Not sure why it's not allowing me to edit my original post. Anyway, no worries about responding. I went ahead and purchased based on Matthew's reputation for quality.

"So against a range that includes so many draws, it makes sense to bet big with even our strongest hands as we want our opponent to put more money in the pot while he’s behind or fold his equity"
At what point is the EV tradeoff of betting "too big"? We don't want to drive out draws against our made hands too much.

"I hate betting big with weak aces, so suffice to say that my strategy is to bet small with these hands."
using piosolver with 2bet ranges of button and big blinds on flop of
AcKd3s as used in the examples in book pio is recommending betting 100% of pot instead of 50% on A9o , A8o, A7o etc
Matt any reason?

This book has been excellent for my game. Validated a lot of things I was trying or already thought were correct. Increased my 3b quite a bit now that I fully understand why.

Question. Considering a typical 2/5 game or even 5/10 game where it's fairly passive or even low stakes online like $50 NL or $100 NL.
Say there are a 2-4 limpers. What hands should we be limping in OTB behind? We assume here iso-raising grants us 0FE. And no *******s who are raise stealing in the blinds because they think they call, when in fact they can't in this sort of game.

Or even in the SB.

I find certain hands only get you in trouble especially from the SB. Like a 4 way pot you can call in the SB with K4s but T5s is asking to have your ass handed to you in the long run.

Depends on how strong his draw is and if you can bet bigger and still get him to frequently call with made hands you beat.

I think it will be rare that you justify betting small because "you don't want to drive out draws." Sure, there's times you'll bet small with good hands and your opponent will call with his draws, but I doubt trying to keep his draws in the hand will be the reason why you're betting small.

In button vs BB, A9o, A8o, and A7o are strong enough to bet big and frequently win. Especially if BB 3-bet all AK/AQ and all AJs/ATs combos.

There's no exact magical threshold where a "good ace" becomes a "mediocre ace" becomes a "weak ace." but in these positions A9o-A7o are pretty, pretty good.

Either online games have regressed since when I played NL$50 or people don't limp very often there.

I have no idea what ********s are.

There are too many variables to tell you what hands are better to raise rather than limp behind and it probably will depend a fair amount based on stack depth. If people aren't limp re-raising almost ever, then I think most playable hands will make better raises than limps when you have position. If they are limp re-raising, then it depends a lot on the frequency of the limp re-raise to know where to draw the line.

I think suited connectors are very overrated multiway in general, though. So I'm probably more inclined to raise those than limp them compared to what you're hearing. Pocket pairs however play pretty amazingly well multiway. But again, there really are way too many variables for me to be of much help here.,

I don't know the answer to your question about raising ranges in multiway limped pots (multiway pots are hard to "solve", to say the least) but if anyone knows of an online 100NL game that regularly has 2-4 limpers, please PM me!
Isn't the subtitle to Matthew's book "Emphasis on tough games"?

"Okay, done? Did you list any hands like the 8 ♣ 7 ♥ or the K ♦ 2 ♦? Well, if you did, do you think those hands call a pot- sized bet on the turn when out of position? Almost certainly not."
I replicated this example on piosolver and the solution on Pio is that with kd2d the program recommends 27.6% raise, 70.6% call and 1.9% fold.
this is after 50% pot on flop and 100% pot on turn cbets. Surprised?

Before we go down the PIOSolver road, do you think your opponents are calling pot-sized bets there on the turn? (IIRC this was OOP too, correct?)

Depends where you play and what game you play. I play full ring only online. Hands are easier defined. I also play on sites that don't allow HUDs. I think my edge is greater there. To me a decent player with a modern HUD should be able to increase his skill significantly vs a better player. Not beat him mind you but better understand when to fold, when to call, and how to raise just from reading some material combining it with the HUD. If you can read the #s right you know when someone is doing anything too much over thousands of hands. In my games it is not uncommon to have several fish. I rarely have to table change as the tighter players have huge leaks. There isn't nearly enough 3 betting.

So that's why my limp question?

From my experience limping trash suited hands in the SB, like 93s, getting 9:1 is not +EV. While on paper it is +EV from the odds your position creates all sorts of other problems. But OTB it seems different. Just the added ability to steal pots and see what everyone else does matter a lot.

