Hey guys!

I know if villain is betting a merged range on the flop, we should also merge our raising range istead of going polar. (Which obv makes sense due to protection reasons and fold equity vs. a rangebet)
But I somehow can`t get my head around Building a good, solid strategy for those situations.


What are Things I have to consider when Building a merged raising range?
Do I still raise my very best Hands or do I wanna check them to Keep balance in check?

Let`s say we`re in a BU vs. BB Scenario in a SRP without reads on villain. The flop Comes A57 and villain starts off by range betting 1/3. which Hands do I wanna raise here? And how do I figure out which Hands I wanna raise here? Would be very glad if someone could help me out here, really getting stuck in this issue.

its a good question, because "merged betting/raising" is something a lot of rec fish accidentally do.

The easiest way to approach it is think of your hands on a spectrum in terms of absolute hand strength
tp, 2p, sets, straights, flushes, fullhouses etc

take the hands youve seen him erroneously over value/stack off with.. say he got it in with top pair on a straight board. Now order all of the hand strengths possible, and figure out where TP falls on that list, say its the bottom 40% of hands, now pick hands that are somewhat higher than that and stack off.

on your board example, there is gutshots, oesd,fd, under pairs, 5x,7x, various levels of A2-ak, 57,a5, a7, 55, 77,aa, say weve seen villain stack off with TPBK on a straight board use that as our baseline and go a few categories up from that and use that as our stack off range ie mid 2p+
of course keep SPR in mind, and dont mindlessly get it in with bottom 2p 1000000000bb deep

its not an exact science, and its going to be incredibly villain/line/board dependent, no two boards are ever going to be the same, and you'll have to approximate. THe best thing you can do is take notes of how thinly they stack off with and just ignore what the nuts are, and look purely at your hand strength "i have a set, a set is way ahead of 90% of his stack off range, even on a straight board" people make gross calls because they cant let 2pair go on a straight flush board, i see it often. you just have to figure out what kinds of hands excite the guy, generally its 2p+. when he hast these holdings, even tho they are trash on the runout, they are going to take lines that look SUPER nutted, because they think 2p is the nuts even tho the board is 4 to a straight.. FLUSHES are a little bit more obvious, so they might be a little more cautious. but if its a backdoor flush they generally pay it less mind.

once you figure this out, some other additional exploits are : they bet ANY piece of the board, so their checks are almost always completely weak and u can just stab them relentlessly. their bet range is also very weak, overall, so some vils you can xr and rr with your semi bluffs/ mid pair etc and get folds bkuz more often than not hes betting bottom pair or a draw.. however, some vils are incredibly stationy and will still call, so you will adapt by reraising top pair+ , ie " value raising " thinly


HOPE that is clear

What about triple range merging though.

The best way to have a merged range in your opps eyes is to make large bets with middling hands and make sure he sees them.

The best way to do this, you can bid high with confidence.