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Betting. It stands on its own, but understanding… Probe Betting As far as rules of thumb go in poker, “check to the raiser” is a… ICM and Blind Battles: The Big Blind This is a companion piece to this article on the SB’s strategy for blind vs… ICM and Blind Battles: The Small Blind ICM incentivizes more conservative play, which means that at stages of the tournament where risk… The Initial Bettor’s Advantage The mathematics of poker holds a little-known secret: the first bettor enjoys better bluffing odds… Mastering the Chiplead: The Scalpel and the Sledgehammer When you have a lot of chips at a final table or in another situation… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in Cash Games Our never-ending quest for money and fame leads us to the flop. We open the… How ICM Impacts Restealing From The Blinds When I first started working with preflop solves, one of the features I found most… The ICM Benefits of Late Registration in Poker Tournaments Why do so many professional poker players register late for tournaments when they clearly would… Flop Heuristics: OOP C-Betting in MTTs Playing against an in-position cold-caller is dramatically different–and dramatically more difficult–than playing against a caller… Counterintuitive Calls Solver outputs such as those provided by GTO Wizard are models of no-limit hold ‘em,… How To Negotiate Final Table Deals Most people’s first introduction to the Independent Chip Model (ICM) is not from studying bubble… How does ICM impact PKO strategy? If you have read The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments you already know why we… Understanding Blockers in Poker Often when looking through a solver’s meticulously crafted grid of deception, one of the following… Flop Heuristics: IP Cold-Caller in MTTs A Cold-call refers to the act of calling a preflop raise when you don’t close… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in MTTs In the world of poker, the flop is a crucial stage of the game that… Flop Heuristics for Defending the Blinds in MTTs The field of Game Theoretically Optimal poker is extensive, and thus, to simplify our strategy,… Multiway strategy in Progressive Knockout Tournaments Progressive Knockout (PKO) tournaments are much more complex than traditional MTTs. The fact that players… How To Calculate Raises In Poker One of the most frequently asked questions in poker is how to calculate the size… Principles of River Play The river offers the least complicated strategy of any betting street. With no further cards… Exploitative Dynamics GTO solutions are designed to be unexploitable, performing reasonably well no matter how your opponents… How ICM Impacts Postflop Strategy Most players understand how the Independent Chip Model (ICM) in poker impacts their strategy preflop,… 10 Tips for Multiway Pots in Poker While lots of work has been placed into research and explanation of heads-up pot strategy,… What is the Bubble Factor in poker tournaments? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) shows us the real money implications of tournament chip decisions.… The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments In poker, a PKO (Progressive Knockout) tournament is a type of tournament where a portion… How To Analyze Turn Textures

In Poker Master the art of turn analysis in poker. Understand how the turn card changes the… Principles of Turn Strategy Learn the principles of turn strategy in poker and discover what makes the turn unique.… Poker Strategies: Tournaments vs. Cash Games Tournament poker is not as different from cash game poker as people sometimes assume. Most… How Solvers Work A Game Theory Optimal solver is an algorithm that calculates the best possible poker strategy.… The Most Powerful Play in Poker The central strategic implication of stack depth is the question of how much equity a… When does ICM become significant in MTTs? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) was invented in 1987 by M. Malmuth and is one… How to Study GTO Solutions Tools like GTO Wizard and other solvers should not be used to memorize specific strategies.… Principles of GTO Game theory, or GTO (for Game Theoretically Optimal), is best understood not as a rigid… Interpreting Equity Distributions GTO Wizard’s range vs range equity distribution graphs are an excellent tool for visualizing which… What is Leverage in poker? Leverage refers to the risk of future betting. When you call a bet on the… Reasons for value betting in poker You’re probably accustomed to thinking of bets as either value or bluff. In this taxonomy,… The Science of Poker Performance Poker is a game of small edges and big swings. Every hand is an investment… What is Valor in poker? Can a poker hand be courageous? How does your ability to value bet future streets… Pot Geometry “Pot Geometry” refers to betting an equal fraction of the pot on each street, such… A Beginner’s Guide to Poker Combinatorics Combinatorics is a fancy term for evaluating the number of possible “combinations” (combos) of any… Stack-to-pot ratio Stack-to-pot ratio, or SPR, is a way of measuring how deep the effective stack is… Equity Realization In poker jargon, equity expresses how much of the pot a hand will win, on… Variance and Bankroll Management Variance and Bankroll Management. Vital Soft Skills for Every Poker Player. How to Become a GTO Wizard Welcome to the wonderful world of game theory optimal poker! This article will serve as… The Three Laws of Indifference Indifference in poker is one of the most misunderstood concepts. The word “indifference” means that… Poker subsets and abstractions An “abstraction” is a way to simplify the game of poker. This game is so… Mathematical Misconceptions in Poker Pot Odds and MDF are foundational mathematical formulas in poker. How to solve toy games Poker is a complicated game. It’s impossible to calculate GTO strategies on the fly. By… The Value of Fold Equity – Experiment The term “fold equity” is ambiguous in the poker community. Firstly, it’s an EV equation,… MDF & Alpha MDF & Alpha. Minimum Defence Frequency and Alpha are metrics on poker that determine how… What are Pot Odds in poker? Pot odds are a fundamental calculation in poker. In the simplest terms, pot odds tell… Does your range affect your strategy? Advanced players will often tell you that your range

affects your strategy. Visualizing implied odds Implied odds are the value you expect to gain over and above your raw equity.… ICM Basics As a tournament player, you may have heard about the concept of “ICM”, but what… What is Equity in Poker? The term “Equity” is ubiquitous throughout poker theory. Equity refers to your chances of winning… Range Morphology “Morphology” is the study of form or structure. You’ve probably heard terms thrown around such… What is Expected Value in Poker? Expected value (EV) is the most fundamental metric in poker. Every decision you make is… Why doesn’t my solution match GTO Wizard? So, you’ve got your own solutions to some spot, compared it to GTO Wizard, and… Understanding Nash Distance Understanding Nash Distance. One of the most common questions when studying with solvers is “Why… Combinatorics Poker Puzzle Today we have a special puzzle for you that will test your intuition as a… The 10 Most Important Concepts for New Poker Players The 10 Most Important Concepts for New Poker Players. Fundamentals are one of the most… What is GTO in Poker? The meaning of GTO in poker is Game Theory Optimal. Game theory is a study… What does GTO aim to achieve? So what exactly is a GTO strategy? What makes it “unexploitable”? What does it try…

The Importance of Board Coverage The first public version of the GTO Wizard announced AI upgrade already has some useful features to explore. In particular, I think the first iteration of this product can show us the importance of board coverage in poker. All the postflop ranges you have seen on GTO Wizard so far are designed with board coverage in mind. What we mean by “board coverage” is making sure all of our ranges, whether they are opening, defending, or 3-betting, can potentially hit any board type. We want to be able to hit an A ♥ A ♦ K ♣ flop, a J ♥ 9 ♣ 8 ♦ flop, or a 6 ♣ 4 ♥ 2 ♣ with the same range. If we miss (or even hit) too often, we leave ourselves open to exploitation. One of the best features of GTO Wizard AI is the ability to change the preflop ranges for postflop play. With this new feature, we can see the importance of board coverage in poker, by demonstrating what happens when a range has an imbalance in its interaction with the board. How Important Is Board Coverage? Let’s jump into an example to highlight what we mean. This is a presolved spot from the Solutions library. It is 40bb UTG vs BB, single-raised pot and this is the UTG opening range : UTG has a tight linear Linear A range construction that consists of the top-down strongest hands. A linear range might contain nutted to medium strength hands, or value to thin value. range of just 19.1% of hands, but despite being tight it does technically cover the whole board. This range crushes high boards, but it has plenty in the middle too, including possible straights. It can also potentially hit a low board. It can make every set because it has all the pocket pairs and it can flop a wheel Wheel A low straight made with the cards A2345 . Also commonly referred to as a wheel straight. thanks to the presence of low suited Ace-x hands. This is the BB response to the open : BB’s calling range obviously covers much more of the low and middling flops, it is especially going to hit more low boards than UTG will. This range has much better board coverage, but it is so wide that it is going to miss most boards, most of the time. This is a capped Capped A range without many very strong hands, relative to the board. See uncapped. range, in that it doesn’t have any of the premium preflop hands. Let’s examine a 652 r flop. This is a good board for the BB. We know they have all the sets, all the two pairs, all the pairs, the straights, and lots of good combo draws. However, the BB also misses this board frequently. UTG does not have as many nutted hands, but they have a lot of strong hands. They have all the overpairs, they have sets, they have 78 s for an open-ended straight draw with a backdoor

Backdoor A draw, on the flop, which requires specific cards to come, on both the turn and river to complete. For example, a backdoor flush draw (BDFD) would be three of the same suit on the flop. flush draw, and A6 s and A5 s for a pair and backdoor flush draw. On this board , UTG has range advantage Range advantage A general term meaning one players range equity distribution is stronger on a given board. It’s possible to have an advantage only over a specific part of the equity distribution. A large advantage near the top of the range indicates a nut advantage. and the BB arguably has a nut advantage (though it is close). UTG has 55.1% overall equity and their EV is 3.6bb compared to 2.5bb for the BB. They also have positional advantage. With all that in mind, despite having a lot of nutted hands (in absolute terms), the BB checks 100% of the time (partly due to having almost three times fewer “Best hands” in relative terms): In response, this is the UTG strategy : UTG has a range advantage, but it’s not so significant that they can bet 100% of the time. BB still has a lot of nutted hands here and UTG misses this board a lot. As such, UTG adopts a polarized betting strategy of mostly overbetting this flop with a 125% pot-size bet. Most hands are mixing, but the hands that always overbet are vulnerable overpairs like QQ – 77 . This is a dynamic flop and there are a lot of turn cards these hands do not like—the board pairing, a straight completing, or any card higher than a J is bad news for these hands. The overbet Overbet Any bet made post flop that is larger than the size of the pot. bluffs are all high card hands that could pull ahead of one pair hands that call. Now let’s head into the new GTO Wizard AI feature to change the ranges. In the following example, all we have done is changed the ranges , everything else is the same . We have fixed the bet sizes so they are the same as the presolved sim above. The BB has the exact same defending range, but this is the range we have assigned to UTG : This range is the same percentage of hands, 19.1% of hands in total. The difference is we have made it an ‘Old School Live Player’ range that revolves around high cards. The lowest cards have a 7 in them. In reality, an Old Man Coffee live player would have a much tighter range than this, but I wanted to make the percentage of hands the same for comparison purposes. The important point is that this range, while overall stronger preflop, does not cover every board now (including the one we have just looked at). The first thing to notice is that the overall equity has gone down for UTG. They still have a slight range advantage, but it has gone down from 55.1% in

