Theory exercise #2

You are in a Full ring game. You are in the BB and opp is OTB. Folds around to the button.

Opp, the Button, is a loose preflop opener and tends to call threebets slightly looser than most. He opens OTB around 45% of the time and you expect that he is going to do the same with you in the BB. Opp will not bluff much in a threebet pot in position besides floating flop bets. He does this as a bluff, mostly with draws but sometimes with total air. He does this a moderate amount of the time. If you check and call his turn float bet after your flop cbet, you are unsure of how often he will follow through on the river. He will never ever raise a flop cbet in a threebet pot unless it is a very drawy board. When checked to on the flop in position in a 3bet pot opp will value bet very light, as low as midpair. However, he rarely will ever fire out a bet when checked to on the flop with air, as far as we know. Opp will always fourbet AK preflop.

Opp, of course, raises on the button to $6. It's a 1/2 game. SB fold and we decide to threebet to $22. Button calls.

The flop is Qs8d3c.

1. You have 89, what is your flop play and how will you play the rest of the hand? Why?

2. You have 76dd, what is your flop play and how will you play the rest of the hand? Why?

3. You have 44, what is your flop play and how will you play the rest of the hand? Why?

4. You have QQ, what is your flop play and how will you play the rest of the hand? Why?

5. You have 54hh, what is your flop play and how will you play the rest of the hand? Why?


Note: I really don't care what the decision you decide to make is, I care way way way more why you make it.

Theory Exercise #2 by Irisheyes (Marshall28 remix)

1) I don't like c/c because we get v/b really light and we don't pick off bluffs. I don't like c/f since we have a pair. So really all we can do is bet. I think we should try to play our hand as a bluff and as such we should bet smallish because there's not much to protect from and we want to keep his range wide so that if we bet the turn he has a enough in his range to fold with a decent frequency. So in summary I just bet small then bet the turn again to exploit his heavy floating. btw I don't like c/c turn because the river will be very hard to play.

2) Same as number 1. My turn betting frequency wont be as high though because we bring our outs with us in the first example whereas we need to pick them up in this hand. I probably barrel any A, K, 5, 9, 6, 7, 4 and .

Like his flop call/turn fold range is probably at least 89s, 8Ts, 68s, 87s, 99, TT, A8s which is about 27 combos before we add gutshots. His call flop/call turn range is AQ, KQ, QJs, JJ, KK, which is 39 combos. If we bet 1/2 pot on the turn we only need him to fold 40% of the time and 27/39 is 70% so I suppose that means we can bet with no outs.

3) Same as 1 and 2. Easy turn bet on any A, K, J, 4. From the maths bit above we should bet 100% of turns lol but firstly I'm not sure if I trust my ranges etc.

4) Bet the flop small again. It makes us harder to exploit if we play all our range the same on this flop for a start. Obviously he needs to be paying attention first for us to need to worry about not being exploitable but I'm going to assume that firstly we play with the villain a lot and plan to play with him onwards into the future. Secondly I'm going to assume that he is paying attention and is attempting to exploit us. The fact of the matter is that betting is the best line in a vacuum anyway. Although he bets really thin when checked to on the flop he will also call a bet with any of the hands he would bet himself with. Secondly he calls with all his floats which as noted in the OP, are extensive. He also calls with all 8x obviously.

And now I suspect I have reached the crux of the matter. On the turn it would seem that my arguments above (that the turn is a really good bluff spot) dictate that we should not bet the turn with QQ because he folds so often. On the other hand it would appear that we should bet the turn with QQ to balance the line we intend to take with our air hands.

However, we can actually get away with not betting QQ here because we have enough AA/KK/KQ/AQ type stuff in our 3betting range to effectively balance our turn air betting range. This situation with QQ occurs so infrequently that it wont effect the balance situation that much one way or the other. The other reason why we would rather bet the turn with AQ than QQ is that we have the board way more locked down with QQ. Thus we a) don't need to protect b) can play much better on the river with QQ. So I think we should take the most in-a-vacuum +EV line with QQ and c/c the turn.

Of course, it would be bad to start c/c-ing AQ and KQ as well as QQ and then bet all my weaker hands then my turn betting range is inherently weak and I suspect that my opponent might pick up on this fact and use it against me. This is bad because just by the nature of how hard it is to make a pair and the high cbetting frequency I chose to have on this flop means that the range that I reach the turn with is heavily weighted towards air rather than nut hands. **Because of this I want to transfer some of the profit I could make with my infrequent semi-hands onto my more frequent air hands because that way I make more money with my range as a whole.

