I think this was played reasonably. Lemme know

Edit: Only value hands they're really repping are TT right? Shouldn't have many 8s or straights I think

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

Hero (BTN): 314.8 BB
SB: 100 BB
BB: 105.6 BB
UTG: 135.6 BB
MP: 137.4 BB
CO: 110.4 BB

SB posts SB 0.4 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has A Q

UTG raises to 2.4 BB, fold, fold, Hero raises to 7.4 BB, fold, fold, UTG calls 5 BB

Flop: (16.2 BB, 2 players) T 8 8
UTG checks, Hero bets 4 BB, UTG raises to 12 BB, Hero calls 8 BB

Turn: (40.2 BB, 2 players) 2
UTG bets 25 BB, Hero calls 25 BB

River: (90.2 BB, 2 players) Q
UTG bets 43.2 BB, Hero calls 43.2 BB,

Yeah I like it

I don’t see anything wrong with this line. Well played.


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Shouldn’t we be sizing up OTF? Don’t solvers say something like 80% pot is best on these paired board where neither player has many of the paired card? As played I think it’s OK

F---uck solvers. This dudes playing 5NL....small bet small bet small bet. Let the fish make the mistakes

hmm interesting, I don't know. From my very limited solver work, I've typically seen small cbet sizing. I think it's because it would be too easy for villain to continue otherwise. Having said that, that sort of does line up with what you're saying, since if they don't have those hands in their range, it's super difficult to continue. Although, if they don't have them, it's still pretty difficult to continue against the small bet size anyway. I would think the amount of straight draw combos also come into play. So on J99 or something when they can have QT, 87, QK etc continuing vs 1/4 is a lot easier than like 992.

I'm just making **** up though.

It's one thing to bet small while realizing that a big bet is theoretically correct, but the small bet is better in practice due to exploitative reasons. But if I don't understand why the big bet is theoretically correct, or why the small bet performs better IRL, OR how either bet size affects my continuing range, then what's the point?

The goal is to learn and improve so that hopefully someday I won't be playing 5nl haha. Do you have any insight on why you'd deviate from what he's claiming is the optimal bet size in favor of the smaller one?

Sure...No problem wasn't trying to be a dink

So what I've found playing small stakes is that it's easy to exploit the average fish by simply making them make mistakes for smaller sizings. We only play the big sizings when we want to. We take advantage of the typical low level fish that overvalues things like TP or overpairs, plays far too many hands OOP and folds to c-bets and PF 3 bets too much.

In this particular instance a small sizing makes a ton of sense. Our range is uncapped. In theory, his is not. However this particular flop hits his range harder than our range. So to put it simply...We give him the opportunity to make a mistake for a better price on our end. TBH I like the smaller sizing here but probably would have bet 5bb instead so it was closer to 1/3 pot. No one likes to fold for a 1/4 pot bet if they think they have any chance whatsoever of winning the hand. And I've found that I tend to get more aggressive play back at me like you experienced here.

If we are playing a reasonable 3! range here he has to know that he has the advantage on this flop if he's even a semi thinking player so I like the way you played the hand in total.

The problem with solvers and gto is that they give us an optimal play route for the hand in total given that each player plays close to a given way. In practice this isn't the way it works and exploitative play (at least at the micros/small stakes) is still superior.

Cheers

Yeah, no problem, that was my reasoning for betting small as well, so why do you suppose solvers prefer a bigger bet size in theory?

I don't think the solver is wrong. I just think that trying to play the game like a computer and trying to keep every little nuance of the game that these things kick out is going to drive you batty. Especially at a micro stakes level. Enjoy the game, play for fun, if you become a winning player then good for you.

If our idea is that we’re going to over-cbet with small sizing because our opponents are droolers and they over-fold and under-x/r.... we need to fold to the x/r

The frequency at which we bet is determined by our equity advantage. The bigger our advantage, the more often we should bet.

The nut advantage is a factor in what size we choose.