the first example to 51.3% here. In the first example, UTG made 3.6bb in EV on average whereas in this new example, they make 2.7bb. The BB made 2.5bb on average in the first example, they make 3.3bb now. The BB is at an equity and positional disadvantage, but now they make more money on average because UTG does not cover the board. The crucial stat to look at here is Equity Realization (EQR) . In the first example, UTG had an EQR of 107%, meaning on average they would win more than the raw equity of their range. In this new example, UTG has an EQR of 88%, meaning they under-realize their equity now. The BB had an EQR of 91% in the first example, they now have 113% here. By not covering the board, UTG is handing equity to the BB. They will get put in too many tough spots where they cannot realize equity with their range. Let’s dive into the strategy to explore this. You will recall in the first example that the BB checked 100% of the time, because of UTG’s range and positional advantage. This, however, is how the BB starts the action postflop: They have gone from checking 100% of the time, to leading out almost half the time. This is a major strategic adjustment. The BB has the same range as before, but because they know that UTG does not have any nutted hands, they get to be more aggressive . The BB leads out with all their nutted hands some of the time, but they also get to do it with all their weak draws like gutshots and backdoors, as well as overcards. In response to the lead , this is what UTG does: There isn’t much folding because UTG still has a strong overall range. The hands that favored overbetting in the first example raise, because they benefit from protection just like they did previously. Most hands just call, however, including all the Ace-x and King-x hands that mixed betting and checking in the first example. When the BB checks , which they do just over half the time, this is what UTG does: They still use an overbet sizing but now it is an even mix of overbet and smaller bet sizing, rather than being predominantly overbet. However, the main adjustment is to bet less often. UTG checks back more often, 61% of the time here compared to 43% of the time in the first example By not covering the board, UTG has capped their range. The correct adjustment with a capped range is to play more passively. If you use the same aggression as when you have a GTO range, your opponent can exploit you by check-raising you and bluff catching more often. Therefore the way to make EV with a capped range is to play passively and let your opponent do the betting for you. One important caveat is that we have to remember that in these examples both players are playing perfectly. UTG may have had a capped

range, but armed with that knowledge they played it as well as they could. In reality, a player who capped their range in such a needless manner is not going to play perfectly after the flop. They likely would be getting themselves in trouble on low boards, most likely by c-betting too much, and would be giving away even more EV. The Easy Way to Achieve Board Coverage In the two UTG ranges above, both had 19.1% of hands in them. GTO UTG Range Top-heavy UTG Range The first range, however, covered so many more boards. It could make wheels, middling (two) pairs, middling straights, and it could make all the sets. The ‘MVP’ hand class in the first range are the suited Aces. They do a lot with little, and it is why they make up a strong part of any GTO postflop range. First of all, if they make a pair of Aces, you have a strong hand that beats all the single pairs. Players used to worry a lot about domination Domination A hand that is very unlikely to beat the opponent’s hand. For example, AK is dominated by AA as it only has a 6.8% equity preflop. with these hands when you make top pair, but it is less of an issue than some may think. Secondly, you can cover any board. If the board is 442 or K66 , you can feasibly have trips on either of those flops. Low suited Aces also make wheel straights on low boards. Also, when you make a flush with a suited Ace, you always have the nuts (on unpaired boards), unless there is a rare straight flush possible. When you flop a flush draw with a suited Ace, you have a very powerful semi-bluffing Semi-bluffs A bet made with an unmade hand (such as a draw) that has the chance to improve on future cards. hand. Not only could it make the nuts when the opponent does not fold, but it could also make top pair as a consolation prize. Crucially, suited Aces are more economical to add to a range. There are only 4 combinations of every suited hand, but there are 12 combinations of every offsuit hand. A5 o has three times as many combinations as A5 s, for example. Therefore if you want to achieve board coverage without increasing the percentage of hands you play, you can get three suited Ace hands in your range for every offsuit hand you give up. This is, in particular, how tight early position ranges can remain tight while still achieving board coverage. Conclusion There are times in poker when you have to play a capped range, but there is no need to cap your range unnecessarily by not covering the board. Board coverage is important in poker because you want to hit flops at a reasonable frequency to keep your opponent(s) guessing. Not covering the board leaves you open to exploitation. When a player is capped , you can exploit Exploit To deviate from a baseline strategy in order to

take advantage of a (future or prior) mistake in your opponent’s strategy. them by attacking on boards they miss too often . They should respond by playing passively, even with their strong hands, to extract value from your bluffs and thin value. In reality, however, players who do not understand board coverage are likely to make the matter worse by not adjusting on the boards where they are capped. The best way to cover the board economically is with suited Ace-x hands. They can make top pair, when they make a flush, it is very often the nuts, when they make a flush draw, they have a powerful semi-bluff, their kicker is a good way to boost the interaction of the range with middling to lower cards, and you can get three suited Ace-x hands in your range for every offsuit hand. GTO Wizard the #1 App for Poker players Study any spot imaginable Practice by playing vs. GTO Analyze your hands with 1-click START CRUSHING NOW JOIN DISCORD Author Barry Carter Barry Carter has been a poker writer for 16 years. He is the co-author of six poker books, including The Mental Game of Poker , Endgame Poker Strategy: The ICM Book , and GTO Poker Simplified . Latest article Navigating Nasty Rivers Out of Position Playing out of position (OOP) is hard. It’s fundamentally disadvantageous to act on each street… Crack the Shell of Nut Draw Strategy Nut draws hold obvious appeal as betting and raising candidates. They benefit from fold equity,… Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first decade of my career. But after my first… Relationships and Poker In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve… Do Multiple Sizes Matter? Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results… The Science of Learning Applied to GTO Wizard The way we were taught to study in schools was flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN preflop raiser in a 100bb cash… When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody… Protect Equity and Prosper When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend… Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative poker thinking. When you’re value betting against… Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots When the BTN open-limps off a short stack, the

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of the most epic final table battles I’ve ever witnessed! Our… Mastering Thin Value Bets in Checked-Down Pots Valuing your hand appropriately—determining whether it’s strong enough to value bet or so weak you… Maximizing Value on Monotone Flops Monotone flops tend to provoke great anxiety among poker players. It’s easy to imagine that… How to Defend Against Turn Donk Bets Responding effectively to donk bets on the turn is tricky;, there’s no getting around that.… How and Why You Should Use Turn Donk Bets Donk betting–taking the betting lead away from the previous street’s aggressor–on the flop is rarely… How Stack Sizes Change Your Range In this series, we have looked at factors that can influence ranges in otherwise identical… How to Leverage GTO Wizard’s EV Comparison Tool With the advent of solvers, some troubling new turns of phrase have entered the poker… Should You Ever Cold Call a 3-Bet? When there’s been a raise and re-raise before the action is on you, you will… When ICM Breaks Down If you have read my previous GTO Wizard articles and my books, you’ll know I… When Is It Correct To Fold AA Preflop? One of the criticisms of ICM is that it is boring and robotic. In my… OOP C-betting vs Loose Cold-callers In a previous GTO Wizard article, I asserted that “Playing against an in-position cold-caller is… Short-Stacked Play in MTTs Playing a short stack well is an essential tournament skill. It is extremely rare to… When To Ladder in Tournaments In my last two articles, I wrote about the effect field size and payout structure… How Payout Structures Impact ICM Last time we discussed the ICM considerations in game selection, we looked at field size,… C-Betting IP in 3-Bet Pots When you three-bet before the flop and the original raiser calls from out of position,… C-Betting OOP in 3-Bet Pots Continuation betting from out of position can be a dicey proposition in single-raised pots. Cold… Dynamic Sizing: A GTO Breakthrough Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Dynamic Sizing Benchmarks Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Understanding The Impact Of Field Size On ICM In Poker When people talk about game selection in multi-table tournaments (MTTs), they invariably talk about the… Defending vs BB Check-Raise on Paired Flops This is a companion piece to Attacking Paired Flops from the BB; you will get… Mastering PKO Final Tables Final tables can be the most exciting and rewarding phase of a tournament, and being… Attacking Paired Flops From the BB Paired flops present unique challenges to both a preflop raiser and a BB caller. The… KK vs QQ vs JJ at WSOP Main Event With only fourteen players remaining in the 2023 WSOP Main Event and blinds of 400K/800K/800K,… Responding to BB Squeezes You open raise, someone calls, and the BB squeezes. How should you construct your strategy?… Crushing a Top HUNL Poker Bot In 2022, Philippe Beardsell and Marc-Antoine Provost, a team of Canadian programmers

from Quebec, developed… GTO Wizard AI Explained We are excited to introduce GTO Wizard AI, formerly known as Ruse, the world’s best… GTO Wizard AI Benchmarks GTO Wizard has combined the power of artificial intelligence with traditional solving methods to bring… Table Management in PKOs Perhaps the most important strategic consideration in Progressive Knockout Tournaments (PKOs) is making sure you… Overcalling From the BB In poker, overcalling refers to calling a bet or raise after another player has also… Understanding Which Mistakes Cost You the Most Money I am fortunate enough to have worked for many years with the mental game coach… Overbetting The Flop in Cash Games Although most commonly analyzed on turns and rivers, flop overbetting can be a devastating weapon… Using New Skills at the Poker Table How many times has it happened to you that you make a mistake only to… Flatting Ace-X Hands Shortstacked Playing out of position is tricky, but it’s an essential part of tournament play. With… Playing Limped Pots as the BB in MTTs Success as the BB in limped pots begins before the flop. The BB’s equilibrium strategy… The Absurd Game Theory of Chopped Boards A “chopped board” in poker is one where the community cards make up the best… Playing Limped Pots as the SB in MTTs MTT confrontations between the small blind and big blind force no-limit players into uncomfortable situations,… The Art of Learning Poker In his book The Art of Learning, chess and Push Hands champion Josh Waitzkin describes… Is Donk Betting for Donkeys? “Donk betting”, or betting from out of position into the player who was the aggressor… Delayed C-Betting This is a companion piece to Probe Betting. It stands on its own, but understanding… Probe Betting As far as rules of thumb go in poker, “check to the raiser” is a… ICM and Blind Battles: The Big Blind This is a companion piece to this article on the SB’s strategy for blind vs… ICM and Blind Battles: The Small Blind ICM incentivizes more conservative play, which means that at stages of the tournament where risk… The Initial Bettor’s Advantage The mathematics of poker holds a little-known secret: the first bettor enjoys better bluffing odds… Mastering the Chiplead: The Scalpel and the Sledgehammer When you have a lot of chips at a final table or in another situation… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in Cash Games Our never-ending quest for money and fame leads us to the flop. We open the… How ICM Impacts Restealing From The Blinds When I first started working with preflop solves, one of the features I found most… The ICM Benefits of Late Registration in Poker Tournaments Why do so many professional poker players register late for tournaments when they clearly would… Flop Heuristics: OOP C-Betting in MTTs Playing against an in-position cold-caller is dramatically different–and dramatically more difficult–than playing against a caller… Counterintuitive Calls Solver outputs such as those provided by GTO Wizard are models of no-limit hold ‘em,… How To Negotiate Final Table Deals Most people’s first introduction to the Independent Chip