5) Similar to the ideas expressed in 1, 2 and 3.

**As I was typing I just realised that I'm 3betting this guy with more broadway type hands than 89o type hands so this bit about the 'heavily weighted towards air' might not be as true as I thought at first. I'll keep going in the original vein anyway.

1. I will bet flop a gay amount like half pot, and plan on continuing on most turns for a similarly gay amount, treating my hand as a semi-bluff with 5 outs. This is because he will call with hands like 99-JJ and most people will fold turn realizing that river is like half pot if they call which is a similarly gay amount to my previous bets. Sometimes he will float flop with a hand like JdTd. Sometimes maybe ace high. As far as we know we will fold all hands that beat us other than Qx/88/33. Playing our hand passively just seems bad. We probably also fold hands like A8s that we have crap equity against, and those are the hands people who call too many 3bs love to play. However, I can c/c some turns like a Q because that's not a turn would barrel with air, so he might think I am giving up. Maybe even some low card turns that don't change the board. Then I can probably safely fold river if I don't improve.

2. We can bet the flop and decide on the turn. While he does float a bit, he's not going to do this every time. This also balances our nut range that will check/shove the turn. We will check/bomb picked up draws on the turn. Our small bet sizing on the flop allows us to have good fold equity.

3. Barrel flop and turn because we have crap equity when behind, and he might call twice with some random picked up turn draw and show it down. We might get him off a better hand, so it's like a two-way bet.

4. We're going to fire flop, hoping that he floats. Then we will check the turn and shove it in when he bets. We will get value from his value range like lower sets, Qx, turned pairs, slowplayed KK+. We will also protect our turn semi-bluffs and won't allow him to get scared on the river and check it back.

5. According to this read we can probably c/f flop and bet turn when it checks through. Then plan on betting the river. This is because when he checks flop back he has a really weak hand, so we can almost always get him off of it if we bet two streets.

I agree with a ton of what IrishEyes said, almost all of it except for the part about needing to continue betting w/ QQ in order to keep your value range stronger, I think in a situation where you have the board on LD (lockdown) and such an incredibly strong hand, the situation doesn't come up often enough for balance to be necessary and we should just worry about extracting from his bluffs (of which we are unsure his frequency--though we do gain good information in the future about that frequency by continuing to c/c down).

On another note, I haven't read one of IOPQ's posts in about a month and a half, but I read three lines in his response here and feel like he hasn't learned anything and still has basically no idea what he's talking about.

You're dead right Marshall. I edited my first post for completeness sake, we'll call it a collaboration ok?


I just had another thought also. In the very first paragraph I said

Originally Posted by Me

we should bet smallish because...we want to keep his range wide so that if we bet the turn he has a enough in his range to fold with a decent frequency.

The quick maths I did shows that bluffing this turn is pretty profitable with like any two cards as long as we bet small enough on the flop that his range to reach the turn is really wide. How about instead of trying to keep him wide to the turn where we make him fold too much, we keep him wide till the river where we make him fold too much. He seems to have enough floats in his range for it to work. Something like 1/3 pot on the flop, 1/3 on the turn and then shove the river.

Originally Posted by Marshall28

On another note, I haven't read one of IOPQ's posts in about a month and a half, but I read three lines in his response here and feel like he hasn't learned anything and still has basically no idea what he's talking about.

point out some stuff
it's easy to say I don't know anything, but I'm really just throwing out some random ideas, I would probably two barrel every hand I hold vs. this guy for 1/2 pot each
but that seems kind of meh so I threw some stuff in that seemed like an interesting line

but if you don't say which parts of my post you like and which you don't like I don't see what people think about this

Iopq's post wasnt that bad imo. As long as your not posting one sentence responses you are welcome in this thread. I'd really appreciate it if the thread was not derailed by talking about how stupid other peoples responses are unless you are specifically arguing against an answer or part of an answer.

1- I like the idea of betting and playing our hand as a bluff. On the turn we can barrel any A/K/J/T/9/8 quite happily. I definitely agree that betting flop small to exploit his floating tendancies is the way to go, particularly since this villain is not going to raise us here ever.

