I did not do a SB vs BB 3-betting range as I felt like I didn't know what it looked like at the time of writing the pre-flop section.

I am glad you like the book but I think the pre-flop section is the worst section. As others have already pointed out (TY btw Game Theory Man) you should check out post 62.

I will make it my goal to make a SB vs BB range and post it here sometime over the summer. I'll make it detailed so you can use the same methodology to make other ranges if you'd like.

That would be great, thanks!

Hi,

warning : those questions might be non-sense

1- Would using the strategy outlined in the book result in having positive non-showdown winnings or not ?

2- If 6 GTO bots are playing in a 6max game, assuming no rake, are they all going to break-even both at SDV and NSDV ?
If there is rake, are they going to lose at SDV or NSDV or both equally ?

thanks !

To answer the 2nd question, if 6 GTO Bots were all playing the exact same strategy in a rakeless game they would all have a slightly losing NSDV line and slightly winning SDV line. This is because of multiway pots when one player puts money in and then folds and the hand gets to showdown between the remaining players. It counts as a negative on the red line for the player who folded early but that winnings goes towards the blue line of the player who wins at showdown..

this

would be nice to see You playing

I am playing now (at least for the summer) and vids are coming out for CR.

We'll see how it goes though. I tend to think live play videos are weaker than powerpoint videos, but there will at least be a couple coming out over the next few months

Thanks for answering the question as I didn't know the answer.

Unfortunately I also don't know what the SD or non-SD winnings would be for the "strategy outlined in this book," but I'm not even sure what that strategy is or what limits and games you're talking about. So my guess is the answer would at least be "it depends."

On the river do you bet or raise for value when you expect to be good >50% when called?

If I'm in position and there's no additional stack depth (so I'm jamming all-in) then yes.

"An Optimal Player Always Takes the Most +EV Line"

This section doesn't make sense to me. An EV line is with respect to an opponents particular strategy. As an opponents strategy changes, the EV of a line of ours changes. But a player playing GTO doesn't care what the opponents strategy is and doesn't change their strategy. As in, a GTO strategy should make absolutely no reference to EV since it makes absolutely no reference to an opponents strategy and without knowing that EV isn't computable nor even a coherent concept. This is the opposite of playing maximally exploitative, where one chooses the most +EV line given the opponents exploitable strategy.

Then in the second paragraph, Matthew rejects the idea that an optimal player will take a line with lower EV because it helps other parts of their range play more profitably. I think such a thing can be true. As in, we are employing an optimal strategy. If we change that strategy in some way, some spots will make more money against a given opponent strategy and some will make less. Or alternatively, moving from an exploitable strategy to an optimal one, some spots will make less money but more in others against others.

For instance, suppose I open shove every hand. For most opponents we can think they will end up calling wider than normal. Well this strategy means having AA is massively +EV, but of course for most other hands massively -EV. So I instead play GTO instead, I am making less money with AA than I would be if I did this strategy, but I'm making more over all because the open shove strategy is obvious horrible.

Now you could point out that this analysis is based on an assumption about the opponents strategy (for instance, that they will start calling our open shoves wide) which a GTO player wouldn't care about. True enough, so my first point is that paragraph just doesn't make sense since we can't talk about EV. But if we DID fix an opponents strategy and thus could talk about EV, then the paragraph would make sense but would be wrong, imo. Or am I just confusing myself?

The point of that statement is you are never taking a line with a lower EV for "balance" (many people used to think you should do this and recommended bluffing even if it was -EV to make value hands more +EV). Basically, the "balance" you see a GTO player play is a byproduct of always taking the line with the highest expectation.

You are correct a GTO strategy won't always be the most winning strategy against every possible type of opponent.

Everyone I know that talks poker theory is constantly talking about EV as well as the opponent's strategy and possible counter-strategy. If we don't talk about these things then I think poker theory won't be very useful. Honestly, I don't even see how it'd be possible to talk about poker theory or GTO without having some idea of the different EV of different lines (even if they're estimations) or some idea of how the opponent should play.

