While your equity may be better in a calculator with the high cards, have you considered how often you could be moved off the best hand by a strong opponent? e.g. you hit top pair and villain fire multiple barrels into you, how happy are you to keep seeing it through with your T kicker?

It's much easier to lose a big pot with KTo than it is to win a big pot.

Ok. So perhaps it is about the "hand signalling" which I mentioned a few posts above.

So you're saying with KTo it's not so easy to be calling multiple barrels with top pair because you're not sure where you're at with your hand. Whereas with 75s the "hand signalling" will be much more clear because you'll assume your opponent doesn't have many hands that also hit your 75s.

Is that pretty much what you mean?

Thanks a bunch by the way

I'm not sure that is what Janda means when he talks about hand signaling... ie i think you may be mis-applying that term, but I'm not sure.

But yes, I think you have the right idea. With a hand like KT you can easily make mistakes on later streets, either by calling incorrectly (he has AK on a K high flop) or also by folding the best hand (e.g. he triple barrels 53s on a missed draw on a K high flop and you fold cos you think he has AK)

Cool, thanks Ian. And as for hand signalling, in the book it says:

"“Hand signaling” occurs when our hand tells us whether or
not we should try to see additional cards to make the best hand by
the river. For instance, after seeing a flop with a suited connector,
we’ll almost always know exactly what we need in order to make
the best hand..."

So it seems like I'm not too far off but I still think you might be right that I'm misusing the term because maybe the term is just meant for your specific hand and not taking into account the opponents range.

75s makes 3 straights (689, 468, and 346) and flushes whereas KTo only makes two straights. It's pretty safe to say that any straight or any flush is a pretty "robust" hand in a 3-bet pot (so it will likely be the best hand even if the opponent's range gets very strong, i.e. you're all in).

As for whether KTo or 75s is an overall better hand will depend on a bunch of things, as KTo does have more equity but 75s does have more "robust" equity (so equity that is retained as the opponent's range gets stronger).

Thanks Matt. I'm learning a lot from you.

Hey, the screenshot of you sb 3betting range from post #62 isn´t online anymore. Can you maybe reupload it?

+1

Shouldn't the correction on the front page be 60 to 54 and not 50 to 54?

I'm having trouble understanding a concept. What does this mean? (From pg 41)

"Hence, the maximum that each remaining player can 3-bet is 6.9 percent."

Why is that the maximum? What bad thing will happen if players 3bet more than 6.9 percent?

Another sentence from the intro isn't making sense to me:

"if you are against someone who will often be beaten, it makes no difference if you know he almost never bluffs. Hence, if he bets, you should almost always fold."

1. If he almost never bluffs, how will he "often be beaten"?

2. Why should we fold to him if he's "often beaten"?

What are we talking about when we say "often beaten" Often beaten by what? How does someone who almost never bluffs, get beaten often? Do they mean in the long term?

Obviously I'm completely misinterpreting that sentence, but can someone please explain?

Slicks, a part of the time suited also, are playable mainly when not dominated too often, like in lhe but suited hands are a bit better in nlh, and the unsuited hands a bit worse.

Suited connectors and such level pocket pairs are up to always dominated but they have implied value and maybe one pair is worth enough vs. some and if not, greater implied or muck, and vs. some both the one pair and implied are better.

Vs. a 3b. Some high value and some other value looks good enough for me, like in plo, and the other value in theory isnt there w kt, but in practice the op might cbet once or not at all and one knows it more or less. The high value w 97s is there .. or then the op 3b xt x9s plus exactly .. and a low flop or board isnt as coordinated as w 75s 2p. 22 is fine in many low flops.

Bump. Hopefully someone can answer my questions..

I'm no expert by any means, but I'll give a shot to these particular questions.
Basically Janda is trying to compute GTO frequencies for the different ranges. So after his calculations comes up with a 3-betting frequency of 6.9 percent, he is saying that raising that amount is unexploitable. And therefore, raising a higher percentage than that leaves you open to the possibility of being exploited.



It's not too hard to understand your confusion on this one. I'll try to work in an example that may help. Let's say your opponent's range on the river is 98% air and 2% nuts. That would mean that he is 'often beaten'. But if 'he almost never bluffs', and he happens to be betting into you this particular time, you have to put him on the small part of his range that is nutted and 'you should almost always fold'.

Hope this helps.

Yeah I understand a bit better now. Thanks man. So for the first part about 3betting, he's saying if you 3bet more or less than the optimal amount, people will be able to tell and then exploit you. I guess that's the whole point of GTO, staying within optimal ranges/percentages so people can't exploit. At least that's my basic understanding.

I think the second part is just bad English. It should be written as "Similarly, it doesn't matter if you are against someone who will often be beaten when you know he almost never bluffs."

The way it is written now, I thought the "it makes no difference" part was referencing the "if you know he almost never bluffs" part of the sentence when it's really referencing the "if you are against someone who will often be beaten" part of the sentence.

