What's your barrell strategy with your trash hands ? Seems to me that it's going to be one and done as you are unlikely to improve OTT. Doesn't that mean your turn and river bets are always for value, making your play predictable ?

Depends on the board. My hand is polarized which means I can bluff bet more effectively. I put a hard decision on the opponent if they call.

I want to understand why Janda's method works in live cash games. I am weighing in multiple factors in this situation because humans are flawed creatures. Correct me if I am wrong, even the best pros don't 3b as much as they "technically should" or defend their blinds as much as they "technically should". I remember reading something on that.

If they call my 3b they hand range narrows and it make it easier for me to read their hand. While if I 3b wide their ranges make it harder for me to read their hand. They can even 4b bluff with impunity. And if I 5b bluff.... well then this is just a pissing contest with high variance where probably over 1,000,000 hands the results are close to even.

I want to be wrong. The idea of poker is to make better decisions than your opponent. If I can facilitate that by playing in a why that accomplishes it then I think that's good. Keeping decisions simple and risking the least to gain the most.

You're not alone in this, but I think a lot of people may have a different definition of a "good" or "tough" opponent than I do.

To me a good or a tough opponent isn't someone who is 3-betting AK on a KcQc7s board after continuation betting multiway on the flop after raising UTG. A good player there is checking at a high frequency and check-raising with both good hands (sets and such) and bluffs. He's not 3-betting with AA and AK against a polarized range when deep and OOP. Likewise, to me a "tough" opponent isn't in an "absolute mindset" where he'll fold like crazy to a 40% bet and call like crazy vs a 33% bet. That's what a weak opponent who we can easily exploit would do. The advice for how to beat such an opponent (bet nut-type hands 33%, bet all bluffs 40%+) is so easy to me that I don't think discussing such a situation is really useful or interesting.

I'm not trying to offend anyone or sound like a tool here, so please don't take this the wrong way. I just don't know how else to honestly answer the question. Yes many variables matter when making decisions, but some of the variables you're assuming you know make the decision (to advanced or professional players) trivially easy.

It's extremely unlikely that 3-betting a very polarized range will work better against strong opponent's than the ranges recommended by PokerSnowie or in the book. That's because against a good player

Won't happen. Or if it does happen, it happens when you get amazing turns or rivers (blank turns or rivers on wet boards) as described in the book, and even THEN he still may decide not to fold and call you with TPWK when that's the best hand in his range.

Hopefully that helps, and if you do have a more specific question I'll be glad to answer.

After reading your book I think I mostly understand the reason that Pio has a all these top pair flop raises. One thing that I cant figure out is, why does pio raise a lot of ax on dry ace high boards?

https://gyazo.com/a9920d8c8ceb1792ef763774823313cb

This is a 3 bet pot BB v UTG, why is PIO raising AQ, AJ, and some AT here? It seems we don't really need to protect our hand on this board and AT seems very thin in a BB v UTG 3bp.

One other question I have, after we raise the flop BB shoves AK and 54s, If the player pool shoves the AK but doesnt shove the 54s very often, should we raise aq/aj and bluffs and fold to the shove or should we just call?

Thanks

What I am gathering then is that you mean me as an opponent. Because I do those things. So basically if I am playing someone as good as I am. At the local casinos I visit I rarely find an equal player. At my place there are about 5 that play 2/5 or 5/10 who think I do and at least 2 of them admit they don't know how to play vs a tough opponent who plays closer to GTO. They are feel players who play exploitive.

Recently one of my poker friends, who is better than me at poker, went to the WSOP and cashed. Even he admitted his late table was better than him with a lot of 3 betting. Basically saying what you are saying.

So my conclusion is that these 3b strategies do not apply 98% of the time at 2/5 and 5/10 at my casino. Thus what I thought you meant by a tough opponent just meaning deep thinker or better. When in reality these guys are well beyond that.

