Totally pulled it out of my ass.

Did I even include the previous action in that example? It's just used to illustrate a concept of how you can flop a pretty strong hand (an overpair, TPGK, pair + FD, etc) type hand and still for the EV of your hand (+$95 in this made up case) to be less than the pot ($100 in this made up case).

I would not CR here on this flop as default for a few reasons:

#1) You're pretty deep (100BB)

#2) CO opening range is way, way stronger than the button opening range

#3) There is a FD on the board, so more of the CR "floats" will be draws than on a rainbow board.

#4) The PF open was big (I'd have folded PF) and he overbet(!!!) the flop.

It's fine to screw up hands, as it's NL$5 and you should be mostly having fun/learning. But at a glance the biggest problem here is it looks like you don't understand how much the flush completely on the turn drastically changes the way the hand will play out.

The turn puts flushes into both his range and your range. That means your KT going to:

A) Have a much harder time getting value from hands you beat (since villain will correctly assume you may have the flush)

B) Be beaten more often.

If you do CR the flop here you have to understand how much worse your hand is now on that turn and realize it's not strong enough to keep betting against a reasonable player. All of this stuff takes a lot of time to develop/pinpoint so don't feel bad about misplaying a hand, just make sure you learn from it.

Arty already did a fantastic job responding (thanks as always) so I won't go into this too much (since you've already heard my thoughts in the book and it's good to hear things explained differently by other people), but I just wanted to point out that the bolded isn't even close to true. Button is calling the check-raise with a lot of hands you are way ahead.

Snowie is not doing that.

I honestly don't know how to explain the A8 situation in better detail than is already explained in the book. I don't mean that in a "Meh I don't want to deal with answering this" kind of way, but I feel like all of your questions are explicitly answered in the book (usually in a "Well, you're probably wondering how to play the turn after check-raising the flop..." kind of way) and I spent hundreds of hours on that book and Mason, David, and I edited it back and forth probably a dozen combined times. So I just don't think I can provide a better explanation, but maybe other people in this thread can explain it in a different way that will help.

I also think there's a good chance it will "click" once you finish reading the book (if you haven't already), and sometimes ideas take a while to process. Or perhaps you'll understand them and just disagree with implementing them for the games you're currently playing, which I think is fine too.

Thanks a lot, very very helpful

so were essentially turning a made hand into a bluff

what hands? because usually in the live games I play in they will either fold worse or continue with better. I guess this means I should be check raise bluffing more, but this hand just doesn't seem like a hand id like to check raise with then, there seem to be plenty of worse hands that I can check raise here that will serve the same purpose, for ex, overcards with back door equity and open enders. I don't see a point in this range merging type play... and a lot of the time I'm not check raising my sets and two pairs for the same exact reason why you do check raise the A8. Most of the time the opponent will just fold out his over cards and I will only get stacks in when he has a big hand like an over pair, so it seems like it is kind of hard to balance my check raising range on this flop since he is going to have air so often.

Exactly. Either your opponents are very, very rarely continuation betting, or you can print massive amounts of money by check-raising any two cards.

Sounds like you think your opponents are folding way too much to check-raises, so just check-raise extremely aggressively with air.

The overwhelming majority of the time your check-raise won't be 3-bet. If he does 3-bet, you're likely substantially better off calling than jamming.

Also, I think an important part of that chapter is that an ussumption that villain is playing sort of balanced, insofar as he wants to stop us printing money, by defending the requisite amount. I.e. if we c/r pot then he wants to defend around 50%. So this either forces him to defend with a range we do well against, or he overfolds and we print money (correct me if I'm wrong).

Pretty much, only if you c/r pot (say pot is 5BB, he bets 2.5BB, and you CR to 7.5BB) he'll have to defend a lot more than 50% to not be folding too much.

If on the 852r board your opponent folds so much that he rarely calls with worse than A8 (button vs BB), then you're printing money by an incredibly wide margin. Didn't the book say A8 is beat like 11-13% of the time on the flop or something silly? I don't remember the exact % but I'm pretty sure it did.

This example was provided in the book explicitly to teach why bets shouldnt be viewed as "value bets" and "bluffs". Saying this isnt a value bet therefore its a bluff is the fundamentally flawed logic that this chapter set out to correct.

Are you recommending just choosing the best size for your hand in all spots and not really worrying about being balanced at all? I know you will be somewhat balanced anyway, but we are not concerned about being accurate?

Accurate in what sense?

I think if you are able to consistently pick out the most +EV line in a vacuum, you're already in the top 1% of players (realistically probably top 0.1%). I'm not saying you always get the exact perfect bet-size and never make mistakes, I just mean you're pretty damn close to consistently betting the right size when betting is appropriate and checking when checking is more appropriate.