Thanks for your thoughtful response.
I'm not following, sorry.

I feel like the "mistake", is that what we ought to be doing is comparing different strategies, NOT comparing individual spots in that strategy. The claim is we are trying to approximate a total GTO strategy and claim that this strategy is not beatable. It is tempting to say that GTO strategy is taking the most +EV line in any spot, as you suggest, but this isn't true. If one fixes an unchanging opponent strategy this is the definition of the maximally exploitive counterstrategy, but it is not the definition of the GTO strategy.

The basic reason is that when we do GTO, the opponent's strategy is not fixed, and is allowed to vary. In particular, it can adjust to what we do. So speaking about taking the maximally +EV line in any spot just doesn't make sense because to compute that we need to know the opponents strategy, and the opponents strategy depends on what we do in other spots as they are allowed to adjust.

I think my example still applies where we open shove everything pre. With that strategy, villian will adjust by calling with the top x% of hands by equity. So open shoving with AA is massively +EV, given our strategy. But if we fold everything and open shove with AA, then villian adjusts by folding everything but AA. And so open shoving has an EV of 0, given our strategy. So we can't just say we are taking the maximally +EV line in every spot, because what the maximally +EV line is depends on the villian's counterstrategy which depends on how we play the other hands. As in, we have to take it as a strategy holistically.

I'm sorry, I still don't see why this is wrong. If we change from strategy A to strategy B, some lines will go up in EV (against "standard" villian counter strategies) and some will go down. We ask whether strategy A or strategy B is more profitable, but there can certainly be trade offs where different components within the larger strategy go up or down but that the net effect is positive.

Sure fair enough. The way I think about it is that in order to discover something that is close to GTO, we need to give our opponents various strategies and then we can compute EV against those strategies to shape our GTO approximation, even if a priori GTO solution is blind to an opponents strategy and thus can't make any mention of EV. It would just strike me as weird to try and define GTO as that which maxes EV in every spot.

uke, seems like you're not clear on this: GTO plays the most +EV strategy against villain who also plays GTO, i.e. it maximizes against GTO (and GTO only). Against other strategies, it's not the _most_ +EV thing you could do, but if you don't know villain's actual strategy, it's still a winning strategy in poker (barring position asymmetries).

I agree completely, in particular, if the title was "an optimal player always takes the most plus EV line against another optimal player" I would agree. Maybe that is meant to be implied...

Yeah sorry if that was not clear. I think one of the most difficult things about writing the book was trying to not make things out to be too wordy yet still being very clear so no one gets confused. For someone like yourself who seems like he already understands GTO conceptually well I can see why that'd be confusing, whereas others hopefully just took the main message I was trying to get across as already explained.

Let me know if anything is still confusing or unclear.

Here is a link to an article which explains some of the SB vs BB ranges I'm currently using:

http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/i...ker-ranges.php

Here's a link to a thread with a question about said article:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/42.../#post43872411

I found sone of the ideas in this book really interesting, do you think it is relevant for tournaments? Im focusing in MTT's and I don't want to blend my focus with cash right now.

Matthew,

I have a question about balancing narrow ranges in 3bet pots which usually occurs when 3betting from MP, CO or BTN. Let's use the narrowest range that you give in your book as an example. We 3bet IP v a decent UTG player with a range of KK+ AKs AJo KQo A5-4s for a total of 48 combos.

We face the following scenario - AK2 2-tone. I guess the natural inclination is to X back KQo/ AJo, A5-4s but what would we use as bluffs then? We have a range advantage here so do we just bet small with our whole range? I do not play Full Ring, but I guess that if we open a tight enough range UTG we simply won't have enough bluffs to 3barell on certain boards even in single-raised pots so if we wanted to do it while remaining balanced we would have to turn our pocket pairs into bluffs. Do we need to turn hands with good equity into bluffs despite them being profitable X back candidates? I understand that it does not make any sense to 'sacrifice' the EV of one hand for the sake of whole range so I just wonder how this works out in spots with tight ranges. Can we somehow solve this with different bet sizing?