On this flop, if we don't give UTG any 8x hands other than 88, then we would want to use a larger sizing. Which makes sense since we have more nutted hands like overpairs that want to pile money into the pot.

At the same time, if UTG has hands like 98s-87s, then we should use a smaller size since our nut advantage isn't as significant.

And to your point, yes, if you are playing someone that calls way too often then you can probably use a larger sizing with your best hands even in spots where a smaller size is theoretically correct.

I should clarify, the part I agreed with was mostly

"In this particular instance a small sizing makes a ton of sense. Our range is uncapped. In theory, his is not. However this particular flop hits his range harder than our range."

Not the whole "bet small cause it prints against mouth breathers".

I bet small because I actually thought that was the GTO approved bet sizing here for those reasons. So in other words betting 1/4 probably means they have to float quite often since they're getting such a good price, but they simply don't have many hands to do it with, which will lead to overfolding.

I don't fully understand why the solver chooses the large bet size here? So usually I think the idea behind not betting big on these paired boards is that it's easier for villain to play their range, since they have a lot of trips.

I'm gonna run this through a solver later, will update you

Not necessarily. Your assumption is that a slightly large bet would have the same effect on our opponent. I like the hand simply because of his 1/4 pot bet. With a 1/3 pot bet I fold this to the x/r in a heartbeat and would have told him that.

The thing is that UTG shouldn’t really have many 8’s at all here. In a no rake environment maybe it’s ok for UTG to have 98s/87s here, but really they should be folding those pre, let alone to the 3-bet

The idea behind betting larger rests on the (perhaps incorrect) assumption that neither player has many 8’s, but the 3-bettor should have lots of over pairs that are effectively the nuts. So we have a big top end range advantage which means we want to have a lot of money in the pot

I don’t really agree with your premise that opponents react very differently vs 1/4 pot bets as opposed to 1/3 pot bets

So I ended up solving UTG vs BU 3bet using pio's 74 flop subset instead of this exact flop. I will post it along with the others eventually like I've been promising haha.

I haven't actually looked through the results, just gonna take a couple of screenshots for now to keep the discussion going.

First off, here are all the paired flops, sorted by highest 75% betting freq. by the IP player after OOP checks.



Take a look at TT3 rainbow



Something confusing to me is that while IP has a range advantage overall with a higher % of their range being overpairs or better, OOP has a higher concentration of trips. 7.41% of their range is trips, and 13.3 an overpair. IP has 21.4% being overpairs, and 5.31% as trips. Of course, IP has AA and KK which OOP doesn't, and OOP somtimes 4bets QQ and even low freq JJ, so IP has stronger overpairs.

Here's where I'm confused. I thought that when we have an overall range advantage, but the other player has the nut advantage, we want to bet small and often. Hence the 1/4 with range or almost range. Is the Tx portion of each player's range just not as much of a factor as the overpair advantage IP has? So, while they may have some ATs which love the big bet, they have more JJ-QQ that kind of hates it? And I guess we stack them when we have AA-KK and they have QQ-JJ?

Here's another interesting thing, which is starting to derail from the whole cbet size thing, but look at how OOP defends.

Here's what IP bets



And OOP almost always defends by raising small with a more merged value-y /in need of protection range.

https://i.imgur.com/Jz2TQry.png

I gotta be honest I still don't fully understand the bigger bet, unless the reasoning really is that our abundance of overpairs, including the stronger ones OOP can't have make up more of our range than Tx (and same for OOP) that we extract more EV from building our range around those combos, and not Tx. Talking out of my ass though.

and T66 rainbow



I think this one does a better job of illustrating your point, since neither player really has 6x. And so those JJ+ hands are effectively the nuts. And when we have a bunch of nut combos that they can't, betting big is what I'm used to seeing the solver do.

Here's where it gets interesting. Something like K66.



First of all, we're literally never checking back.

