eg,

We raise XX pre, 3bb from CO get called by the BTN

Pot is 7.5bb we bet 5bb and get called pot is not 17.5bb on the turn,

Assuming 100bb stacks and that we are ahead of BTNs calling range, and always behind his raising range.

How much of a difference do you think sizing makes when betting for solid Value,

Would you rather

A: Bet 16bb
B: Bet 12.5bb
c: Bet: 9bb

do we make more betting B because B might be more likely to get called more often,

or do we make up more money the time we bet A, we might be called less, but when we do its 4bb+ and that also compounds the river for extra bb's.


or C: "Balance" to make bluffs more profitable (assuming we get history and it becomes relevant.

its a in general and theory wise question..

Come on BQ

wheres that golden advice ?


at what % does betting smaller and being called more, become more EV than Betting bigger and getting called less ?

I've a positive redline and blue line at 10NLz and 10NL , but feel like I might be blowing some bb's here and there by not sizing correctly with no reads... after a few orbits we have an image and it becomes a clearer decision.

why do you have a positive redline

It's situation dependent. On some runouts vs a particular range you'll do better by betting small. On others, betting bigger makes more money.

I mean, there's a reason why sometimes RedBaron bets 15% of pot with 95% of his range on one board and sometimes he goes for 5x pot with 10% of his range on another. It's not like the same sizing regime works perfectly in every situation. That said, you probably wouldn't lose much overall EV if you restricted yourself to one arbitrary (but reasonable) bet-size (e.g. 55% of pot) for every situation. There are plenty of robotic players that seem to do just fine without giving their bet-sizes a whole lot of thought.

P.S. Looking at the COvBTN example, I can't immediately think of any situation where I'd c-bet 5bb into 7.5bb OOP, but I'm too GTO for my own good.

Also depends on how your opponents perceive your overall style of play. For example, do you bomb bluffs on the turn or size it smaller?

Not having d) bet 35BB might be a mistake

+1

In a vacuum, betting as much as possible is the right answer. For 9 BB to be greater +EV than 36 BB (to make the math simpler), the villain has to call more than 4 times as often. As practical matter, a villain that is calling 9 BB isn't going to be 4 times less likely to call 36 BB.

Can't say for sure, but its a mixture of picking out weak ranges to bluff at and getting villains to lay down hands that are better than mine but just, (HI card hands with equity against me, picking up dead money, restealing over regs iso's etc, obvious lower pairs that are calling too much in pos, to get blown off by another barrel)

but when Im playing Fast variants, I tend to keep bet sizing pretty much the same for different boards, dry boards 1/2 pot, wet board 85% + pot, since you see the same spots over and over vs the same people in a smaller pool. -50 on average,

and when I play normal tables I can read the ranges pretty well, which helps me get folds outta some villians much easier, I have a straight redline slightly curving up on Zoom, but on normal tables it skyrockets along with the blue.

TPTK vs drawy board ? , Flopped set on T95ss ?

would all be checks ?

I tend to size my bluffs according to how a value hand would act on said line/action,

If, Its a 3bet pot and im playing a range of TPTK/SETS/2pair, think board like AKx where we 3bet the value part of out range,,.

I would play the bluff how I would play my value range with one difference, if I have any kind of equity I'll size it as small as I think I can without making it look obvious that no decent hand would be betting that small,. straight and flush draws and betting out 1/3 pot or 1/2 is something id rarely do with a made hand.

That is 100% a mistake and thats why I love posting here!

Just seems as the villians become more aware and better , its just another way for us to find exploits at lower limits and not just go through the motions, eg grinding,

Id rather play 4 tables or 1 table of thinking poker, than 16 tables of robotnic stuff

When OOP as the pre-flop raiser in a single-raised pot, I typically check or bet small (35% of pot). I might bet bigger for value if villain is really loose/passive.
In theory of optimal play at least, it's somewhat rare for the OOP player in a SRP to bet more than half pot. With the absolute top of your range, check-raising gets more money in the pot and gives you a better chance of playing for stacks.

