Hi all,

I'm diving into the IP strategy in SRP. Specifically I am looking at CO, BTN vs BB.

My initial understanding was that we can range bet small (33%) on all boards that favor our hand range. So most boards other than super wet boards or 3 middling cards.

I am now realizing that is wrong. Looking at betting frequencies on boards with an A we don't bet more than 60% of the time even though this favors our range.



So a couple questions:

1. What is the theory behind range betting?
2. What boards can be range bet from the previously described positions

1. The theory is that our opponents will exploit our wide Cbets on the boards you describe. Therefore, theory suggests having a protected Flop Check range.
But at the lower stakes, opponents don't check/call and check/raise enough against our bets, allowing us to exploit them with wide CBets.

2. To simplify, I would divide flops into 3 types:

1. Dry - unconnected, unsuited (range bet)
2. Draw - with FD/OESD/GS (polar bet, but if the opponent has a high check/fold or a low check/raise - range bet)
3. Heavy Draw - opponent's range can contain made Flushes/Straights (polar bet)

Further, you can complicate the strategy by checking part of the trash hands, defending your check with medium hands like Top Pair weak kicker, MP (2 street value hands), and continue betting the rest of the range with a small sizing.
Thus, you will have a Cbet IP of 70-80% and a protected Check range.

The main weapon against wide Cbets is Check/Raise which burn our equity.
If Opponents call wide, they have weak ranges on the turn and river, allowing us to keep printing money.
So keep betting wide on the Flop until you see high check/raises.

A-high flop is a category all to itself. First of all Aces make up a large portion of preflop calling ranges, so you can't count on your bluffs getting through as often. Also there are no overcards, so gaining protection becomes less important, and opponent's calling ranges become smaller so we gain less value with medium-strength hands. So betting QQ on K63 gains by folding out A5, and still gets called by some dominated hands like AT. Betting KK on A63 is folding out a bunch of hands with almost no equity, and never getting called by KQ or QJ (you still get calls from smaller pairs, so a bet may be okay, but it's not a super-profitable spot). So on A-high flops it often makes sense to bet polarized with very weak and very strong hands, checking a lot of medium strength holdings.

To add to the previous replies, betting with a polarized range doesn't imply that you have to be betting big. On low connected boards, for example, you should default to cbetting with a very low frequency and still use a small size when you do bet.

To understand this, think of the concept of 'range advantage' as having two separate categories: (1) overall range equity advantage and (2) top of range advantage / nut advantage.

When you have the overall range equity advantage AND a slight nut advantage AND your nutted hands aren't overly concerned with denying equity to draws, you have an incentive to leverage your range advantage in the form of betting with all your air, because it would be a shame to give up with air when your opponent is going to have to overfold.

Sometimes though you'll have a slight overall range equity advantage due to having all the overpairs, but your opponent's range proportionally has more sets, straights, and 2-pairs like on a 6d5s3s board (even if you have all the same combos in your range, the OOP range has fewer total combos, so the nutted hands will make up a greater proportion of his range if you have an equal number of combos). On this type of board your overpairs are not good enough to play a huge pot, so if you start betting big, you're just going to narrow your opponent's range down to the portion you don't have an advantage against. This means your range's overall EV is going to suffer if you start blasting, even if you only do so with nutted hands.

Now to get more advanced, sometimes you have boards where the IP player has a significant overall range equity advantage AND a big nut advantage, such as an AK2r board. On this type of board, you still have the incentive to bet small with all your air, but you also can just start blasting 2x pot on the flop, because this maximizes the EV of your nutted hands if your opponent defends properly. If you run a BTN vs BB SRP AK2r board in PIO or GTOw, this is the strategy it'll like best, because maximizing the EV of your nutted hands and giving up with most of your air generates more EV for your entire range than betting small with your full range does. Note that the solver won't mix sizes on this board if you give it multiple options. It'll just blast with TPGK+ and some bluffs. HOWEVER, most good players, even if they know how to identify this type of board, will just opt to range bet small on these boards because it's hard to know what conditions might alter the EV of this strategy in real life vs equilibrium. I.e. How often does your opponent have to call down with bluffcatchers against the huge size and is that actually going to happen? If you know the answers then you should go for this strategy and adjust the amount of bluffs accordingly, but if you don't then you can still play these boards very profitably by range betting. If you want to go down the rabbit hole someday and get the best of both worlds against opponents who are unlikely to be able to figure out what you're doing then you can start looking at mixing sizes in an intentionally unbalanced way, but that's ultra advanced stuff. Most people are better off picking one strategy at a time.

Thanks for the replies! That is a bunch of really helpful info and I appreciate all of you.

So just to recap and make sure I understand.

On very dry boards where we have the range advantage I can bet my whole range with a small size. As the board becomes more dynamic I can begin checking back a mix of air and medium value, as well as begin to bet larger with the top of my range (TPGK+) and my strongest draws. I'll still be betting a good portion of my range at the small sizing though.

As the range advantage moves towards my opponents favor I will bet less frequently, and the range of hands that can bet large shrinks (2p+).


Would a good default strategy be to take the top 10% of my value hands, 50 combos from the BTN (so sets, 2p, and the top 3 TP hands), the best 10% bluff combos, and the worst 10% of air combos and always bet these (I read that flop value to bluff ratio should be 1:2, not sure if that is good info or not)? Default size to 2/3 but increase up to 125% as the board becomes more dynamic and the nut advantage remains with me. Then the other 70% of my range will either bet small or check depending on the board texture.

I realize this would be exploitable if I never had 2p+ when I check. Not sure if that is an issue at low stakes, but I could increase my betting range to the top 15% but mix in a check with all combos 1/3 of the time.

I'll typically RNG on boards I don't range bet.

Let's say it's a flop that I would normally bet 70% of the time. I'd split my range into hands that are pure checks and hands that mix. Then I just RNG if I have a hand that mixes and bet or check accordingly.