Is there a section in the book that discusses how to design preflop ranges to defend against different stealing ranges?

I'm having a tough time with a reg who opens 70% of buttons and 60% of small blinds, and I'm wondering if this book can help me.

Thanks very much.

This is covered in the preflop part. It is more likely someone opening that wide has trouble defending their opening range enough.

Any special reason why Matthew didn't provide a 3betting range chart for BB vs. SB open? (I have the e-book only)

Also another point on the provided ranges, the following hands show up in multiple ranges both are not mentioned with the * that proves they were intended to be in both ranges.

UTG vs IP 3-bet, AKs in both our 4B and C3B range
BTN 4bet and C3B range both contain A4s-A2s
SB flat vs MP, 3bet vs MP AQs in both
SB vs BB 3bet, C3B T9s and 98s in both ranges
BB vs UTG 3bet, AK non asterix in cold call range, but with asterix in 3bet range

Not trying to nit pick, I understand the book is providing us with theoretical knowledge of the why and how, and the chart is merely an example of what could be good preflop.

Some of my thoughts about how it is practically impossible to balance flop bluff to raising ratio on flop.It's certainly possible to do balance things preflop. IE by picking exact hands (for example 3bet against Utg AA,KK,AKs and picking exact hands for bluffs A2-A7s which would result us having ok ratio in t he long run) but on the flop we can't pick exact hands,cause even if we know our value hands on that specific flop should have 9 value combos for example,and we want aprox.18 bluff combos,Then how can we know in real time hand ,what hands should go into bluff raises?u will have for example 30-40 combos candidates to bluff raise and in real hand u will have only one hand and u cant know if that should go to that 18% bkuff raises or not. Hope you get my point

Another thing concerning your 4Bet ranges vs OOP 3bets:

EP: AA, AJs-ATs, 76s
MP: KK+, 98s, 87s, 76s, 65s
CO: QQ+, AKs, A8s-A5s, 87s, 76s
BTN: KK-JJ, AKs, A5s-A2s, K8s-K4s, Q8s-Q7s, AKo

What's the reason for not including a single blocker in MP and instead adding lots of SC's?

1. pg 35
a. I don't understand where you get 0,03% in the equation
b. and I think there are 3 player left to act, since blinds could 4bet but also OR which is CO

2. pg 36
I don't understand where the 2bb for every 1% equity come from...

3. pg 40
I don't understand how you come up and stated these two sentence below (obv I'm missing something, it's not you that are wrong )
The hand will have a total EV of better than -3.5 big blinds when players respond by calling rather than 3-betting. (Even the weakest hand in an opening range can become a strong hand on the flop.)

I'd recommend reading my previous post as they'll probably answer a lot of questions (including why there's no SB vs BB range).

As for those hands appearing in both ranges without an *, it's just a mistake. There are sooooooooo many mixed strategies pre-flop that honestly I should have just abandoned the * altogether and kept ranges as simple as possible, and likewise it's really important the reader not think these are optimal ranges since actual optimal ranges would be impossible to solve and the hand chart bigger than the entire book.

You'd be surprised at how good some people can get at getting a good ratio of value bets to bluffs on any street (including the flop). It just takes a lot of practice, but after talented players who understand theory well play 1 million+ hands they can make balanced ranges very quickly. That said, no one's perfect, and any sort of ratio that comes from models is just an estimate anyways.

I think all of these questions are already answered in other posts.

I'll look into this when I make my next post about corrections (likely within the next few days, I've been a bit busier than expected recently).

On p.86 CO vs OOP 3bet, is there a specific reason why AQs-ATs is in the calling range and A8-A5s is in the 4bet range, but A9s is in neither range?

No reasonable one that I could imagine, since A9s > A7s I'd say (whereas you can at least argue A5s is better because it can make some straights).

Still very much enjoying this thread, as Im 1/2 way thru the book. I keep watching for this kind of stuff in my live 1/2 game.

I'm halfthrough the book and think it's fantastic, like most of you guys here.

However, That is what Oliver Improva (deuces craced couch) wrote about Applications.

"That book has absolutely nothing to do with GTO and is a waste of time. I was happy when the book got released and people would start shoving A5s and XC with "unexploitable" frequencies.''
I always thought Improva was a smart guy, but this should mean he's very wrong now.His statement should also say that Sauce123 also is also wrong cause he said book is amazing.

pg 69
I'm completely missing an important point here, I got also the same problem at @ pg 41, but let's take a look at pg 69
You said:
When we open to 2.5 big blinds and our opponent 3-betsfrom the big blind to 9.5 big blinds, he risks 8.5 big blinds to win 4 big blinds. And as we’ve already shown, this means the big blind’s 3-bet cannot be allowed to succeed more than 68 percentof the time. Put another way, it’s important to defend at least 32 percent of our opening range.

