I think he means a player that has complete knowledge of your strategy. Thus if you were going to fold the top of your range in a situation, then he could profitably bluff his whole range.

and I think the main reason his statement isn't true is because of the possibility of improbable events happening in a hand due to community cards

What % of your hands is the top of your range? Is it the top 50% or is it the absolute best hand you could have?

Observation: some people really enjoy "brain-masturbation".

I'm not sure how this changes things. the % you choose is a somewhat arbitrarily chosen high %.

Eddi, your above post isn't constructive at all. I think its an interesting question with practical applications to poker. If you don't, thats ok, I respect your opinion. Just please stop posting in the thread. Or if you'd like, post reasons you think it isn't a good question

First of all, this strategy (incomplete as it is) is very unreasonable. It is fine to fold the top of your range if you think that it doesn't fare well against your opponents range and how he will play it. I again implore you to think less about your range of hands as opposed to your hand and your perceived range.

If you are playing in such a way where for example you can't have an A on an Axx flop, then you are just putting yourself in a tough spot. It's similar to calling a 3bet from a good lag oop with a hand like 99 and check calling a lot. He's capable of 3barreling a K8523 board as a bluff or with KQ for value. I do what I can to avoid spots like this.

I'm not sure how this changes things. the % you choose is a somewhat arbitrarily chosen high %.

Eddi, your above post isn't constructive at all. I think its an interesting question with practical applications to poker. If you don't, thats ok, I respect your opinion. Just please stop posting in the thread. Or if you'd like, post reasons you think it isn't a good question

edit: and I meant low percentage sorry.

niffe the KK spot isn't a tough one at all. The flop came ace high, it is very likely villain has an ace. Check/fold is the obvious correct strategy.

it is also very difficult for villain to exploit this strategy. He could start 4 betting wider, and bluffing any ace high flop. but he won't hit ace high flops all that often and he will lose quite a bit of money when you have aces or AK and the such.

What's new here? If he bluffs his whole range you call more, he bluffs less. You play the mental game of perceived bluffing frequencies. If he plays GTO he is obviously able to throw in a bunch of bluffs since he has lots of hands in his range that you can't beat. However, just like always, if he's bluffing in a GTO manner it doesn't matter if you call or fold.

Please explain the second statement. What if we're playing the river? Why does that matter anyway?

I was referring to flatting KK preflop
You are not thinking this through. Also, considering you didn't state your own 3betting range, you should at least state a 4betting range for the villain. If you are going to pick hypothetical situations or toy games, you have to set up the initial conditions.

My initial disliking of the strategy was in segregating strategies for AA and KK preflop. They play very similarly and in most realistic situations I think it makes sense to flat both of them, or shove both of them.

I might not solve it fully, but here is my explanation. I propose to shove KK instead of flatting. Essentially, the money you are saving by folding KK on A high flops when beat does not outweigh the money you could be making by allowing your opponent to fold hands he would have gone all in preflop. Additionally, you can get bluffed out of the ENTIRE pot sometimes.

You are calling KK preflop in order to go bust on non A flops and c/f A flops.
Let's break it down.

4betting range of JJ+, AK, and 35s (representing 4bet bluffs, he folds these to shove obviously)
Assuming one pot sized bet left and that you had to call 1/3 pot preflop.

call
AA (6 combos) you save that bet when an A flops (12% of the time)
AK (12 combos) you save that bet when an A flops (18% of the time)
you lose your 70% equity edge you had preflop (82% of the time)
QQ,JJ (12 combos) - you lose the bet when an A flops (24% of the time)

If you sum up all these products (and accept my initial conditions) you will find its better to shove KK even if your opponent is NEVER able to bluff.

isnt this why nutcapacity is one of the most important concepts in optimal play for mulitstreet games like poker? The more often you can threaten to have the nuts in ur range given any type of previous action the tougher you are to play against in a game theory/optimal way of playing?

kind of skimmed this so i hope i'm not being too redundant.

A5, i don't think top of range is a general idea that applies to some echelon of high equity hands. it refers to the very best hands you can have given your range as it changes from street to street. suppose you never flat AA pre and you fold small pairs and suited connectors to a button raise in the SB and always 3b AQ+. if your opponent opens the button and you flat the SB and the flop is A23r, the top of your range is AJ. that you can't have the nuts is mitigated by other factors, such as the overall airiness of your opponent's range, his possible tendency to multibarrel bluff into a hand (AJ) you intend not to fold, etc. - but the very real fact is AJ is the best hand that you can have there.

as far as the OP, this is kind of a silly inquiry. we've all played with opponents whose valuebetting ranges and bluffing frequencies are such that we SHOULD fold the top of our range at points. of course this is exploitable - the point is that we're exploiting them.

I don't think it's as simple as what some of you are saying. Sometimes the top of your range is not the effective nuts. For example, look at this hand from a recent thread.

Party Poker $1000.00 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players
2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked

BTN: $2267.81
SB: $1475.25
Hero (BB): $1042.00
UTG: $1000.00
MP: $303.75
CO: $985.00

Pre Flop: Hero is BB with K A
1 fold, MP raises to $20, CO calls $20, 2 folds, Hero raises to $91, 1 fold, CO calls $71

Flop: ($202.00) 9 6 6 (2 players)
Hero checks, CO checks

Turn: ($202.00) 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, CO checks

River: ($202.00) A (2 players)
Hero bets $170.25, CO raises to $553.31

Here, AK is at the top of his range not because he's a bad player but because it's most likely burning money to play the better hands (99, 66, AA) this way. Yes, once in while you'll be slowplaying AA or 66 or whatever but that happens so rarely that you can say vast majority of the time, AK is the best hand you can have in that situation.

in an effort to be unexploitable a lot of people play far from optimally.

