Here we go... a lot of questions though
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A mixed strategy occurs when the EV of two lines is exactly equal. In theory, this is an extremely common occurrence in poker because if a player always takes the same line with the same hand in certain situations he can be exploited. For example, if a player 3-bets all of his AK hands preflop and is called, he’ll have 16 combinations of AK post flop on the 9♣ 5♠ 3♦ flop. If he bets all of his AK hands on the flop, he may be betting too often and his range may consist of so many AK hands that his opponent can exploit him. Likewise, if he checks with all his AK hands, he may not improve often enough on an ace or king turn after having bet the flop. So while there are many other variables at play here, it’s reasonable to entertain the idea that betting sometimes and checking others may be correct. But in order for a mixed strategy of betting and checking the AK to be best, the EV of both lines must be exactly equal or we’d always prefer to take the most profitable line. The concept of mixed strategies and how prevalent they are is often both surprising and confusing to new players. In fact, in many situations, most hands may be part of mixed strategies and only a few hands follow pure strategies (i.e. they always take the same lines)
Disclaimer: I don’t have PIO or any other solver and I didn’t dig in any GTO sotftware and/or teaching video
Although I don’t any GTO background, I’ve seen a lot of PIO screenshots and all of them contains 99% of mixed strategies.
Let’s say PIO says AK is a bet 60% of the times and a check 40%, what does really mean and what we can extrapolate? We should strive to achieve those percentages?
Because I guess the 60%bet/40%check strategy is an equilibrium only if we follow the turn and river strategies accordingly right? What really happens if we bet and check 50/50?
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Why We Bet and Raise
- We bet or raise to make the pot bigger in case we win
- We bet or raise to deny our opponent the ability to realize his equity.
Now Reason No. 1 looks remarkably similar to “we bet for value” and Reason No. 2 looks similar to “we bet as a bluff,” but the small differences matter a tremendous amount. Most notably, the two reasons given for betting or raising are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the best spots to raise or bet will usually be where we’re satisfying both reasons
While I understand what you say I find it a little confusing given what you have written before
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suppose you have the 8♥ 7♥ on the J♥ 7♣ 5♥ board. This hand has a ton of equity, but what part of the equity is robust and what part is non-robust?
Here, the most robust equity component is the flush draw and runner-runner straight draw, whereas the non-robust equity component is the middle pair. Additionally, if we make two pair or trips, we’ll also have a hand with reasonably robust equity (though it will of course depend on how big the pot gets). This can often make playing hands like this tricky, as we’ll frequently want to make sure we retain the equity of our middle pair. So, in some situations, automatically raising this hand will be a mistake because by raising it’s unlikely for us to win at showdown with the pair of sevens (as all worse hands would have been folded).
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When multiple players are getting to see a flop, the term “pot odds” loses most of its meaning. Pots odds are relevant when you’re getting 4-to-1 odds on a call heads up, such as when you call a button min-raise with antes in the big blind. But once the pot becomes multiway, your odds of winning also decrease with each additional player and the dead money needs to be divided among all active players. Saying “pot odds” as the 4th caller is akin to saying “pot odds” when buying a lotto ticket. That’s because despite the fact you’re getting better odds, you’re less likely to win. This means that hands like 97s and 65s often overrated, especially when playing against strong opponent
I understand the what posted above and this is especially true vs strong opponents who won’t pay us off when the board is drawy and we have an obvious hand. At the same time is quite unlikely that 4 strong opponents will see the flop at the same time, is more likely that would be a mix with at least one fish in between. Vs one or multiple fishes our implied odd skyrocket, so speculative hands gain value when they hit.
Have you tried to query your DB (or even a larger one) to find whether those speculative hands aren’t really profitable? Because, at least for me, this looks like a spot when in theory you are right and those hands are overrated, but in practice they are profitable
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I understand the what posted above and this is especially true vs strong opponents who won’t pay us off when the board is drawy and we have an obvious hand. At the same time is quite unlikely that 4 strong opponents will see the flop at the same time, is more likely that would be a mix with at least one fish in between. Vs one or multiple fishes our implied odd skyrocket, so speculative hands gain value when they hit.
Have you tried to query your DB (or even a larger one) to find whether those speculative hands aren’t really profitable? Because, at least for me, this looks like a spot when in theory you are right and those hands are overrated, but in practice they are profitable
If our opponents holds a draw like QT we want to charge it ofc, but at the same time we don’t want to lose value betting too big. If we are against a solid opponent he will fold the draws while actually, we hope for a call without proper oddsodds… isn’t our EV higher if Villain calls a bet without odds?
Since Villain is capped,I don’t think a competent one will shove over our polarized overbet, so that’s the case when we bet OTF and got a call we shouldn’t be simply overbet very very often, with that I mean our entire range, OTT without fear of facing something big?
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Suppose you open in the cutoff and the button calls. The flop comes the J♥6♣5♣. You bet $5 into a $10 pot and the button raises to $15. At what frequency must you defend here before your opponent can profitably raise you with any two cards? Why might this problematic if you bet the flop at a high frequency?
Answer: Your opponent is risking $15 to win $15, so his raise needs to work only 50 percent of the time to show an immediate profit. But since you will mostly defend against the raise by calling (rather than raising), he’ll also frequently have a chance to outdraw you with his bluffs. You’ll thus need to defend significantly more than 50 percent of the time to prevent yourself from being easily exploitable
I play NL25 and NL50, so this could be pool dependant, but the above example is very frequent and yet, I still have to see check-raises often. Seems to me that we can comfortably x/r very very wide and autoprofit since my player pool doesn’t defend 50%, not even close.
Anyway I guess that even on higher levels there aren’t many check-raises, why is that?
Have a wonderful 2020 Matthew
Thanks in advance
