I think there is an error in terminology in the book. I'm currently on Part 2: Preflop Play.

"Defending enough so that the opponent is indifferent to 3-bet bluffing" (the terminology used) is not that same "defending enough so that villain cannot make an immediate profit on his 3-bet bluffs" (the correct terminology for the formulas Matt is using).

This is due to the simple fact that villain's bluffs will have some amount of EV when called.

Consider the following example:

SB opens to 3bb
BB 3-bets to 9bb

Matt would say something like "to make BB indifferent to 3-bet bluffing, we need to defend 1 - 8/(8 + 2) = 1/3 of the time".

When villain is indifferent between 3-bet bluffing and folding, the EV of 3-bet bluffing will be 0, since the EV of folding is 0.

EV(SB 3-bet bluff) = p(BB folds) * (4) + p(BB 4-bets) * (-8) + p(BB calls) * (EV when BB calls)

EV(SB 3-bet bluff) = (2/3) * (4) + p(BB 4-bets) * (-8) + p(BB calls) * (EV when BB calls)

EV(SB 3-bet bluff) = 8/3 + p(BB 4-bets) * (-8) + p(BB calls) * (EV when BB calls)

The maximum value of p(BB 4-bets) is 1/3, which occurs when BB uses a 4-bet or fold strategy and never calls. At this point, SB's EV is in fact 0. However, for any value of p(BB 4-bets) less than 1/3, when we consider that (EV when BB calls) will always be greater than 0 (greater than 0 postflop, greater than -8 for the hand overall), SB's overall EV will also be greater than 0, and therefore he is not indifferent between folding and 3-bet bluffing.

If we are assuming that nobody ever calls 3-bets and only 4-bets or folds, then these two wordings would be equivalent, but that is not explicitly mentioned as far as I've read.

P.S. I suspect this may just be a simplification that is explained later in the book. I apologize if that is the case.

Also, I don't understand this section of the book.

pg 56 Part Two: Preflop Play

#3 Says the blinds cannot defend by 3-betting more than a combined 37.5%. I don't understand where this comes from. Why is he putting restrictions on the blinds' 3-betting frequencies?

I know where the number comes from. BB and SB must defend a combined 62.5% to prevent BTN from being able to profitably open ATC. And 37.5% is simply 1 - 62.5%. However, I do not understand the logical leap that therefore SB and BB cannot 3-bet more than a combined 37.5%

If someone could explain the logic behind this, that would be really helpful.

Thanks

Haha, pretty much.

Anyways, I've pretty much decided that I'm just going to wait until I have time (probably during December) and just make a few really good posts. I don't expect anyone to read a 1000 posts in this thread to find an answer but I also of course don't want to keep answering the same or similar questions.

I'll almost certainly talk about pre-flop stuff in a lot more depth (check out the 2+2 articles for now, I'll talk more about linear 3-betting ranges and 4-betting ranges in December) as well as hopefully some other concepts.

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

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

Woops, I meant to say that BB and SB cannot fold more than 62.5%, not that they have to defend 62.5%

They have to defend 1 - 62.5% = 37.5%

P.196
"More specifically, if we’re constantly check-folding on the flop, then something is probably wrong. We’re either check-folding hands that belong in another range on the flop, or our preflop range is too weak. (The exception to this occurs when calling in the big blind since it often makes sense to call getting a great price even if the flop must often be check-folded.)"

When defending BB vs BUT, with current trends with minraise BUT, you must often defend explosives, leading to the game on the flop with no EV = 0, and it seems to me to play with EV> -1BB. Then here's what happens. With the game 5/10 pfr BUT = 20 cb = 30 and EV = 0
30 * X - 45 (1-X) = 0
X = 45/75 = 60%

And now considering EV> -1BB obtain
30 * X - 45 (1-X) = - 10
75X = 45-10
X = 47%
It turns out that instead of 60% is necessary to protect 47% of the flop.
What do you think?

Ok, let's do this. I'm going to just start with some new pre-flop ranges since people have been asking about them. This is my "default" when I'm playing anonymous tables on Bovada.

