Okay I tried to sleep but I can't do it right now I'm too excited. I wanted to gather all my thought's in one place for this next topic.

My ultimate goal in poker is to have well constructed strategies vs all different player types. If I'm playing someone better than me, I play defensive (GTO) to the best of my ability. If I play a fish, I learn how to handle flop donks/turns/rivers and how to interpret bet sizing.

But the most satisfying strategy might just be the newest one. How to play vs the weak reg.

Weak Reg Profile:

Overcbets flop



Under cbets Turn/Under cbets river/Over fold to XR (BF flop)



What do Weak regs NOT do? They don't bluff. That is a stone cold fact based on million's of hands of data and redlines that look like they fell off a cliff.

What does that mean for our strategy?

Bluff catching becomes less important.

What becomes more important?

Denying Equity!

How do we do that? By pure aggression.

Let's introduce the flop check-raise.

I want to take the most common of all common situations and look what happens when we introduce all the population tendencies for the weak reg.

BTNvsBB SRP 6max 100BB Stacks.

The Board is K72r - the most vanilla board ever.

Let's first look at how a solver would play this spot.



Pretty much what we expected it bet's most of it's range (read: all in practice) for a small sizing.

Now let's look at how the BB responds to that near range cbet for small.



BB responds by raising a respectable 15%. Mostly using 3.5x XR sizing but also some 6x sizing.

Okay not bad solver - pretty good.

Now let's make some not so crazy assumptions and see what happens:

First Assumption

1. Weaker reg ranges for 1/3

Second Assumption

2. Weak reg doesn't have a 3bet flop range

Third Assumption

3. Weak reg doesn't defend hands weak hands like Q3ss and other air to a raise



Fourth Assumption

4. Weak reg doesn't defend hands without a BDFD to a raise



If we can all agree that these 4 assumptions are reasonable then this is the inevitable conclusion.





I would like some other people to run this spot with my reasonable assumptions and please tell me your finding's.

Thanks for reading and let's go find some weak regs!

Is your nodelocked fold to xr in line with MDA?

Thanks for sharing.

What parameters did you use to classify weak reg players?

More or less. They BF 46% and PIO is 42% but they over cbet so it's closer to what it should be

I don't have super tight continues in my sim. I have them continuing any AT+ and folding Ax without BDFD. I have them calling all pairs and Ax with BDFD. I even have them continuing hands like T9s/98s with BDFD.

All I did was tweak sizing to increase frequency and have them fold weird hands like Q3ss/A8cc which no one continues with. Then I put a range cbet and 0% flop 3bet range.

Would you mind running a sim in PIO to compare notes? My pc is old and I had to limit sizing's to get the sim.

Weak reg to me:

1. Doesn't have complex X back ranges
2. Doesn't fight for pots/gives up too easily
3. WWSF is 46 or less
4. Big losing red line
5. Over cbet flop/under cbet turn + river

Yep, can confirm. Even with my slightly different ranges and assumptions Pio adjusts to a woeful BU defending range with a range x/r

numbers (out of a potsize of 60):

original sim

EV OOP: 20.374
EV IP: 39.626

locking BU to depol flop

EV OOP: 20.380
EV IP: 39.620

locking BU to woefully undercall x/r

EV OOP: 42.683
EV IP: 17.317



This has to be one of the more difficult boards to defend as BU though, I know I wouldn't defend properly. Be interesting to see if this pattern repeats across wetter textures.

One issue I can think of: all of this presumes BU and BB counter-adjust to each other over the next two streets perfectly. Not sure if that makes this better or worse in practice, although i accept the central premise that on certain boards a range XR vs Mr average weak reg could be +EV on alpha/mdf frequencies alone

Seems relatively reasonable. One thing worth considering is that the pool is tighter preflop than gtowiz, so their range isn't going to have as much of the junk that is supposed to find unintuitive defends here. it's probably still going to be correct to go apeshit but maybe not quite as apeshit as your sim suggests

Done a few more to check. Promising results across less obvious board types:


986tt

BU locked to depol + under3b/overfold
BB adjusted xr = 99.8%

(not sure weak reg depols this board, they would probably have a stronger continuing range. Also, they could be 3betting more draws. Still, in principle the rule stands)


AA6r

BU locked to depol + under3b/overfold
BB adjusted xr = 98%


...one more:


A53r

BU locked to depol + under3b/overfold
BB adjusted xr = 98%


Seems like attacking BU's lazy cbet is quite profitable across various textures if the read is gud

Caveat: presuming we play perfectly when called. Somewhat straightforward on turns (we still have all our range so nearly always check, BU will usually bet all their remaining strong range), but by the river we're back into the woods with narrow ranges very sensitive to blockers/texture and of course gto juggling skills.
I'm not sure how significant this disparity is or how to test how much it would affect the EV of the blanket XR? Could be negligible

The pool is but we aren't attacking the pool. We are attacking certain player types.

Let's look at some MDA from Iggy 25nl.





Pool is 36.85% and GTO is 43%ish.

But if you filter out Nit/Fish/Whale. The pool is actually higher than GTO and jumps up to 50.8% open OTB.

Now we can't 100% know if someone is a nit or not on a low sample but it's pretty easy to identify Fish/Whales.

Regs opening more than they should OTB is better for our strategy as well. Even Tight Regs open more than they should OTB.

Great work on the other boards. Now we need to test these theories in game and see if they work haha.

that's fair

That's the problem, people are going to quickly notice if you start XRing 98% and showing down stupid hands, except for anonymous pools. But definitely a frequency increase of bluff XRs would be good

I understand the concern but I think it's not a very big problem for the following reasons:

1. Getting an accurate frequency on our xr range will take tens of thousands of hands.
2. We only do it on certain boards.
3. We only do it vs certain players
4. We know our strategy better than they know our strategy
5. They are weak regs for a reason i.e. they don't adjust well

The one thing I have learned from this thread is that I am a weak reg and I don't know whether to be proud or ashamed

I think your winrate will tell you if you are proud of it or not

If anyone is trying out this strategy let me know!

I've been learning through trial and error and have been trying it out in COvsBB/BTNvsBB SRP spots only.

Some other boards we can get away with 100% xr range strategy.

QT5r
983r

Those two boards are solver approved and I'll be studying other ones in the future.

If you tweak their folding range and make them fold by only about 5% more OTF (very realistic) and eliminate flop 3bets + go smaller xr sizing. You will usually get to at least 80%+.

If you nodelock them to under barrel turn/river then 100% is the way to go.

Also make sure the cbet is small. Once opponent's start going to 50%/75% PSB cbet sizing we can't xr 100 anymore.

Be careful OTT though. One thing about this strategy is it makes our turn range very weak so we need to be 100% checking range REGARDLESS of the turn card.

We will be at a severe EV disadvantage so just check range if you get called OTF.

Happy check raising.