Suited connectors? I agree with your statement if you never bluff or semi-bluff with them. I think you have to have good hand reading ability and be able to barrel with them when you have outs vs the right opponent. And the factors when you are chasing the flush and you backdoor a straight no one can put you on is an immense increase to winrate just from that one pot. Winning 3bbs on the flop is one thing. But when player B slowplays his set to the river and you spike what seems to be a meaningless card and get 90bbs that is 30 small pots IMO. Well that how I see it.

You can't play speculative and trashy one trick pony hands unless you play on bluffing with them and have position.

Hey guys and Matt! im about to buy Applications of no limit holdem, because i like all theory material Janda has put up. I had to register here to ask my theory related question!

I have been thinking about MDF, Bluff-to-Value ratio and bet sizing in relation to others a couple of days now.. and i came up with a theory about triple barreling, but i dont know if the math is correct here, because it seems so simple to be true.
lets think this really simple and ignore things like position and preflop action and so on everything i dont mention separately.

The idea here is that if we Triple barrel with a balanced range with bluff to value ratio being somewhat exactly 2-1 on flop, 1-1 on turn and 1-2 on river(completely ignoring our betsize, which i know should affect a little on ratios) and we bet flop 1/2 pot, turn full pot size and river 2x pot overbet, arent we basically betting exactly what our odds indictate? on flop we are value betting 1/3 of our range and 2/3 is bluffs, our bet size is giving us 1/3 odds of winning, on turn we should have 1:1 value and bluffs, we bet the pot and we have to win that bet 50% of the time to break even, and on the river we 2x the pot because we think we are going to win it 67% of the time. we also give the villain a chance on each street to play perfectly against us when thinking about Minimum defence frequency, but if he overfolds or overcalls he is losing?

Am i talking completely gibberish here or am i just missing or not understanding something right on this one?

- Ari88

The thing is you don't need to make those bet sizes specifically. Some bet sizes are higher +EV than others based on a variety of factors.

I have a few quesitons regarding multiple bet-sizings. (Sorry if this has already been asked a million times before)

Lets say we OR on the button, BB calls. Board is kinda drawy. And on the flop we decided we want to have two bet sizings, one 75% and one 33%.

Hands that are a pait or better seem really easy to put in a range or another. And also to mix it up sometimes.

But what about "bluffs" (FD, gutshot, OESD)?

(I get that the concept of bluff and value bet has no real meaning, I mean draws, or hands that have decent equity but are not a pair or better)

And I get that we should have every type of "bluff" in each range, and most draws will play well in almost any range.

That being said, I still have no idea how frequencies or ratios should look like. Or which combos play better than others in different ranges. Or how should we go about randomizing that.

If it doesn't really matter, could I just flip a coind and do whatever with my FDs? But that doesn't seem like the way poker should be played :P

And I know that there's no answer that's gonna work for every flop, every hand and every spot.

But I would appreciate some tips or some basic guidelines about this. Just so I can go and do some work by myself to try to figure out this stuff.

Thanks!

I would try to figure this out by thinking first what kind of flops i would want to bet small and what flops to bet bigger... maybe the easiest example would be something like AxKxQx with FD, your uncapped range can hit this board way harder than your opponents who defended BB by calling, you both can have JT of course, but you are the only one to have all the combos of two pairs and sets, so you can use a smaller sizing here, villain flops a FD only 1/10 times(or something like that) so you dont have to worry about giving him a great price, instead you should get a lot of calls and floats by worse, like T's with gutshot and Qx with bottom pair, allkinds of funky stuff.

and maybe on some coordinated High card flops like Kx7x5x you could be better to use that bigger sizing to get unnecessary floats just dumb their hand there and to get value/protection when you have something like KT here and villains floats with a lot, because that board favors him also in many cases.
Then i would just count all my combos i would value bet and then work out all the bluffs needed to balance that range, with the betsizing im using and the ratio i should have there, but someone else can probably explain you those ratios better.

Upswingpoker has this Free poker resources section where they have a rulebook for playing flush draws, it has some good advices, you should check that out!

