Man this is deep stuff

thank you sir

I was confused before I read this, but now its all clear what I need to do

load gun / aim at own head / pull trigger / miss

This is a really good cotw. PTR says i go to showdown 10-12% more than the top winners but I still manage to maintain 2.8+ptBB/100 at 50nl. (brag?, but to prove a point) Its mainly because of understanding polarizition. A+ post Split.

When i was reading this i was like "oh $hit why is he telling people this?!" but then i rememberd a coulple of nitty regs min 3betting me with 72o today and ive relaxed since then.

Thanks for the sarcasm. I'm just trying to sort things out in my head.

Did I understand this hand correctly or just got lucky?

opponent is 30/25 over 300 hands
6max btw



Full Tilt Poker $10.00 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

UTG: $11.86
CO: $10.00
Hero (BTN): $10.00
SB: $9.90
BB: $8.98

CO posts a big blind ($0.10)

Pre Flop: ($0.25) Hero is BTN with 7 7
1 fold, CO checks, Hero raises to $0.45, SB calls $0.40, 2 folds

Flop: ($1.10) J 6 J (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $0.50, SB raises to $1.50, Hero calls $1

Turn: ($4.10) 6 (2 players)
SB bets $2.10, Hero calls $2.10

River: ($8.30) 9 (2 players)
SB bets $5.85, Hero calls $5.85

Final Pot: $20.00
Hero shows 7 7
SB shows 3 3
Hero wins $18.67
(Rake: $1.33)

Roo, I'm not saying I have the answer by any means but am kind of posting out loud what I am thinking.

To me, using polarization has to start with having a thinking player as a villain. If a player can't put you on a range and is only playing their cards, then adding in no value hands to bet is -EV. Split has already said this. I read a long time back that Ted Forrest tends to play ABC against unknowns until he has them figured out. Losing value because a player is worse than you thought is minor compared to the loss because he was actually better than you thought. You have to know the villain well. Will he assume you always have it, never assume you have it or does he adjust?

The next area is how you played the hand. Can you represent a monster on the river? If you opened in the UTG by raising and the board on the river is 86542, you don't have a monster. However, if you raised pf in the UTG, cbet the flop and checked the turn and a FD hits on the river, you can plausibly want to make a big bet on the river with your nut hand.

After that is balance. How frequently will you have the hand you're representing? Let's say you have the goods 50% of the time and you don't 50%. The villain knows this. You make a PSB on the river. The correct decision for him is to call 100% of the time. You do nothing but break even on your bet. If you bump it to 70% good/30% air, he has to fold 100% of the time.

Using a completed FD as an example as a UTG raiser and assuming your PFR is AQ+, 88+, only about 8% of your range has the correct cards on the river. Assuming you had no real value, adding in your hands that had the ace of the suit would be a nice addition to your range. It gives you about the right combination of additional hands and has the bonus of making it plausible you do have the nut flush because you know the villain doesn't have the nut flush.

Going the other way gets even tougher. The villain makes a river bet. The necessary conditions have to be that the stacks are big enough to cause him to fold. If he's getting 3:1 or more, he's probably going to make the crying call with anything he'd bet with. At 2:1 in a 100BB game and he makes a 60% pot bet on the river, the pot can't start any bigger than about 30BB. That would make it a pf raise, cbet flop, check turn type of hand. You won't be able to do this is a 3bet pf hand, nor a hand that had betting already on two streets unless you are both significantly deeper than 100BB. To me, being able to represent a caught straight or caught set on a non-dangerous board is a key. A case might be with an A7659 board where you can rep having 88 or 99 because you called a PFR and would float. You could probably do this with TT as your holding.

As I said, I'm still working through it and these are more musings than anything else at the moment.

you guys may be overthinking it at the beginning.

Split did a great job at showing us the how and why, and as you understand the concept more you will start to see the brillance in his post. But for those of us beginning and during play it should be a simple conversation like;

"What the heck is he betting/raising here...everything else should check/call this is either the nuts or air."

EZ GAME.

and to reiterate the warnings stated in the thread.

The reason this is hard to implement at the micros against unknowns is that a lot of players do not understand showdown value. I suggest rereading that COTW along with this one. They are linked.

****ing this, i hate all you regs who become born again COTW readers after each one of these and religiously follow the one new COTW. At least it makes it easy to note the 2+2ers

Do you mean this one?

I admit that I may be overthinking. I understand that we should raise part of our folding range. What I'm trying to understand is whether we raise the top or the bottom of that range.

In your example cangurino essentially the top and bottom of our folding range are the same thing. Were raising them because we can't call, i.e. they have no showdown equity at all. With that being said there is no top or bottom of our folding range because were flatting what would become the normal top of our folding range. After we raise the top of our range, and flat the middle, all our folding/bluff hands are pure **** and can be beat by any bluff catcher no matter what.

(I think...)

thank you. and agreed, especially on the last statement. just think about what villain would bet. If he is the kind of guy to just c/c one pair, then you know his bet would be 2pr+. If you don't think he can have a lot of 2pr+ (given his line, texture, etc), AND you think he is a capable bluffer...then you might be able to call

polarization and SDV are so heavily linked its not even funny

wowowowow

and tl;dr

Wonderful COTW. It's pretty deep, so I know I have to re-read a couple times to see what I've missed and to get it set in my head for actual use.

Thank you Split!

thank you =)

well...the biggest problem here is the hypothetical cangurino created: a situation IP OTR where we can only call, shove, or fold. our villain will pretty much never be valuebetting thin, so realistically their bluffcatching range is stronger than our calling range. ergo, our folding/bluff range is never going to be called by worse regardless of what part of our folding range it's from.

the only real selection you could have would be hands with blockers i.e. Ax hands or high flush cards... when those have blockers to villain's possible calling combos

if we were OOP here, it would be of course optimal to put the top of our check/folding range into our check/raising range b/c we can get a WTFOMGBBQPOLARIZATION call when villain value bets us light.

hmm...at the risk of sounding like a moron what is the title of the showdown value COTW?
Fantastic post Split, just fantastic.

hmm, I thought we had a COTW just on that topic, maybe we need to add one.

But the concepts can be found here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/78...-river-487743/

and here:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/78...etting-454494/

and of course here:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/78...-value-630309/

In the next couple of weeks would be good. Thank you for volunteering.

so you dont know if he is polarised to nuts here or nuts and holdings that beat you ?

no lie...ive read this about 26 times (read it earlier, then came back and read it again)...and I still haven't the foggiest idea what you are trying to say...

just wondering how wide his value range is. im pretty sure his entire value range beats me, therefore i have a bluffcatcher.

TBH, it all starts with the call pf. If you had raised or folded, you wouldn't be in this position. I don't think you even have a bluff catcher here, his entire betting range beats you. High variance is to shove, otherwise fold.