Now here is the follow up. Which is the best resource to understand how to combat tough opponents by 3 betting? My future plans when my son is out of school and I have more free time is to enter into larger MTTs to play for educational charities. Give a portion of my winnings to help children. I will need to know how to play these players. Also if online ever gets to the point where I am forced to play on a HUD site. I'll reread that 3b section again.

And no offense taken. Learning from mistakes is never offending. I often overthink my opponent's capabilities. They simply are not at my level. I do a lot of combo work, understand how often people flop, what combos they have, what percentages of combos they have, etc. Some of my poker friends call me the math player but I am not. Mathematics of Poker gave me headaches.

You'd have to post a lot more information (turn and river strategies) to really start trying to figure it out, but I agree it's surprising. Especially that AJs seem to be raised as a pure strategy.

Is it check-raising them then check-calling them later? Maybe it's worried that if it check-raises too polarized of a range (pure nuts/pure air) then villain will never have an incentive to bet, so it mixes in some TPGK type hands to check-raise now but potentially check-call later. But I'm really not sure and software does weird stuff all the time that's often hard to figure out why, so you'd have to explore deeper.

Ok great, I think we're on the same page now. So when you say a good/tough opponent you mean basically a top player at a NL$500 or NL$1000 live cash game. Got it.

Against this player pool the best strategies are going to be highly exploiative, and both a good exploitative strategy and good GTO strategy are both going to be highly profitable (in terms of BB/100) due to the relative softness of the games. So you can take either approach, but a good exploitative strategy is probably easier to learn and can ultimately be more profitable (likely by a wide margin) too.


OH SNAP oddly enough I JUST NOW got your email from CardRunners. Good to have you here too as I'm going to miss discussions there.

Ok, so I assume you've seen my videos at Cardrunners regarding pre-flop play and 3-bet pots. Did you find watching videos useful? If you did, I'd probably look into one of the following but you'll have to fact check what I'm saying is true:

1. RunItOnce, advantage here is most content and very good players.
2. Deuces Cracked, advantage is still lots of content and cheapest option
3. Upswing Poker, advantage here is top notch players and most organized content.

I would then try to supplement this material with either PokerSnowie (probably this one) or PioSOLVER (a bit more advanced but it might float your boat) then find other players to talk to who are working on concepts similar to yours. Playing in 3-bet pots well is high variance and difficult so this is stuff that's going to take time, so make sure you're enjoying it too as if you have a family and full time job I would not do anything that makes a game you currently love feel like "work."

Pricing doesn't matter for the subscription. Frankly I don't subscribe to any site currently. A lot of the advancements I make are books or my own work of discovery. Come to think of it I think I get free card runners because I play enough hands online every month.

But seems like a good idea to understand to at least invest a month, watch lots of videos, and take good notes.

I've got some bad news for you....

Rhu-Rho Raggy!

Is there a little button on the side of this thread you need me to press?

Is the screengrab showing UTG's strategy when facing a c-bet by BB? I'd like to know what the BB's c-betting range looks like.
In an analogous spot (but with different/tighter ranges for seeing the flop), Snowie suggests the BB doesn't c-bet AK/AQ/AJ, and is more weighted towards underpairs and air when it c-bets. In that case, UTG would effectively be raising AT+ for value/protection. (Apart from 99/44/A9s, those aces are the top of UTG's range). If Pio is saying that AK is a c-bet (and indeed a flop 3-bet) for the BB, then it's really hard to work out why UTG should raise AJ/AT, since it would just be valueowning itself against a strong c-betting range.

BBs has huge range advantage on this flop. The flop is bone dry so c-betting Ax hands does little to deny UTGs equity. And why build the pot when BB can be behind 2 pairs and sets. QQ-TT are in UTGs range but they are unlikely to improve so BB can bet for value on later streets. Having said this I agree it would be good to see the Pio flop strategy for BB.


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I am trying to replicate the BB v UTG example on piosolver. I can't find the ranges for 3 bet BB v UTG in available choices. Can you please give more information? I have the latest pro version.

