I think what you're missing here is one of the reasons to bet is to make it incorrect for certain hands to call. Against a pocket pair, a small bet will do. But against a good draw, a larger bet is needed. This is never mentioned and is an important consideration relative to bet sizing and is one of the reasons why bets on wet flops need to be larger than on dry flops.

MM

I don't think so. According to you there are only two hands which should be 3-bet. They are aces and kings (which is just 12 combinations). But you have a fair number of hands which to call (producing a much larger number of combinations than 12). When this is the case, it's probably a better strategy to hide information and not 3-bet at all. That is you move the aces and kings into the calling range and now your calling range will be better balanced by including a small number of strong hands and you won't have a 3-betting range. If you want to get a better understanding of this, I'll refer you to The Intelligent Poker Player by Phillip Newall where he addresses hiding information in some depth and why simplified strategies are often better.

On the other hand, if you were against an opener with a wider range and had more 3-betting hands, then you should maintain a 3-betting range and balance it with an appropriate amount of light three betting.

No. It appears that your understanding of mathematical expectation isn't quite right.

Let me give an example. If you give me a dollar to hold and then at a later time you take the dollar back, your profit is not $1, it's $0. So if your goal here is to make 30BB you cannot count your initial investment of 3BB since that's not part of your profit.

Now looking at exactly the way it's written you first say:

I think where the confusion comes in is that 1 in 10 is 9-to-1 odds. And if you want 9-to-1 odds that means you only have to win 27BB on your 3BB investment.

But that's not what your set mining rule states where you say:

10x your investment means odds of 10-to-1 which is different from 1 in 10. So:

You're talking 10-to-1 and need to subtract out your initial 3BB investment. If you actually meant 1 in 10 (which is not what is written) then the 30BB (in this example) can include your initial 3BB investment since in reality you're only winning 27BB.

Mason

I totally disagree that a strategy of flatting our whole non folding range is superior in this spot. In practice I think the EV of KK+ is increased dramaticaly by 3-betting and that this is a greater achievement for our whole range than the rest of it beneifting from having these hands as flats. 3-betting polarised against the average reg also allows +EV routes with hands like KQo for example that are otherwise 0 EV (folds because they're too weak to call) yet hands that seriously reduce villains nutted combos.

In practice, very few good regs in my experience do not have a 3-betting range against UTG opens in 6-max cash and for good reason.

I may be guilty here because I think this is one of the most over-applied and blinding notions in NLHE common theory. Draws are combinatorically fairly insignificant in most ranges in most spots. You may be right that it deserves more of a mention, but I think it often totally dominates a student's thought process unecessarily.

Set Mining Rule: Hero needs to make 10x his investment on average when he flops a set for pure set mining to be profitable.

In my opinion this means he needs to get back ten times what he invested in total which includes all money in the pot not just that which is surplus to the investment. The examples which follow clarify this as they show the procedure:

1. What is 10x my investment?
2. What will the pot be before additional money goes in?
3. What is 10x my investment minus the pot?
4. Can I make the above amount on average?

I've tired to simplify set mining while still bypassing sktchy rules such as "Villain must be X deep with Hero" that only capture one factor of the equation. I accept there may be a bit of confusion over the way the rule is worded, perhaps it can do with some revision in the next edition.

True, but this is just one exploitatvie potentiality. When introducing a concept or mode of thinking I avoid situplating lots of exploitatvie potentialities. In general it is less proftable to c-bet into larger fields. If the last to act player folds too much in this exact situation only then that's a very precise read that we will hardly ever have in an online cash game. If he folds too much in general then that's covered by the player type factor and its sub-factor of Fold to F CBet Stat. I disagree about the severity and relevance of this criticism.

Are those suits correct? (Peter mentioned a BDFD).

Peter makes a compelling argument for betting big, but I'm of the opinion that UTG's range does better with a small bet at a low frequency... and that particular combo is an obvious check.

Hand #62: 4 of our outs are a scare card, which will reduce our implied odds.

I started watching your new video series on DC. I joined a week ago. I've talked to your student a bit on discord.

When you started to talk about range advantages, I think it would be important to note that sometimes you can have a range advantage because the nutted combos make up a larger portion of your range, even if your opponent has all of the same combos.

Also initiative is a bit of a flawed concept. Usually we check to the preflop aggressor because he has the range advantage and he has the positional advantage. It doesn't matter what actions were taken in what order by which players as long as the same ranges reach the flop with the same pot size. I do think that the initiative does have a psychological effect though.

