This is a good point, but are there any hands near the top of our preflop range that would play well this way?

Robust and non-robust Q&A section, question 3.
In the answer 1 you stated that a T or a Q are part of non robust equity also because it puts two pairs and straights on villain's range. In the second example (K86 flop) you include the possibility of making two pair in the robust equity. But any 7 put straights on vilain's range and better two pairs, so imho this should included in the non-robust equity. Where am I failing?

Look at robust equity the same way you look at "value betting" and "bluffing" on the flop.

There is no threshold when betting on the flop where a hand becomes strong enough to go from a "bluff" to a "value bet." They should nowadays just mostly be terms people use where most people get what you're saying (value bet = strong hand), but they don't have any real meaning.

Same deal with robust equity. There is no exact equity quality where a hand goes from "non robust" to "robust". For the most part, it's easy to see how a gutshot to the nuts is "robust" and ace high is "non-robust." But everything in between (turning TPGK, rivering two-pair, rivering trips, turning the 3rd nut flush, etc etc) isn't as clear.

A little late to the discussion on the flop betting, but I just finished the book, and found your flop bet sizing section the most interesting part of the book, and I agree that a typical villan wont know your game inside and out. I think that these bet sizings wont work great against certain villans (most notably, I think good unknown live regs will assume this is a weak made hand until they have a reason to think otherwise, so if i bet 35% of the pot w A8 on the board described, id basically turn my hand face up, even though my range is actually wider than he put me on).

I think the important thing is to glean off exploitative opportunities to bet at least portions of these ranges in this manner against certain villans, as well as a pretty clear way to have a somewhat balanced difficult to counter range in both betting sizes. I think this bet sizing will work best against ABC regs and passive fish, but sill certainly be great at confusing and exploiting good regs as well, especially if you do it with a portion of the range they dont expect.

Very good read, and i appreciate the help on the 3 betting. I feel like i may just be kind of lost until I get some experience in 3 bet pots against villans who 3 bet more than AA and KK.

Well you're not just betting small with 8x hands in that spot. You're also doing it with top set, some overpairs, and some draws, so villains can't just recklessly check raise you every time you bet small.

Let's say in the example above you are the button and you get overbet check raised to $25 after betting $1.75.

If your bet-small range looks like:
A8 (12)
AA (6)
TT (3)
20 combos of straight draws or flush draws
5 combos of low equity hands

Your opponent needs you to fold ~79% of the time, so you need to defend about 21-22% of your range, or 9-10 combos. AA and TT alone make up 9 combos, and you should have at least a couple combo draws as well.

Just purchased this book. Has anyone in this forum read this book yet? This may be way over my head but ive read most of it so far and I totally disagree with many of the concepts and hands he explains.

For ex. there is a hand in which he goes over where a good player on button min raises, and he defends bb with A8o. stacks are 100bb.

Flop is 825r. He checks, villain c bets, and hero decides to check raise. From a theory prospective it doesn't seem like this check raise accomplishes much at all. This raise will only get better hands to continue and the villain will fold out all of his equity, I know getting villain to fold out his equity is a good thing and makes sense but this hand is one of our strongest check calls on this board and if were against a tough opponent who is going to barrel frequently then doesn't is make sense to keep villain as wide as possible and also protect our weaker check calls on this flop by just check calling with A8? We will be check calling with 8x 77,66,5x,44,33,2x, then makes more sense to check raise 88,22,55, 85s,25s , 76s, and 34s some percentage of the time.

Someone who has read this book please help me understand why he is doing this other than just looking at one street of ev. We can happily check call flop with A8 which is our best check call, and then check call turn on an over-card, then reevaluate river, then with our weaker check calls we can start to fold out those on the turn if villain in fact keeps betting. Also we don't always have to check raise our sets and two pairs all the time either so we would further be protecting our check calling range some of the times we decide to play monsters this way. Also he talks about robust equity and non robust equity. I feel like 76 and 34 are great hands with robust equity to use as check raises on this flop sometimes. What are your guys thoughts here? I wasn't really sure where to put this since its strictly a theory based question.

Hey, first off just wanto to say this is a great book. Lots of new ideas in it that I think can help me improve, and well written and explained too.