2 - Definitely bet, there are even more great barreling cards here - any A/K/(T)/9/7/6/5/4/diamond is going help our hand or weaken his range vs our range - over half the deck

3 -Surely it is not a mistake to have some sort of c/f flop range vs. someone who is going to be floating a lot and generally trying to own us. 44 in particular is really weak and has very little chance of improving on the turn. This is why I hate 3betting small PPs unless I'm going to shove over a prolific 4bet bluffer.

4 -

If you check and call his turn float bet after your flop cbet, you are unsure of how often he will follow through on the river.

I think this is the key point here. We're going to look weak on a lot of rivers and I think he will vtown himself sometimes and also bluff a lot. I think bet, c/c c/c is best here, I imagine most of his 3barrel calling range (Qx/AA/KK/sets/random two pairs) is going to bet the river for value and he can have a large bluffing frequency.

5 - I think is close between c/f and bet. If we bet I think we're going to have to follow through on some turns where we have no equity whatsoever agaisnt his range and don't help our range that much (thinking of like J/T/9) and I don't know if that's a good plan. I probably c/f.

Ok no looking at previous answers:

1. I think we can c/f flop and basically c/f the whole hand if a T+ comes on future streets. If a 9 and an under come then we can bet/fold. We can't really bet on the flop when he can be crushing us already or slightly behind with a gutter and some overs.

2. I think I go ahead and bet the flop. The reason being, most diamonds/9/5 can help us double barrel. If none these come out, I probably just c/f.

3. I'm in c/f mode. We have a hand with shitty equity and we don't really want to include this in our bluffing range.

4. I go ahead and cbet. We can get value from made 1 pair hands such as Qx (not many)/TT (if he just flats pre)/99/98/87/floats. We can c/c most turns as he seems to bet a lot on this street with a much much weaker range than ours and will fold to our double barrel often. On the river, it's interesting. We look so strong if we just lead. I probably lead anyways depending on the board.

5. I c/f down. He's probably capable of betting his pairs lower than 88 on a 5 or 4 turn so we can't really c/c even on those turns. If a straight draw card comes on the turn we still have barely any equity and like if an A comes it sucks because he can easily check back an A on the flop.

ok, i'll give it a shot. i might be wrong right from the get go because i'm putting villain on like 22+, AJ+ (except AK), A9s+, KQ, KJs+, 54s+. This might not be wide enough, but it's tough to have ranges honed down for me since resteal spots against regs isn't nearly as common at 10NL.

anyway, i'm probably completely wrong about this, but after evaluating each hand, i think we can check all these hands on the flop. i know, sounds crazy, but here goes:

1. 98: i say c/f. since we're checking our entire range, checking doesn't turn our hand face up and say "hey i have SD" value like it often does in cbet opportunities. then, based on reads and based on how dry the board is, we beat like nothing but 66-77 (if he bets that) once villain bets. so c/f, if he checks behind, then the turn is SO card dependent...

i'm c/c'ing an A or K turn because he's repping oober thin if he bets behind in those spots (woulda 4b AK pre, woulda bet AQ, KQ, AA and KK on the flop, so it's like ATs, A9s and AJ on an A turn and like KJs on a K turn [assuming my PF range is even close to right]). a Q is an ldo c/c because it improves 0 of his range. i'm c/r'ing a J or T turn with my improved equity. i'm not exactly sure what we'd be reppin' in this spot, but he'd be hard pressed to call with his range that's dominated by mid-pair and semi-bluff type hands, and if he does then we have outs. we should lead a 9 and an 8 for value because i don't expect him to bet behind with a huge part of his range. pretty much the moral of the story is that once villain checks behind on flop, he's like always repping thin by betting turn, so we can usually check expecting to see a cheap showdown. cards 7 and lower, it's a shame we don't know how much he continues on the river because a bet here is mainly semi-bluffs, so we can c/c if he's giving up when his draw misses, but i fear i wouldn't have the balls to c/c like a 7 turn and c/c a J river or something like that....so if a 7- hits then i'm prolly either leaking or missing out on value.