When talking about calling a BU opener from the big blind Clarke writes:

This comes out of nowhere and needs to be explained. In limit, as Philip Newall shows in his book, to hide information you should never 3-bet an opening raise from the big blind as long as no one else is in. So in no-limit against a BU min-raise there are a lot of similarities, and I wonder if this is the better reason not to reraise?

Mason

Cepheus strongly disagrees. Maybe you're thinking of 4-bets (since Cepheus never makes those)?

I'm awfully tired and possibly being dumb, but isn't the ratio better? I mean when comparing raises of the same size relative to the pot.

However, since Hero also has better odds for flatting, the following statement can still be true:

So I stayed up all night the other day to finish this book. I think it's easily one of the best poker books out there. It's up there with Applications of No Limit Hold 'em and The Mathematics of Poker, and well ahead of Easy Game. Here's what I liked about it:

1. There were 152 hand examples. They are a lot like practice problems. The goal of practice problems is to ingrain the material into the mind through application, and these hand examples were more than adequate. I liked how there would be multiple examples for each concept, meaning that you couldn't just assume that you were supposed to c-bet light in hand #25 just because the chapter was discussing light c-betting.

2. The book was very up to date. The peflop ranges are a bit tighter than what mid stakes regulars are using from early position and for blind defense, but they were solid nontheless. GTO concepts were used throughout the book including indiffernece, the value to bluff ratio, balancing, combos/blcokers, and the idea of ranges constricting from street to street.

3. The opposition was taken into consideration. Throughout the book, Carroters introduced individual HUD stats and implemented them into the hand examples. He teaches you how to exploit fish and to look out for the tendencies of the population and regs in your game.

4. Every topic that should've been covered, was covered, and in detail. Most poker books think it's just fine to give you a minuscule table on opening ranges and a 2% 3-bet range for their section on preflop strategy, but Carroters discusses cold calling ranges, blind defense, linear versus polar 3-betting, and range construction. I liked how Carroters split up postflop strategy into value betting, double and triple barreling, facing end of action spots with made hands versus non-made hands, etc. There should hardly be any situations you encounter at the poker tables that aren't covered in this book.

5. There were a lot of useful figures and flow charts. For every major concept like c-betting light or value betting, Carroters provides an easy to follow, but accurate thought process to use at the tables. It's definitely a book where you'll see immediate improvement in your game, rather than having bits of unapplicable theory floating in your head.

If BalugaWhale, Matthe Janda, and a 200z reg got together to write a comprhensive book on 6-max NLHe, The Grinder's Manual would be the result. It should be one of the first books any aspiring poker player reads.

In your latest DC video, Carroters, I heard you say that initiative isn't really a thing in poker, so it seems that you're aware of this, but your book sure mentioned it a lot.

Just before hand 97, there is a typo where you say "Vilian can expect to loose quite bit of money." "Loose" should be "lose."

There was another typo towards the end and a hand example I disagreed with, but I'll have to figure out what those things were later.

Have you looked at Snowie's preflop game at all Carroters? I think it would be worth looking at what Snowie adds as bluffs in 3-bet and 4-bet ranges, and to look at it's cold calling and blind defense ranges. In position, it 3-bets semi-polarized and semi-merged, since it sometimes 3-bets AQs-ATs and KQs. For 3-bet bluffs in position it usually chooses A5s-A2s and 76s-54s. I believe 98s and 87s face more domination issues. I thought most of the preflop ranges were solid, but they could probably be furthered optimized, or perhaps it's the reader's job to further explore preflop ranges on their own. I do think that just because a hand can be flatted profitably versus an open or 3-bet doesn't mean it's not more +EV to 3-bet that hand in place of the top of your folding range. I'd rather turn a close to 0 EV flat in some situations into a 3-bet/4-bet bluff that has better postflop playability than suited junk.

Against a min open, a common 3-bet sizing from the small blind is 7.5bb. The required fold equity for this situation is 66.7% (7 / (7 + 1.5 + 2)). Against a 3bb open, a common 3-bet sizing from the small blind is 10bb. The required fold equity for this situation is 67.9% (9.5 / (9.5 + 1.5 + 3)). So the risk to reward ratio of 3betting is indeed better when villain opens to a smaller sizing.