That said, I'd really appreciate it if anyone would take the time to explain a few things about the check raise chapter. Sounds like the poster above would appreciate it too.

Just to clarify - we want to check raise 1) to deny villain equity with a hand that can outdraw us, 2) because we do actually have a hand and want to build the pot in case we win, and 3) because we are doing well against his continuing range.

As a 5nl player, I'm sure some would tell me to spend my time worrying about non-GTO-ish stuff, but I'd like to get this straight in my head. This is all a bit rough but....

On the 852r board we have:

Check raising range - A8 and K8, say. But I'd be happy to see a fold, so it almost feels like we need to 'back up' our medium c/r hands with stronger ones like 88. We then also have some obvious bluffs. So this feels quite strange because normally I'd check call a set on this pretty dry board, partly because it we aren't that vulnerable, partly to make my c/c range stronger. So I guess the thing is to make sure we have some monsters in both c/r and c/c.

Therefore in check call; we can have one or two sets, along with weaker top pairs that don't do well when villain defends.

Does that all sound reasonable?!

Then, though, there is the 8s6s4h board, where we don't want to check raise TPTK because villain's continuing range is much stronger. So we are in effect bloating the pot with a hand that is TOO vulnerable, in a sense - we're in bad shape when called.

But by this logic, should we not also flat sets? Possibly not, because we are still ahead of all turns that give villain two pair, but we could still say that raising sets bloats a pot again a range that is likely to turn a straight or flush. I suppose it all comes down, obviously, to having different ranges on different boards. But any thoughts and clarification is much appreciated.

Finally, here's an example (hopefully this is allowed in this part of the forum?)

PokerStars - $0.05 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

UTG: 157.8 BB (VPIP: 38.74, PFR: 25.23, 3Bet Preflop: 6.52, Hands: 118)
CO: 103 BB (VPIP: 25.65, PFR: 22.61, 3Bet Preflop: 9.78, Hands: 237)
BTN: 100 BB (VPIP: 20.00, PFR: 15.52, 3Bet Preflop: 8.45, Hands: 180)
SB: 101.4 BB (VPIP: 22.67, PFR: 18.67, 3Bet Preflop: 13.79, Hands: 78)
Hero (BB): 229.2 BB

SB posts SB 0.4 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has T K

fold, CO raises to 4 BB, fold, fold, Hero calls 3 BB

Flop: (8.4 BB, 2 players) T 5 3
Hero checks, CO bets 10 BB, Hero raises to 30 BB, CO calls 20 BB

Turn: (68.4 BB, 2 players) 5
Hero bets 68 BB, CO raises to 69 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 1 BB

River: (206.4 BB, 2 players) 6

A rainbow flop would be better, but in-game I thought this came pretty close to a good check raise spot. Problem is that the turn gets tricky, as we know can happen often. Like it says in the book, though, a check/raise flop check/call flop turn just feels uncomfortable, it's not a 'usual' line. But at the same time this turn feels spewey as hell.

So some thoughts on whether this was a sensible c/r spot or not also appreciated, and any ideas about the turn.

Mods, or anyone, just me if I need to post the hand part of this post elsewhere.

Thanks all

The A8 hand is mainly about denying equity. Villain's got a fair bit with his overcards and there are also so many overcards are possible on that board that he can continue firing on to put pressure on us that make it difficult to play OOP.

Re the hand history you've posted I see this as being different for a couple of reasons, first of all there are less overcards, so we're a bit more comfortable and secondly that flop overbet from villain is a big red flag. Your pot sized turn bet seems really really bad as well, I'm no sure what you're hoping to achieve with it on that turn card. C/f seems better to me.

Cool, thanks. Yeah turn felt gross, was totally lost to be honest. I guess though in reality we might not even be seeing a load of, but when we do we will be check calling or folding a fair amount.

EDIT - one thing also I forgot to include - what sort of turns are we 'happy' with, then? I guess we could check fold flush and overcard turns, but even check/calling 'safe' turns also feels odd, as we arer giving a free card toa vulnerable hand, yet the whole point of check raising in the first place was that we didn't want to give free cards with vulnerable hands.

Cheers.

I forgot to add that the example in the book was a dry flop whereas there's possible flush draws in your hh so that also changes things a bit.