Yes, it depends on the opening sizing and stack depth. A lot. That's one of the main problems with hand charts but here we are.

Here are the CO ranges:

CO Open: AA-22,AKo-A9o,KQo-KTo,QJo-QTo,JTo,AKs-A2s,KQs-K4s,QJs-Q8s,JTs-J8s,T9s-T7s,98s-97s,87s-86s,76s-75s,65s-64s,54s (27.9%)

SB 3-Bet vs CO: AA-77,AKo-AQo,KQo,AKs-A8s,A5s-A3s,KQs-KTs,QJs-QTs,JTs,T9s,98s (11.5%)

BB 3-Bet vs CO: AA-99,AKo-AQo,AKs-ATs,A7s-A2s,KQs-KJs,QJs,JTs,T9s,98s,87s,76s,65s,54s (10.6%)

CO POSSIBLY DEFEND vs OOP 3-Bet: AA-22,AKo-AJo,KQo,AKs-A2s,KQs-K9s,QJs-QTs,JTs-J9s,T9s-T8s,98s-97s,87s,76s,65s,54s (17.9%)

Notice if we defend all of the possible defending CO hands we are defending 17.9% / 27.9% = 64.1% of all of our opening range. Exactly how much to defend no one knows, it probably uses a mixed strat, and you should defend more against certain 3-bets than other 3-bets.

It seems weird, but if you look at PokerSnowie, you'll see it's defending all pocket pairs in the CO against a SB 3-bet. That's because (I assume) you get a very good price on your 3-bet call and even if you have 22-44 it's possible you get to showdown and beat AQ/AK hands or find a +EV spot to turn it into a bluff on certain textures. So, it calls with those hands expecting to lose significantly more often than not, but it's hard to lose a big pot with 22 but you can pretty easily win a big pot.

So as I'm looking at my flopzilla ranges that I made over summer, and I'm realizing despite having 26 ranges saved I don't even have any cold calling in position ranges saved in flopzilla. I thought I did, but I don't. There's a few reasons for this:

#1) What you should cold call is going to depend drastically based on opening sizing. If your opponent min-raises, it's a lot easier to cold call in position knowing they'll be more dead money in the pot (relative to what you're risking) than if your opponent opens to 3.5BB.

#2) Stack depth matters a lot. Whether or not a hand like AJo or 76s is better is going to depend on stack depth. It's not all that common (at least on anonymous Bovada) that everyone has exactly 100 big blind stacks.

#3) There are probably mixed strats and it just gets messy for whether or not to call or 3-bet a random hand like AQ, AJ, KQ, etc. I have a good sense of what hands are reasonable to call and since the opening sizing and stack depth can easily swing a hand that's on the cusp from a call, 3-bet, or fold, I must not have felt (when I made my ranges) that the cold calling in position ranges were useful enough to justify making.

So that's why I don't have these ranges. Most hands that you probably feel are "close" probably are and only a small change (like stack depth) can swing it one way or the other. I'll talk about the general defending ranges vs the CO in the next post.

So let's say the CO opens. As you can see from the above posts, in general my ranges look as follows:

#1) The button will use a polarized 3-betting range. That's because I have a cold calling range in the button so it makes sense to mostly call the medium strength stuff that can keep the opponent's dominated hands involved.

For example, I would dislike 3-betting 88 in the BTN against the CO. I think I make my opponent fold 77-22 and suited connectors I dominate too often. I'd rather 3-bet a polarized range which have many strong hands that want to both get value and deny equity (such as AK) and hands that can still improve but want to make the opponent fold hands which dominate me (like A5s, since if I 3-bet it I may make my opponent fold many AXs and ATo/AJo).

#2) I do not flat in the SB, so I use a linear 3-betting range. It's just all the hands that I think are best, even the awkward ones (like 88).

#3) The big blind 3-betting range is again more "polarized" because I have a cold calling range. So, I'm not going to 3-bet something like KJo because I think it has not all that robust of equity (it just makes pretty good pairs) and I don't mind too much keeping my opponent's dominated hands involved (such as K6s). Also unlike when I cold call in the button I can't get squeezed (and getting squeezed is awful, even when I'm at the top of my button cold-calling range).

