Folded to villain in the SB, who is an older Asian man who doesn't chop. He raises and I defend 89o in the BB.

Flop T65. Villain bets, I call.
Turn Q putting up a flush draw. Villain checks, I check.
River 4r. Villain checks, I take a stab even though I don't really rep anything.

I think I may have screwed up all three post flop streets, but curious what y'all think.

raise flop is poor to do w\ all combos of 98o imo. you can turn 2nd pair tons and comfortably call down.
bet the turn and river. i dislike the turn xb

--You're repping 6x, 5x, 4x, 73, 23, 78 combos that didn't bet turn. There should be a number of them.

--How to play flop depends on your overall game plan. Some people like to have really wide flatting range. Some people like to attack quickly with most hands, and put pressure on villains to play back or call down light.

I'd bet the turn.

As played on the river, it depends on how the small blind would play worse hands like 72s. If he will let you win a showdown with your 9 high then take the free showdown. If he would bluff worse hands then you have no showdown value and should bluff the river with an exception; if he doesn't fold enough to allow you an immediate profit with junk, then you should exploit this by not bluffing.

Agreed. We have to be near the bottom of our range and our opponent is showing weakness.

expand on this? are you just saying it plays out a lot better with a one bet per street approach than with a flop raise the times you turn 2nd pair? obviously we're not folding if we get 3-bet...

I like a turn bet and barrel though I assume some percentage of the time you'll get owned by AK and AJ and perhaps even worse A high combos. I admittedly play way too passive at times and even I can find a turn bet here.

Yes but he wont fold either when you raise the flop...

Not likely, but we win on the turn sometimes against hands that would otherwise beat us. That doesn't answer the question though and I wasn't advocating raising.

Betting the turn is just giving an asian $80

seems unlikely when you have 30% equity

I think the thread ended here honestly. Anyone advocating something different is the one who has to prove their side.

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Flop T65. Villain bets, I call.
Turn Q putting up a flush draw. Villain checks, I check.
River 4r. Villain checks, I take a stab even though I don't really rep anything.
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Lets dump some gto in this thread. Spent most of my life studying this stuff.

bb range is capped preflop and dominated heavily by sb opening uncapped range.

on T65 sb should bet effectively his whole range, as his RvR EQ crushes his opponent.
...bb should then raise flop a bit less than normal
1) we're IP
2) we have a capped range
3) we don't have many strong value hands

as bb,
- the only monsters we have are T6o T5o and 65o, 65s should 3b preflop
- we could raise 2/3rds our Tx hands w\ good kicker
- rarely with a 6 (ace kicker, bdfd, or 3straight)
- rarely w\ 5 (same type as 6)

we're going to be raising sb cbet with ~225 combos, and ~30-35% of that should be bluffs. ~75

If we raise all combos of 98o, 97o, 87o that's already 36 combos... well over half of our possible bluffs. what about 74o? 43o? up to 60 combos now..

always using these types of hands as bluffs means that on a turn T657, you literally have no bluffs in your range anymore. A good player will exploit you by check folding a higher % as your range has too much equity.

We also want to be able to turn straights with those combos in our calling range. Another way it becomes unbalanced by always raising. LOTS of lags always raise these types of hands, it's extremely easy to play against. They also generally raise most pairs they make... leaving their calling range naked as fk. We counter them with higher turn + river cbet/bluffing frequencies.

I much prefer to sometimes raise all of the gutters, and include hands like -
- J9o, QJo, Q8o, Q9o that can turn big draws + overs
- A7o, a4o that has some weak showdownability and can xb some turns
- Q7s bdfd K4s Bdfd that has some weak showdownability and can barrel off on turn 7s to punish.

So yea, always doing X or Y in wide range spots is bad imo.
#mixedStrategy

Fwiw, I teach this approach to all of my students. I also speak about this as a commentator on the poker show: www.liveatthebike.com

So to answer this, we should raise the flop sometimes, obviously calling if we get 3bet. But we should often (and by often I mean usually) just call the flop here, preferring to spread our bluffs over many types of hands.

I don't check 2+2 as much as I used to... if y'all ever want to discuss strats w\ me hit me up on instagram or twitter. My handles are avoidthe9to5 everywhere

Thanks for that poast, v. informative.

Specifically related to my question:

"raise flop is poor to do w\ all combos of 98o imo. you can turn 2nd pair tons and comfortably call down."

I initially took the second sentence to be an explanation for the first... are you basically just saying hands that have two chances to turn middle pair are generally better to call with from a GTO perspective? That makes some sense to me, but with a gutshot it also has quite a bit of equity against the SB range so when you're raising hands with equity you can mix in more bluffs...

Or were those sentences not directly related?

Not directly related, more coincidental. <3

Are we assuming BB has a capped range because his BB strategy includes 3-betting a range of hands (mostly strong one)?

Hey man thanks for the awesome post above. Although I would word it as "...range has a surplus of equity which means you missed calling value on the flop."

I agree. The risk of counter exploitation is real.

Confirm. should be 3betting ~20% preflop, not mostly strong ones... but a well balanced merged range including 65s =P

avoid: you're making a lot of assumptions on BB PF strategy. You say only monsters BB can have are 6T/5T/56: this implies BB is 3b'ing 100% 55+. What evidence can you show that that is optimal? Your GTO strategy can only go as far as your PF parameters.

Yeah with all this talk about playing the flop in a way that we'll have a balanced range on any turn card it seems pretty inconsistent to play preflop in a way that defines our flop range so rigidly. Even if we're doing that as an exploitive strategy it seems silly not to occasionally flat strong hands to keep SB and other players at the table guessing about our frequencies.

if bb flats 100% sb should adjust by cbetting ~10-15% less as his range has less equity.

Millions of GTO hand histories, including 3handed results from AI championships. + years of study
When the btn folds, and sb raises, bb is 3betting 20%. If you don't 3bet 20% from the BB, the SB can adjust exploitatively to cbet less often.

This is actually something that bothered me for a long time. I finally realized it was more about balancing the RvR EQ than it was about "protecting my call range w\ Aces".
Normally in the big blind we just flat everything vs opens. But IP, this spot was played differently. Surprised me

Both the 3betting range and calling range are extremely well balanced.

If you wanna be super technical about it, you could do something like flat the hands in your 3betting range 10% or smth. Makes it annoying to do range work on though =P and not necessary imo

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Fwiw, capped ranges are not an awful thing, as long as they are played correctly and not treated as symmetrical to the pfr. In NLHE, 95% of calling ranges in position are capped. When you raise + call a 3bet in NL you range is also usually capped.

Getting away from GTO and into exploitive strategy (avoidthe9to5 can stop reading here), I think mixing in the 10% or even 5% has value against perceptive opponents. It's really hard for them to determine how often you flat big hands when they see you show down JJ after flatting preflop, but if you *never* do it they're likely to get a good handle on your calling range.

i think you have to stab turn, you aren't getting too many folds but i think you're getting enough folds on rivers. plus the whole GTO attempt at, well if you're gonna have a bluff, pretty sure it's when you're supposed to have this kind of hand. if turn goes check call you can value bet very thin on the river, i think.

Your hand strength is pretty polarized on almost any river so there aren't really any thin valuebets possible. I guess if you pair up on a 4-flush card, but that has to be too thin. I guess an offsuit 8 is kind of thin?