2. 76dd: i like a c/float here. i guess it's not technically a float because he's not cbetting, but you get what i mean. if villain bets the flop, his range becomes like 88+ (maybe 77-66), AQ, KQ, QJs, 98s, 87s. he's probably betting the turn with 88, QQ and he's betting his TP hands a certain percentage of the time, so we can get away from the top of his range without wasting a float bet against them. i could be wrong but i think he's checking back the turn with all of his marginal range that we can fold out with a river bet the vast majority of the time on the vast majority of cards. (and 42.4% of his range is hands like split pairs and mid pairs which are vulnerable to a float).

there are 4 cards that give us a combo draw on the turn and a bunch of turn/river combonations that give us a ballin' hand and blah blah blah all that obvious backdoor draw stuff, so that's why i like floating this hand specifically.

3. 44: EDIT: this part is retarded. i tried to compare it to 98o too much, but the spots are really completely different. i think we have to play this hand as a bluff as others suggested and bet this flop. END EDIT

flop is c/f for same reasons as 98, except now we're behind 77-66 too. there are far less cards that help us on the turn, so we're c/f'ing a lot more turns than we are with 98. in fact i'm prolly only continuing past the turn if it's an A, K, Q or 8 (and i'm c/c'ing in these cases). since we're demonstrating such poor SD value and such poor chances of having our hand improve, this hand is def. much more in a C or D range than 98. i'll be a nit and put it in our D range and not try and make too many plays with this hand. so basically i'm like c/f'ing the flop, c/f'ing most turns, and c/f'ing most rivers, and hoping villain thinks he has SD value with his missed broadways, or he's just too poor of a handreader to bluff, and we can pick up a few pots here or there with our passive play.

4. based on reads, i actually like checking the flop. he's not floating this board very often so cbetting with the hopes of him calling with air or draws will have disappointing results. and since he's vbetting so light when we check, we're now getting value from 99-JJ and sometimes 77-66 and giving them a chance to improve to hands that will give us more value (but will not often suck out on us). we're getting AA and KK whether we c/c 3 streets or lead 3 streets so it's kinda irrelavent if he has those hands (other than for balancing ranges and so forth). the board isn't often gonna get scary enough to not get 88's or 33's stack so that's irrelavent too. we've decreased the chances of getting AQ's stack but increased the chances of getting two streets (probably flop and river). i don't like c/c flop and donk turn, but i might do it on like a Jc turn because it maximizes our value against QJs and pair+draw type hands (and it's tough for AQ to fold because it looks like we have a draw here a lot).

if the flop is checked behind then i'm bet/raising every chance i get on every card. if villain bets flop but checks behind turn, then i'm leading river on any board

there's a good chance i'm completely wrong here, but if villain is calling thin, yet betting wide when checked to, and we don't have much of a chance of being sucked out against, and he's never playing back at us if we bet, then i think we should just let him bang his head against the wall.

5. 54hh: probably terrible poker logic, but i can't think of how to continue with this hand with any sort of profitability because i'm not creative enough/good enough at hand reading, so i'm prolly just c/f'ing to any bet on the flop, and if the turn isn't a 6 or 2, then i'm c/f'ing the rest of the way.

Question 1: After reading the above, my impression was that we should play our medium-strength hands as a bet/fold on the flop followed by a check/call on the turn. The flop texture doesn't indicate that he would be raising often on the flop, which keeps all of his strong hands in his river range. Coupled with his aversion of bluffing in 3-bet pots, I think the river is a check/fold if we don't improve given the strength of our line.

Question 2: After reading the above, I thought that some portion of our best air should be played as a bet/fold on the flop followed by a bet on the turn if we improve at all. This is some of our best air, so I think it's a bet/fold on the flop leading to a bet on the turn to try to take advantage of his weak turn range. If he calls on the turn, I think it's a check/fold unless we improve to 2 pair or better since at that point I don't think he's folding any of his range to a shove because he doesn't like to raise the flop so all of his strong hands are potentially still in his range if he doesn't raise the turn with them.

* After answering question 4, I think an improvement is to make the turn a check/raise if we improve to a gutshot or better draw. His turn range is particularly weak after he calls the flop and bets the turn.

Question 3: Because of his flop tendencies, I think this is a check/fold on the flop followed by a check/call on a lot of turns. If he's value betting so much on the flop, that means that when he checks his turn range is going to be pretty weak. Couple that with how much he seems to like bluffing on the turn, and it's possible we should check/call the river as well given how weak his range from the turn will be.

