So yeah this is a pretty general question (sorry in advance lol), but when we play exploitatively vs. our opp. (who have exploitable tendencies duh) we find spots where we can...

-Over fold (opp. is not/very infrequently bluffing here so we over-fold and not call with the top of our range...)
-Make an exploitative call (not over-calling, but like calling with a bluff catcher that's in the bottom of our range)

This a such a general/detailed question but when is it right to do either or (mentioned above) im not looking for "specific" answers but im trying to get an idea of what factors to consider...


And how do we know if we "ourselves" are being exploited (average opp. will prolly know that in order to win money you need to exploit ppl so yh) by either over-folding or calling too much in NON-STANDARD spots where it's NOT that obvious, such as being a uber nit or calling station is easy to spot and thus exploit...

Some board like KhTh2c5c8s can be a good spot to call down light say in BB vs CO because CO has so many bluffs and once you get to river it'd be very easy to overbluff.

QJo/s = 16
AJo/s =16
AQo/s = 16
J9s= 4
Q9s = 4
XXhh/XXcc = quite a few

So basically tallying up value vs. bluffs for a specific villain, calculating the ratio and then determing your pot odds is how to figure that stuff out

Basically you're asking how to play poker. The real answer is that you shouldn't be calling all that much post flop unless you have a draw.

I'm sorry, but what?

One of the tenets of game theory is that all exploitive strategies are exploitable.

The art of poker is to play an exploitive strategy until you sense the table, or certain players, beginning to adjust, and then you switch to a strategy that exploits your opponents attempt to exploit you. The simplest example is to play LAG until you sense that your opponents are going to start light three betting, and then switch to TAG.

As to when to switch, and what to look for, look for tells or comments that indicate that your table image is of a certain way (good players will not give you much to work with), or look closely at your players actions to determine what exploitive strategy they are using(keep in mind they are doing the exact same thing to you, so it may be difficult to know when they start exploiting you).

If this sound very vague and unactionable, it is because it is. You are basically asking, without specifics, 'how do I know which unbalanced line to use at any given time to maximally exploit my opponents?' Which is kind of the key question of poker, isn't it.

I think you're over-complicating things.
If you're playing in a "soft" game full of exploitable players, you maximise your winrate by exploiting their most obvious tendencies.
e.g. If they hardly ever bluff the river (I mean less than 20% of the time), you should always fold your bluff-catchers on the river. Against the value-heavy player, you should instead be asking "Does my hand beat anything in villain's value range?"
So if the board was KhTh2c5c8s and you don't think villain ever bets with worse than AK, then you should always fold KQ.

If villains have a tendency to fold anything worse than 2 pairs on the river, then you exploit that tendency by bluffing at a higher frequency than is "optimal", since their exploitable folding frequency means your bluffs have a better chance of getting through and making you money.

In short, what you need to do is have a think about where villains are most unbalanced (whether it's in terms of their 3-bet/4-bet ranges, their triple-barrelling or overbetting ranges, or their river-calling frequencies etc) and then alter your play accordingly.

I don't think the question can be answered much better than this without writing a book!

i think arty and spewing here might need to be barred from the beginners forums :-) as these two posts are so good that all the so called top and expert players will be down here learning the right way to play poker. thanks guys.

hm well that's what i thought and im guessing that we keep adjusting?... to exploit his inbalances because villain can't play "perfect poker" unless he is playing GTO?

Yes, but you shouldn't level yourself into "mixing up" your play just for the sake of it. You should only make major adjustments to your own play if you think your opponents have some sort of sick reads on you, because you've been playing "face up" as it were. i.e. If they think you're a massive nit for example, then that gives you the opportunity to steal some pots.
If you're not obviously unbalanced (like nits are), then your opponents won't have an obvious way to exploit you, so they won't even try.

In some of your posts it sounds like you think many low stakes live players are playing optimal/unexploitable poker. They aren't. Not by a long shot. Most of them are probably playing fairly ABC with an emphasis on betting for value and rarely getting out of line. Even in tough 100NL games online there are tendencies of both individuals and the player pool as a whole that can be exploited. You just have to find out what they are and find the best general strategies to profit against them, without opening yourself to too much counter-exploitation.

One of the challenges I face is when to read a players action as an exploitable tendency, and when to chalk up their pay to variance. If a player open 10 times in 2 orbits, do I consider him a LAG, or is it just that he had a run of hands in his tight opening range.

Because of the tendency to read too uch into individual actions, as well as the ability of good players to falsely represent expoitable trends, I am very reluctant to completely change my style significantly.

you also have to take into account losing players dont last long at the table. so your chance of getting their so called easy money is limited time wise. hence it becomes important to recognize their play and capitalize on it as quickly as you can.

Factors to look for are basically mistakes. You look for people doing something they shouldn't do and then think about how to exploit that. The obvious one in weak games is people limping too much. We exploit by raising decent hands in position - now we crush their range and have position on a bad player. We are printing money.

Going further with this, what if they always call a raise once they limp? Obviously we increase our raise size, perhaps even vary our raise size by hand strength, if we think they are bad enough.

What if they limp but fold to any raise they deem 'too big'? Well, we simply make a 'normal' raise with every hand we want to play against them and if table conditions make it safe to do so, we make a 'too big' raise with bluffs. Probably we should make these hands semi-bluffs so we have some equity when they inevitably decide to call to keep us honest.

So you can see immediately that a mistake leads to exploitation and further information provides additional ways to exploit or to refine the initial exploitation if you like.

think he's just trolling to make a point about asking super broad questions

but idk

good stuff

Bump? (this might be a ramble and i've read through this thread thoroughly)

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Fish are easy to exploit (because like you guys mentioned... they wont' adjust, employ a counter-strat or exploitative strat vs. us, or take a game theory approach), ...but what about good/avg regs that don't give you easy opportunities to exploit them in obvious spots and do one or more of these things mentioned above?
-One thing we could do is start looking into their bet sizing/combos and calculating their bluffing frequency & pot odds etc... basically Brokenstars post.