So I guess we just never bluff catch anymore? A8 on 852r, against a player who is likely to keep firing seems like a pretty solid spot to check call twice at least, then we just need to think "how often does villian triple barrel" if they didn't do it often enough then you can happily fold river, loosing about the same $ you would as if you check raised. The check raise in this board just doesn't seem good, I don't really care to blow villian off his equity, I'd rather go to war with a wider range and if he beats me then over cards fall then so be it. I'm calling certain players down and letting their over aggressiveness in some spots be their exploit.

I'm no expert here so this is just my understanding behind the reasoning for it. However calling down on this board will see us getting into some pretty unhappy river spots with overcards out there. I've got to admit, I don't understand why you prefer not to blow someone off their equity and just accept if the runout means you're beat then so be it. If you apply that to other spots as well you're gonna end up in some horrible situations.

Ok so we're check raising to avoid tough rive decisions? Seems kind of weak. Yes we're oop, but does this mean we have to be scared, no. We might have to make some tough folds in the river by just check calling, but also if we know our opponent good enough then I think we can make the correct decision a lot of the time. Also check raising this flop bloats the pot oop when we get called, so what's the plan on turn? Say an over card comes? So we just tried to deny equity with a check raise and now we're on the turn against our opponent who now has a stronger range. Talk about being in a "horrible situation". I would not advise making this play too often, seems wildly unprofitable the times we get called and have to play the turn in a bloated pot against a stronger tighter range. A lot of mistakes will follow.

I never said we're check-raising to avoid tough river decisions. It's already been explained that it's to fold out villains equity. If a side benefit of this is avoiding tough decisions down the line then all well and good. Iirc the ranges used in the book has us having the best hand 90% or so here, so we expect a lot of folds.

Btw I've just had a look at this situation in Snowie and it also prefers a check-raise to a check-call if we use a half pot size raise.

you're wrong bro

easy to say someone is wrong, but better to say someone is wrong and then explain in detail why someone is wrong.

I wonder why that is, I guess snowie is only looking at the flop as one street, my concern is when making this play what to do on the turn. I'm if I take the check calling line, then I already know what I'm going to do on the turn, I think check calling is more than reasonable. When you check raise you get in a spot where your almost turning top pair on a dry board into a bluff, are we happy if villain decided to continue? probably not. This is tough for me to grasp, if villain is wide then why don't we keep him wide. Also are we check raising with a set? two pair? Seems like we would rather call with those hands using the logic that we aren't afraid of to many turn cards, so if were only check raising A8 and sometimes our open enders then it seems like our check raising range on this flop seems pretty weak and then against a good regular this will open ourselves up to being 3bet on the flop, just doesn't seem like a desirable situation. I'm interested to see if Mr.Janda can explain is in better detail, because check raising to denty equity doesn't seem like a good reason to bet and I feel like it could lead to a lot of mistakes on the turn and guesses in a bloated pot oop.

From memory, that check-raising spot comes up twice in the book. Have you read both chapters, or just the initial mention where Janda himself says he was confused by it?
Denying villain the chance to realize his equity at a price of his own choosing is a very important part of theoretically correct play. Sometimes you'd prefer villain folded on the flop, even though you have the best hand. Sometimes you want villain to call the flop and then fold to a turn barrel. (The win-win of getting some value before making villain fold).

As an aside, I found it quite amusing when I was experimenting with Snowie and saw that it would make "fishy" plays like check-minraising top pair no kicker on the flop. It was as if it was "raising to see where it's at", like it was playing in 2006. But then I saw high stakes players do the same thing. They aren't raising to find out where they are at, though. They are preventing their opponents from realizing equity for free and in some cases they are getting thin value from super-light floats at the same time. A similar thing happens vis a vis the small c-bets that are becoming popular now. You can bet small on the flop and villain can't fold much of his range with such sick pot odds, but then on good turn cards for your range, you bomb it and make him fold. Easy game.

I guess my point of this discussion is, when we check raise and get called, what do we do on the turn? we almost always have to check because we got called and we have a hand that isn't that great and were up against a range that is now tighter. Its a dicey spot, because we don't know whether to keep bluffing or to try to realize the little bit of showdown value that we have. I assume were going to continue firing our 76 and 34 open enders so when we check were almost capping our range it seems.