Matthew, as a PLO player I just recently found out about you and your books (Jnandez Podcast).
Now that cardrunners closed the doors, is there any way to get access to your Videos?

What?? I didn't even know that ... next question then becomes: where will you publish videos in the future?

Another question for ya.

In all your examples we expect a player plays things a certain way. Players always 3b AA and have a 3b bluff range to match the AA.

From reading the book it seems like we are reading ranges but specifically frequencies of good and weak draws, air and strong hands, etc. And we mix in some TPTK A8 example type hands in our XR range, etc.

So what happens to the play when someone does something not optimal. Example

Table of tough players. Player A raises from LJ, player B calls in the HJ (which is NOT optimal because of squeezing) instead of 3 betting or folding.

Now take a player who calls behind in the HJ with 1/3rd of his premiums and an appropriate amount with some random suited hands. When someone squeezes he back 3bs.

So this isn't optimal but it is balanced. So how does this figure to play into GTO vs tough opponents? It's a crazy example. So now these tough players know this, do they squeeze less? Do they still squeeze?

This is where I am having a tough time understanding how GTO is optimal. With data and a heads up A.I. opponent how could they compensate for that with the computational power they have. Now a human.

The player that flats pre and then occasionally backraises when he gets squeezed is reducing his own EV by flatting his monsters in the first place (when 3-betting had a higher EV).
The squeezer's strategy should already take into account the fact that any of the players can 4-bet. i.e. Strong players don't just squeeze for the sake of squeezing. They squeeze knowing that sometimes the original raiser will call, sometimes the original cold-caller will call, sometimes both with call, sometimes the original raiser will 4-bet, sometimes the original caller will 4-bet.
In short, the squeezer just plays normally. The player that sometimes back-raises is just harming himself by not 3-betting in the first place.

An analogous situation is limp re-raising AA UTG. If limping AA UTG was the most profitable play, everyone would do it. It's not the most profitable play, and "tough" players will just laugh when someone tries to do it. They make plenty of money from isolating the weak limps, and by folding to the (rare) limp-reraises.

Illustrative example using Snowie at 100NL:

1. CO slowplays AA because he's a trappy fish.

2. SB 3-bet squeezes. CO backraises after flatting pre, and SB folds.

3. Everyone plays "GTO". CO 3-bets, SB cold 4-bets, CO is about to 5-bet.


Note the "GTO" SB player only loses $10 when CO slowplays and backraises. If CO 3-bets AA like a proper human, the GTO player in SB loses at least $28 by cold 4-betting, and often 6-bet jams and gets stacked (he invested so much by 4-betting that he's close to getting the right odds to stack off). In short, by being "tricky", the CO costs himself a ton of EV, and the GTO player in the SB laughs all the way to the bank.

I was just coming on to say I thought about my question and realized my answer. Which is what you posted. It's more complex than that but it took me a while to think it through.

Thanks for the example though.

Hey guys,

First let me say that the book is amazing. Great job. it is well constructed and render deeper concept more accessible and easy to digest.

I bought the e-book version and read it with the Adobe Digital Reader, for some reasons i moved the original e-book files and now i can't seem to find it. Obv there isn't a "reconnect" option in the Adobe reader so i tried to download again the book via the link i was provided in my mail box.

It worked(download) but when i try to open the book(file) i got an error message:

(Error getting License. License Server Communication Problem: E_LIC_RESOURCE_ITEM_UNKNOWN)

I'll still have some content coming out, but I'm not sure if I will regularly be making videos for any sites yet.

Just so you know, unfortunately none of this is handled on my end so I have absolutely no idea how to help you. But if anyone else reading the thread knows and can help you out that'd be great.

Sounds like Arty already answered this and included images to boot, so TY for that Arty.

Can someone who has read the book help me. My two main focus areas are: 1) learning how and when to overbet effectively and 2) learning how to pick spots to bluff catch. If those were the only two things that you wanted to take away from the book, would it be worth the read? Thanks for any insight.