Question 4: I think our strongest hands should be a bet on the flop to take advantage of how wide his calling range is, followed by a check/raise on turns that put more draws out there. If the board is particularly dry, I think a check/call is fine on the turn followed by some combination of bet/calls and check/raises on the river. His river range is still going to be fairly weak, so it's possible we get more value from leading with another check than value betting, and while I'm not sure, it's what I'm leaning towards.

Question 5: This is one of the weakest holdings we'll usually have here. It's going to be hard to make a flop bet profitable, so I think the flop is a check/fold. Once he checks, I think we can bet a lot of turn cards that improve our hand to a good draw or a pair (including Aces) but expect to get called (or raised) a fair amount of the time. A turn check/raise doesn't make any sense because we'd rarely [never?] take this line for value. If our bet is called on the turn, I think we value bet when we improve to two pair or better and bluff a lot of scare cards because his range seems to be a lot of low pairs, draws, or hands that caught a pair on the turn (since he value bets so much on the flop but checked instead).

spoon I think an improvement over your line in question 3 would be c/f to the river because I feel like villain might check his ace high down and wouldn't turn it into a bluff
and if he has a gutshot with JT or something then it's likely he's going to bet the flop with it since he has 4 solid outs and 6 potential outs and no showdown

I think we could just try to show the hand down and only call low cards on the turn and c/f most cards that hit his range in any way
but the other 4 questions I believe we have a similar answer

1) If you really believe he'll only rarely bluff when you check to him (which i think is pretty ridiculous frankly) then of course c/f.

As for how I'd play the hand vs a tag, I am at a loss, because I doubt I would ever have 98 from preflop. Turning my hand into a semibluff and betting seems best. Since he likes to float, even better. Depending on how compulsive of a floater he is, and depending on how thinly he valuebets in float scenarios, I would either c/c or c/f the turn.

Also, having 9s8s or 9c8c makes it more of a bet and having 98o or 9h8h makes it more of a c/f (same deal as before though, I think it would be pretty abnormal to face a player who doesn't auto bet 60% of pot when checked to on this flop).


2) With over 50% chance to somehow improve on the turn, and while having air currently, I would bet this 1000% with the intention of double barrelling one of the 20 cards that improves me not to mention the 8 cards that improve my range.

3) I think that vs a player who rarely bluffraises the flop, we're gonna be able to get away with c-betting pretty much all air here (yeah so what if he floats, we gain so much benefit from seeing the turn even with air that he doesn't exploit us significantly by floating imo).

That said, 22 33-77 are some of the few hands I will be c/fing. Mainly because I do it anyway, but its specifically good vs this player who seems to not bluff when shown weakness (see my above comment). He'll probably tend to check down his ace highs, making c/fing 44 here massively +ev compared to betting.

4) Betting of course, vs a player who would rather float than exploit relinquished initiative. C/r turn all in probably.

5) Vs someone who isn't bluff raising on dry boards ever, I think I'm gonna be betting all air until I detect adjustment on his part (i.e. he starts bluff raising, or if he gets to the point of floating 70-80% of cbets in 3-bet pots).

Originally Posted by Renton

1) If you really believe he'll only rarely bluff when you check to him (which i think is pretty ridiculous frankly)

I'm wondering why you think this. On a 876 board or something I'd think it way less likely that they would rarely bluff when we check, although there are players who are considered competent who rarely bluff there. But on this board, I think the main arguments for him rarely bluffing when we check is the fact that we checked a normally high cbet board, and that most peoples ranges consist of many hands that do not fold to one bet. There are also few draws that would feel good about multi barrel bluffing.

Yah I agree that people bluff waay more on coordinated boards IP, as they expect your check OOP to more often than not, denote giving up.

Cash is definitely not my specialty but ill give this a try. let me know what you think. Maybe this will improve my line of thinking in the future...

1. Im leading for about 15-18 for value agaisnt his wide range. Plan is to call a flop raise and c/c turn. I guess i would fold river depending on board texture to another barrel. C/f river usually with occasional c/c

2. I would definitely check the flop because I dont want to get blown off the backdoor draws. Ill call anything up to a pot size bet on the flop and then lead any turn that gives me a flush or straight draw, if it gives me an open ended/gutshot straight flush draw, ill c/rai the turn

3. C/f...i never know with these spots..lol

4. Lead for about 13-16 for value and hope he floats me. Lead turn if its anything other than ace or king(he likely wont have either cuz he didnt 4 bet pre...), if its an ace or king, i will check hoping to induce a bluff knowing its less likely he has an ace or king/esp ace-king

5. lead once then c/f. Dont really want to set up an intricate bluff here with just backdoor draws and under cards...

