PM me your email and I'll send it to you.

Questions are of course fine, but try to post them in the proper place (so here if they are book related questions or on CardRunners if they are video related questions). I typically won't answer poker questions over email and just ask they be posted somewhere.

Why is that so?

Would you 4b TT-JJ\KQs+ here?

I`d probably 4b QQ\AK here (but won`t feel too good about it), 4b AA\KK (and feel good), and call or fold TT-JJ\AQs depending on opponents.

You can sort of get away with that strategy in the micros, but it's really unbalanced and turns your hands face up. If you only cold 4-bet QQ+, and you cold-call 3-bets with JJ/TT, it's pretty easy to play against you. By 4-betting all your playable range, you should increase the EV of everything in it.

Long story short there are sometimes thresholds when a bet gets so big (relative to your stack) you have no calling range.

Not saying you never call a 3-bet cold and you can't in your situation, just in general that's a good way to look at it. So sometimes if you face a big enough bet no hand in your range will be most +EV by calling and you'll either raise or fold. Obv as bets gets smaller your strat will often become callcallcallcallcallcallcallcallcallcallcallcallca llcallcallcallcallcallcallcallcallcallcallcallcall callcallcallcallcallcallcallcallcallcallcallcallca llcallcallcallcall with good but not amazing hands.

At low stakes do you ever have a cold call 4 bet range and what does your cold call 3B range IP look like? The math all makes sense to me now but I'm struggling a little with constructing the calling range, now even sure my raising ranges are correct but I think I have them down. Also best hands to use as a bluff component of 3B range? I see the ranges given in the book but I've heard doubts about them, although I'm sure they're sufficient to an extent at low stakes.

Also based on the max 3B% is it profitable to open ATC from SB if BB's resteal % is less than 30%? I know I should be looking at his FTS% also but hmmm... *not sure*

Page 46-47

'A raise first in of 15 percent is arond what many players use for an UTG open, and the inability to 3-bet and 5-bet AKo for value against an UTG open in 6 max is consistent with the theory from 'max 3 bet ranges'.

Could someone clear up how it's consistent please? I thought the value component of the 3b range vs UTG open (15%) includes AKo (2.76%)

I would recommend you try not look at raises or bets as "value bets" or "bluffs" unless you are on the river or have a very, very polarized range. AKo is just a hand you 3-bet because you want to deny equity and make the pot bigger in case you win (and AK is of course quite strong).

in regards to the above: wouldn't any hand have those capabilities? we always want to deny equity(maybe not always?) And, any hand can win, in regards to "making the pot bigger."

so in this instance, is it problematic or wrong to replace ak with 49? why?

You're exactly right, but it's not a binary thing. So take AK 3-betting in the BB against a CO open. It's both really, really good at denying equity (the average hand we make fold probably has 40% equity or so and position) and even if we make our opponents range much stronger since he folds his weakest hands, our hand is still very strong against his calling range as we're still always drawing to the best possible pair and kicker.

3-betting 49o in this spot also denies lots of equity (it denies more than AK), but now you've made the pot bigger and your opponents range stronger and 49o isn't going to play well OOP against a strong range (i.e. it won't win very often, especially if the pot is big). So the net result is 49o probably isn't (spoiler alert: it definitely isn't) a good 3-bet.

Usually you'll need to be able to both deny equity pretty effectively (which just about every hand does) as well as win a big pot reasonably often to make 3-betting good. Hands like AK, QQ, 65s, etc all accomplish both tasks pretty well, which is why they're often 3-bets. A hand like AJs can also be correct to 3-bet since it can accomplish both tasks pretty well in some spots, but that hand clearly won't fit nicely into a category of "value 3-bet" or "3-bet bluff" (like QQ and 65s do) so that's why I just try to avoid the term now.

Do you think the best route to take is to use suited connectors when villain calls too often and using blocker hands with one high hard like K2s when they're not calling enough?

I can't remember the last time I cold-called a 4-bet (it would presumably have been when someone 3-bet jammed in front of me and I had KK+) and I don't make a habit of cold-calling 3-bets either. Most of the time when I'm pressing the CALL button pre-flop, I'm in the BB, or flatting a 3-bet in position, so I'm closing the action.
My pre-flop strategy is closely modeled on what Snowie suggests. The free pre-flop advisor app (google it) is good if you want to improve your pre-flop play.