Let's look at this from a theory perspective. When the button opens smaller, our minimum defense frequency goes up. We can either meet or exceed the MDF by flatting more hands, by 3-betting more hands, or by doing both things. I believe that we will actually be 3-betting more hands the smaller our opponent's opening size is. This is because our opponent will open with a wider range of hands when he opens smaller, meaning we can 3-bet more hands for value since he has to defend more hands to meet his MDF versus our 3-bet. Also the SPR is higher when he min opens, which favors the player in position, so by 3betting more, we reduce the value of the button's positional advantage.

When the button opens to 3bb, his RFE (required fold equity) is 66.7%, meaning that the maximum the blinds can 3-bet is 33.3% combined, because if they 3-bet more than this, the button's 0 EV hands suddenly become -EV, and it can't be theoretically correct for the worse hand in a GTO opening range to be -EV. If the button opens to 2bb, his RFE is 57.1%, which means the maximum 3-betting frequency from the blinds is 42.9%. So it has been shown that the blinds are permitted to 3bet more versus a smaller sizing.

If you look at Snowie's 3betting ranges BB vs BTN, it 3bets more versus a smaller opening size.

Hi Carroters,

is the Kindle version available?

I read the kindle edition.

Hi Foosa,

I didn't get any update from gumroad.
Did u buy the edition from amazon ?

I was able to read it for free using the kindle unlimited free trial.

It would be based on limit poker

I would say though that Mason's different perspective was really useful earlier in the thread when we were talking about OOP river play - I bet more often in that spot now than before - and the result of this thread I'm excited to be ordering both Carroters' and Mason's latest books at the start of next month and will review both.

Just reviving the earlier derail about whether those "tactical" OOP bets that are slightly more likely to be called by a better hand but betting is still better than checking should be thought of as value bets or not. While it's true they don't meet the current definition (more likely to be called by worse) I tend to think the current definition should change to Mason's definition because for actual purposes we need to think of value bets - e.g. balancing - they function as value bets not bluffs, they still need to be balanced by bluffs.

For another view of "reasons to bet" I recommend dusting of your old copies of Theory of Poker by Sklansky. It's very much limit-oriented but that's the point; it trains different mental muscles to the ones NL-based materials train. Like the training for running 100m isn't just to run 100m over and over again; you train other muscles too.

+2 for a paper edition.

On the page with the graphic showing short term EV versus long term EV, the numbers don't add up to $8. They add up to $7. Perhaps it's implied that there were more short term results then the ones shown, but not everyone can read in between the lines. In any of the ranges where you added 43s, you should swap it with 53s unless both are in the range. 53s makes the same number of straights as 43s since 432AK is not a straight, and you might as well have the higher card.

If you purchase book from site, you get it in PDF so if you really want paper edition, you can print out the pdf and get it bounded at Kinko's or Staples.

yeah well it is not the same thing right?....

I'm not really sure what you are saying, are you implying the books you release evolve with the game? I think Harrington would have a brain aneurysm if you tried to explain GTO to him, does he still balance his range with his watch? harrington on online cash games is really bad.

Mason

I'm not really sure what you are saying, are you implying the books you release evolve with the game? I think Harrington would have a brain aneurysm if you tried to explain GTO to him, does he still balance his range with his watch? harrington on online cash games is really bad.

Hand #24:

Hero has AdQd and the flop is KcJh6c. The question is how large a c-bet should be.

Author writes:

Quote:
This flop is semi-wet, but Hero has decent equity with an over card and gutshot. Moreover, Villian should be calling pre-flop with a decent number of pocket pairs, which have flopped poorly here.
Notice that this is a reason to bet small since pocket pairs only have two outs to a better hand.
You are manipulating bet size based on hand strength not your perceived range which is bad imo and very exploitable. How would you balance this?

Quote:
Hero's range is strong here given the position he opened from and how well he connects with the K and J on this flop. Hands such as [AA KK JJ 66 AK KQ KJs KTs] are strong and sizeable part.
Isn't this another reason to bet smaller since Hero won't want to lose his opponent? But yet Clarke recommends a larger c-bet. And most important he doesn't mention the idea that with this flop many good draws are available to Villian where you would want to bet large.

Lose his opponent? More like lose value if we bet small as you are suggesting. I kind of feel sorry for the author if he has to put up with much more than this i would would wager he has played more hands and has better results than you in online cash games? I would also wager you would get absolutely crushed in NL25 Zoom on pokerstars over 100k hands played in a month.

I agree completely. And when I write, from Post #113:

This should be completely disregarded.

MM