I guess on this flop, our overpair advantage is kind of negated since we only have 6 combos of AA, but we do have KK and AK. KQo is about 50/50 3bet or fold pre, and KQs is called about 80% of the time. So I guess are strongest hands are really AA-KK and AK. Oh, and we have exacctly K6s 13% of the time lol.

The solver uses a mixed strategy here, and it's about 50/50 between the 1/4 pot size and 3/4. Honestly, this is a spot where I'd probably default to the 1/4. I totally get betting AA and AK for a large sizing, but there's no way I'd 'know' to be betting 99-77 and **** like A4cc for the big sizing. I would probably pick the more natural stuff like FD and BDFD. Is the logic just that those A4-A9s type hands with no relevant BD equity are the worst hands we have here, and we need more bluffs than just flush draws? So we choose those and **** like 88. I don't get the 88 large bet, since they're folding 88 themseleves, and it doesn't really block anything.

Considering it plays a mixed strategy with almost every combo, I guess either bet size is fine. Some hands are used with 1 sizing like 90% of the time, which makes logical sense. Like KK-JJ, the weaker Kx etc. And things like AA, unblocking his Kx which we're ahead of for the large sizing makes sense.

The confusing part is how it just takes every other hand like QThh, KQo, and just bets it with either bet size roughly half the time. Is it just that our range is so strong overall that we can just blast off?

There are a lot of things about this flop strategy that just don't really make sense to me. Do we just have such a better range here that we can bet everything, and the size is just a coinflip since we're using 2 sizings, and we need to be able to 'show up with' anything in both ranges?

Ok I'm gonna stop this here cause I'm just looking at the solver and rambling at this point. I just wanted to post some of those screenshots and see what people think.

I get in these spots a lot where I can kind of see arguments for multiple bet sizes being good. Then you plug it into the solver and it does indeed used a mixed strategy. The issue however is understanding why, aside from the 'obvious' hands that work better as a large or small bet, it chooses to just sort of do whatever with the other combos.

Well, it's more about understanding the underlying theoretical concepts behind the solver output. I get that its not necessarily the best play against real people, and that a human can not effectively employ the strategy (or rather, as effectively).

I find this game theory **** interesting and fun. Moreso than playing TBH, at least online.

The advice 'Enjoy the game, play for fun, if you become a winning player then good for you.' is sort of incongruous for a strategy discussion forum. Not that it's bad advice, but people are posting here for the express purpose of improving/learning/general stragegy discussion

I didn't read your entire post, this is ​easy to check in GTO+.

Just hover your mouse over the made hands for each player and look at the number of combos for the best possible 3 to 4 hands.

Even though the number of Tx combos are about the same, and OOP has 33 and IP doesn't. IP still has about 2x as many combos of overpairs, and like you said, that's the biggest factor in why the solver goes with a larger sizing.

It's always good to understand why a solver does something, but also if and when we can deviate.

Like I think it's perfectly fine to bet more of our range with a small size just due to the fact that a lot of players aren't defending enough on these kind of flops: TT3r, KK4r,etc.
​

It is fine. Wouldn't bet 25% on this flop though.

Concentrate on other spots

This is just a regular solve. IDK how to node lock either. I'm a software dev for a living, so I've seen all sorts of documentation, and belive me when I tell you GTO+'s documentation suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks.

IDK how to do any of the fancy **** either lol

So you think it's a big bet or check spot? I assume for the reasons that have already been mentioned?

I don't blame you lmao

I have a bad habit of rambling

Couldn't agree more. So maybe this is a spot where we can bet big with the hands that make sense to bet big with, and sort of employ and exploitative small bet size with hands that the solver would usually check back, in hopes that we get more folds than we theoretically should.

I will try that hover to view combos thing. I honestly have no idea how the hell to use this program and the docs are severely lacking

3betting the flop here might do wonders to open up your game

This is the main GTO+ thread here

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...nersev-155966/


It actually started off in 2008 as the thread for CREV, but then at some point became the GTO+ thread when that was released.

You can ask any question and get an answer within a day usually.