Model (ICM) is not from studying bubble… How does ICM impact PKO strategy? If you have read The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments you already know why we… Understanding Blockers in Poker Often when looking through a solver’s meticulously crafted grid of deception, one of the following… Flop Heuristics: IP Cold-Caller in MTTs A Cold-call refers to the act of calling a preflop raise when you don’t close… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in MTTs In the world of poker, the flop is a crucial stage of the game that… Flop Heuristics for Defending the Blinds in MTTs The field of Game Theoretically Optimal poker is extensive, and thus, to simplify our strategy,… Multiway strategy in Progressive Knockout Tournaments Progressive Knockout (PKO) tournaments are much more complex than traditional MTTs. The fact that players… How To Calculate Raises In Poker One of the most frequently asked questions in poker is how to calculate the size… Principles of River Play The river offers the least complicated strategy of any betting street. With no further cards… Exploitative Dynamics GTO solutions are designed to be unexploitable, performing reasonably well no matter how your opponents… How ICM Impacts Postflop Strategy Most players understand how the Independent Chip Model (ICM) in poker impacts their strategy preflop,… 10 Tips for Multiway Pots in Poker While lots of work has been placed into research and explanation of heads-up pot strategy,… What is the Bubble Factor in poker tournaments? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) shows us the real money implications of tournament chip decisions.… The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments In poker, a PKO (Progressive Knockout) tournament is a type of tournament where a portion… How To Analyze Turn Textures In Poker Master the art of turn analysis in poker. Understand how the turn card changes the… Principles of Turn Strategy Learn the principles of turn strategy in poker and discover what makes the turn unique.… Poker Strategies: Tournaments vs. Cash Games Tournament poker is not as different from cash game poker as people sometimes assume. Most… How Solvers Work A Game Theory Optimal solver is an algorithm that calculates the best possible poker strategy.… The Most Powerful Play in Poker The central strategic implication of stack depth is the question of how much equity a… When does ICM become significant in MTTs? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) was invented in 1987 by M. Malmuth and is one… How to Study GTO Solutions Tools like GTO Wizard and other solvers should not be used to memorize specific strategies.… Principles of GTO Game theory, or GTO (for Game Theoretically Optimal), is best understood not as a rigid… Interpreting Equity Distributions GTO Wizard’s range vs range equity distribution graphs are an excellent tool for visualizing which… What is Leverage in poker? Leverage refers to the risk of future betting. When you call a bet on the… Reasons for value betting in poker You’re probably accustomed to thinking of bets as either value or bluff. In this taxonomy,… The Science of Poker Performance Poker is a game of small edges and big swings. Every

hand is an investment… What is Valor in poker? Can a poker hand be courageous? How does your ability to value bet future streets… Pot Geometry “Pot Geometry” refers to betting an equal fraction of the pot on each street, such… A Beginner’s Guide to Poker Combinatorics Combinatorics is a fancy term for evaluating the number of possible “combinations” (combos) of any… Stack-to-pot ratio Stack-to-pot ratio, or SPR, is a way of measuring how deep the effective stack is… Equity Realization In poker jargon, equity expresses how much of the pot a hand will win, on… Variance and Bankroll Management Variance and Bankroll Management. Vital Soft Skills for Every Poker Player. How to Become a GTO Wizard Welcome to the wonderful world of game theory optimal poker! This article will serve as… The Three Laws of Indifference Indifference in poker is one of the most misunderstood concepts. The word “indifference” means that… Poker subsets and abstractions An “abstraction” is a way to simplify the game of poker. This game is so… Mathematical Misconceptions in Poker Pot Odds and MDF are foundational mathematical formulas in poker. How to solve toy games Poker is a complicated game. It’s impossible to calculate GTO strategies on the fly. By… The Value of Fold Equity – Experiment The term “fold equity” is ambiguous in the poker community. Firstly, it’s an EV equation,… MDF & Alpha MDF & Alpha. Minimum Defence Frequency and Alpha are metrics on poker that determine how… What are Pot Odds in poker? Pot odds are a fundamental calculation in poker. In the simplest terms, pot odds tell… Does your range affect your strategy? Advanced players will often tell you that your range affects your strategy. Visualizing implied odds Implied odds are the value you expect to gain over and above your raw equity.… ICM Basics As a tournament player, you may have heard about the concept of “ICM”, but what… What is Equity in Poker? The term “Equity” is ubiquitous throughout poker theory. Equity refers to your chances of winning… Range Morphology “Morphology” is the study of form or structure. You’ve probably heard terms thrown around such… What is Expected Value in Poker? Expected value (EV) is the most fundamental metric in poker. Every decision you make is… Why doesn’t my solution match GTO Wizard? So, you’ve got your own solutions to some spot, compared it to GTO Wizard, and… Understanding Nash Distance Understanding Nash Distance. One of the most common questions when studying with solvers is “Why… Combinatorics Poker Puzzle Today we have a special puzzle for you that will test your intuition as a… The 10 Most Important Concepts for New Poker Players The 10 Most Important Concepts for New Poker Players. Fundamentals are one of the most… What is GTO in Poker? The meaning of GTO in poker is Game Theory Optimal. Game theory is a study… What does GTO aim to achieve? So what exactly is a GTO strategy? What makes it “unexploitable”? What does it try…

What is Equity in Poker? The term “Equity” is ubiquitous throughout poker theory. Equity refers to your chances of winning a hand, assuming the pot gets checked down. In simple terms, equity refers to your “piece of the pie”. In this article, we’ll discuss: Types of equity comparisons The Rule of 4 & 2 Introduction to equity realization How NOT to use equity EQR defined Examples of equity realization in practice Equity distributions explained Equity buckets Equity graphs Equity metrics Nut advantage Range advantage Conclusion Types of equity comparisons Equity comes in many forms. For example, let’s say you open AA on the Button and BB calls: Hand-vs-hand equity : AA has 77% against 65s Hand-vs-range: AA has 83% against BB’s overall calling range Range-vs-range : BTN’s entire range has about 53% against BB’s calling range Since it’s very hard to put your opponent on an exact hand, you’ll typically use hand-vs-range and range-vs-range equity to inform your decisions. Equity is defined as how often you’ll win if the hand were checked down. Mathematically it’s defined as follows: Equity% = (win% + 0.5 tie%) For example, if a hand wins 50%, chops 20%, and loses 30%, it has 60% equity. The Rule of 4 & 2 Here’s a great shortcut every poker player should know to quickly estimate equity when drawing: Count your outs Multiply your outs by 4 on the flop or 2 on the turn The result is your approximate equity. This works because there are approximately 50 cards in a deck, so each out adds about 2% equity for every card drawn. Example: Your opponent shoves pot on the flop, and you have a spade draw Board: A ♠ 6 ♠ 8 ♦ Hand: K ♠ J ♠ You have 9 outs: 2 ♠ 3 ♠ 4 ♠ 5 ♠ 7 ♠ 8 ♠ 9 ♠ T ♠ Q ♠ Now multiply by 4 since this is on the flop: 9 x 4 = 36 You have approximately 36% equity. Ok, so how does that help me? Calculate your pot odds . You only need to win 33% of the time to break even (you’re risking 1 pot to win 2 pots), and you will win more often than that. So this draw is a clear call! While this method is useful for quickly estimating your equity with draws, it’s not perfect . If the flop bet isn’t a shove, then you may have to contend with facing another bet on the turn. It’s also possible that your opponent is sometimes bluffing, so you’ll have more equity. It’s possible that not all your outs are clean (e.g. villain may have an AA in the above example, in which case your 8 ♠ out gives them a boat). It’s possible that more money goes in later if you hit your draw. Regardless, it’s a useful tool to keep in your toolbox when playing. This shortcut is best used when facing shoves while holding a draw. Introduction to equity realization The problem with raw equity is that it assumes we’ll check

it down . It assumes a 50% hand will win its fair share of half the pot. But that’s not how poker works. One player may have an advantage that allows them to “over-realize” their equity, meaning they’ll win more than their fair share. The converse is also true ; factors such as range or positional disadvantage may work against you such that you “under-realize” your equity. This phenomenon is called equity realization. How NOT to use equity You’re on the BB facing a 2.5BB BTN open. You think to yourself, “ I’m calling 1.5BB and the pot after I call will be 5.5BB. Pot odds tell me I need 27.3% equity. Better make it 29% to account for rake ”. Then you call 72o, which has 30% against a standard BTN opening range. This call loses 48bb/100 on average . 72o may have 30% equity, but it only realizes a small chunk of that equity. The EV of calling 72o is 0.48BB less than folding, so it would only recoup (1.5 – 0.48) = 1.02BB after calling a 1.5BB open. Therefore, this hand would only capture (1.02/5.5) 18.5% of the pot. If you could get BTN to agree to check it down after calling, then 72o would be a fine call as it would realize all 30% of its equity. Postflop factors like position and range disadvantage mean this hand drastically under-realizes its equity. 72o expected value facing button open EQR defined Equity realization (EQR) is a way to transform equity into EV. It’s defined as follows: EQR = pot share % / Equity % “Pot share” represents EV/pot, or in other words, how much of the pot you actually expect to win in the long run. Equity realization can also be written as: EQR = EV / (pot x equity), which is just another way of comparing how much you actually expect to win vs how much your raw check-down equity would win. Examples of equity realization in practice GTO Wizard allows users to view EV, Equity, and Equity realization. Let’s imagine that you call the open with A ♠ 9 ♠ , flop comes J ♠ 8 ♥ 5 ♥ . Ok, not a bad hand, you’ve flopped a backdoor, an overcard, and the 9 can outdraw an 8 or 5. You’ve got 43.3% raw equity. If we ignore equity realization, we’d win about (43% * 5.5) = 2.36bb on average. Let’s see what our EV looks like. Yikes. We’re supposed to win 43.3% of the pot, yet we’re only winning 13.5% of the 5.5bb pot. We’re realizing less than ⅓ of our equity. If we look at a hand like 6 ♥ 3 ♥ , it also has 43% equity. However, it has a much higher EV due to its implied odds and ability to continue against pressure. It realizes over 90% of its equity. Equity distributions explained Range-vs-range equity is often referred to as a single number. However, it can be more accurately represented as a distribution – we’ll have some nutted hands, and some air and

everything in between. Viewing your equity as a distribution allows you to gain insight into strategic trends. Let’s take a look at some of the most common metrics we’ll use to break down our equity, using the BB vs BTN J ♠ 8 ♥ 5 ♥ example. Equity buckets Equity buckets are a method of categorizing how many weak and strong hands you have in your range. Group each of your hands into a “bucket”, based on their equity against your opponent’s range: On J ♠ 8 ♥ 5 ♥ the equity buckets look like this: As you can see, BTN has twice as many “best hands”, and only a third as many “worst hands” compared to BB. Of course, we don’t need to stop here. We can break it down into finer categories using the “advanced equity buckets” option: Equity graphs A more detailed method of looking at our equity is to straight-up graph the equity distribution. Imagine we sort our range by weakest to strongest hands by (hand vs range) equity, then graph that across our range. The horizontal axis represents where each combination sits in our range, the verticle axis represents that hand’s equity against the opponent’s range. In the example below, at the 62nd percentile, BTN has A5s. A5s is better than 62% of combinations in our range, and has 57% equity against BB’s range. By examining these distributions we can see at a glance that BTN has a small range advantage throughout the entire distribution, mostly owing to the excess trash at the bottom of BB’s range. Equity metrics Now that we know how to break down our equity distribution, it’s time to learn how to interpret it. The study of how equity distributions correlate to optimal strategies is a developing area of research, but there are a few key terms to be familiar with: Nut advantage A “Nut advantage” refers to an advantage in the nutted region of your range. A Nut advantage typically allows you to polarize over your opponent, use larger sizes, and represent the strongest hands. In this situation, BTN has double-barreled K ♥ J ♦ 5 ♦ 2 ♣ and lands on a Q ♥ river. The equity is 50%/50%, however, BTN has a large nut advantage. Their range is much more polarized, representing very nutted hands and bluffs. BB’s range is mostly top pair. This polarization gives BTN a big EV advantage and pushes the optimal strategy to an all-in. Let’s zoom in on that equity graph. Here we’ve highlighted the nut advantage. Dots represent combinations with at least 90% equity against the opponent’s range. The nut advantage dictates how much you can polarize, and how large you can bet. Betting larger and more aggressively narrows your opponent’s range quickly, so it’s important that your “value” hands can extract money from villain’s value hands after triple barreling. For that reason, BTN must use a polarized strategy consisting of nuts and bluffs. If BTN were to do this with medium-strength hands they would simply fold out worse and get called by better.