3-bet pots are a bit different. If you 3-bet in SBvBTN, then c-bets will sometimes be bigger, depending on the range advantage. It's all situational though. There are some flop textures where I c-bet 2x pot as standard (but at a low frequency) and others where I bet 1/4 pot with 95% of my range. The turn allows even more scope for overbets. For me, 2/3 pot is neither here nor there. I usually bet very small or very large. Overall, I think the optimal sizes for heads up SRPs average out about 2/3 pot when IP and just under half pot when OOP, but some textures call out for big bets and some call for small ones.
As I said before, you wouldn't be making a huge mistake if you always used 1/2 pot. You would be making a mistake if you always potted it, or always bet one third of pot. If you want to squeeze out some additional EV, you have to think about what's best for your range given the exact situation.

See i've missed this whole GTO movement that has gone through here the last few years, I remember when it was first being discussed and prisonners dilema etc (fun fact, played that in real life, both of said it was the other and charges where dropped) was actually innocent but had to play the system.

I havent looked much into the GTO stuff, seems like you have spent a great deal of time studying it, and not that im trying to rob you of all your hours spent learning, but would you be able or willing to give me a few short outlines of spots where GTO comes up OFTEN,

Like single raised pot in position, with KK and flop with Axx , or same but we 3bet CO from BTN with KK and flops Axx, is there a standard line for spots that come up often ?

Your example about c/r to get more money in with Value hands since GTO says we on average get only 50bb into the pot (assuming 100bb) then I understand wanting more money in the pot but assuming he has a hand that will call a bet or a c/r but never continue past a turn that crushes his calling range, does that not turn our c/r into I hope I take the pot down now, or is it always with the intent to get it in on the flop?

is there ever a merit, in GTO to let a safe card peel on the turn to lock equity v 200+ stacks ?

how close were we? eg, 2+2er mostly advocated TAG/LAG , 3bet or fold from the blinds, iso limpers wide etc, do they come up in GTO , or does GTO say something completely different ?

Feel free to answer, 1 or all, or none of the questions.

*I will be looking into it now, since if villians are all hard for this stuff it might help with what ranges they are using to do what these days, but so far havent seen much change except people are more predicatible in a way.

Well, there's a theoretically optimal way to play your range in every spot, whether we're talking about which hands to open UTG, or which hands make the most sense as check-raise bluffs on the river. Most regs are pretty solid pre-flop, but they can be quite unbalanced/exploitable in various spots post-flop. (Not that being exploitable/exploitative post-flop is a huge problem against weak opposition. Indeed, you make more money by exploiting their "leaks".)
One of the most curious things about optimal play is that mixed strategies are extremely common, by which I mean that - if you play your range optimally - it's actually correct to sometimes bet and sometimes check a particular combo. It's usually the case that KK is a clear check on Axx, but in some spots (where you're betting a large proportion of your range, mostly for a small size), it's apparently "GTO" to bet some hands that don't seem to make sense as value-bets or bluffs. It's easy on a human level to divide your range into "obvious value-bets", "obvious bluffs" and "obvious checks", but true GTO is much more complicated, because to prevent exploitation you need to "randomly" put some hands into two categories at once. (Quick example: If BTN opens and you have AQo in the BB, it's fine to 3-bet and it's fine to call. The GTO strat would 3-bet at X% frequency and call at Y% and a GTO bot would get those frequencies perfect, such that the 3-betting range and the calling range are both maximally profitable. As a human, it's easier to just say "I always 3-bet AQ here", or "I have that in my flatting range 100% of the time", as you don't need to "mix up your play" with every combo that requires a mixed strategy in theory, as an opponent will never get a large enough sample size to be able to attack the way you play one specific hand.
FWIW, to this day, I don't think I've ever c-bet KK on Axx, but it certainly crosses my mind to do so sometimes, because it's definitely (according to solvers) part of the optimal strategy at some frequency in some spots.