Now here is the key part. Regardless of what opening size my opponent uses, my 3-betting ranges don't change all that much (they will change some, but not all that much). My cold calling ranges in the big blind, however, change drastically. . So again, I don't have any "default big blind cold calling ranges" saved into my flopzilla because my BB defending strategy is going to change so much based on whether the opponent opens to 3BB or 2.25BB.

If he opens to 3BB, I risk 2BB in the big blind to win (3 + 0.5 + 1) = 4.5. So still pretty awesome odds (a bit better than 2-to-1), but nowhere near as awesome as if he opens smaller.

If he opens to 2.25BB, then I risk 1.25BB to win (2.25 + 0.5 + 1) = 3.75. So I am getting 3-to-1 odds which are pretty much amazing.

So based on the price I'm getting laid in the big blind my cold calling range is going to change a lot. That will impact my 3-betting range some, but mostly it's just going to determine what I do with lots of K7s and Q9s stuff.

If the opponent has no raising range, consider overbetting. That usually happens when the opponent checked or called in position on a wet board and the board texture didn't change on the turn.

So, board is TJ6, your opponent calls a flop bet in position or checks back in position. If the turn is a 2 I would consider having an overbet component in my range.

That said you don't want to overbet everything willy nilly, as if you bet the flop with KJ and your opponent's calling range includes AJ than overbetting KJ is going to be a pretty awful strategy. So you might only want to overbet QQ+ hands "for value" here. But yeah, he's pretty much in an awful spot here when he faces a big bet as you basically got really lucky to get a blank turn which favors your range over his quite a bit.


KQ is probably too thin there for 3 streets, maybe by a lot. Remember betting has to be more +EV than checking. Do you really expect someone to c/c QJ 3 times there? UTG opening ranges are le strong.

If your range gets THAT much stronger than the opponent's, you just bet your entire range. It's pretty uncommon though to have a 100% bet frequency, but it can happen.

You aren't usually going to follow up a turn bet with a river overbet unless the board was very wet and the river was dry (again, ask yourself "Does villain have a raising range on the river?" to give you clues for when to consider overbetting).

You basically want your bets and raises to do some combination of the following:

#1) Allow you to win more money from the pots you win. So, maybe you "bluff raise" AJ on a 854 board and now when you runner-runner a flush or make top pair you win a bigger pot than you would have if you had just called the flop.

#2) You deny your opponent the ability to realize his equity. This happens any time you make your opponent fold a hand with equity.

A good example of a spot to bet for both getting value and denying equity is opening the button with 88 and betting on a K75 flop against the opponent. If he calls with 7x or 5x that's cool, as now the pot is bigger than it'd be if you just both checked down every street. But if he folds QJ that's cool too as that will outdraw you a lot.

So it's just a game of figuring out if you are getting enough "value" and denying of equity with each of your bets to justify betting. If you have a set in position on the flop, then just bet because you have crazy value. If you have 76 in position on a K83, then you bet mostly because you deny crazy equity as every hand in the opponent's range is favored to beat your 7 high (and you also make the pot bigger in case you get lucky to boot).

So, because you bet to both "get value" and "deny equity", it's often easier to justify betting 88 on a K74 flop than it is to justify betting QQ on a K74 flop. Since QQ isn't much afraid of giving free cards but 88 is more scared of giving free cards than a Sony rep screening "The Interview" in North Korea.

As for checking lots out of position, the in position cold caller is so vulnerable to squeezes that the IP calling range needs to do very well against the opening range. Because of this the OOP player usually has to check a lot, since the IP range does well against the OOP range and the OOP player is OOP with a lot of stack depth at play.

There's no way to know how much you "need to defend," you just can't have a contradiction in your thought process. So you can't think villain shouldn't be able to profitably bet 0.5 PSB while simultaneously folding more than 33.3% of your range.