Hi,Matt
can you explain how to distribution each position cold calling ranges，I mean,at page 82,MP,CO,BTN,SB,BB cold calling range percentage is different,If there are any laws?
if I want building my full ring calling range,how do i distribution percentage at each position.

hej,

Finally i bought this book to get a bit of an understanding of gto and exploitative play.
Know i am not getting those parts:

On the flop and turn we’ll need to defend
wider if we call rather than just raise since our opponent gets
to see an additional card

What does this mean? Could someone explain it to me in other words.

Also why would it be a good idea to play gto when you would not win anything but will be break even against a reg and against a fish??
Wouldt you better adjust and readjust and play exploitative?

Unfortunately i cant edit.

Also i dont understand this calculations:

Minimum EV of our opponent’s air on flop:
(0.566)[(8)(0.503) − (6)(0.497)] = 0.59 big blinds

For example.
49.7 is the check defending range
But why multiply it with 6 and the rest with 8??

Also some times he has a range which check/folds 100 % - this couldnt be gto ??

I’ve been rereading your book and it’s excellent. I highly recommend it to anyone who plays NL, any game type. Will definitely improve your decision-making.

I have a few questions regarding the thinking behind putting the correct hands in the correct ranges.

Say the CO opens and the BB defends, and you’re 100BBs deep.

Flop: K87

Obviously QT is a great candidate betting hand. It retains its equity well and gains a lot of value when the BB folds. Ditto for JTs and A9s with backdoor flush combos.

My question concerns the in-between hands, some might say the showdown hands.

Of the following, which would you most likely bet?

QQ
TT
AQ
66

I ran a few simulations and found the following facts:

AQ gains the most from getting folds and it retains its equity well. I’ve heard arguments for checking this hand though to get to showdown.

QQ is a favorite when called (~52% equity), but it would hate getting check-raised and can extract value on the turn or river on most runouts, and the check may induce a wider payoff range from the BB. It probably can’t bet three streets, so the flop might be a good spot to check it back. Also, QQ doesn’t benefit that much from folding out the BB’s check-folding hands.

TT has significantly less equity than QQ does against the BB’s check-calling range (my estimations led to ~43%). But the BB’s check-folding range has 17% equity against TT, which isn’t anything to sneeze at, and it can barrel on some turns.

The 66 I threw in for fun just to hear your thoughts.

Besides equity retention and the value of folding out the BB’s check-folding hands, what ideas or concepts do you consider when making decisions with these in-between/showdown hand types? I’m not often playing against world beaters, so any exploitive tips would be appreciated as well.

From what you guys just posted (don't have the book in front of me) it looks like you're right. Thanks for catching that and sorry about the confusion.

It's somewhere else in this giant thread (don't remember where) but I would go with PokerSnowie ranges over my pre-flop ranges. Just remember PokerSnowie is pretty restricted in it's bet-sizing so some of it's 3-betting or 4-betting sizes might seem a bit off (and it's ranges have been built around that bet sizing which you might not use).

I don't even have those ranges anymore as I constantly tweak them.

What page is this on? Is the in the intro I wrote or 2+2's thoughts?

Definitely would go with Snowie here. People play quite a bit different (better) than they did when I wrote that book. Most noticeably people call 3-bets and 4-bets a lot more and squeeze more aggressively.

A few things to note when using Snowie's pre-flop ranges:

#1) It assumes a pretty small open sizing from UTG/MP, so the BB will often come along. If you're against a wide BB calling range, hands like ATo become better than hands like 76s. My guess is that's why you see Snowie emphasize opening UTG/MP with some hands that have a lot of very non-robust equity (because it thinks it'll often be playing against a week BB range).

#2) Snowie is not much of a fan of flatting in the SB, especially if the BB will often squeeze (much more common vs a BTN open than UTG open).

#3) Snowie is pretty comfortable flatting 3-bets and 4-bets, especially against small 3-bets and 4-bets.

#4) If you make a FR range, think about the opening size your using and whether or not that will encourage you to emphasize robust or non-robust equity (so based on whether you min-raise or open to 3x may change if a hand like KQo or 76s is better for example, but that's just me guessing).

Hope that helps

It means raising makes the opponent fold some percentage of his range so he doesn't get to realize the equity of that part of his range.

Imagine you are opening on the button and I'm in the big blind. What is going to punish you more if I 3-bet you aggressively or call aggressively? If I call a bunch you're getting to realize all the equity on the weakest hands in your button opening range (let's say A2o or J4s). So, if I want to keep you from opening the button all willy nilly with a super wide range then I'll need to 3-bet aggressively rather than call aggressively since calling doesn't ever blast you off any equity.

The same concept applies post-flop. If I raise it punishes you for betting widely much more severely than calling does.

Playing GTO would crush everyone including HSNL regs and super donks alike. It doesn't break even.

The 8 and the 6 deal with the pot size and the bet size.

Much more likely to bet AcQc by a wide margin as it's equity is pretty robust and it can double/triple barrel like a boss (you will probably get some run-outs that let you overbet the river pretty comfortably in practice). I don't think the AQ showdown value here is all that great that I mind mostly throwing it away by betting.

I would not bet any of the pairs. If I had to bet one it'd be TT though as it seems to accomplish a mix of both getting "value" (villain calls 7x, 6x, 99 and 88) and pushing villain off equity the best of the two (it should make a good chunk of AQ, AJ, QJ combos fold which all have a lot of equity).