I don't think this is an ev-maxing strategy if we're facing an overbet *every time* we're capped.

Yes, but not what I'm looking for.

Overbetting exploitively (generally this means a super value-heavy range) can be good vs weaker villains, but vs. stronger villains it can be good to capture more equity in the pot in some situations.

Awesome stuff here

I give up :l tough question...

Well i mean if villain is overbetting every single time we are "capped" well that's a bit excessive/unrealistic lol

I recently got a private message asking about dealing with an overbetting opponent so I linked him to this thread. Here's his question:

My response:

Well that's exactly what he should be doing with his valuecombos and appropiate amount of bluffs.

So I read and loved this post and decided to give it a try, in one my 1200 hand session I only found one spot to be a good spot to try this out. Here it is:
Winning Poker Network (Yatahay) - $0.02 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

BTN: 51.5 BB (VPIP: 27.87, PFR: 8.47, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 63)
SB: 182 BB (VPIP: 21.88, PFR: 17.19, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 64)
BB: 70.5 BB (VPIP: 52.83, PFR: 16.98, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 53)
Hero (UTG): 152.5 BB
CO: 104.5 BB (VPIP: 31.11, PFR: 25.93, 3Bet Preflop: 14.00, Hands: 278)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 7h 7c
Hero raises to 3 BB, fold, fold, SB calls 2.5 BB, BB calls 2 BB

Flop : (9 BB, 3 players) 7s 3s Qc
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets 8 BB, SB calls 8 BB, fold

Turn : (25 BB, 2 players) 4h
SB checks, Hero bets 35 BB, fold

Hero wins 24 BB


Is this about the right flop and turn for this type of action or am I not getting called by worse enough with no viable straight draw out there? Because myself and villain are 150bb deep am I actually not betting enough on the turn?

Thanks in advance from someone trying to figure it out.

Don't really see the point of overbetting here, you might fold out some queens (idk really because 2nl 6max ranges), mid pockets (hands like 99) or spade spade draws that they'll call incorrectly to a smaller size. I'd rather just try to extract in this spot. Another real question is what overbet bluffs do you actually have here? Obv this is just an exploitable overbet, but theoretically are you overbetting ss combos on the turn? It doesn't quite seem right.

Thanks for the response! Maybe I'm confused slightly about the whole concept. My thoughts were that spade draws and big queens are calling here and I can set myself up for a bigger river bet. Villain timebanked and folded so your hypotheticals are most likely true ... Which is obviously a bummer. I also never really planned on bluffing with an over bet ever at these stakes because of how soft they are. If I don't plan to be bluffing at all with similar bet sizes should I never be turn betting for value with similar size then? Thanks again.

I'm talking much more about theoretically sound overbetting than exploitative overbetting. It may very well be that 2nl villains are calling way too wide vs overbets in which case this would be great. But in general we overbet so we can bluff more and put more pressure on v's midstrength hands. These are annoying spots (holding weak tp facing 2 huge bets for instance), but if we never bluff, competent villains can just fold every time and crush us. So to overbet soundly, we need to have plausible air we can be overbetting in addition to our strong value combos.

At 2nl you shouldn't be overbet bluffing, and it might well be fine to just overbet overbet strong made hands (especially vs some villains who call way too much), but at higher levels of play we overbet to make more with our value combos as well as to get more folds with our bluffs. Overbetting for only one of these reasons is extremely exploitable.

You made it much clearer, thank you!

Yeah regarding the math of overbetting the larger the bet size the more bluffs we should have and smaller the bet size the fewer bluffs we should have.

Also i think the spot you provided "risky"... if you overbet all ur bluffs here think about what it does to your other ranges when you check in this spot, if i'm correct? It makes you super exploitable vs. any thinking villain.

Re-reading the OG post might help.

Right. I believe the reason it was a mistake for me personally in this spot is because I'm never bluffing here. Which is also exploitable. I've read the original post three times now I will continue to search for spots that apply. Would you mind if I send one or two to you some time? Thanks for the response!

Thing is, being exploitable at 2nl or 5nl is often fine. But after that you need to start thinking about it at least a little, especially vs. regs.

Damn what a good read just re-reading this thread now lol totally forgot about this + (face palm @ my other posts)

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Also @ OP you talk about betting a "balanced" overbet sizing strategy, but to me i think over-betting is more exploitative and works better to be over-bet over-bluffing in some spots vs. a capped range and vs. x villain because people dunno how to defend against it or know the math's behind it/MDF etc...

Whilst you can definitely use overbets to exploit the tendencies of an opponent, it's very clear that overbetting is part of optimal/balanced poker. If you allow a solver to choose from several sizes (e.g. 25% of pot, 50%, 100%, 200%), there are many spots (especially on the river with asymmetric ranges) where jamming 2x pot or more maximises EV. After all, if you have a range advantage (especially in regard to the number of nutted combos you have, compared to your opponent), you generally make more money by making the pot as big as possible, because it means your best hands get paid the max when called, but you can also push through more combos of bluffs.

Maybe it's easier to look at it from the other end of the scale. If you minbet the river, you're almost always getting called. That would make your bluffs pointless, and your nutted hands would be missing value. Hence, you should bet big when you have a more polarized range containing lots of strong value hands that want to get paid, but also lots of air that can only win by making villain fold.

Awsome thank you for that Arty, yea in a spot where our range + board run out gives us a polarized range as in *majority* a lot more nut combos or complete air in our range betting near pot/pot makes sense.

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In regards to over-betting being apart of GTO i think you are totally right but i don't have a solver like GTOrb or Pio to actually go through and see the EV's with diff sizes LOL.

When i typed that statement i think i was just referring to my playerpool or the lower stakes that i play @ where *balance* is like lolbalance ya know esp versus certain villains.