Hi Matthew,

Great book, it's really turning my game upside down for the better!

I'm also looking at ways to translate what i've learnt into the tournaments that I occasionally play, as the stacks are much more shallow I have been looking at some of the points you touched upon in Part 13 (i know you deliberately don't go into huge depth on this).

Firstly, in part 13 you offer a turn and river value:bluff ratio, but not on the flop. Why is that? (sorry if its obvious).

Have you read Ed Millers latest book? Any thoughts?
He references your work several times and appears to offer a simplified version of some of the things you discuss.

He advocates a 70% (very rough estimate) cbet range on average. Looking at your chapters on this subject it seems you often cbet less often (in position)?

In tournaments, as the value:bluff ratios are more value heavy on turn and river the shallower we get, is it often the case that we need to cbet less often than we would with 100bb stacks on the flop?

Or should we just have stronger preflop ranges so that we are cbetting the required % of times? Or maybe just get it in lighter?

Hope all of that makes sense? As you can see, i'm a little bit lost when it comes to this.

It seems like you're emphasizing absolute equity too much rather than the quality of your equity. For example, ace high hands often have a lot of equity but are often folds, whereas gutshots with backdoor flush draws don't have much equity but they're usually quite profitable hands.

You also need to remember you're almost always getting a very good price to call a bet, so hoping to have an "equally strong" hand and folding if you do not is going to result in your folding some very profitable hands.

I don't think your flop betting range should be all that polarized on the flop in many spots (for example, if you open the button and BB calls, I think you're not going to be very polarized when you CB on a Th 8c 5c flop).

If you really are betting very polarized ranges then yeah you can probably figure out how big you should bet on the flop based on how often you bet on the turn, but I don't think that's the best way to go about trying to find a good strategy. You also should be pretty willing to adjust your turn and river bet sizing based on the actual turn and river card (if your range is really polarized on the turn and river overbetting will often be very good, but your range won't always remain polarized after the next card comes).

These are REALLY good questions, but they're really hard for met to answer them well as they deserve pretty long discussions.

I have not read Ed Miller's book unfortunately.

The book discusses the flop value betting to bluffing ration with a polarized range. I think for pot sized bets on each street with a perfectly polarized range it was (2/3)(2/3)(2/3) = 8/29 or 27.5% value bets on the flop. But you of course won't have a perfectly polarized range on the flop ever.

Your CBet range should fluctuate greatly based on positions (For example, I would CB a much higher % if I open button and BB calls than if I open CO and BTN calls).

When stack sizes are more shallow you must bluff less if you are betting with a perfectly polarized range. There can be a long discussion here as I'm not saying your CB % should necessarily be less as other variables may change (bet sizing, types of hands bet, etc).

Pre-flop ranges should be quite a bit different for tournaments especially as stack sizes get shallow and/or antes are involved.

Hope that helps.

I'm pretty confused by what you're asking so if this so if it's still bothering you you'll have to clarify a bit.

Thanks for your reply. I'm pleased you feel they are good questions and your answers give me some guidance to dig a little deeper. I really appreciate it.

If you know of any CardRunners videos (or other site, if you can say) or articles/books which cover this I'd be grateful of the advice.

Better yet, feel free to write a book or make a video yourself! haha ;-)

Do you think CR-Ev would be a good way to play around with this? I've seen very little of it being used for tournaments...

Hi Matt,

Finished reading the book, which was good btw, this helped me understand a more balanced or GTO approach without me getting overly confused like I usually do. I found the last hand analysis part really helpful, a fitting conclusion to the book as it brings everything together.

How would you suggest taking what we learnt and applying it to the tables? I ask because, it would prolly take me 30 minutes to for me to look at a flop and write out a balanced combos for each street like you illustrated at the end of your book. 30 minutes is a long time compared to some 30 or so seconds we have at the tables.

For example on the tables, how can be quickly know how many combos we have OTF where are range is wide, wouldn't it take a long time to count out to 100+ combos? Once we know how many combos we have, I think it becomes easier, as its then a case of just hitting or defending/betting targets and spitting our range as best we can. Also, say, OTF, IP, where we have 150 combos, and we got say, 4 value raise combos, how can we pick 8 bluff combos out of 150?