This is what I'm wondering. Look at the hand I posted above. Maybe this type of check raise should just be on rainbow flops, but imagine the turn is not a flush. Do we barrel a brick? It gets thin. So do we check call? If so we are giving free cards when the whole reason we check raised in the first place was cause we didn't want to give free cards.

The turn isn't easy to play when called but you can't look at it in isolation. The whole idea is that we're getting a ton of folds on the flop, geting opponents to fold their equity.

Hi Matthew,

I'm about half way through the book so far, absolutely enjoying it (also a big fan of Applications). Just a quick question.

On page 58 in the You Don't Want Action section, when talking about having QQ on T74 in a single raised heads up pot of $100, you estimate the EV of our hand before betting to be around $95.

What thought process did you use to come up with this number? Is this something from snowie/pio, or a rough estimate from having a lot of experience with theory?

Thanks!

I think to some degree we all treat a check-raised pot as something special, when it's just a pot. In a single-raised pot when we're in position, there will be some bad hands that we c-bet and hope villain folds. When villain calls and the turn is a "negative event", we might sigh and just give up. Well the same thing happens in check-raised pots. We might check-raise the flop with top pair, hoping to take it down, but sometimes we don't get the result we wanted. It's perfectly fine to just check-fold with some combos when the turn is bad for them. As long as our overall range will be able to keep firing at a decent frequency on the majority of turn cards, what's the problem?

I guess the problem expressed by the "What do I do on the turn?" question is where having a 'balanced range' with various hand strengths (everything from sets, to two overcards, flush draws, bottom pair, gutshots) and board coverage comes in. The turn will alter the relative hand strengths of various combos in your check-raising range. On totally blank turns, nothing much changes, so you can barrel quite a lot of your flop x-raising range. If the turn completes some straights, your straight draw check-raise bluffs now become straights that you barrel for value, and your two pair combos that were "value-raises" on the flop might become bluff-catchers that go into check-call mode on the turn and river. If the board pairs, your sets become boats, and you can balance them by continuing to barrel the 9-high gutshots or whatever.
Often when your check-raise with top pair gets called (you would have preferred a fold as most of your EV came from equity protection), your relative hand strength with those top pair combos nosedives on the turn. Maybe a flopped top pair is now so weak that it check-folds on some turn cards, or it bluff-catches the turn but then check-folds the river. You have to constantly re-evaluate the strength of various parts of your range. Sure, you might cringe when villain calls your raise with A8 on 852 and the turn is a ten, but if you also check-raise T8s (or JTs, or QTs) on the flop at some frequency, you've always got something that can continue to the river. In short, just because your check-raise sometimes gets called and the turn is sometimes a bad card, it doesn't mean that the check-raise was a mistake.

That KT hand kind of illustrates the point I'm trying to make about how hand strengths will change. When that flush draw came in, your top pair is no longer very strong. You should probably check-fold it. But you should have some flush draw hands that you check-raised the flop with. These are now your value-jams. If the turn had been a brick, you might jam your KT in order to make villain fold his flush draws (protection) or call with them (value). Barreling the turn just because you check-raised the flop might have been the "standard thing" a few years ago, but if you're going to check-raise at a high (pseudo GTO) frequency, some of those combos will barrel, but some will need to check-call the turn, some will check-fold, and some will go for the double check-raise.

There is no easy way to play A8 on an 852r flop when you're OOP and deep on the flop.

Check-raising will result in many difficult to play turns and rivers.

Check-calling will result in many difficult to play turns and rivers.

You're allowed to not give free cards on one street (by check-raising the flop), then decide to check the turn. Just because you give free equity on one street (the turn) doesn't negate the equity you denied on the previous street (the flop, if you chose to check-raise it).

It sounds like you're wanting to play with very polarized raising ranges.

I'm fine with this, and if you read Applications you'll know many of my ranges were very polarized when I wrote it. They're easy to play and work well.

As you get better, you'll start to find playing with less polarized ranges is more profitable in many spots. But these ranges are harder to use, and if you're not quite there yet I think it's fine. You can easily be a very winning player at SSNL online cash games, tournies, or live cash games while still using very polarized raising ranges. As you start playing higher (especially online cash), then these smaller edges will become more important.