Range advantage A range advantage is a general term indicating an advantage in your overall equity distribution. A range advantage can be specific to certain parts of your range. For example, a nut advantage is a range advantage over the top of the equity distribution. For example, on this Q ♥ J ♥ 8 ♣ A ♥ board , BTN has 52% equity, but graphing the distribution we can see an advantage as the green line is above the blue line. BTN has a range advantage over the middle of the equity distribution, but they lack the nut advantage. Bet size is directly related to nut advantage. As a result, BTN pushes more of their middling equity using small-medium bet sizes. Let’s zoom in on that equity distribution and highlight the range advantage. Here we see the middling equity advantage: BTN vs BB Equity Distribution Conclusion Equity is fundamental to the art of valuing a hand. Learning how to utilize and interpret various equity distributions is an invaluable skill to have in your analysis toolbox. To summarize: Equity is the probability of winning if all players go to showdown. Equity realization is used to account for postflop variables. We can extract more strategic information by bucketing or graphing the equity distribution. GTO Wizard the #1 App for Poker players Study any spot imaginable Practice by playing vs. GTO Analyze your hands with 1-click START CRUSHING NOW JOIN DISCORD Author Tombos21 Tom is a long time poker theory enthusiast, GTO Wizard coach and YouTuber, and author of the Daily Dose of GTO. Latest article Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first decade of my career. But after my first… Relationships and Poker In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve… Do Multiple Sizes Matter? Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results… The Science of Learning Applied to GTO Wizard The way we were taught to study in schools was flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN preflop raiser in a 100bb cash… When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody… Protect Equity and Prosper When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend… Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative poker thinking. When you’re value betting against… Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots

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Table Management in PKOs Perhaps the most important strategic consideration in Progressive Knockout Tournaments (PKOs) is making sure you cover your opponents . You cannot win a bounty if you don’t cover your opponent, which means sometimes you have to take big risks to put yourself in that position, and occasionally pass up profitable spots to hold onto a chip lead Chip leader The player who presently has the most chips in a tournament. . Table of contents What is table management? The importance of covering people How much more profitable is it to cover your opponents in a PKO? The art and science of PKO table management Conclusion What is table management? ICM ICM A commonly used acronym for the term independent chip model. ICM is a model that translates the value of a tournament chip to actual cash value, better known as tournament equity. ICM calculations are based on the stacks and payouts of all players remaining in the tournament. , Bubble Factor , Risk Premium Risk Premium Risk Premium measures the extra risk you take stacking off in an MTT. It’s a measure of survival pressure and a valuable tool for understanding ICM spots. Risk premium is defined as the extra equity you’d need to call someone’s shove, compared to a (chip EV) pot odds calculation. RP = Required Equity (ICM) – Required Equity (cEV) when stacks are fully invested. Each player has a unique risk premium against every other player in a tournament. , and Bounty Power are very useful models, but they all have limitations. They all ignore the size of the blinds, the position of the players, and the fact that the blinds move around the table. An ICM range, for example, will ignore the fact that a very short-stacked UTG Under the gun (UTG) The position to the immediate left of the big blind. The under the gun player acts first pre-flop. player is posting their big blind next, and they might be better off shoving a wider range to avoid the less profitable spot of being pot-committed the next hand. In tournament poker, one of the skills the solvers don’t teach well is table management. Table management is understanding the profitability of your relative position at the table, knowing when to maintain it, and knowing when to take risks to change it. A classic old-school thought experiment in poker highlights this. You are the chip leader on the bubble of the World Series of Poker Main Event and are enjoying pushing around the amateur players who are hanging on for dear life trying to make the money. A micro-stacked player in the Small Blind Small blind The required blind put in the pot by the player to the immediate left of the dealer. Typically, half the size of the big blind. shoves all-in for two big blinds into your big blind. You are looking at Pocket Aces Pocket Aces A pre-flop hand containing AA . . What do you do? In a vacuum, this is obviously the easiest call in poker history, but what

happens after you call and win? The bubble is over, everybody loosens up, and your chip lead is not as impactful. There is a strong case for folding the Pocket Aces here and prolonging the bubble. The micro-stacked Small Blind isn’t going to post their big blind for almost an orbit, and there is a very good chance you can win a lot of uncontested pots before the bubble eventually bursts. In the early days of SNGs Sit and go A poker tournament with a specified number or maximum number of players that starts when a certain number of players have registered. Unlike regular tournaments, which started at a specified time. this was a legitimate strategy enjoyed by good players on the bubble. They would give the micro stack a walk Walk When all players fold preflop, the hand is over and the big blind wins the small blind. The big blind is said to have received a walk. because the bubble was where they made the most EV Expected Value (EV) The anticipated value one expects from any hand, position, or play. EV is calculated as a weighted average of all possible outcomes weighed by the probability of each of those outcomes. , so the longer it went on, the more profitable it was for them. The importance of covering people This brings us to Progressive Knockout tournaments. PKOs are already so complex they will never be completely solved, especially when you factor in this skill of table management. Covering people in PKOs is so crucial that it is often correct to take significant risks to get the chip lead at the table, and sometimes correct to pass on good spots to maintain the chip lead. This is never more true than the very first hand of a PKO , where the Bubble Factor of every player is 0.82. If you have read our article on Bubble Factor you will know that this means it is correct for two players to get all-in against each other with as little as 45% equity without any extra dead money in the pot. This is unheard of in regular MTTs and is even wider than identical ChipEV spots. The result is a “negative risk premium”, as shown below. The reason for this is that there is so much more upside to winning the hand than in regular MTTs. You essentially win four types of equity: The ICM equity from the regular ‘payout’ portion of the prize pool. The immediately realized equity for winning the bounty. The potential future equity of winning more bounties because you cover everyone else at the table. The potential future equity of winning your own bounty when you win the whole tournament. Covering players at your table in a PKO makes every hand more profitable. How much more profitable is it to cover your opponents in a PKO? Let’s look at two similar spots from the GTO Wizard database to highlight this. In both these examples, we are looking at a PKO spot with 70% of the field remaining, the

average stack is 60BBs, and we are the BTN with 44BBs. In this first example , this is the table set-up: As you can see, the BTN is covered by both blinds when folded to them. This is the BTN’s opening range and the EV of every hand in the range: Now let’s look at this very similar spot , here is the table set-up: As mentioned most of the details are the same, but in this example, the BTN covers the Small Blind . This is their opening range and the EV of each hand in the range: The first thing to note is that the BTN can play more hands , 51.6% of hands here, compared to 45.5% in the previous example. The other thing to pay attention to is that, across the board, every hand is more profitable when the BTN covers their opponents. In some cases the difference is massive. This is just one simple example but it already shows us a lot. The chance to win a bounty makes every hand you play more profitable . Covering people is very important in PKOs and it is sometimes worth the risk to put yourself in the position to win bounties. AA makes 2.58BBs when the BTN covers, but only 2.45BBs when they don’t. That 0.13BB difference is a 13 BB/100 difference over the long term. A weaker hand like A3s only makes 0.12BBs in the covered example, but makes 0.17BBs when the BTN covers. That 0.5BB difference is smaller than the difference between Pocket Aces in the two spots, but it is a 41.67% increase in the profitability of this specific hand. The art and science of PKO table management In this example, we have 50% of the field remaining and the average stack is 50BBs. As you can see, the SB is in poll position with 82BBs, as is the BTN is near to them with 74BBs. We also have some shorter players between 18-34BBs. This is reflected in the Bubble Factors: As we discussed earlier, PKOs are the only format where Bubble Factors are often below one. The lowest Bubble Factor here is when the SB is facing an all-in pot vs the short stacked UTG1, it is 0.72 meaning they only need 42% equity to get it in against them. The highest Bubble Factor is when the BTN with 74BBs is facing an all-in decision against the SB with 82BBs. The Bubble Factor is 1.13, meaning they would need 53% equity – still very wide compared to regular MTTs, but the BTN needs a much stronger range to take on the SB. The consensus opinion here would probably be that it’s optimal for everyone to avoid pots against the players who cover them, and try to get into pots when they are the coverer. You can win bounties against the players shorter than you; you cannot against the players who have more chips than you. This is where we are seeing the limitations of using ICM, Bubble Factors, and Bounty Power as guiding strategic principles.

These models do not take into account the future game . In the future, we want to win the bounties of the player who cover us right now, which requires having to think a few moves ahead. The HJ is in the middle of the pack with 42BBs, covering UTG1, UTG, and the BB. In a regular MTT, the middle-of-the-pack players have to play tight and avoid big confrontations. However, in this spot the HJ might be best advised to take a big risk to double up . By big risk, I mean a high variance play – taking a very small edge or even a slightly minus EV gamble. illustration They have a pretty bad seat at the table. When the shorter players are in the blinds, if the HJ wants to target them they have to get through the three biggest stacks. If the HJ is the Big Blind and one of the shorter players enters the pot, there is a very good chance the player currently in the LJ with 58BBs will isolate them. Crucially, if the HJ doubles up, they will have at least 84BBs and thus will cover everyone at the table . While not in a great chip position, the current BB is in a reasonable table position. They are third lowest in chips but the two players who are lower are to the BB’s immediate left. The BB is out of position to them, which is not ideal, but the stacks are short enough that the BB could bet/call a resteal against either of them very profitably. If they took a big risk to get a big stack, it would not put them in a spectacular position . Doubling up would get them around 68BBs, which means they would still be covered by the BTN or SB (assuming it was not them who doubled them up). So ironically it might be better for the BB to bide their time and enjoy covering two players right next to them. The current SB is the chip leader and will be looking to play as many pots as possible to win bounties. However, if the BTN or CO got aggressive with them, this might be a spot to pass some small edges. Losing an all-in to either of these players would make the SB the shortest stack at the table. It might be more prudent to avoid close spots with the two other big stacks if it means maintaining their overall lead. Other than this exact hand, the SB also enjoys position over the other two big stacks. Another reason not to punt off light against them when they could instead grind them down in small to medium pots. illustration The BTN is in a similar position; they cover everyone but the SB. Generally speaking, it might be a good plan to avoid tangling in big pots with the two other big stacks, because they can still win six bounties immediately. However, the BTN has a terrible seat , they are to the immediate right of the chip