Lastly, do you recommend any drills or something to do away from the tables? I can see, just picking random flop runouts and then going through ranges over and over and over again would be helpful.

I am just kinda unsure how to go about applying what we learnt in a progressive manner, or maybe I am taking the hand analysis examples too literally.

Thanks,

On page 332 you explain a situation where when out of position on the river and our opponent has us beat 30% of the time. In position we would check back, but OOP we should bet because checking would allow him to bluff 15% of the time. So now he's betting the river with 45% of his range, and has in a sense turned those bluffs into winners since he does so every time he faces us with a bet from a balanced range.

My question is, does the fact that he can "turn those bluffs into winners" on the river, also to apply to our bluff catching situations on the turn? I am familiar with the frequencies we need to call him to keep him indifferent, I'm just confused because when stated this way, it feels like our bluff catching hands will have some sort of reverse implied odds type of effect on the river after calling the turn. In real situations on the turn that aren't all nuts VS do we have to factor this in, when trying to figure out if we are ahead of enough of our opponents range on the turn?

Apologies with my question is not worded very well, I hope my question came across well enough.

Thanks,

Steve

I have a question about the flop section where we talk about going for 1-2 streets of value with some hands. You showed how the math for how often we need to bet these and balance with bluffs is different than a 3 street range.

Does this mean that we should make both:
1. a polarized 3 street bet range with enough bluffs and
2. a polarized 2 street bet range with enough bluffs

Or would this leave us betting too many hands on the flop overall?

Thanks Matthew, I'm really enjoying the book.

what i meant

Hey Matt, I have been having trouble in spots where an opponent will take a polarized line, then check the following street. I tried to generalize the following, would you agree with:

Board is dry, our range is floats/bluffcatchers and some nutted hands.
River doesn't complete anything. - Bet nutted hands, bluff worst of my bluffcatchers at the proper frequency.

Board has some draws, our range is some draws, mostly bluffcatchers, some nutted hands.
River completes something. - Bet completed draws and semi-nutted hands, bet missed draws at the proper frequency.
River doesn't complete anything. - Bet nutted hands, bluff missed draws at the proper frequency.

Board has a lot of draws, our range is half draws and bluffcatchers, very few nutted hands.
River completes everything. - Bet completed draws, bluff draws that missed and bluffcatchers.
River completes something. - Bet completed draws, bluff draws that missed and bluffcatchers.
River doesn't complete anything. - Bet few nutted hands, bluff missed draws at the proper frequency.

On the flip side, as the person taking a polarized line:

Board is dry, our range nuts, air.
River doesn't complete anything. - Bet nutted hands, bluff air at the proper frequency.

Board has some draws, our range nuts, some draws, air.
River completes something. - Bet completed draws and semi-nutted hands, bet missed draws at the proper frequency. Sometimes check/call semi-nutted.
River doesn't complete anything. - Bet nutted hands, bluff air at the proper frequency.

Board has a lot of draws, our our range nuts, draws.
River completes everything. - Bet completed draws, check/call some of them and semi-nutted hands. Bluff missed draws, even if they have a pair.
River completes something. - Bet completed draws and semi-nutted hands, bluff air at the proper frequency. Sometimes check/call semi-nutted.
River doesn't complete anything. - Bet nutted hands, bluff air at the proper frequency.

I'm not 100% sure but i think:

If your opponent is barreling with a polarized range and you are calling down with bluff catchers, then as soon as they check the river you win.

If there are a lot of draws or other middle equity hands in your opponent's betting range, then your opponent isn't betting a polarized range. He'll have a varied range on the river and you should polarize your betting range when he checks to you.

That is true, but mostly on dry flops. Ranges are gonna change when new cards come out.

Hi Matt and 2+2ers! I been reading this thread now for a while so I thought I introduce myself and thank Matt for his Book and vids they are some of the best content I came across as a person trying to learn and improve anyway, I think this is the best place to post this.