Im going to have to think about this a little more. Most of these hands are making my head asplode. Hard for my little NL 50 mind to put a range on his 3BET calling.
#4 QQ Bet flop since we know he floats a lot. Check/ Call Turn. Small 1/2 pot bet river. This line might make our hand look a bit strong but this might be the best way to get value from the hand?

Hand 1 89 Lead flop, since we know he floats some and folds some of the time. Im probably looking to barrel any A, K, 8, 9. If its a blank then Im probably C/F??? I dunno that hand is a toughie.

Hand 2 prob play the same way, but also lead turn if we improve our draw.

Originally Posted by Irisheyes

Because of this I want to transfer some of the profit I could make with my infrequent semi-hands onto my more frequent air hands because that way I make more money with my range as a whole.

Here's what I think he's saying here, please correct me if I'm off: Even though a check/call is probably a more profitable way to play the strongest hands by themselves, when we do this we weaken our bet flop/bet turn range a lot (because it's already pretty wide to take advantage of how our opponent plays the flop and turn, etc). So we play these strongest hands in an "inferior" way by barreling to protect our bet flop/bet turn range because it is so wide (and profitable). The net effect is that the way we play our strongest hands loses some value, but causes the rest of our bet flop/bet turn range to gain so much value that it's a net +EV.

That's it ya.

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

Originally Posted by Irisheyes

Because of this I want to transfer some of the profit I could make with my infrequent semi-hands onto my more frequent air hands because that way I make more money with my range as a whole.

Here's what I think he's saying here, please correct me if I'm off: Even though a check/call is probably a more profitable way to play the strongest hands by themselves, when we do this we weaken our bet flop/bet turn range a lot (because it's already pretty wide to take advantage of how our opponent plays the flop and turn, etc). So we play these strongest hands in an "inferior" way by barreling to protect our bet flop/bet turn range because it is so wide (and profitable). The net effect is that the way we play our strongest hands loses some value, but causes the rest of our bet flop/bet turn range to gain so much value that it's a net +EV.

This is a superb concept that has changed the way I play poker a lot.

Not to take away from it, but this concept is only true IF opp is calling our turn bets with what we calculate as an "unoptimal frequency" of high or in other words, he calls the turn too much, he's a station. For example if we were playing a player who raised all his hands tp or better on the flop when we bet here and would fold anything midpair or worse to a two barrel, he'd be folding the turn everytime we bet the flop and turn when he calls the flop. In this situation keeping a made hand or nut hand in that turn betting range is not valuable for that range (in fact looking at it from a shania perspective, its -EV for your game). I actually use this concept a lot. I.e. HU someone is opening 100% of buttons but calling with maybe 15% of hands. Adjustment: I threebet all air, flat everything else including AA-TT, AQ+. Why? Because opp is folding so much, made hands have more value in context of shania and in a vacuum by flatting pre.

Now the tricky part, like in this situation, is when your not making these adjustments preflop or on the flop, but rather on the turn or river. The reason is because people are normally poor at forming their ranges on the turn or river because they lose connection to the flop. So lets say in this situation we decide to c/f most of our air on the flop and bet most of our made hands. And let's say we determine that our opponent is folding "too" much on the turn to the point where we would like to add more air to our turn betting range. Now given the line we took on the flop we can't do that. In fact, our opponent is now folding for good reason: We can't have a lot of air in our bet flop-turn betting range because we don't have barely any air in our flop betting range.

/rant

Okay so briefly:

1. Our opponent's flop calling range contains a lot of air, but also his entire range of "good" hands.
2. Because of the large amount of air in his flop calling range, we can [semi]bluff the turn a lot.
3. This suggests that we should consider balancing our bet flop/bet turn range with stronger hands.
4. Doing so would be useless if he didn't have very many hands at all in his flop calling range that are calling a turn bet since we'd rarely get value. (ties in with your last paragraph)
5. Sort of a side point that hung me up for a few minutes, even though he has these "good" hands that are calling two streets, there is so much air that bluffing the turn is still profitable.