See my above post for picking betting (and raising) hands based on how effectively they get "value" by making the pot bigger as well as how effectively they deny equity. It's very common to bet a hand that wants to both "get value" and to "deny equity" while checking a stronger hand (such as the QQ vs 88 on a K75 board example I keep using).

Whether to bet or check OOP also depends on the overall strength of both ranges, as that determines how often the IP player will bet. In general, it's better to check very strong hands (to either check-call or check-raise) if villains going to be betting a lot and it's better to bet them if villain will be checking a lot. And that depends on the overall strength of both of your ranges.

See my rambling from like 1.5 hours ago. There're too many mixed strategies, ranges change too much based on stack depth and opening sizing, and pre-flop models awfully so the models I used in retrospect are probably pretty bad.

Considering hands "value raises" and "bluff raises" works perfectly when we have 100% or 0% equity and still pretty well when we have like 85% equity and 15% equity (which is close enough in lots of flop or turn spots). But it works pretty poorly when we are pre-flop as there are too many streets left ot act and even "value raises" (like JJ in the BTN against a CO open) might only have like 60-65% equity post-flop, and our "bluff raises" like A8s might have like 40% equity.

No idea, but good poker is good poker and I'd play the same at NL$25 as I would at any other limit. That said, the preflop ranges aren't really good ranges once people start calling 3-bets and 4-bets very regularly so I would not use them. Look at the more recent ranges I just posted (the SB and BB 3-betting range vs a CO open) and get a sense of when linear and polarized 3-betting pre-flop ranges make sense.

It's kind of funny, but the "fish" at NL$25 might actually be playing closer to GTO pre-flop than the regulars. GTO defending frequencies are likely 60%+ of the RFI range, yet most regulars are low limits fold like crazy to 3-bets (because they argue no one 3-bet "bluffs" enough and they don't want to be put in mediocre spots post-flop).

Get a good understanding of how badly it sucks to get raised in just about every spot in poker. Your hand needs to be so, so strong to want to get raised (and pretty damn strong just want to want action in general).

For example, want to guess how strong a hand needs to be to open UTG in 6-max and want action (according to Snowie)? It's QQ+. Yup, even JJ and AK have an opening EV of less than 1.5 big blinds (the dead money). Obviously who knows if Snowie is right, but hopefully you can see how strong hands need to be to "want" value.

The same concept applies when you're 3-betting. If the button opens and I'm in the SB, I'm 3-betting AQ 100% of the time. But I don't want action. I'd prefer he folds. And I definitely don't want to face a 4-bet. But if he does, I'll put on my big boy pants and call even though I strongly dislike the position I'm in. I needed to 3-bet pre-flop both to make the pot bigger in case I win at showdown AND to deny him equity, as even 74s probably has like 35-40% or so equity against my AQ. Now when my opponent 4-bets I'm just going to shrug and call getting often about 3-to-1 odds.

I think the arguments for raising bigger on the button than UTG are correct.

I also think the arguments for having a close to non-existent cold-calling range in the SB vs BTN or CO opens are correct. A SB cold-calling range vs MP (or earlier) positions is probably correct. Getting squeezed sucks and it's a lot easier for a random BB hand to be strong enough to squeeze vs a BTN open and SB call than it is for a random BB hand to be able to squeeze vs a UTG open and SB call.

I don't think Snowie's 3-bet and 4-bet sizing is very good, as the optimal sizing is probably neither 1 PSB or 2 PSB.

Hmm, what are the arguments for raising bigger on the BTN? I'm not super familiar with Snowie so I don't know the reasons that it prefers to raise bigger on the BTN.

Snowie explains nothing for why it does what it does. So this is my own interpretation.

When UTG opens small (like 2.25BB), a random random hand in the BB still will have trouble making a +EV call against an UTG opening range since an UTG open is strong. But since the button opening range is so weak, it's pretty easy for the BB to be able to make a +EV call against a 2.25 BTN open.

I strongly believe min-raising the BTN is awful. I've never liked it but now I think it's really bad. It's just being in the button kicks ass so anything you do will be +EV, so it's hard to realize opening to 2.75BB >>> opening to 2BB. But again, no way to prove it so no one knows for sure.