I recently quit my job, I saved up a small roll to start playing poker with intentions of trying to play for a living starting at 25/50nl.

I’ve spent the past three weeks studying all of Matt's Vid's on card runners and reading his book I'm still only half way through the book, the reason I'm posting is I decided my learning curve would be much improved if I had study partner/group, that are dedicated to studying the theory behind Matt's book and videos I also like to ask Matt do you do any coaching? so if anyone interested PM over here and I hope to hear back from a few like minded players who be interested in joining me.

If i played GTO as best as humanly possible, would i win at the microstakes? It seems to me its only useful as theory or when playing against an extremely skilled player like you will find at the online nosebleed stakes

CREV seems to benefit people the most that are already very, very good and/or deal with a lot of situations where the pot is already very big relative to stack depth.

I don't think I can remember any NL$200 or lower player ever showing me some CR EV calcs that they thought they benefited a lot from, but I'm sure there out there.

If you're looking for other videos, I always hear very good things about Sauce and Galfond videos (but I'm probably a bit biased). I believe Sauce puts more emphasis on theory than Galfond, but you'll have to make some posts at Run It Once telling them what you're looking for and see if that website looks like a good fit for you (assuming it's within your budget). I also hear very good thing about Tipton's book, especially with regards to poker theory.

It's not really fair for me to say how to best apply this stuff at the tables since I don't play very much and when I did do most of my playing I didn't know most of the stuff in the book. I do think like most things you need to understand concepts first and then with practice you'll learn when and how to apply them.

I don't think there are really any short cuts. It just takes a lot of time and while it's not popular to say but most MSNL+ players on Stars also just happen to be pretty talented and smart.

In some CardRunners videos I talk about how I like to sort of put different types of hands into different groups and I think that can be done pretty easily. For example, if I'm playing HU and I open the button and the flop comes Kd 6d 4h I might do this.....

Group A, Strong Hands (K8+): Bet all non-KK very strong hands. I very rarely slowplay in position as people rarely overbet the following street after I check back, but I think KK is ok to slowplay since it blocks 2/3 of the kings.

Group B, Strong but non-nutted hands which aren't afraid of giving free cards (K7, K5, K3, K2, QQ-JJ): Check these. These hands aren't afraid of giving free cards but can't usually get 3 streets of value and hate getting check-raised. I'll value bet these later usually after I give my opponent the chance to bluff.

Group C, Strong but vulnerable hands (TT-77, most 6X): Bet these now with the intention to mostly check the turn. Mostly.

Group D, Medicore Hands which we'll often be value betting against ourselves if we bet (Most 4x, Most Ace high): Check these, because even though we want to deny our opponent the ability to realize the equity of his weak hands, when we bet these on the flop we're often going to be "value betting" against ourselves. For example, if we bet As4s, our opponent will call us with a many more Kx and 6x which we'll lose to than 4x hands which we'll beat.

Group E, Hands which have robust equity but little showdown value (Qh5h, etc etc): Bet these, blah blah blah more Janda logic.


I can pretty much put hands in like 8 groups on the flop playing HU pretty quickly on most flop textures (some textures you won't have a certain group). This didn't take me very long to learn how to do once I understood the stuff I wrote about in the 2+2 book, but my HU sample is still laughably small so I won't pretend I'm a good HU player or anything. Either way, while playing like this with my **SMALL** HU sample, it seemed to be working very well and I felt very comfortable despite having very little HU experience. It wasn't very hard for me to classify a hand quickly, and I didn't really worry about having too few or too many bluffs (though I tried to be somewhat aware of it) because I'm not at the skill level yet where I really care about that (and honestly I don't think my opponents were near the skill level where that would matter).

So yeah, I think you can do something like that and group hands pretty quickly once you understand what checks and bets are trying to accomplish in different spots, but it's hard for me to tell how hard that is for someone to do who never thought about poker in that way.

Unfortunately I don't really understand. I Think you had me until the second paragraph then you lost me.