Assuming there are fewer "big bet" combos in your range and they are mostly fat value hands (sets, 2pr etc), a quick shortcut is to put your monster combo draws into that 'big bet' group. Your run of the mill draws (OESDs, middling flush draws) can go in the small bet-size group with the various "thin value" hands (top pairs etc).
e.g. If you wanted to bet big with sets on T65tt, you could balance by also betting big with the combo draws for 98s, 87s, and maybe some NFDs with blockers/backdoors like A9s/A8s/A7s.
Run of the mill (non-nut) flush draws like K8s/Q7s probably work better as small bets.

You're not talking gibberish, but you're talking like someone who is starting to understand theory and sort things out but is getting confused. So many of the numbers and concepts you're suggesting don't really work.

This is explained in a lot of detail in Applications. If things are confusing, especially regarding the "bluff-to-value betting ratio on the flop," just let me know.

Poker isn't solved, but from what we do know it looks like there are many, many mixed strategies.

Especially when it comes to betting with bluffs, it looks like many bluffs and "draws" (gutshots, FD, and OESD) get put in both bet sizing ranges because if you don't do this there are clear counter strategies.

For example, let's say the flop is the T85 and you are the PF. If you play to bet 75% with a range here as well as 40% with a range here, you'll likely fine flush draws go in both ranges. Many of the flush draws will be mixed strats (for example the 74 might go in both ranges). And I've yet to see a pattern to determine if there is a pure strat with a single flush draw, how to find what range it goes in (and remember PIOsolver is always modeling and not actually solving a real poker situation with infinite different bet sizes).

Hope that helps.

I feel a bit dummy after thinking about that post again and i did the math again and realized that it was way off and would be a losing play.

So i came up with a correction to illustrate the point i was trying to accomplish.

Lets think this river spot as a simple game where we have a 3 card deck, 2 Aces and 1 king. Player A and player B must put an ante of 0.5 in to the pot, so the total pot is 1. Then player A gets to bet any amount he wants and B can either call that bet or fold. After the betting round, we turn one card face up and if it is Ace, player A wins, if its a King, player B wins. This is were we get player A's value to bluff ratio, player A will win that bet 2/3 times. Now i figured out that if player A bets 1/2 pot there, player B cant win? He can only make the game breakeven if he somehow knew when the card is going to be a king and calls only then.
And until player B figures out the right calling frequency, player A wins a little making that betsize, but is guaranteed to be breakeven at worst.
Is this right?

As this would probably be impossible to achieve in poker river situation... Could this be theoretically possible?

If we think its an heads up pot, where we think the earlier streets betting as same as the ante in that game i just made up and we arrived to the river with a range that we can bet with 2:1 value bluff ratio and we bet 1/2 pot, doesnt this kind of trap our opponent in a situation where he can breakeven at best?

Thanks for the answer Matthew

I think that for the most part I get the theory, what I don't fully understand is what to do in the real world when the action is on you and you have to decide how to split your ranges.

In that example, could you use RNG to split it 50/50 or some other ratio?

I have a new question. A scenario I see often.

Say there are 2 limpers in UTG and UTG+1 (not tricky trappy), a competent player raises who is capable of iso-raising here many hands, there is 1 more callers. We hold QJs in the SB or even the BB. We are stuck between all these callers in a really ****ty spot.

Is it better to call or to 3b with this kind of high equity hand? From a game theory perspective?

I would 3-bet

I would take the approach of thinking "There are two options here which are likely both correct from a GTO perspective. So, I should pick the option that I think is best against this specific opponent or against the general playing field. If I don't know what this is, I should take the line I'm most comfortable with."

I would continue to apply this thought process again and again. I think once your opponents get pretty good, then sometimes the fancier line that's part of a mixed strat actually may become more +EV because less people expect you to take that line. But I would most likely avoid the fancy lines that are part of mixed strats until you are already a very good player.

I'm unable to really follow this or what you're asking.

I'm happy you're excited about theory and if you want to ask obscure theoretical questions I'm glad to try to help, but the questions need to be really, really clear. So proof read it multiple times and try to use as clear of spacing and paragraphs as possible.

For example, in your toy game I have no idea what you're even talking about regarding "flipping one card face up." Were they each dealt a card? Do they just flip a card off the top of the deck? I have almost no idea what's going on.

Yeah i meant they flip one card open from the top of the deck. Sorry for my hard to follow english writing!: D im asking if it could be possible to make a betsize on the river that is bulletproof to make profit unless opponent plays perfect and if we are balanced he can only make the game breakeven.