Also, I have another question about single-raised pots. We raise on the BTN and the BB flats. The flop is 722r or some other dry board which gives us a clear advantage. Let's say that we opt to cbet our whole range, even high aces for the sake of simplicity, for some small sizing. Do we then proceed to play turn with a much smaller range, simply giving up a big portion of our worst stabs without any need to unload them as bluffs (since our value range is limited) because it will be so difficult for the villain to defend flop with the high enough frequency?

Obviously, these spots do not occur frequently and might be rather insignificant but I just want to understand the theory behind it.

I have a question about the PF hand chart.

The UTG opening range includes suited connectors down to 65s. When facing a 3-bet from an IP bettor, though, hands like T9s are missing from both the 3-bet flatting range and 4-betting range while 98s is in the 4-betting range. How does it make sense to fold T9s while 4-betting 98s?

Any MTT's player can answer this please?

My big blind winrate is terrible and I already have your book. I like how it is written but I have trouble constructing ranges. I watched an insane amount of videos on other sites, got coaching, but still that big blind winrate is horrible. I fold too much vs minopens, 2.5x opens, 3x opens from button, I fold too much to cbets, 2barrels, etc. I just know this is true (from coaches and analyzing), but still when I try to loosen up I end up spewing it feels. Would you say that getting a Cardrunners subscription for your blind play series is the way to go or should I make progress with your book already?

*I realize this question is a bit vague but cliffs: I am desperate because I suck with wide ranges. SB and Button winrate are lolbad too... Figured maybe you can help me.

I'm by no means an expert but I can tell you that personally I feel this book helped my tournament game a lot. For most stages the principles of this book applies, but the lower the effective stacks the more you have to adjust. For example if you have 25bb stack you still want to use the right frequencies to fold, check/call, and bet/raise (with the appropriate value to bluff ratios), but many times you are only going to need to figure that out for only 1 or 2 streets. If effective stacks are going to be all in on the turn you probably want a value to bluff 3b flop ratio closer to 1:1 rather than 1:2 (perhaps Mr. Janda could confirm that for me). If you have 10BB you have no fold equity so you won't have a 3b bluffing range and perhaps not a calling range either, only a folding and shoving range. What I can say for sure is that this book helped me play better post flop, and it helped me spot and exploit holes in my opponent's game. If someone shows down something funky and I was paying attention to the hand, I'm be better now at making assumptions about his range in other situations.

The stages where this book doesn't apply (at least without more math) are bubble spots and final table pay jumps. In the book it says generally you want to have a value:bluff ratio on the river of 2:1, but after factoring in ICM considerations that ratio will probably go to effectively never in certain situations (an example would be if you are against the big stack and there are 6 short stacks almost ready to bust out). You probably don't want to value bet nearly as light in many spots as you otherwise would since the danger of re-opening the betting is so much greater (the consequence of it happening, not necessarily the frequency).

The new BB vs. BU 3-betting Range from Post #62 is missing.
Can you or anyone else please upload it again?
Thanks!

Matt, thanks for this book. I've spent quite some time on it and it's easily one of my two favourite poker books ever, the other being Tommy Angelo's book. I have a question regarding preflop ranges. How did you come up with the percentage you're opening in each position, e.g. 13.9% openraise UTG, etc? I've been intuitively using very similar ranges, slightly looser but I also make it a bit smaller preflop. I'm currently overhauling my preflop game and would like to check back those things. I would like to know whether there was some kind of methodology you were using to come up with these ranges, similar to what you talk about in the Complex Ranges chapter p.54 onwards, or whether you were just using ranges that you thought were common and reasonable. Thanks!