leader. It’s going to be hard to win bounties at this table if the SB is aggressive and isolates when a short-stacked player goes all-in. Therefore it might be a good idea for the BTN to take a risk at this table to pull ahead of the SB in chips. All of this advice is subjective. It really depends on how the players are actually playing. If the chip leader doesn’t seem to be adjusting for bounties and playing an ABC ‘vanilla’ tournament strategy, then there is no need to try and overtake them and become the chip leader yourself. If the bigger stacks are being very aggressive, it might be right to take a stand and play a big pot against them. There are other dynamics worth considering too. For example, if one of the shorter stacks has a very big bounty. In this example, let’s say UTG1 has a $300 bounty, which is huge relative to the others. There is less impetus to gamble for a big stack when you already cover the biggest bounty at the table . illustration Another reason to pass on a small edge when you cover another big stack is if they have a small, ‘starting’, bounty. In the example above, if BTN only had a $25 bounty, for example, that is another reason for the SB to avoid a big pot with them. You want to win all the bounties, but when there are much bigger bounties at the table, there is a trade-off between targeting the bigger bounties and preserving a big stack. However, if all the big bounties belong to the biggest stacks, as they often do, that might be a reason to take a big risk when you have a covering stack. Finally, the later the tournament goes the more PKO ICM becomes a factor. Taking big risks to get the chip lead is much more of a consideration in the early stages of PKOs when the bounties are worth much more, relatively, in terms of your equity . As the payouts are looming then survival becomes more of a factor. Conclusion Progressive Knockout Tournaments are complex enough before you factor in future game considerations and table management. There are times when it is right to take a big risk to cover more people, and there are times when making a nitty fold even though you could have won a bounty makes sense. The main takeaway today is that perhaps the most important consideration in PKOs, especially in the early stages, is how are you going to put yourself in a position to cover more players , and therefore win more bounties. Key takeaways ICM ranges do not factor in future game, i.e. what happens when this hand is over. You can play more hands when you cover an opponent, and the potential to win their bounty makes every hand more profitable. A bad seat at the table is a good reason to take more risks in a PKO to get a big stack. If doubling up means you cover a

lot of players, it is worth taking a few risks. If losing to another big stack would mean you no longer cover other players, it is worth passing up close spots against them. You don’t need to cover everyone. If you already cover the biggest bounties, it might be better to prioritize maintaining that position. However, you will want to change that dynamic if the biggest bounties cover you. Table management is more important early in PKOs. ICM influences the action much more later on. GTO Wizard the #1 App for Poker players Study any spot imaginable Practice by playing vs. GTO Analyze your hands with 1-click START CRUSHING NOW JOIN DISCORD Author Barry Carter Barry Carter has been a poker writer for 16 years. He is the co-author of six poker books, including The Mental Game of Poker , Endgame Poker Strategy: The ICM Book , and GTO Poker Simplified . Latest article Navigating Nasty Rivers Out of Position Playing out of position (OOP) is hard. It’s fundamentally disadvantageous to act on each street… Crack the Shell of Nut Draw Strategy Nut draws hold obvious appeal as betting and raising candidates. They benefit from fold equity,… Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first decade of my career. But after my first… Relationships and Poker In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve… Do Multiple Sizes Matter? Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results… The Science of Learning Applied to GTO Wizard The way we were taught to study in schools was flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN preflop raiser in a 100bb cash… When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody… Protect Equity and Prosper When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend… Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative poker thinking. When you’re value betting against… Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots When the BTN open-limps off a short stack, the postflop play against the BB should… I’d Rather Be Drawing Which is the better hand on a K♥8♦5♦ flop: K♠T♣ or 7♥6♥? OK, I’ll admit… The Curious Case of Open-Limping Buttons Before the advent of solvers, open-limping was considered the province of passive, gambley recreational players… Cleaning Out Sticky IP Callers A “sticky” player on your left,

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making sure you… Overcalling From the BB In poker, overcalling refers to calling a bet or raise after another player has also… Understanding Which Mistakes Cost You the Most Money I am fortunate enough to have worked for many years with the mental game coach… Overbetting The Flop in Cash Games Although most commonly analyzed on turns and rivers, flop overbetting can be a devastating weapon… Using New Skills at the Poker Table How many times has it happened to you that you make a mistake only to… Flatting Ace-X Hands Shortstacked Playing out of position is tricky, but it’s an essential part of tournament play. With… Playing Limped Pots as the BB in MTTs Success as the BB in limped pots begins before the flop. The BB’s equilibrium strategy… The Absurd Game Theory of Chopped Boards A “chopped board” in poker is one where the community cards make up the best… Playing Limped Pots as the SB in MTTs MTT confrontations between the small blind and big blind force no-limit players into uncomfortable situations,… The Art of Learning Poker In his book The Art of Learning, chess and Push Hands champion Josh Waitzkin describes… Is Donk Betting for Donkeys? “Donk betting”, or betting from out of position into the player who was the aggressor… Delayed C-Betting This is a companion piece to Probe Betting. It stands on its own, but understanding… Probe Betting As far as rules of thumb go in poker, “check to the raiser” is a… ICM and Blind Battles: The Big Blind This is a companion piece to this article on the SB’s strategy for blind vs… ICM and Blind Battles: The Small Blind ICM incentivizes more conservative play, which means that at stages of the tournament where risk… The Initial Bettor’s Advantage The mathematics of poker holds a little-known secret: the first bettor enjoys better bluffing odds… Mastering the Chiplead: The Scalpel and the Sledgehammer When you have a lot of chips at a final table or in another situation… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in Cash Games Our never-ending quest for money and fame leads us to the flop. We open the… How ICM Impacts Restealing From The Blinds When I first started working with preflop solves, one of the features I found most… The ICM Benefits of Late Registration in Poker Tournaments Why do so many professional poker players register late for tournaments when they clearly would… Flop Heuristics: OOP C-Betting in MTTs Playing against an in-position cold-caller is dramatically different–and dramatically more difficult–than playing against a caller… Counterintuitive Calls Solver outputs such as those provided by GTO Wizard are models of no-limit hold ‘em,… How To Negotiate Final Table Deals Most people’s first introduction to the Independent Chip Model (ICM) is not from studying bubble… How does ICM impact PKO strategy? If you have read The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments you already know why we… Understanding Blockers in Poker Often when looking through a solver’s meticulously crafted grid of deception, one of the following… Flop Heuristics: IP Cold-Caller in MTTs A Cold-call refers to

the act of calling a preflop raise when you don’t close… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in MTTs In the world of poker, the flop is a crucial stage of the game that… Flop Heuristics for Defending the Blinds in MTTs The field of Game Theoretically Optimal poker is extensive, and thus, to simplify our strategy,… Multiway strategy in Progressive Knockout Tournaments Progressive Knockout (PKO) tournaments are much more complex than traditional MTTs. The fact that players… How To Calculate Raises In Poker One of the most frequently asked questions in poker is how to calculate the size… Principles of River Play The river offers the least complicated strategy of any betting street. With no further cards… Exploitative Dynamics GTO solutions are designed to be unexploitable, performing reasonably well no matter how your opponents… How ICM Impacts Postflop Strategy Most players understand how the Independent Chip Model (ICM) in poker impacts their strategy preflop,… 10 Tips for Multiway Pots in Poker While lots of work has been placed into research and explanation of heads-up pot strategy,… What is the Bubble Factor in poker tournaments? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) shows us the real money implications of tournament chip decisions.… The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments In poker, a PKO (Progressive Knockout) tournament is a type of tournament where a portion… How To Analyze Turn Textures In Poker Master the art of turn analysis in poker. Understand how the turn card changes the… Principles of Turn Strategy Learn the principles of turn strategy in poker and discover what makes the turn unique.… Poker Strategies: Tournaments vs. Cash Games Tournament poker is not as different from cash game poker as people sometimes assume. Most… How Solvers Work A Game Theory Optimal solver is an algorithm that calculates the best possible poker strategy.… The Most Powerful Play in Poker The central strategic implication of stack depth is the question of how much equity a… When does ICM become significant in MTTs? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) was invented in 1987 by M. Malmuth and is one… How to Study GTO Solutions Tools like GTO Wizard and other solvers should not be used to memorize specific strategies.… Principles of GTO Game theory, or GTO (for Game Theoretically Optimal), is best understood not as a rigid… Interpreting Equity Distributions GTO Wizard’s range vs range equity distribution graphs are an excellent tool for visualizing which… What is Leverage in poker? Leverage refers to the risk of future betting. When you call a bet on the… Reasons for value betting in poker You’re probably accustomed to thinking of bets as either value or bluff. In this taxonomy,… The Science of Poker Performance Poker is a game of small edges and big swings. Every hand is an investment… What is Valor in poker? Can a poker hand be courageous? How does your ability to value bet future streets… Pot Geometry “Pot Geometry” refers to betting an equal fraction of the pot on each street, such… A Beginner’s Guide to Poker Combinatorics Combinatorics is a fancy term for evaluating the number of

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The Right Way To Think About Protection Suppose Paul the Protector is in a 200bb cash game and opens A ♠ A ♣ in the SB. The BB calls, and the flop is 8 ♥ 6 ♦ 4 ♥ . He might be tempted to fire a 75% pot c-bet here, as betting allows him to “charge flush draws on a wet board” and “protect his hand against some straight draws,” both of which his hand unblocks. Additionally, he might not want to allow his opponent to check behind and see a “free card,” which could be an unfavorable turn like a heart, 7 , or 5 . Paul might be surprised to learn, however, that this hand is close to a pure check in theory, and betting 75% pot loses him around 7% of the pot in expectation . In this article, we will dive into this scenario and further examine when and when not to bet for protection . We’ll also discover how the concept of protection influences the frequencies and sizings associated with a flop c-bet strategy. When Not To Protect So where does the logic from the above situation break down? While BB does defend against Paul’s 75% bet with flush and straight draws that are behind A ♠ A ♣ in raw equity, these draws have relatively high EV due to their implied odds Implied odds A calculation of odds that takes into consideration future betting, thus allowing players to estimate the additional bets they could gain on future streets should they make their hand.Reverse implied odds refer to the value lost when making a hand and losing to a stronger made hand anyway. : they can try to extract value from AA when they hit or bluff off AA when they miss. When BB continues and the runout is “scary,” Paul’s AA will often become a bluff catcher Bluff catcher A hand that is likely only able to beat the opponent’s bluffs, and will therefore likely lose to the opponent’s value hands. , with zero EV in a pot that he built. When Paul the Protector bets his AA, narrowing his opponent’s range so that AA is transformed into a 0EV bluff catcher, he has effectively lost all the money he has put into the pot thus far . This is far from an ideal outcome when holding a hand with such high equity on the flop. Unblocking continues isn’t ideal either: when Paul c-bets 4.5bb into a pot of 6bb, his expected value with A ♠ A ♣ when called is 11.19bb. Since this number barely exceeds the starting pot size plus his c-bet size, his hand enjoys only slightly higher EV when BB calls, compared to getting a fold. Put another way, the change to AA ’s EV when called (EV − Flop Contribution) is 6.69bb, whereas the change to its EV when BB folds is 6bb. Getting a fold is almost as good as getting called, highlighting how poorly this hand performs as a value bet . There is another hidden benefit to