+1

terp thanks for your post. You explained what I was trying to say better than I was doing it.

Unknown soldier, my point is that I think an unexploitable strategy would still fold the top part of its range occasionally.

I agree that playing to exploit others weaknesses is usually much more +ev than playing to avoid exploitation. I also think that when attempting to create strategies against much stronger players attempting to make strategies against stronger players attacking them from a "don't let this player exploit me" angle seems to be a decent one.

I don't get this discussion, why discuss whether it's correct to fold the top of your range from a theoretical point of view if being exploited is at the same time acceptable according to all posts? It becomes utterly pointless to discuss.

When you are saying "its ok to be exploited" I think the point most are making. Is that if you are folding the top of your range, its not that you are being exploited, its that you are exploiting the bettor (i.e. he's too passive or loose or something).

When you are playing against very good players it becomes less ok to make these 'exploitive' folds. Simply because those good players are not passive, and are not too loose (or too tight, or too anything).

So when constructing strategies against very strong players we want to minimize the opportunities they have to make extremely +ev plays against us (just another way of saying we want to be unexploitable).

Many people believe that folding the top part of your range is an exploitable action. So they wouldn't want good players to be capable of that. You can think of it as a measure of a good strategy. You look at a hand and say to yourself, oh look I'm folding the top part of my range to a good aggressive player...I probably should rethink my strategy at some part of that hand.

What I'm saying, is that I think that in many cases this statement is false. That it can be the case that folding the top part of your range is not something that can be exploited. If this is the case, then we don't need to give it as much impact on molding our strategies and we should look for other more accurate measures to evaluate our strategies.

lol, can't help but think that all this is putting the cart (theoretically unexploitable/optimal play) before the horse ($$$$$$$), for about 20k hands a while ago I used to not fold QQ+ on boards like 4456 to any player, no matter how bad or how good, until they always showed AA+ and then it hit me (and my br) that having AA is pointless if their range is always AA+ here

basically level the hell down, the q is "will calling is going to leave me with more money than if I fold" instead of "am I playing game theory perfect unexploitable poker vs hypothetical preprogramed pokerbot"

sometimes in msnl games (2/4, 3/6, 5/10) I feel a few of my opponents are playing virtual 25/50+ when they make a failed superhuman call that I get to see shown down vs players that just won't be playing that tough to make the call right

zeestein,

I agree with you that while actually playing, most the time you don't need to think on a very high level.

The problem I have with your statement: "is calling going to leave me more money than if I fold". Is that a hold'em hand is a complicated thing. One decision on a later street is strongly affected by your decisions on earlier streets.

So when putting together a complete strategy for those earlier streets you need to consider their impact on different possible future permutations of the hand.

The whole thing gets even more complicated when you consider that your decisions in a certain situation have an effect on hands that you aren't even currently playing. For example, if you always bet or raise your sets then you can't ever have a set when you don't bet or raise.

So, something that I believe many good players do, is tailor their strategies so that they are never left with weak ranges (without a strong top part). This has many impacts on strategy in general. For instance it makes it important to consider what hands you are checking with when you make a continuation bet.

Another good example is checking with a strong hand to protect a normally weak range. When you see a good player do this, the decision can be interpreted as a desire to induce a bluff as well.

I think there are a lot of interesting routes this conversation can continue on. But I'm going to stop now, as I'm getting the idea that most people aren't interested and disagree with me that it has some impact on their game.

By my definition of a "good aggressive player", these two can never be true at the same time.

I think that their are 2 ways to make folding the top of your range unexploitable.

1) You can fold your hand a certain % of the time; e.g. With the KK hand you proposed earlier, you would fold call and raise the flop x,y,z% of the time so that no matter the range villain is playing you can minimise his Ev.

2) I think that it would be possible to manipulate your range so that you have the nuts often enough so that any bet from villain would be -Ev, even if you fold your whole range except the nuts. Although I'm not sure how possible it would be to skew/balance your range in such a way.

Edit: An example of this could be where a turn bet from villain is either a bluff or the nuts. With this range we would call with the nuts, fold the second nuts and then call with a weak made hand that has a marginal redraw then call all rivers. In this case it was profitable to fold you 2nd nut hand because you protect it form bluffs by calling with the weaker hand.

In which case I think that if you were to only ever do anything 100% of the time then it would never be GTO correct to fold 100% of your range.

lets say that there is a special card in the deck (call it a joker). If the joker hits, suddenly 90% of villains range becomes better than your entire range.

Against the remaining 10% your hand values retain the value they previously had (so it is still meaningful to talk about the top of your range).

Now say that the joker has an extremely small % chance to hit (so it doesn't really effect anything, like .00001% chance).

So if you play a hand out to the river, and then a joker hits on the river. You better be check/folding your entire range. Despite the fact that a good aggressive player will be betting his entire range.

did that make sense?

I don't see a reason jokers can't exist in hold'em (obviously not the exact equivalent, but similar).

The problem with this example is how can we know villains range soo exact. I think that it is expliotable to fold the best hand in your range even in this instance if we call villains range x% strong, y% blufss and that x>>y.

huggy, the joker is just a really magical card. Its definitely not correct to ever call if this magical card makes villains range much stronger than ours. The big difference between jokers and real community cards is that the joker is defined such that it can't hit your range.

its definitely not correct to ever call if the aggressive player bets big when a joker hits. In reality though, a good aggressive player would bet smal. Which is probably what mdma will bring up.

However, in the situation where the aggressive player bets big and the joker has hit it is definitely wrong to call.

edit:
ok...so I can see this 90% thing making things complicated. you could just make it 100% (then the top of your range is just every hand in your range).

So you contend that it is correct to fold your entire range when it is very weak vs villains range. Which I agree with, but this definitely will mean we need to adjust our overall strategy so that our folds will not become exploitable.