Edit: Actually now that I look back at it after going to the bathroom, I don't think #3 necessarily belongs. I think balance is the wrong word and idea to use here. If I had to rewrite #3 I would say something like, "Figure out what we're doing with our good hands on the turn." The answer then becomes a function of what his turn range looks like and how he's playing it, like it should be.

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

5. Sort of a side point that hung me up for a few minutes, even though he has these "good" hands that are calling two streets, there is so much air (and/or hands that are folding) that bluffing the turn is still profitable.

Just corrected it a bit. I'm wondering why this point hung you up? This situation where he has some good hands and some weak hand and air is more representative of common situations in poker.

I also agree, #3 shouldn't be there.

Othewise nice post.

ISF,

Thx for making another one of these.

Also, how often do you actually find players who play in the way that you've described this opponent? What I tend to see more often are players who fold the turn too much to a double barrel here. Thinking about it now, I probably fall into the category of playing like this villain, I guess I just feel like most people will fold to the second barrel a high percentage of the time, even when it's evident I've been pounding on them.

Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan

Just corrected it a bit. I'm wondering why this point hung you up? This situation where he has some good hands and some weak hand and air is more representative of common situations in poker.

I've been thinking about and trying to figure out why I got hung on that for the past few hours now. It really bothers me because I can't figure out what the problem was. It reminds me of when I'm looking for my keys or something and they're literally right in front of my face but I don't see them, and after a couple of seconds (or minutes tbh) I'll see them and feel like "Oh, duh."

I've been busy the past week, but I decided I'd post my "answer" to this theory question.

I think that there were some interesting factors brought up that were touched on as far as the decision making process goes. I liked the whole idea of the fact that his flop calling range was weaker because of his propensity to float and therefore double barrelling more seemed profitable. A lot of people mentioned with some hands that c/r or c/c the turn would be good, specifically QQ since we had the deck crippled.

I think when I put the floating aspect of opps game in the description, I had in mind two concepts. The first is it is rare that we want to use anything but upfront aggression (bet/raise, rather than checking or calling planning either to raise or win on later streets) against anyone who is very over aggressive, something you rarely see in a full ring or six max games. There are two main reasons for this. One is that opponents most of the time call lighter than they are willing to bet. The 2nd reason is that checking or calling gives us less oppurtunity to bluff in a range with a large amount of value hands, therefore lessening the amount of hands we can play profitably and decreasing our Shania, our overall winrate. So with that in mind, when facing the decision of whether to bet the turn or c/r to exploit his floating, it seems like we should be betting the turn with our made hands rather than c/ring. Another support for betting the turn rather than c/ring/check calling is that this is a not so draw heavy board, and its not likely he'd actually float a large amount of hands on it. Although, because QQ has the deck somewhat crippled, betting the flop and checking the turn seems like the best option.

The 2nd concept I had in mind was betting into balanced ranges. Using the definition of a balanced range as something with both nut hands and hands that are weak or a bluff, it is clear that we want as little as possible to bet into a balanced range. This is because the strong hands increase the overall equity of the range and make it only profitable to bet good equity draws as a bluff. In other words, the strong hands act as protectors to the weak hands. A great example of someone who takes advantage of this concept is mastrblastr / Scott Seiver. If your goal in life is to put people in as tough decisions as you possibly can, play by this rule: Never bet into a balanced range, find unbalanced weak ranges and build as big of pots as you possibly can.

If we were to play by this rule, the unparalleled, best decision to make with nearly our entire range of hands here is to check the flop. Why? Because opp vbets very thin. When he checks behind the flop, his range will be unbalanced towards weaker hands, and we have the turn and river to get nearly our whole stack in. This line may not get any credit initially, as a good hand reader may see that checking the flop is repping weak sd value, while a big turn and river bet is repping strong sd value, and therefore he may put us on a bluff. Of course, this is why we are checking KK,AQ,AA, A9, 99-JJ and all that good stuff on the flop to balance our range.

However, a lot of the time, the best move for us is to bet into the balanced range anyways. I think this is especially true in 6 max or FR where you're not 3betting people greater than 20% of hands. If, for example, we were playing a player who was folding to 80% of my 3bets, and I was 3betting 30% of the time (which believe it or not happens a lot for me), I think the clear answer in this exercise would be to check the flop with most of our hands, including nut hands, pretty good hands, and air, probably not including a hand like 89. This is because preflop our range is weaker than our opponents range and therefore we should be less inclined to build a pot postflop, especially in a threebet pot where the flopped board isn't significantly better or worse for either player. In other words, when you threebet someone a shit ton and they call a small amount, you should be checking more than you are used to.