checking: when Paul checks OOP, BB is not guaranteed to check back. Because this board texture is relatively advantageous for their range, she will stab with hands such as Q ♦ 9 ♠ and K ♣ 2 ♣ , which are drawing near-dead Drawing dead When one player has no outs to win a hand, and is therefore guaranteed to lose the hand if it goes to showdown. against his specific hand but are fairly trivial folds vs the 75% bet. In general, a bet will obtain more value when it gets called by a hand that is drawing dead, as opposed to when it gets called by a hand that has live outs and possibly implied odds too . This explains why c-betting A ♠ A ♣ on 8 ♥ 6 ♦ 2 ♣ is more acceptable . When the board is drier, BB is required to defend with more no-pair no-draw (“static-equity”) type hands, mostly overcards with backdoors. On 8 ♥ 6 ♦ 2 ♣ , 37% of these hands continue facing a 75% c-bet, compared to 22% on 8 ♥ 6 ♦ 4 ♥ . For AA, getting called by KQ on 862 r is a much better result than getting called by 76 on 864 tt. A bet will obtain more value when it gets called by a hand that is drawing dead, as opposed to when it gets called by a hand that has live outs and possibly implied odds too. Worrying about protection too much can come with a steep price tag . On 8 ♥ 6 ♦ 4 ♥ , a GTO c-betting strategy captures 2.77bb in expected value from the pot. Imagine Paul c-bets too many overpairs (which “need protection”) and too few straights, sets, and pair+draws (which don’t “need protection”). If we nodelock Nodelock The act of fixing one players strategy at some node within a solver. Typically this is done to calculate exploitative adjustments. him to this strategy , we find that he captures only 2.7bb and thus is exploitable for around 0.07bb (7bb/100): Paul’s c-betting range is relatively capped Capped A range without many very strong hands, relative to the board. See uncapped. and too dense in overpairs, which are too weak to happily stack off for 200bb. This vulnerability in SB’s range allows BB to pounce by ramping up their raising frequency (for a re-pot sizing) from 5% to 21%—always raising with two pair or better and adding requisite bluffs: In fact, a far more robust strategy for Paul would be to check his entire range . He lacks the positional advantage, and BB’s range is competitive in terms of not only its overall equity but also strong hands (two pair+). This strategy captures 2.75bb in EV, which is much closer to GTO (and may outperform it, if BB over-stabs). When To Protect In poker, bets and raises derive EV from inducing low-equity hands to call and high-equity hands to fold . As we have established, it is imprudent to design a flop c-betting strategy with the goal of pricing

in a high-equity draw . Rather, the primary goal of betting with “value hands” should be to get calls from hands that are drawing much closer to dead. On the flip side, the goal of betting with “bluffs” should be to fold out as much equity as possible. When thin value hands can also “bluff” off/deny another part of the defender’s range (including gutshots, overcards, backdoor draws, etc.), we can bet them “for protection.” For example, consider BTN’s c-bet strategy on A82 rainbow in a single-raised pot against the BB. Note that BB continues preflop with nearly every offsuit (and suited) hand with two cards 9 or above. BB arrives at the flop with over 100 combinations of two cards between a King and Nine, accounting for nearly 30% of range. As a result, BTN is strongly incentivized to place a small wager with 8-x to fold out these hands (which have up to 6 immediate outs) and to extract value from hands like 77 – 33 (which have at most 2 outs): While a large bet might fold out even more overcard hands, sizing up with 8-x would isolate it against a stronger range that’s more weighted toward Ace-x, and so it would fare poorly when called. If BTN employs a c-bet strategy with a single 33% sizing , he will be able to bet 8-x over 70% of the time. If we force BTN to use a 75% c-bet at the same frequency as the smaller sizing, they lose 6bb/100 of expected value. When thin value has the incentive to bet for protection, smaller sizings must be used to allow these hands to bet frequently. In the next section, we will further investigate the relationship between protection and frequencies/sizings with which the flop should be c-bet. Frequencies and Sizings Using the Aggregate Reports feature , let’s take a look at BTN’s c-bet strategies vs the BB in a SRP , where the board is A X 2 rainbow and X is a card between a K and 3 : We can observe a clear dichotomy: BTN’s primary sizing is a 125% when X is a Broadway card Broadway A ten through ace straight. “Broadway cards” can also be used to describe any 10 , J , Q , K , or A card. and 33% otherwise . In the former case, there are fewer overcards to second pair, and the existence of Broadway gutshots (of which BB has all offsuit combinations) reduces the equity of BTN’s made hands. Consequently, BTN is reluctant to protection-bet with second pair, so BTN c-bets larger with a polarized range Polarized Describes a range that is mainly very strong made hands or bluffs, with very few middle strength hands. consisting of mostly good top pairs+ and bluffs. (As an added bonus, the overbet sizing makes many Broadway gutshots indifferent .) In the latter case, there are more overcards to second pair and BTN is eager to protection-bet with second pair and underpairs, so the predominant sizing decreases. Conclusion Strong draws on the flop have high

EV (often more than many made hands) and will always continue facing most “standard” c-bet sizes. When c-betting the flop, don’t focus on “charging” these hands. Instead, think about the following heuristics: When you are OOP and lack a significant range advantage Range advantage A general term meaning one players range equity distribution is stronger on a given board. It’s possible to have an advantage only over a specific part of the equity distribution. A large advantage near the top of the range indicates a nut advantage. , check frequently. Hands that can make the effective nuts by the river have high EV/EQR, even compared to better made hands. (The categorization of “effective nuts” is highly dependent on stack depth.) Bet more frequently with hands that are likely to remain value bets/raises, rather than degrade into bluff catchers, on future streets. These hands are often said to have “high equity retention” or “robust equity.” Pay attention to offsuit hands in both ranges, as each such hand represents 12 combinations. Pay attention to the value of fold equity . It’s not just about how often your opponent will fold, but the type of hands they fold. If your thin value bets would fold out hands with many outs against you, then you have more incentive to go for fold equity. Consider betting small with a wide merged range. If your thin value bets would mostly fold out dominated hands while getting called by high equity draws and better, then you have less incentive to bet thin. In these spots, you should opt for a more polarized betting strategy. When gutshots constitute a large part of your opponent’s range, overbetting forces indifference from many of these draws. GTO Wizard the #1 App for Poker players Study any spot imaginable Practice by playing vs. GTO Analyze your hands with 1-click START CRUSHING NOW JOIN DISCORD Author David Chen David Chen is a GTO Wizard and MIT student, with a deep understanding of game theory and algorithms. Latest article Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first decade of my career. But after my first… Relationships and Poker In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve… Do Multiple Sizes Matter? Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results… The Science of Learning Applied to GTO Wizard The way we were taught to study in schools was flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN

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Turn Reports feature to… Navigating Range Disadvantage as the 3-Bettor Picture this: We’re playing a NL500 6-max cash game, and we’ve won a few pots,… Mastering Three-Bet Pots In Position in MTTs Playing in position against a three-better is a lesson in playing to your advantages. As… Mastering Three-Bet Pots Out of Position in MTTs Three-bet pots are scary. Playing out of position is scary. Put them together, and you’ve… The Greatest Final Table in Triton History Today, we’ll examine one of the most epic final table battles I’ve ever witnessed! Our… Mastering Thin Value Bets in Checked-Down Pots Valuing your hand appropriately—determining whether it’s strong enough to value bet or so weak you… Maximizing Value on Monotone Flops Monotone flops tend to provoke great anxiety among poker players. It’s easy to imagine that… How to Defend Against Turn Donk Bets Responding effectively to donk bets on the turn is tricky;, there’s no getting around that.… How and Why You Should Use Turn Donk Bets Donk betting–taking the betting lead away from the previous street’s aggressor–on the flop is rarely… How Stack Sizes Change Your Range In this series, we have looked at factors that can influence ranges in otherwise identical… How to Leverage GTO Wizard’s EV Comparison Tool With the advent of solvers, some troubling new turns of phrase have entered the poker… Should You Ever Cold Call a 3-Bet? When there’s been a raise and re-raise before the action is on you, you will… When ICM Breaks Down If you have read my previous GTO Wizard articles and my books, you’ll know I… When Is It Correct To Fold AA Preflop? One of the criticisms of ICM is that it is boring and robotic. In my… OOP C-betting vs Loose Cold-callers In a previous GTO Wizard article, I asserted that “Playing against an in-position cold-caller is… Short-Stacked Play in MTTs Playing a short stack well is an essential tournament skill. It is extremely rare to… When To Ladder in Tournaments In my last two articles, I wrote about the effect field size and payout structure… How Payout Structures Impact ICM Last time we discussed the ICM considerations in game selection, we looked at field size,… C-Betting IP in 3-Bet Pots When you three-bet before the flop and the original raiser calls from out of position,… C-Betting OOP in 3-Bet Pots Continuation betting from out of position can be a dicey proposition in single-raised pots. Cold… Dynamic Sizing: A GTO Breakthrough Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Dynamic Sizing Benchmarks Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Understanding The Impact Of Field Size On ICM In Poker When people talk about game selection in multi-table tournaments (MTTs), they invariably talk about the… Defending vs BB Check-Raise on Paired Flops This is a companion piece to Attacking Paired Flops from the BB; you will get… Mastering PKO Final Tables Final tables can be the most exciting and rewarding phase of a tournament, and being… Attacking

