Anyone else had the experience of gleefully lapping up some new fangled theory (GTO and balancing ranges in this case), thinking you're god's gift and then doing something ridiculous like a triple float bluff-shove at NL2?


Protip - there is never a good time to triple float bluff shove with 55 at NL2.

Well, not to be a jerk but you probably have no clue what gto strategies looks like. No idea what you mean by triple float but you shouldn't get to the river with crappy hands, gto is the opposite of that..

Now sure, there are things you shouldn't do at nl2 which gto would dictate but should you play an approximation of gto at nl2.. well.. let's just say you wouldn't play nl2 very long.

GTO strategies vary considerably hand to hand, but the general principle is to make your opponent indifferent to your actions by balancing your ranges for particular bet sizings. Generally one finds such strategies by using AI algorithms etc.
Now no-one is saying that you must sit with PioSOLVER and work out a chart for your range given villain's range every hand and use a random number generator etc...in fact doing so probably doesn't profit very much relative to standard exploitative play at these stakes, since opponents are DEFINITELY not playing anything close to GTO strategies. It just got me interested in the concept of balancing one's range.

Float = call a cbet with the intention of betting if checked to
Double float = call a cbet and a turn cbet with intention of betting if checked to.
triple float... he bets the river and you shove with nothing anyway because you are a big donkey

The actual hand played out something like this,
Villain raised pf from CO, I called with 55,
Flop was Q84, he bet, I called,
Turn was an 8 (good card for my range, since he doesn't cbet that many of his combos with 8's whereas I call with many A8's etc), he bet, I called
River was a 4, he bet, I jammed, thinking I was representing a very plausible 8x type hand,
Villain snaps with AQ.

Fair enough to him, it was the right call, and he was just probably the wrong player type to try this against.
My logic went along the lines of - if he bets the river, he probably has an overpair or a queen a lot of the time. I want to get paid the times I am jamming with an 8, so I have to balance my value range (A8, A4) with a few bluffs. By the time i hit the river, my calling range is something like KQ, QJ, A4, my raising range is literally A8, 88 and 44 and my folding range is 99, 77, 66, 55 (assuming I fold 33 and 22 by the river).

I should thus take one of the hands from the folding range and put it into the raising range to balance. 55 is a good candidate because it has least showdown value of all, i.e we are getting better to fold.

Of course, range balancing doesnt matter at the micros, because typical villains have VERY unbalanced ranges, so you can exploitatively fold all but the strongest hands to passive opponents, and call maniacs a lot etc...

But I thought I'd give it a whirl, and hey presto, opponent is a station and cannot fold, thus whilst this bluff probably isn't so bad (maybe some Q's fold, and you make more with your value range because villain always calls the shove), the exploitative play is just to not do this ever.

For the record, I'm playing NL2 because I'm a brokeass grad student. Started with $100 on January 1st and on $140 now after about 6000 hands of NLHE and PLO. Have previously played live £1/£2 in the UK profitably for some years.

But yeah the point was that I got all excited about fancy play, and immediately decided to try out my new toolkit...on completely the wrong opponents.

That having been said, it's a common myth that bluffing isn't profitable at NL2. 4bet bluffing is profitable against the guys who cbet like 20percent (just dont do it agains the guys who cbet 2 percent!), and double barrelling selectively is extremely profitable at NL2, because passive players have figured out that cbetting is a thing, but their solutions is to just peel the flop with ATC a lot of the time, which just creates dead money you can take on the turn.

That's not a bad winrate
But yes, you played this particular hand terribly I'm afraid. The 8 is a good card for you range, that much is true but it is also a terrible card for 55 and the fact villain keeps betting should point to a very clear cut fold (anything other than a 5,6,7 is a fold to a 2nd barrel). Then on the river you decided to shove with 0 blockers to 8x + blocking 56s. That is very far from GTO, that is burning money. So yes, fancy plays are bad but fancy plays aren't GTO plays.

Absolutely - I wasn't defending the play! Just sayin' about the tendancy of players to read about fancy stuff and then immediately go and completely misapply it due to over-enthusiasm!

So maybe 99 is actually the hand that warrants the shove here, since it doesnt block the 76 and does block the 89 !!

Yes, it might be the best candidate. And it clearly is a +ev turn call.

In general i think micro stakes players are just to obsessed with playing GTO. People trying to apply advanced theories that don't work or aren't necessary at the micro stakes.

I mean in principle the whole point of GTO is that it works regardless of what your opponents do (i.e the best they can do against it is play GTO themselves which would then be EV neutral), it's just that opponents are passive at the micros and when they bet they generally "have it" and won't put down a hand like top pair, so you make more by exploitativley folding all but your strongest holdings...

Made the money back at PLO. Microstakes PLO is good training for teaching you how to fold big hands and not bluff too much. Always amazed by how weak they show down...