To deny equity and make the pot bigger incase we win. You should lean more towards chr the weaker your range because that incentivizes your opp to bet at a higher frequency then normal. Does that sound about right?

Also on flops where opp can have say 16+ combos of straights does that then make our chr with sets to weak assuming equities run close to begin with?

Thanks again

Sounds about right. Weaker your range is, the more your checks face a bet, which makes CR strong hands more profitable than leading in BB vs BTN type situations.

The total amount of straights matter less than the frequency he has a straight.

If he opened UTG in 10-max and the flop comes QJT, then yeah the fact that the opener has 16 combos of the nut straight is a huge deal as the range is very tight.

If SB opened and BB called with 1000 total combos, then 16 straight combos matters much less.

Hi guys,

Is professionalpoker.com the recommended source for the ebook? Thing is it appears down right now.

The reviews for Adobe Digital Editions on App Store are pretty woeful and worried I'd be lumbered with an unusable product, but I like the idea of having copies on my 2 phones and PC so would rather not buy from Apple. Can anybody vouch for ADE?

Hi,

Does this book contain an updated preflop section similar to that found in Applications? I really liked how it laid out a blueprint for opening ranges as well as ranges to play based on others raising, such as CO vs UTG, SB vs MP etc. Does it go into the same level of detail in this respect or does it only contain opening ranges?

Thank you

Hello Mr. Janda.

I am a upswing member, and I was watching the video you did with Ryan Fee(stellar job btw, you spoke really fast but I myself am a fast speaker so I respect that).

Just clarification to see if I really understand.. so you discussed and shown that if you want to make a PSB OTR with a perfectly polarized range, after you bet the flop, OTT you can only bet 66% of the time, check 33% of the time, then OTR you can only bet 66% of the time and check 33% of the time. But then later on you say this isnt a practical strategy because we are losing too much EV the 33% of the time we check turn on river?

This would make me conclude that a polarized range is most effective and profitable OTR, and less so OTT and OTF.

is this correct? if not, feel free to correct/make me clarify. Also how much does being IP and OOP as the bettor affect any of this?

Also another question is why does a polarized range vs a range of bluffcatchers always win no matter what as long as the you bluff the right frequency? How come the bluffcatchers can't do anything to win if they can beat the bluffs? How come the bluffcatchers can't make the polarized range lose?

Also wonder this.

It does contain some pre-flop hand ranges, but not to the details that are included in Applications. This is partly because I still recommend PokerSnowie's Pre-flop advisor for anyone who wants pretty straight forward pre-flop advice.

https://www.pokersnowie.com/preflop-advisor.html

When did I say that? It's pretty practical to still check with a perfectly polarized range on the river, and you should do it at some frequency or you'll be bluffing too much.

What I might have said (I honestly don't remember) is that if you have a very polarized range, most players will probably fold to large bets too often. So in reality, if you can have nuts/air on the river and your opponent can only have bluff catchers, you may find you can bluff profitably in reality (whereas in theory the bluff would be break even) so you should bluff too often (i.e. never check).

But again, I don't even remember if I said this or there's some misunderstanding.

It won't always win simply because you'll sometimes be called down when bluffing, regardless of if an optimal opponent would call you or not.

What is true is that if your range is perfectly polarized and you have enough nut type hands, the average EV of your hand can be equal to the money in the pot. So if I'm playing against you and we're on the river and the pot is $100, and I have the nuts 80% of the time and air 20% of the time, I can go all-in for 1 pot-sized bet 100% of the time and you should always fold. So in that case, all my hands have an EV of $100, because you know I'm nutted so often that you should always fold and I always win the pot.

You're of course still free to call me in the above example. But if you do in that case, my average EV will be $200(0.8) - $100(0.2) = $140. So you're better off folding.

Matthew

Loved the book and I've started playing around with a solver lately. Theoretically there's a few things the solver does that I'm trying to get my head around, one of the things being bet sizing on the river.

For example, BTN v BB the solver overbets, the straight (32) on the following board:
A 9 5 4 J

This is after betting range for 1/3 on the flop and 70% pot on the turn.

Now given the flush is on the board (which it overbets 65% and uses a smaller sizing 35%) I struggle to understand why it would overbet 32, given the only things I can see calling that sizing would be hands that beat it.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Why not just look and see what hands are calling the overbet? The solver should show you and that can give you a much better answer than I ever could.

Maybe it thinks not many flush draws call the flop 1/3 and turn 70% PSB so a straight is strong enough to big bet the river?

Good point.

It has it raising nut flushes, calling with others and also calling with some sets, 2 pair and even a few top pair hands.

It appears that only 8% of it's river range is flushes given that is has all the Ax combos so I suppose it has to call wider than just the flush.

Actually given the games I'm in there's a pretty huge exploit available here

If I may add some observations here, the oop solver player doesn't have too many flushes when it is a backdoor flush with flop and turn bets going in. Similar idea is true when it is backdoor straight getting there on the river. Those boards are very unfavorable for OOP player and as such he is susceptible to overbets.