I would call in the big blind quite a bit wider now than I did in the book since you are getting a great price and can't be squeezed. On that note, I would rarely check-defend more than 60% of the time in the big blind (though sometimes I do). Anyways, I wouldn't worry about someone being able to profitably bet ATC in position against a big blind cold caller. In lots of other spots though letting someone profitably bet ATC is a big no-no and no one should ever (in theory) be able to profitably raise ATC.

The first AT7 board my guess is you are CR too aggressively by a pretty wide margin. Insert typical "but no one really knows" disclosure. But you are check-raising more than half the hands you defend. Also, you probably don't want to consider draws you CR with as either "value" or "bluff," so you probably need to CR bluff less combos as your CR range as it stands is likely too weak.

For the CBetting range, I would have KJo, QJo, and KQo all in the CB range. I dont' remember if I opened all those hands in MP in the book, but either way they'd be in my range now and give me a lot more air combos. I also think that's a board texture that I can overbet on some turn cards (or at least pot it or so) since it's hard for the BB to c/c very strong hands on the flop, so he's pretty screwed on like a 2 turn. Remember, the BB cold-calling range sucks, so it's pretty easy to CB a high frequency vs a BB cold-caller (depends on board texture, but usually higher than 42% and often by quite a lot).

Your defense strategy vs a check-raise looks pretty good at a glance. You'll probably need to widen it some as you CB wider (add in all those gutters) but at a glance it looks very good to me.

It's not a merged range, it's just a linear range (unless merge = linear, since I'm honestly not really sure what merged means). Calling anything in the SB vs a button open probably isn't very good at the BB can squeeze very aggressively vs a button opening and SB cold-call.

Playing a calling range in the SB vs an UTG open is likely fine, however, as it's harder for a random BB hand to be strong enough to squeeze vs an UTG open since the UTG opening range is strong.

Either way, here's what I currently 3-bet in the SB vs a button open:

AA-55,AKo-AJo,KQo-KJo,AKs-A2s,KQs-K9s,QJs-Q9s,JTs-J9s,T9s-T8s,98s,87s,76s (16.9%)

Good point, I think this is definitely explained several times throughout the book, but it should have been clearer right from the start.

If the blinds 3-bet too much, the button will never have a hand that opens and folds to a 3-bet since that will be -EV.

Granted, I can't prove the button shouldn't defend every hand it opens to a 3-bet. But I think most people will agree it's a safe assumption to assume that the button should fold at least it's very weakest hands to a 3-bet annd if that's the case then you can figure out the maximum amount the blinds can 3-bet and still have everything make sense.

As I mentioned previously I think min-raising the BTN is really, really bad. I know it's widely done and it's still super ++++EV since the BTN is just a great spot to be in, but I think a BTN min-raise is much weaker than a 2.5BB open (or bigger).

Whoa, what does the term "defend explosives" mean?

You are correct you are calling with many hands from the BB that only want to lose less money overall for the hand than they would if they just folded pre-flop. So, that results in you having a super weak range vs a BTN min-raise and check-folding a lot on the flop (and still being very much ok with it).

So are you saying we shouldn't have a flatting range in the SB against Btn or CO at all, but its OK to have a tight flatting range against EP/MP?

That is what I'm currently doing, yes. Because it's much easier for the BB to squeeze vs a BTN open and SB call than an UTG open and SB call.

The problem isn't playing the SB call vs the open. The problem is putting in your hard earned cash monies into the pot then getting blasted off your equity without getting to see a flop every time the BB squeezes. And realistically, it's not *that* great playing OOP in the SB vs a BTN or CO open anyways even if the BB doesn't squeeze.

Hence no SB calling range and the SB 3-betting range becomes linear.

Yeah that makes sense.

It's also pretty annoying that when you flat SBv CO/Btn, it becomes a 3 way pot more often than not, because BB is getting such a great price. So I'm totally changing that up in my game.

Also how do you draw the line what hands are you 3b-calling and which 3b-folding. Especially when the 4bet sizes are bigger like 2,4-2,5x?


Btw when's your next video coming up @ CR?