Paired Flops From the BB Paired flops present unique challenges to both a preflop raiser and a BB caller. The… KK vs QQ vs JJ at WSOP Main Event With only fourteen players remaining in the 2023 WSOP Main Event and blinds of 400K/800K/800K,… Responding to BB Squeezes You open raise, someone calls, and the BB squeezes. How should you construct your strategy?… Crushing a Top HUNL Poker Bot In 2022, Philippe Beardsell and Marc-Antoine Provost, a team of Canadian programmers from Quebec, developed… GTO Wizard AI Explained We are excited to introduce GTO Wizard AI, formerly known as Ruse, the world’s best… GTO Wizard AI Benchmarks GTO Wizard has combined the power of artificial intelligence with traditional solving methods to bring… Table Management in PKOs Perhaps the most important strategic consideration in Progressive Knockout Tournaments (PKOs) is making sure you… Overcalling From the BB In poker, overcalling refers to calling a bet or raise after another player has also… Understanding Which Mistakes Cost You the Most Money I am fortunate enough to have worked for many years with the mental game coach… Overbetting The Flop in Cash Games Although most commonly analyzed on turns and rivers, flop overbetting can be a devastating weapon… Using New Skills at the Poker Table How many times has it happened to you that you make a mistake only to… Flatting Ace-X Hands Shortstacked Playing out of position is tricky, but it’s an essential part of tournament play. With… Playing Limped Pots as the BB in MTTs Success as the BB in limped pots begins before the flop. The BB’s equilibrium strategy… The Absurd Game Theory of Chopped Boards A “chopped board” in poker is one where the community cards make up the best… Playing Limped Pots as the SB in MTTs MTT confrontations between the small blind and big blind force no-limit players into uncomfortable situations,… The Art of Learning Poker In his book The Art of Learning, chess and Push Hands champion Josh Waitzkin describes… Is Donk Betting for Donkeys? “Donk betting”, or betting from out of position into the player who was the aggressor… Delayed C-Betting This is a companion piece to Probe Betting. It stands on its own, but understanding… Probe Betting As far as rules of thumb go in poker, “check to the raiser” is a… ICM and Blind Battles: The Big Blind This is a companion piece to this article on the SB’s strategy for blind vs… ICM and Blind Battles: The Small Blind ICM incentivizes more conservative play, which means that at stages of the tournament where risk… The Initial Bettor’s Advantage The mathematics of poker holds a little-known secret: the first bettor enjoys better bluffing odds… Mastering the Chiplead: The Scalpel and the Sledgehammer When you have a lot of chips at a final table or in another situation… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in Cash Games Our never-ending quest for money and fame leads us to the flop. We open the… How ICM Impacts Restealing From The Blinds When I first started working with preflop solves, one of

the features I found most… The ICM Benefits of Late Registration in Poker Tournaments Why do so many professional poker players register late for tournaments when they clearly would… Flop Heuristics: OOP C-Betting in MTTs Playing against an in-position cold-caller is dramatically different–and dramatically more difficult–than playing against a caller… Counterintuitive Calls Solver outputs such as those provided by GTO Wizard are models of no-limit hold ‘em,… How To Negotiate Final Table Deals Most people’s first introduction to the Independent Chip Model (ICM) is not from studying bubble… How does ICM impact PKO strategy? If you have read The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments you already know why we… Understanding Blockers in Poker Often when looking through a solver’s meticulously crafted grid of deception, one of the following… Flop Heuristics: IP Cold-Caller in MTTs A Cold-call refers to the act of calling a preflop raise when you don’t close… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in MTTs In the world of poker, the flop is a crucial stage of the game that… Flop Heuristics for Defending the Blinds in MTTs The field of Game Theoretically Optimal poker is extensive, and thus, to simplify our strategy,… Multiway strategy in Progressive Knockout Tournaments Progressive Knockout (PKO) tournaments are much more complex than traditional MTTs. The fact that players… How To Calculate Raises In Poker One of the most frequently asked questions in poker is how to calculate the size… Principles of River Play The river offers the least complicated strategy of any betting street. With no further cards… Exploitative Dynamics GTO solutions are designed to be unexploitable, performing reasonably well no matter how your opponents… How ICM Impacts Postflop Strategy Most players understand how the Independent Chip Model (ICM) in poker impacts their strategy preflop,… 10 Tips for Multiway Pots in Poker While lots of work has been placed into research and explanation of heads-up pot strategy,… What is the Bubble Factor in poker tournaments? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) shows us the real money implications of tournament chip decisions.… The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments In poker, a PKO (Progressive Knockout) tournament is a type of tournament where a portion… How To Analyze Turn Textures In Poker Master the art of turn analysis in poker. Understand how the turn card changes the… Principles of Turn Strategy Learn the principles of turn strategy in poker and discover what makes the turn unique.… Poker Strategies: Tournaments vs. Cash Games Tournament poker is not as different from cash game poker as people sometimes assume. Most… How Solvers Work A Game Theory Optimal solver is an algorithm that calculates the best possible poker strategy.… The Most Powerful Play in Poker The central strategic implication of stack depth is the question of how much equity a… When does ICM become significant in MTTs? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) was invented in 1987 by M. Malmuth and is one… How to Study GTO Solutions Tools like GTO Wizard and other solvers should not be used to memorize specific strategies.… Principles of GTO Game theory, or GTO (for Game Theoretically Optimal), is

best understood not as a rigid… Interpreting Equity Distributions GTO Wizard’s range vs range equity distribution graphs are an excellent tool for visualizing which… What is Leverage in poker? Leverage refers to the risk of future betting. When you call a bet on the… Reasons for value betting in poker You’re probably accustomed to thinking of bets as either value or bluff. In this taxonomy,… The Science of Poker Performance Poker is a game of small edges and big swings. Every hand is an investment… What is Valor in poker? Can a poker hand be courageous? How does your ability to value bet future streets… Pot Geometry “Pot Geometry” refers to betting an equal fraction of the pot on each street, such… A Beginner’s Guide to Poker Combinatorics Combinatorics is a fancy term for evaluating the number of possible “combinations” (combos) of any… Stack-to-pot ratio Stack-to-pot ratio, or SPR, is a way of measuring how deep the effective stack is… Equity Realization In poker jargon, equity expresses how much of the pot a hand will win, on… Variance and Bankroll Management Variance and Bankroll Management. Vital Soft Skills for Every Poker Player. How to Become a GTO Wizard Welcome to the wonderful world of game theory optimal poker! This article will serve as… The Three Laws of Indifference Indifference in poker is one of the most misunderstood concepts. The word “indifference” means that… Poker subsets and abstractions An “abstraction” is a way to simplify the game of poker. This game is so… Mathematical Misconceptions in Poker Pot Odds and MDF are foundational mathematical formulas in poker. How to solve toy games Poker is a complicated game. It’s impossible to calculate GTO strategies on the fly. By… The Value of Fold Equity – Experiment The term “fold equity” is ambiguous in the poker community. Firstly, it’s an EV equation,… MDF & Alpha MDF & Alpha. Minimum Defence Frequency and Alpha are metrics on poker that determine how… What are Pot Odds in poker? Pot odds are a fundamental calculation in poker. In the simplest terms, pot odds tell… Does your range affect your strategy? Advanced players will often tell you that your range affects your strategy. Visualizing implied odds Implied odds are the value you expect to gain over and above your raw equity.… ICM Basics As a tournament player, you may have heard about the concept of “ICM”, but what… What is Equity in Poker? The term “Equity” is ubiquitous throughout poker theory. Equity refers to your chances of winning… Range Morphology “Morphology” is the study of form or structure. You’ve probably heard terms thrown around such… What is Expected Value in Poker? Expected value (EV) is the most fundamental metric in poker. Every decision you make is… Why doesn’t my solution match GTO Wizard? So, you’ve got your own solutions to some spot, compared it to GTO Wizard, and… Understanding Nash Distance Understanding Nash Distance. One of the most common questions when studying with solvers is “Why… Combinatorics Poker Puzzle Today we have a special puzzle for you that will test

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Mastering Three-Bet Pots Out of Position in MTTs Three-bet pots are scary. Playing out of position is scary. Put them together, and you’ve got many a poker player’s nightmare. As always, the best way to combat that anxiety is to arm yourself with information. Once you understand the principles that guide your play in these tricky situations, you’ll make better decisions in these big, important pots. You’ll still lose them often – that’s baked into the situation, as we’ll see—but you can rest easy knowing your play was sound. Playing Before the Flop The first thing to know about playing postflop out of position to a three-bettor in an MTT is that you shouldn’t do it very often. Even mild ICM pressure incentivizes you to four-bet or fold preflop more than you call from out of position. Calling is a bigger part of your strategy when the stack depth becomes shallower, for two reasons: Your opponent’s three-bet should be smaller, offering you better immediate calling odds . Being out of position is less of a liability, making it easier to realize equity with marginal hands. Even so, calling should remain your least frequent action in response to a three-bet from an in position player at all stack depths. Among other things, shallower stacks also make shoving more appealing by reducing the downside risk when all-in. These numbers remain similar regardless of your position. The composition of the ranges changes to reflect the width of the initial opening range, but facing a three-bet, the opener folds, calls, and four-bets similar proportions of that opening range regardless of their position . This is because the three-betting range takes the original raiser’s position into account. So, while an early position opener will have a stronger range than a late position opener, the raiser’s range for three-betting the early position open will be stronger as well, leading the opener to respond with similar frequencies. The proportions shown in the chart below reflect modest ICM considerations with 50% of the field remaining. As we have seen, more ICM pressure will result in more folding and less calling. Playing the Flop Calling a three-bet from out of position is voluntarily entering a disadvantageous situation because the price is right. You should expect to have a weaker range postflop and to lose more pots than you win. The caller always has a weaker preflop range than a preflop reraiser in a three-bet pot, for reasons that are similar to why a BB caller has a weaker range than a preflop raiser in a single-raised pot: The three-bet risks more than the call . When CO opens to 2.1bb and BTN reraises to 6.82bb, the raise puts 6.82bb at risk, while the call risks only an additional 4.72bb. The call closes the action . Whereas the three-bettor risks a four-bet from a player who has not yet acted or, more likely, from the original raiser, the caller can be sure they will see the flop. The caller is incentivized to four-bet their strongest hands . Slowplaying is generally risky from

out of position, so with the exception of exactly AA , the opener will generally four-bet their strongest hands, leading them to call with a largely capped Capped range A range without many very strong hands range. Much like calling from the BB, calling a three-bet from out of position is voluntarily entering a disadvantageous situation because the price is right. You should expect to have a weaker range postflop and to lose more pots than you win. It follows from this that you should almost always begin your postflop play by checking to the raiser . Technically, there are some exceptions on the most coordinated boards, those where the three-bettor’s overpairs are weakest, but you should default to checking unless you have an extremely good reason to do otherwise. CO Donk Betting Strategy in Three-Bet Pot, CO vs BTN, 50bb Stacks Shallower stacks make donk betting slightly more appealing, but only slightly: CO Donk Betting Strategy in Three-Bet Pot, CO vs BTN, 20bb Stacks After checking to the raiser, you will likely face a small continuation bet. This is the three-bettor’s default strategy on most flops. In response, you should most frequently call but do plenty of folding as well. A tiny continuation bet is not weak. This is CO’s response to BTN’s 25% pot continuation bet in a three-bet pot with 50bb starting stacks: Note that a 34% folding frequency is almost double the 20% folding frequency that the Minimum Defense Frequency formula would yield. This reflects the three-bettor’s equity advantage. Just as in a single-raised pot against the BB, the three-bettor paid for this profitable flop bluff by taking on relatively more preflop risk than the caller. As the preflop caller, you should not fight them tooth and nail for the pot, even when their bet is tiny. Note also that because of the low SPR Stack-to-pot ratio (SPR) The effective stack divided by the size of the pot. SPR is commonly used to gauge the value of implied odds and the relative value of made hands. , a tiny continuation bet is not “weak” and does not in any way cap the three-bettor’s range. They will have plenty of leeway to get stacks in with turn and river bets if they wish to do so, so they are not disincentivized from betting small with their strongest hands. The low SPR also means you do not need a great hand to stack off . On K62 r, for instance, CO can check-raise a BTN three-bettor with K8 and barrel off for value on most runouts. Despite starting with 50bb stacks, the SPR on the flop is less than 3 , so any top pair is a strong hand. The weaker King-x that does not check-raise will check-call all the way on most runouts. Sets and two pairs are not so eager to check-raise. They gain less than King-x from denying equity (BTN has a lot of Ace-x which could draw out on K8 but not on 66 ) and so would rather give rope for BTN to keep bluffing.