IP player has a lot of those flushes and so the OOP player will frequently use flush blocking kickers to bluff catch with his one pair hands. Which makes over betting a straight a good play. Straights also don't block any pairs on the board that can call. So top set and straight may have similar relative value but top set isn't as good as a straight in terms of extracting additional value.

Mathew, will you donk bet more heads up or multiway.

Why, situations and comments... Please.

Hey Matt, in your book on 217 pages: Denying your opponent’s equity while realizing ours, in a short stack situation you say:

In fact we should keep betting smaller and smaller until we force him to have a check calling range.

1. Does that mean if we give our opponent 3 options is better for 2 option since they should developers a more complex range to defend? (call+raise+fold VS raise+fold)

Does it still work in deep stack? so I have the second question.

2. in a more deep stack like 100bb, SRP BTN vs BB, we are IP. Suppose our opponent is weak, don’t raise us very often unless very strong hands and strong draw, if we continue bet smaller like 25%, I find my opponent raise frequecy became lots more, now they have 3 options on flop, but I think we bet smaller give our opponent a wider raise range can include more bluff, does that a bad situation for us since we range looks more condensed?

Actually I find my opponent often over bluff on river since I use small size on flop face they raise, (some of my opponent don’t know how to bluff, some of them don’t konw how to stop to bluff).

But if our opponent is balance on later streets, Does a good strategy for us to exploit a raise range for our opponent?and if we use this strategy what’s our bet range looks like?

Sorry for so long and bad English : ), hope your response in free time.

This isn't something I can really answer briefly here.

A lot of donk betting depends on ICM/stack depth stuff, but I haven't had the time/desire to really work this out yet.

Always take what you think is the most +EV line. This is basic exploitative poker and you always want to be doing this regardless of what poker theory, PioSOLVER, PokerSnowie, etc tell you is the most GTO line. So, if you think betting bigger than is GTO gets a disproportional amount of folds, then you've found a valuable exploitative bet sizing and you should abuse it.

That said, if your opponent will play a"push or fold" game against your $30 bet, then it doesn't make much sense to bet $50 since by betting $50 you risk more money and effectively increase the amount of dead money in the pot.

In general, the smaller you bet the less polarized your betting range should be and the higher your opponent's raising frequency should be. So finding out that if you bet smaller on the flop villain raises more does not suggest either you or your opponent is doing something wrong. You both may just be playing well.

When will this be available for kindle again?

Hi Matthew

I saw your upswing videos and I have been working on this idea of being perfectly polarized and balanced range on all three streets. Instead of using a PSB I have been using a more realistic bet size of 2/3 pot which results in a 60% betting frequency.

The hand I'm using is Hero is RFI from CO and is called by the BB. flop is 9h Qd 2c. I'm assuming villain has no donking range. Hero has 387 combos in his range and using pencil and paper along with PIO and Upswing postflop methods, i've found a reasonable place for each and every combo. The result is that 55% of Hero's range wants to bet the flop. Of those bets, 34% are for value and 66% are bluffs. I'm trying to work backwards from the river using that 60% x 60% x 60% = 21.6% flop bet concept. These numbers aren't perfect, but 34% is close enough to 21.6% where i'm satisfied with the alignment of my range construction with PIO and the concepts in your video.

I'm getting stuck on the turn, however. Once BB calls this flop bet, there are so many bad turn cards for our hero in the CO according to PIO. Ace, 3 or 4 are the only turn cards that get hero closer to positive equity when comparing ranges. On an Ace, 3 or 4 PIO recommends betting roughly 59% of our turn range. Great! However, on all other turn cards PIO is recommending betting only 40-50% of our range. That is not close enough to 60% IMO and has fallen out of alignment with the concepts in the video.

I realize that you can't just take any range on any board and no matter the runout just bet 60% of the time which is kindof what i'm trying to do. Should I be working backwards from the river and constructing my range backwards? I'm close to understanding this concept I just need some help to get in the end zone.

Thanks for reading

Hi, I understand how to work out Value to bluffing ratios with the same bet sizes across all streets however I am unsure how to do it if i bet different sizes on each street can someone help?

That old school model assumes a perfectly polarized range.

In most poker situations, you won't have a perfectly polarized range. So there's nothing wrong with getting a mediocre turn card and only betting 40% of the time, even if you'd have to bet 60% of the time if your range were perfectly polarized.

Optimal poker uses a lot more checking and check-raising than anyone likely would have thought many years ago.

Hello,

I received the book from mail this week, bought on book depository, and the first 2 chapters have the pages all wrong and upside down. I am sending an image as an example. Who should I contact about this? Really unacceptable and shows lack of professionalism, I blame the publisher obviously.

https://gyazo.com/952a8e85bb7624e8486e11b3a87ecf81