Hey guys,

Hope I don't bother you with this beginners question, I tried looking for examples to see if I'm on the right track but I would like some comfirmation before I begin to start shaping my ranges further.

I try to get my head around the relation between RFE and bluff/value ratio's.
Without all other factors which I know should be taken into account as well, but looking at the pure math, is the following statement correct?

If player x opens 3bb, and hero 3bets to 9bb, my RFE is 66%.
Does this mean that (again pure looking at math) I should shape a 2:1 bluff/value ratio?

And if for some reason hero decide to 3bet 12bb instead of 9, the RFE is 72 so the ratio is 2.6:1, in other words, if we 3bet larger we should have more bluffs?

Again, these ratio's are math based, so the actual ratio is always less bluffs if I'm correct?

Thanks for reading and hoping you can help me forward!

Generally at low limits you shouldn't be bluffing unless you have a very good reason to do so.

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Bluff:value ratio isn't really a concept that works before the river. Many hands aren't clearly value or bluffs on early streets so it doesn't make sense to bucket them like that, and stuff like range compositions, number of remaining streets, stack size, etc. can affect how much you want to bluff.

There's no direct relationship between required fold equity and bluff:value ratio. Bluff:value ratio is determined by the pot odds your opponent is getting. In theory you should balance your value bets with enough bluffs to make your opponent's bluffcatchers indifferent between calling or folding based on the pot odds your sizing offers him.

I don't agree that you shouldn't be bluffing at low limits. There are tons of spots to bluff profitably. Particularly people tend to fold too much to c-bets and too much after they check as the last aggressor.

Here's a simple spreadsheet I made called "Caveman GTO". It determines the optimal value:bluff frequencies for each street postflop.

You plug in the bluff equity, value equity, and the size of the bet on each street. It spits out value:bluff ratios. It's based on the math in Janda's book Applications of NL Holdem.



This calculator makes a number of assumptions:

1) We always triple barrel value and give up with a portion of bluffs on each street.
2) Villain can only call/fold, no raises.
3) Equity is static and unchanging on every street.

Now obviously this isn't reflective of a real game, but it may help you understand some of the inner mechanics of pure game theory. Note that it's easy to get impossible results if your inputs are bad.

This also interests me because I'm currently studying the 3bet chapter of "The Grinder's Manual" and is saying exactly this about polar ranges (still talking about preflop action). Of course, this is to be perfectly balanced and will usually have very little relevance at lower stakes, where people over/under defend against 3bet and we should therefore need to adjust our range accordingly.
However I'm also still studying this, so if there is something wrong in what I said, please feel free to correct me.