Suppose Hero is BTN and Villain is BB, why Hero should care about the EV of Villain's 3betting range? I think he should care only about is EV.
What you have calculated is the point where BB is indifferent between 3betting and folding, if Villain wins by 3betting more than 68%, he's better of 3betting. Why BTN should care about that? I done the calculations and there is something strange

-2,5 (x) + 12 ( 1-x) = 0
x = 0,82
BTN should defend 18% of the times ... why you said 32%?

Poker is a zero sum game so obv I must be wrong in my calcs...

The EV of Hero's BTN range is a function of the EV of the Villain's range. If Villain can 3bet 100% of his hands profitably, then obviously we ought not open any hand from the BTN that will not either call or re-raise a 3bet.

This is wrong. Even if 3-betting will show a profit, it may be the case that calling will show a greater profit. And even if Villain wins by 3betting less than 68%, it's still possible for 3betting to be better than folding.

What do the numbers/variables here represent?

Hello,

I am stuck on page 35, just got the book and very eager to learn .)
So it says: "the CO opens to 3,5bb and the BTN 3bets to 10bb. Since the 3bettor needs to fold 66,7% of the time to make instant profit the remaining players must defend a combined total of at least 33,33% (I get that). If each of the blinds cold 4bets 3% and otherwise folds, then the original raiser need to defend at least 29,1%.

(1-x) (1-0,03)^2 = 0,6667
x=0,291

x-is the probability that the original raiser defends and
1-0,03 is the probability that each blinds folds"

So we create the equation to the given situation and we equalize the left side (1-x) (1-0,03)^2 with the 66,7% that is the percentage that is break-even and if the original raiser folds more the 3bettor auto-profits.
We use the (1-x) as a way of saying that is the time that the original raiser does NOT defend to the 3bet. That way we also use the 1-3% for all the time that blinds does not cold 4bet. So when we solve equation we get the 0,291 and this is supposed to be the needed % for original raiser to defend.

I am thinking in a way that if we have to defend 33% vs the btn, when we factor in the probability of blinds cold 4betting our overall defending % should drop. And thats what we get when we solve the equation for given numbers. So when blinds cold 4bet we dont care becouse 3bet has already been defended and when they fold we need to defend 29,1% of the time.

Am I way off here? thans in advance im very noob in this.

Cheers

Well if I'm one of only two players left in the hand, then increasing my EV lowers my opponent's EV and likewise increasing my opponent's EV lowers my EV. So you're right that we only care about taking the most +EV line with our hand every chance we get, but if we open the button and the BB has a massively +EV play by 3-betting that EV had to come from somewhere. Basically, it's impossible for the BB to get very +EV 3-bets with weak hands without making many of our opens -EV.

Hopefully that will clear things up and help pre-flop play make some more sense. If you're still confused me let me know.

I'm a bit confused, but I think you're mostly right and just making things out to be a bit more complicated than they are. All the book is saying is that if we open in the cutoff and the button 3-bets, the fact that the blinds will sometimes help defend against the 3-bet allow us to defend a bit less aggressively than we otherwise would. In other words, even though most of the responsibility for defending against the 3-bet falls on us (since we've already invested money into the pot and have a stronger range than any two cards) we don't need to do all of the defending. So yeah, when the blinds 4-bet then the 3-bet has already been defended against, and when the blinds fold you'll need to defend about 29% of the time if you only defend by 4-betting or folding (in reality you should be calling here as well and defend more aggressively).

He's entitled to his own opinion and I don't think it'd be very professional of me to comment further.

Thanks for quick response Matthew, I get it now.

In addition I think theres a slight mistake on page 37 where you consider 5bet bluffing math. 36,5 = 24 (4bet size) +11 (3bet size) +1,5 (blinds). I think you might have forgotten the 3,5bb preflop open raise size that we are considering in these examples.

So amount of bb we win when he folds to our 5bet:
1,5+3,5+11+24=40

(X)(40) + (1-x)(-26,5)=0
X=0,398

I am just trying to calculate everything you have written and figure out why things are the way they are. Books looking great

Cheers

Don't have the book in front of me now, but the 3.5BB of the open should already counted be counted in the 4-bet size (to 24BB). If you add another 3.5BB you're counting it twice.

But actually this is true ! Look at example 20.2 in TMOP. When the draw comes in on the river, X does not have to call anywhere near the %age needed to make Y's bluffs indifferent because Y has already paid a price to draw on the earlier street. X only needs to make Y's entire strategy indifferent.

What EmptyPromises is (correctly) saying is that all that matters for determining the best line is the current state of the game (each player's range, the stack depth, etc). If you and your opponent are playing heads up and find yourselves in a certain situation, it doesn't matter how you got there the optimal lines will be the same.

What you're saying is poker is a multistreet game so the EV of a line has to take those multiple streets into account. So for example, it's not a big deal if someone can make a profitable bluff if they had to risk money to maybe get the chance to make the bluff. This doesn't contradict what EmptyPromises is saying, you're just looking at it in a different way.

As much as I trust Janda, I would like to read/hear/see a respected HS player's review of this book.