A more human way to approximate a GTO style post-flop is to categorize your hands into groups like I mentioned above. e.g. If you open on the BTN and get flatted by the BB, then on the flop you can divide your range into:
1. Strong value hands that want to bet multiple streets.
2. Mid-strength hands that want to keep the pot small.
3. Weak made hands that could benefit from protection.
4. Hands that make sense as (semi-)bluffs because they have robust equity even against villain's continuance range.
5. Total air that has very little chance of winning, no matter what action you take.

When you've got your hands categorized like that, it's fairly simple to think "I'll bet the value hands for value, the weak made hands for protection, and the semi-bluffs as bluffs, and I'll check the mid-strength hands for their SDV or bluff-catching ability, and I'll check the air and plan to fold unless I get a decent opportunity on a later street."

A more important idea is that whatever action you take needs to be roughly balanced, such that it's not completely obvious when you're strong or weak. So when you're value-betting, you need to have the right amount of bluffs in the same spot, and when you're checking your air you also need to check some decent bluffcatchers, so that you can defend against villain's turn bluffs. (This is why you should nearly always have some top pairs in your check back range.). You also need to check back some of your draws, just so you can have flushes/straights in your turn range whether you c-bet the flop or checked.

When you're OOP, it's more complicated because now you have check-raising as an additional option. (i.e. If you're in position with the nuts, you almost always bet it. That's simple. When you're OOP you can bet or check, and it can be hard to work out which line is more profitable, because checking might lead to missing a whole street of value/protection when villain checks back, but it also gives you the potential to make the pot much bigger if villain stabs IP.)

What people used to do is think "C-betting is instantly profitable, so I'll c-bet 90% of my range". Nowadays, they are thinking things like "This combo makes more money as a c-bet, that hand does slightly better by checking back" or "I'm gonna get check-raised a lot on this board, so I'll bet at a lower frequency" or "Villain doesn't have many strong hands on this board, so I'm gonna bet huge and put him in a cage."
I could go into the reasons why some hands that seem "natural" c-bets to beginners would actually make more money as checks, but this is BQ. There's loads of discussion about GTO-style play in the theory forum and also in the books/publications forum threads about books by Janda et al.

Again it's situational, but taking down the pot (and making villain fold all his equity) often has a higher EV than getting called. e.g. If you have top set OOP and villain has random air, he's never calling if you c-bet, but if you check and he takes a stab, it doesn't matter that he folds to a check-raise. You still got more money out of him than you would by betting. Janda's written a lot about the concept of "preventing equity realization" and "not wanting action" in his books. Obviously with the stone cold nuts you want to play for stacks, but with hands like 2 pairs, you'd frequently prefer to win the pot before villain sucks out with a straight or backdoor flush, or a set or whatever, so you'll try to pick the line that achieves it best. (Pro-tip: 2 pairs is most commonly a bet, not a check-raise, since it is more vulnerable to a free card than a set is, since a set can "easily" re-suck out with a boat vs a flush/straight, whereas 2 pairs has very few outs once villain overtakes you on the turn).
It's hard to say how close to GTO today's players are. Players are much much better today than they were 5 years ago, especially pre-flop (people have learned to fold pre, and they also 3-bet/4-bet more often, just like GTO suggests) but in the micros especially everyone is still pretty terrible post-flop. e.g. They don't bluff anywhere near as often as GTO does, they are overly value-heavy when aggressive, they don't check-raise out of the BB at anything near GTO frequencies, they c-bet OOP way too often and for sizes that are too large etc.

Depending on which site and stake level and format you play, the games might not have changed much in the past few years, so you don't really need to think much about what the theoretically optimal play is, and can just stick with ABC value-heavy poker. Zoom cashgame players on Stars are much more solid than random low stakes tourney players on Unibet for instance, so should be treated somewhat differently if you want to crush them.

Could you show someone boards where he cbets 5x pot? Thanks

I've never seen him c-bet more than pot. (I c-bet 2 or 3x pot for fun sometimes though). The Baron's turn and river overbets are legendary though.