Ik we always want to be maximizing our EV with a certain line esp vs. fish which is a no brainer (which means no FPS > trying to be unexploitable).

Versus good/avg regs i feel like we have such a harder time trying to exploit them... :l
Also i think that even if we were given a chance to exploit villain in a certain spot we shouldn't be doing it @ a high frequency if they are capable of figuring out a solution to it? Because they will notice us doing this and adjust their strategy?

I feel like what seperates the best from everyone else is just the ability to figure out those vague/unclear spots which allow us to exploit those reggy villains and obv they are incapable of doing anything against it.
^
So my next question is basically this what do we look for (those vague/unclear spots), if we aren't given easy/obvious opportunities to exploit villains? I think i've listed one being what brokenstars mentioned... (I'm not trying to ask how to play poker...)

My initial thread post seemed to be around the topic of exploiting fish which is now pretty str8-forward to me...

I like to draw a line in the sand to separate two very different things:

exploitive strategy: a general plan of attack that exploits opponent's leaks that doesn't change due to the cluelessness of our opponent.

exploitive strikes: a play or tactic that we use on a one and done basis to exploit an apparent opponent's leak that isn't to be used again in the near future, or at all in the future, due to the cluefullness of our opponent.

I think another/2nd thing we could do would be doing EV calculations away from the table and analyze spots (i don't have CREV).

I saw a cool vid from the gtorangebuilder guy where he talks about counter exploitation with a RPS example. I don't usually like analogies between poker and rps, but this one was good. He gave the example of an opponent that always throws rock, and showed that the correct counter strategy was not to throw paper 100% because it would take hundreds of hands to make up an ev of (pot) which would be lost in just one instance of the opponent throwing scissors, which would nullify the exploitation and then some.

It's like when a nit finally decides to make a stand. You're exploiting him over and over with bluffs but then he calls and you lose a huge pot, nullifying your previous exploits.

This is my new strategy lol but small pots matter to a degree as well it might be break-even for both/better for villain... so it might not even be worthwhile because you are still given villain +EV spots.

Btw villain's strategy in a certain spot (to play his range/his hand on this board in a certain way) is basically what his tendencies are as well right... (dumb question but just making sure lol).

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Also given the posts that i've been making it sounds like basically getting into a leveling war with villain/constantly adjusting, but that's not really what i'm asking here in this thread.

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Thanks bob148 i missed some good stuff in here...

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/15...62/index2.html

I can't speak for others, but when I say "player pool tendencies", I'm generally referring to overall value/bluff or betting/folding frequencies.
e.g. 5NL zoom is full of value-heavy fit-or-fold nits. Their tendency is to bet for value, and to fold to raises, but rarely make triple-barrel bluffs.

A particular player might be a LAGfish, and his tendency would be to bet too often, either with bluffs or thin value hands that do better by checking. If he has a particular tendency for certain situations (e.g. donking on paired boards, or check-raising all his gutshots), you can take a note on it.

To go back to the title of the thread, exploiting general player types is quite simple.
If someone folds too often (nitty), you should bluff more.
If someone calls too often (a calling station), you should bluff less, and focus on getting value.
If someone bets too often (a LAG), you should check and call.
If they only bet very strong hands (passive the rest of the time), you should fold when they bet.

To put it another way, which makes poker a bit more like RPS...
To beat the nits, you play more like a LAG.
To beat the calling stations, you play more like a nit.
To beat the LAGs, you play more like a calling station.

To beat everyone, you play balanced/GTO.

If you're worried about close spots you do stuff off the table but a reasonable percentage of the time two actions can have pretty close EVs and the only way to determine which is theoretically best is the least exploitable strategy basically, but rarely is that going to be important.

Do work off the table---its not as hard as it sounds, it just takes a lot of time.

I think that's ok. There's money in the pot and hands have equity, the ability to improve, and the ability to regress. Because of this, you will rarely have an ev of (pot) with your whole strategy in a given spot. The vast majority of the time, both strategies involved will be earning a fraction of the pot and there's nothing that you can do about it but take your share and be happy with it.

It may not be what you're asking, but I think leveling wars are the result of exploitive play and so we need to talk about them.

I play lots of heads up and shorthanded poker, where adjusting is at a premium value. One of the biggest mistakes I see is players trying to out lag each other. This ties in with what Arty said here:

This is true, but it's somewhat dependent on the type of overaggression they exhibit. If they are overaggressive with both value hands and bluffs, while maintaining a high showdown frequency, I think we can raise them more for value with strong hands and occasionally with dominating draws. If they are overaggressive with both value hands and bluffs, while maintaining a relatively low showdown frequency vs aggression, then I'll do lots of calling with showdownable hands, but I'll mix in some more bluffs. Of course, the subterfuge usually only lasts as long as my cards remain hidden. Once a weak semibluff is exposed, the leveling war should dissolve. That's when it's time to go back to a default style of play because the next level is too exploitable.

I sometimes do what you call an "exploitative strike" mainly on decent thinking villain's who know how to bet/fold or fold etc... because like you said due to their cluefullness i don't want them to realize we are exploiting them and adjust, unless they are playing closed to balanced/GTO in general in this spot (adjusting on margins like u said).

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Do you think it's better to employ these "exploitative strikes" in bigger pots as opposed to smaller pots vs. these villain's i mentioned above who aren't going to use a game theory approach or don't think about their range/% of hands they should be defending or not trying to be unexploitable etc...?

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Currently @ micros and 2/5 live so i think this exploitative strike may work well for my game.