If you're at that level, I'm really not worried AT ALL about this person failing to realize that balance can be important or else counter-strats exist. A person who is good enough to (almost) always take the most +EV line in a vacuum will be someone who has worked very, very hard at poker and already understand this, especially since it's not like a player in the top 0.1% of poker players won't use exploitative strategies against their opponents (for example, there's probably not a single person reading this who doesn't open the button more than is GTO at many/most stack depths).

That said, the next article I write (not sure if it'll be for TwoPlusTwo or Upswing Poker) will probably focus on balance, since I seem to be getting asked a lot of questions about it and I don't mind at all writing a couple pages on it to clear up some misconceptions. When I do, I'll post a link to it here.

It does say in the book that balance will be a natural outcome of implementing the strategies discussed. If your bet-small range consists of no strong hands, you're probably doing something wrong. Same goes for bet-large range.

Could someone starting 2nl start with this book?

https://gyazo.com/42d030e8c401ecccf48b298bdc1ccd6c

This is co v bb in a srp, the co betting range on the flop. Is the reason for checking some AA and some Jx for balance, to have some strong hands in our checking range? It seems like both AA and Jx strongly satisfy both reasons for betting?

I'm keen to read Matthew's article about balance when it comes out. I kind of feel like balance arises naturally as a result of trying to maximise the EV of your range/strategy given that there are various responses to your actions and various runouts still to be navigated.
There are clearly some good reasons to bet with AA, but there are some other combos that satisfy those reasons even more strongly. e.g. JJ or 86s or 75s are pretty much mandatory c-bets (sets and two pairs are "obvious" value bets. The 75s OESD is an "obvious" bluff, and all of these combos have robust equity. They're still in good shape if villain check-raises and threatens to play for stacks).
AA and J9s/J7s have mixed strategies because they work equally well as bets for value/protection, or as check backs that can be used as delayed c-bets or as bluff-catchers. If you always bet AA and all Jx combos, then your check-back range would definitely be somewhat weak and vulnerable to turn and river bluffs by villain. You've got to check back some made hands on the flop so that you can adequately defend against turn bluffs. On J86tt, AA and J9s/J7s (and TT/99) seem like very good candidates for doing that.
FWIW, I suppose that KK/QQ are more likely to bet the flop than AA is in that spot, despite being "worse hands", because they are slightly more vulnerable to free cards. Denying free equity is apparently more important with those hands, because some turn cards could mean they are close to drawing dead, and they won't be able to bluff-catch profitably on many runouts.

What range do you give to BB as defend, may i ask?

Hi Matthew,

Mistakenly posted this in pre sale thread too.

In the section 'Why we Bet and Raise' you give the example of the BB ch rz A8*vs Btn 50% cbet on 852*to build a pot to win and deny button ability to realise equity.

Could you explain why achieving these things is more valuable than potentially gaining more bluffs from the weaker/lower equity hands in Btn range on turn/river if BB were to instead ch call the flop?*

Thanks*

^^ There was a big discussion from post #156 onwards

tldr the book explains it well

As another poster pointed out, the book addresses this in great detail so it's going to be hard to address it better here. I would recommend reading the 852r section again, as it often takes a while for this stuff to "click."

That said, your question is a good one and one that troubled a lot of players (myself included). What I would recommend you do is "argue like a politician" why check-calling with the A8 on the 852r board is good and why check-raising is good. Clearly, they'll both have lots of advantages and disadvantages. This is what makes the spot confusing.

Once you've written everything out (and you really should do it), you still won't really have an answer. There's so many pros and cons to both calling and raising. That's where solvers (PioSOLVER) and artificial intelligence (PokerSnowie) come in. And if you look at what they recommend, they recommend check-raising with strong but vulnerable hands which likely won't be able to go check-raise/bet/bet (such as A8 on the 852r board) much more aggressively than most players would have thought just a few years ago.

Hope that helps.

Hi,

I'm thinking of getting this and Applications in a number of months through the 2p2 888 book deal. I'm only playing the micros though. Will I struggle a lot with concepts? I've read the grinders manual and understand basic concepts but no math advanced math or game theory.

So what's the verdict? Is it superior to Applications?

On part 6 Your bread and butter: Hand examples.

We have initial impressions, hands we bet big and hand we bet small and mistakes. Ok i learn a lot what kinds of made hands we bet and why bet, but there are no bluffs or light cbets examples. ¿Should I never bluff on Button vs Big blind?

'Applications' was the most useful poker book I ever read. It opened my mind to a whole new way of thinking about poker, and it came out at just the right time for me (when I was starting to get more interested in ranges and 'optimal play' theory instead of just ABC strat). That said, I'm finding this one (I'm about 90% done) to be a much better book, and definitely an easier read. It also contains fewer equations. I hate equations.