Keep in mind river bluffs still break even. It sounds like you may be thinking they auto-win the pot when they do not.*

*They may "auto-win" the pot with some examples in the book where a player isn't bluffing enough so the counter strategy is to always fold, but in reality the player bluffing will not get folds 100% of the time against an optimal opponent (since an optimal opponent will not adjust to someone not bluffing enough)

And even if you do assume a player adjusts and always folds his "bluff catchers" when facing an opponent who is not bluffing enough, this also means the player who is not bluffing enough won't get any additional value from his value bets.

Check out my post (I think 2 posts ago) where I talked about putting hands into different groups when playing HU on the Kd 6d 4h board. You can clearly see which hands I am planning on hopefully betting all three streets (K9+ based on the turn and river card) and which hands are only going to bet two streets max (TT-77, 6x).

While my flop betting range in this HU spot is overall reasonably polarized, it's really not THAT polarized. Nowhere near polarized enough to try to apply a model to or anything.

I would honestly just add less "bluffs" in my flop betting range for each weak value betting hand than I would for each strong value betting hand. You can analyze a few hands to make sure it seems like you're not bluffing significantly too much or too little, but the spot is too complicated to model super well IMO. That will often be the case as betting ranges get less polarized, which they will if you are betting on the flop "for value" with the intention of being unable to bet all three streets.

It's hard for me to comment on posts like this because it depends on your skill level and whether or not general rules like this actually help you.

Example: Betting a "missed draw" might be really bad if the draw has some showdown value and you're blocking the draws in your opponents range.

There are also a few spots where it's hard to even have pure air hands, such as when the river "completes everything." In these spots you might have to end up bluffing some hands that would still make quite profitable checks (if you're in position).

Good post which showcases why models are oversimplifications. They help us understand stuff but real poker is more complicated.

Good luck on trying the pro poker thing. I hope you get the results you want and enjoy it.

It's fine to make a study group here but if it's something personal like coaching related please PM me and if it's specifically CR related please post it on CR.

Also, side note about coaching, while I don't know your financial situation if I were playing that low I would try to use cheap resources (video training sites, books, etc) as well as find guys just excited who want to study with you (which is easy to do at that limit).

I think for just about any realistic situation someone playing GTO would crush everyone.

If you "tried" to play GTO and weren't very good at it then you're probably much better off just playing exploitative. I talked a bit about HU earlier, and note that when I do play HU I sometimes intentionally fold hands that I think are +EV calls in theory because I don't think I'm good enough to play the hands profitably. Playing OOP with T5o is hard and if you don't feel comfortable playing some hands which you think are +EV calls in theory than I would muck them.

I think theory is useful way, way before nosebleed stakes though. I think it's still very useful at NL$200 and possibly even a bit lower, but the more detailed stuff becomes more important as opponents get better.

Sorry let me try to rephrase by asking a different question. I'm confused about the concept of how villains ability to bluff future streets and stop us from realizing all of our equity affects our bluff catching decisions. I've seen the nuts/air VS bluff catcher examples where we call X percent of our range, but I'm still missing by something. In your example on page 332, if we check, villain can bet his 30 percent value, and add 15% bluffs to increase his equity from 30% to 45%. The way I'm thinking about that is, going back to the turn, say we think we have 35% VS villain range neither of us will improve, and he makes a pot sized bet. We can't call even though we have "equity" since there is another street to play and he can add bluffs on the river making us indifferent close to 50% of the time.

Then I think about the fact that our opponents threshold bluffs are break even, and the two ideas seem very contradictory and confusing me to me. I know I'm not processing something pretty simple but I can't put my finger on what it is. Thanks for any help.

Steve

In the chapter "The Mental Block of Betting as the Preflop Raiser" you write on page 184 "So the conclusion is that optimal poker does not care who raised preflop and has the initiative and against strong opponents neither should we"
I'm confused my your statement because I can think of many advantages to having the initiative and being the preflop raiser:
1. Opponent may fold to my bet
2. Allows me to barrel on turn and/or river
3. It is easier to control pot size
4. Easier to bluff
5. More lines available to win the hand
6. I am in control. He must respond to my betting - calling floating - check raises
I would be interested in hearing other comments
PTBob