But because this isn't the case, I think pretty much everyone who didn't check much were "right."

So here are my answers.

1. 89. I agree with the bet flop group. I'm not sure why we would double barrel some good turns here? We're not folding out anything we're losing to. I like the idea that our hand has good equity but nonetheless it just seems like we're betting to fold out floats, which we are already beating. I'd bet flop and c/f or c/c turn, hoping flop/turn timing or turn bet sizing would give away whether he was floating.

2. 76dd, Honestly I could go either way here with c/fing, and then betting many turn and rivers on good turns, or betting and double barreling good turns.

3. 44, Seems like a c/f flop, but turn or river seems interesting based on the fact that he vbets the flop thin, leaving his range with a lot of air. I think if he checked behind the flop and bet the turn when we checked again, I may call down. This hand has no equity when behind so bluffing is obviously stupid.

4. QQ, I would just try to play this hand against the maximum amount of bluffs, so betting the flop and c/cing or c/ring the turn seems good.

5. 54hh, we have no equity so c/f. Betting and barreling a 6 or 2 turn seems alright but I don't think its going to be profitable to barrel a 7 or Ace.

Disputes are welcome.

so you think we can't fold out 99-JJ to a second barrel?
he's never folding AQ or KQ I agree

The more I think about it, the less and less I care about extracting thin value on the turn from his floating range. I feel like my best overall strategy against this type of player is to bet/bet/shove very often.

Someone who is trying to peel preflop too often and peel the flop too often, I can't see how any hand, even one without equity, is bad to barrel flop and any turn with... And also to shove river based on the card and his timing.

I think this strategy is superior to extracting thin value from his floats by trying to c/c or c/r some turns because I want to be 3betting this player with a very wide range. Clearly if we have 44/54hh and 89o it's hero's plan to be 3betting this ridiculously wide of a range as it is. If the hands we had to work with were more hands like KQ QJ JT AQ AJ, then I might feel like there is more value in extracting from floats.

If he is making the mistake of not ever raising the flop shouldn't we just apply maximum pressure and keep putting him to tough decisions until he adjusts, then start to mix it up once he finally decides to put us to a decision?

I don't see a difference between 44, 45hh and 89o given this plan.

Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan

5. 54hh, we have no equity so c/f. Betting and barreling a 6 or 2 turn seems alright but I don't think its going to be profitable to barrel a 7 or Ace.

Disputes are welcome.

It's definitely profitable to triple barrel all in on an Ace given the only hand he can have to call us down with is two pair or better.

Originally Posted by Marshall28

Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan

5. 54hh, we have no equity so c/f. Betting and barreling a 6 or 2 turn seems alright but I don't think its going to be profitable to barrel a 7 or Ace.

Disputes are welcome.

It's definitely profitable to triple barrel all in on an Ace given the only hand he can have to call us down with is two pair or better.

Maybe im just too used to HU but is it unreasonable that he'd call the flop with AT or AJ?

I'm curious as to why you say to bet flop and c/c or c/r turn with QQ instead of just bet/bet/bet. You said you want to play against the maximum amount of bluffs but that doesn't really make sense to me since our hand is the nuts we just want our opponent to put in the most money possible. We'd want to play against the maximum amount of bluffs with a weaker made hand right?

Is it because you think he's not giving us three streets of value very often (folding much of his wide floaty range to second barrel) but we'll get two streets a very high percentage of the time if we check the turn?

Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan

Originally Posted by Marshall28

Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan

5. 54hh, we have no equity so c/f. Betting and barreling a 6 or 2 turn seems alright but I don't think its going to be profitable to barrel a 7 or Ace.

Disputes are welcome.

It's definitely profitable to triple barrel all in on an Ace given the only hand he can have to call us down with is two pair or better.

Maybe im just too used to HU but is it unreasonable that he'd call the flop with AT or AJ?

I probably just play too low of stakes in the sense that if they flat the flop w/ AT or AJ (which they probably fold on flop most of the time) and I keep barreling they put me on AK like ALWAYS and just fold. It's ridiculous how often I get a fold in a 3bet pot whenever an ace or a king falls.

400nl+ I think you are right though.