On a slight tangent, nice work on the HEM SnowieApp videos, Matthew. Very nicely done.

Thanks to Matthew for replying, didn't spot that earlier.

Is there a kindle version of this book?

The magazine forum thinks like that vs small blind. It being crap to 3b crap as their ev goes down against a call range and then one has crap in a big pot. But if the op folds often enough, it should be good enough. You will see it in practice.

Not sure about ak against even late open, it depending on op and positions. But at least it wont make the ops call range too strong in many cases. Qq is better in a way as it can be an overpair, but one can think it a bit.

Hi JYamada:

There used to be and we'll try to get it back up on Amazon. Every now and then Amazon will drop one of our titles from the kindles, and now that we know this one has disappeared we'll contact them to get it back.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi Matthew,

What's more important on the river that I bet 70% or that my
value to bluff ratio is correct?

Because sometimes I don't have enough value hands on the river.

And if I don't have enough value hands on the river I can choose
for a correct value to bluff ratio but then I only bet around 45%.

Or I can choose to bet 70% but then I have more bluff in my range.

Or I can even lower the number of bluffs on the flop but then my bet
percentage on the flop gets lower. But I prefer to bet ~70% on the flop.

You definitely don't need to bet 70% of the time on the river. That was just from a model with a very specific situation. It depends entirely on your range, your bet sizing on previous streets, and the previous action.

Betting 70% of the time on the flop is going to be a big leak if you are playing OOP against good opponents or playing multiway often. But if you're not and you can exploit your opponents, by all means bet 70% of the time on the flop and don't worry at all about balance on the river.

Later

In that case, if we play vs good opp OOP ow multiway, what's the bet size you suggest on the flop?

Hi Matt. I had a question for you about dealing with flop raises.

I have a hard time constructing ranges for defending vs. flop raises where our betting range is 2:1 bluffs or more. I won't often have a 3betting range, and if I do it's fairly small, so that means b/c with a pretty significant number of bluffs.

Although we will usually have at least a few bluffs that have some kind of showdown value and can bluff catch, when we are oop, those hands will lose a significant % of the time even to random garbage. We will do a little better with those types of hands in position, but they will also more often be better to check in the first place.

Just wondering if you had any thoughts specifically about this segment of our flop betting range. Sorry if this is already discussed somewhere and I missed it, and thanks for all the time you've spent answering questions.

I think you want to remember the 2:1 ratio comes from a model and it's not going to work that well when you aren't particularly polarized. While flop raising ranges are often (but not always) really polarized, flop betting usually ranges aren't.

For example if you bet as button vs BB on a Q83r board, I would think you're bet/calling all your queens, all your eights (and you probably bet J8+ or so on the flop, depending on how big you bet), TT and 99, and most if not all your gutshots.

When OOP, you probably shouldn't be betting all that often in theory. I know in Applications I recommended a really low CB frequency when CO vs button (for the time when the book came out), but if you look at PokerSnowie the CB frequency it uses in these positions is often much lower. So you don't want to bet too frequently against someone good or you will have trouble defending your flop bets.

I was curious so I just checked, PokerSnowie only CB 20% of the time CO vs btn on Q83r. I didn't dig deeper, but if you CB at that low of frequency, I don't imagine it's too hard to bet/call your AQ/KQ and your gutters with BDFD (which almost all your gutshots will be). Then you can fold some of your weaker stuff.

Hopefully that helps, but if not it might be better if you ask me a specific board/situatoin as I'm not sure what boards are giving you trouble.

There's lots of different sizings I'd use on the flop. It's pretty common on some flops for me to bet between 40%-100% on the flop depending on what I have.

There are spots where I'd only bet small or not at all (say you are OOP multiway on a 994 board), but it really depends on the board texture, stack depth, how many players are left, etc. I don't have a "go to" sizing.

Great book! Bought it a couple of months ago and I'm going to re-read it soon i thought.
Is there some part of the Preflop-part of the book i should ignore that is way wrong? ( The charts i think you have commented on for example)

How important is it to consider blockers after the flop?

When is it most important ?

Blockers can be pretty important for river calls and such.

Like if you're debating between "bluff catching" with hand like K4 vs QQ on a K9322 board, the K4 blocks about 1/3 of the top pair hands which is likely a big deal.

I think blockers are kinda hard though and not something I'd recommend worrying too much about until you're already quite good.