fixed limit when I get the chance. Nice work guys and gal!

October is going to be a breakdown of stats, just to let you know.

Thanks so mush for the link guys, I read the whole thing and it is defanitley a lot to digest. If there are these type of discussions going on theres no way I wont get better!

So thanks Doug for introducing the thread as well as some of the ways it applies to NL. And thank you Dunna for providing the right link as well as your insights into how applies to NL. Also want to thank mikes007 and Ozi for their thought as well. It was a good read for sure; I leared a lot.

So what kind of range can we give to Villian in NL hand assuming it was raised to 20 and he calls?

another good issue. Im really glad you guys write this each month, very interesting.

I think I'd give him something like:

JJ-22,AQs-A2s,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,T9s,98s,AQo-AJo,KQo

basically pairs, suited broadways, suited aces, a couple of suited connectors and unsuited broadways.

This changes a bit depending if he would 4bet JJ or AQ, and he might want to play a few more suited connectors or possibly he might call the 3bet with AA/KK sometimes in order to strengthen his calling range.

Against this range, we are an 83/17 favorite. So the question really becomes a question of whether we do better to cbet in order to get some value from his worse Aces and maybe JJ or TT, or whether we do better off by checking back the flop, trying to induce action from worse on later streets, and also incidentally saving some money when he has us coolered.
It might actually be ok in this spot to not have a cbetting range. Or if we want to cbet and be balanced, we can cbet 1/2 pot with KQs and black 99(5 combos of bluff) and AA,AK (15 combos of value), and check back the rest of our range. This, in spite of the fact that "omg A72 you HAVE to cbet this board all the time"

Question b/c I don't know... if I balance by cbetting everything on this "great board for cbetting", do I have normal opponents who read the texture and call a hand like 89s? Them thinking that I might only fire one barrel when I missed, so they can draw to 2nd pair? Or, are people just super fit/fold on this board. In LHE, this is a cbetting board and most would balance by betting 100% HU IP.

Can we assume Villians range is less than optimal against us? How about table, meaning can he be a winning player with these stats or is he a fish?

Part of your answer is in the bold text. The other part is that it is -EV for Villian to try to cold call to get a 2nd pair since you are generally betting 1/2 pot on this flop (so you want Villina to call). Depending on how Villian balances his monsters it may be scary to see a ck/raise on this flop unless he is a wacko and does this with JJ-KK in which case he is probably doing this with hands as low as A9s or some garbage like that; then again he might have A7 in this spot as well and you would have to pay him off.