Many of the hands that would pay off the check-raise will continue betting later streets for value anyway. Despite what we said before about CO folding at higher than MDF, they nevertheless have a lot of counter-intuitive calls and raises when facing a tiny continuation bet on such a dry board. They never fold a pair and rarely fold Ace-high. The stronger Ace-x make good calls, as they dominate some of BTN’s Ace-x. The weaker Ace-x need a backdoor flush draw to continue (which they have three times out of four) and often check-raise, partly because they can fold out dominating Ace-x . CO draws the rest of their check-raise bluffs from gutshots and hands with backdoor straight and flush draws . To be clear, these are not particularly strong draws, and raising them is not especially profitable. But there are no strong draws on this board, and CO needs some bluffs, so they might as well do it when they have an outside chance of improving. Playing Connected Boards On K ♦ 6 ♥ 3 ♠ , CO’s check-raises are exclusively small, regardless of whether there is a flush draw on the board. CO’s check-raises are almost always small , for the same reasons BTN mostly uses a small continuation bet. But there are some exceptions on the most coordinated boards, as can be seen below: This check-shoving strategy is actually more intuitive to implement. Because the raise is all-in, it’s a smaller and more linear Linear A range construction that consists of the top-down strongest hands. A linear range might contain nutted to medium strength hands, or value to thin value. , equity-dense range. For example, on T ♠ 9 ♦ 8 ♦ , CO check-shoves mostly strong draws like AQ and AJ of diamonds and strong but vulnerable made hands like top two pair and the low end of the straight: For the check-calling strategy, we select the weaker draws, including nut flush draws and most straight draws with overcards. Playing a draw passively from out of position is never ideal, but BTN’s bet is worrisome. This is not a high-frequency bet spot for them. Indeed, they check back more than half their range on this flop. So when they do bet, CO gives that bet a lot of respect and raises much less often than on K62 . Playing Flush Draw Boards Similar principles apply when introducing a flush draw, such as on K ♦ 6 ♥ 2 ♦ . CO check-raises less King-x because they have more strong draws with similarly high equity against BTN’s Ace-x and lower pairs. Their weakest bluffs are still gutshots and backdoor flush draws, which now take the form of two hearts or a single diamond. Note that 6 -x of diamonds, for middle pair and flush draw, is an especially poor raising candidate. Yes, it has a lot of equity, but better hands never fold and the weak hands that do fold have little chance of drawing out. It is better to raise weaker flush draws, which value fold equity more

highly, and call with flush draws that have showdown value against BTN’s bluffs (high Ace-x of diamonds also pure calls). Playing Later Streets There are too many distinct later street scenarios to provide even an overview of them all here. The good news is that the same strategic principles that guide your play when playing from the BB against a preflop raiser will serve you well when out of position to a three-bettor. You’ll just need to keep in mind two important variables: The SPR Stack-to-pot ratio (SPR) The effective stack divided by the size of the pot. SPR is commonly used to gauge the value of implied odds and the relative value of made hands. will be low, so your threshold for stacking off should be low as well. Preflop ranges are substantially stronger and more concentrated around high cards. Following those familiar principles, if you checked and called the flop, you’ll mostly check the turn. If you raised the flop, you’ll mostly bet the turn. The major exceptions will be on cards that dramatically change the board texture . In a three-bet pot, that’s more likely to be an Ace or King than a board-pairing or straight-completing card as it would be in a single-raised pot. Conclusion The pots may be larger, but the principles remain the same: Avoid bad situations when you can. If you do call, recognize you are playing from a disadvantage and proceed defensively , with an emphasis on checking, calling, and folding. Assess the strength of your hands contextually, with an eye toward the SPR and the preflop ranges. Going on the offensive via raising is a lower frequency play but appropriate for strong hands that benefit from denying equity . Bluff only carefully selected weak hands that have the potential to improve. You can’t always avoid losses, but by sticking to these principles, you can avoid mistakes. Practice Ready to try it for yourself? These drills have you facing a three-bet from an in position player from various seats and stack sizes. They are all based on Chip EV simulations, so you can practice both preflop and postflop decision-making. If you want to practice incorporating ICM into your decisions, these ICM drills put you in similar preflop spots (postflop simulations based on ICM models are not yet available) with 50% of the field remaining. Once you’ve got the hang of that, you can tweak the parameters to practice other stages of the tournament, but you’ll likely get more out of focusing on one stage at a time rather than training on a set of drills that randomly draws from many different ICM models. Ready to try it for yourself? These drills have you facing a three-bet from an in position player from various seats and stack sizes. They are all based on Chip EV simulations, so you can practice both preflop and postflop decision-making. If you want to practice incorporating ICM into your decisions, these ICM drills put you in similar preflop spots (postflop simulations based on ICM models are not yet available) with

50% of the field remaining. Once you’ve got the hang of that, you can tweak the parameters to practice other stages of the tournament, but you’ll likely get more out of focusing on one stage at a time rather than training on a set of drills that randomly draws from many different ICM models. GTO Wizard the #1 App for Poker players Study any spot imaginable Practice by playing vs. GTO Analyze your hands with 1-click START CRUSHING NOW JOIN DISCORD Author Andrew Brokos Andrew Brokos has been a professional poker player, coach, and author for over 15 years. He co-hosts the Thinking Poker Podcast and is the author of the Play Optimal Poker books, among others. Latest article Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first decade of my career. But after my first… Relationships and Poker In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve… Do Multiple Sizes Matter? Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results… The Science of Learning Applied to GTO Wizard The way we were taught to study in schools was flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN preflop raiser in a 100bb cash… When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody… Protect Equity and Prosper When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend… Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative poker thinking. When you’re value betting against… Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots When the BTN open-limps off a short stack, the postflop play against the BB should… I’d Rather Be Drawing Which is the better hand on a K♥8♦5♦ flop: K♠T♣ or 7♥6♥? OK, I’ll admit… The Curious Case of Open-Limping Buttons Before the advent of solvers, open-limping was considered the province of passive, gambley recreational players… Cleaning Out Sticky IP Callers A “sticky” player on your left, one who calls your preflop raises too often and… Defending Against Tiny 3-Bets Tournament poker is about precision. Cash games, where stacks typically run into the hundreds of… Heads up! Exploiting SB’s Preflop Mistakes Heads up (HU) tournament play presents unique challenges to the average player. Many tournament players,… C-Betting As the OOP Preflop Raiser Position is an extremely valuable advantage in poker. Most players would describe the comfort zone… Overchoice: Making Sense of Multiple Sizings Solver solutions

with multiple bet sizes often involve a lot of mixing between those sizes,… River Refinements: When Your Opponent Won’t Check-Raise One of the biggest strategic differences between playing in versus out of position involves betting… Turn Barreling in 3-Bet Pots There are two articles on the GTO Wizard blog that make good prerequisites to this… The Right Way To Think About Protection Suppose Paul the Protector is in a 200bb cash game and opens A♠A♣ in the… The Importance of Board Coverage The first public version of the GTO Wizard announced AI upgrade already has some useful… How To Adjust When Villain Has No Bluffs “They always have it!” is a common, semi-joking expression in poker to describe the tendency… Adjusting on Later Streets After Exploiting Flop The key to exploiting opponents profitably is knowing when to stop. I’m not referring to… C-Betting IP vs Passive Poker Players A preflop raiser enjoys a significant range advantage over a BB caller, enabling them to… C-Betting Against ICM Preflop Ranges You raise from early position (EP) in a multi-table tournament and the BB calls. Both… The Art of Bluff Catching Bluff catching—calling a bet with a modest hand which you expect to win only if… Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by IP On some flops, it is simply not possible for the preflop raiser to continuation bet… Is Limping Pimping? In a past Discord post, one of our members noted that an upside of implementing… Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by OOP A preflop raiser who continuation bets too often is always a potential target for exploitation,… Preflop Button Mastery in PKOs Playing from the Button presents many unique opportunities in any tournament format, especially in PKOs.… The Worst Turn Card Greetings from GTO land. In today’s article, we will use the Turn Reports feature to… Navigating Range Disadvantage as the 3-Bettor Picture this: We’re playing a NL500 6-max cash game, and we’ve won a few pots,… Mastering Three-Bet Pots In Position in MTTs Playing in position against a three-better is a lesson in playing to your advantages. As… Mastering Three-Bet Pots Out of Position in MTTs Three-bet pots are scary. Playing out of position is scary. Put them together, and you’ve… The Greatest Final Table in Triton History Today, we’ll examine one of the most epic final table battles I’ve ever witnessed! Our… Mastering Thin Value Bets in Checked-Down Pots Valuing your hand appropriately—determining whether it’s strong enough to value bet or so weak you… Maximizing Value on Monotone Flops Monotone flops tend to provoke great anxiety among poker players. It’s easy to imagine that… How to Defend Against Turn Donk Bets Responding effectively to donk bets on the turn is tricky;, there’s no getting around that.… How and Why You Should Use Turn Donk Bets Donk betting–taking the betting lead away from the previous street’s aggressor–on the flop is rarely… How Stack Sizes Change Your Range In this series, we have looked at factors that can influence ranges in otherwise identical… How to Leverage GTO Wizard’s EV Comparison Tool With the advent of solvers, some troubling

new turns of phrase have entered the poker… Should You Ever Cold Call a 3-Bet? When there’s been a raise and re-raise before the action is on you, you will… When ICM Breaks Down If you have read my previous GTO Wizard articles and my books, you’ll know I… When Is It Correct To Fold AA Preflop? One of the criticisms of ICM is that it is boring and robotic. In my… OOP C-betting vs Loose Cold-callers In a previous GTO Wizard article, I asserted that “Playing against an in-position cold-caller is… Short-Stacked Play in MTTs Playing a short stack well is an essential tournament skill. It is extremely rare to… When To Ladder in Tournaments In my last two articles, I wrote about the effect field size and payout structure… How Payout Structures Impact ICM Last time we discussed the ICM considerations in game selection, we looked at field size,… C-Betting IP in 3-Bet Pots When you three-bet before the flop and the original raiser calls from out of position,… C-Betting OOP in 3-Bet Pots Continuation betting from out of position can be a dicey proposition in single-raised pots. Cold… Dynamic Sizing: A GTO Breakthrough Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Dynamic Sizing Benchmarks Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Understanding The Impact Of Field Size On ICM In Poker When people talk about game selection in multi-table tournaments (MTTs), they invariably talk about the… Defending vs BB Check-Raise on Paired Flops This is a companion piece to Attacking Paired Flops from the BB; you will get… Mastering PKO Final Tables Final tables can be the most exciting and rewarding phase of a tournament, and being… Attacking Paired Flops From the BB Paired flops present unique challenges to both a preflop raiser and a BB caller. The… KK vs QQ vs JJ at WSOP Main Event With only fourteen players remaining in the 2023 WSOP Main Event and blinds of 400K/800K/800K,… Responding to BB Squeezes You open raise, someone calls, and the BB squeezes. How should you construct your strategy?… Crushing a Top HUNL Poker Bot In 2022, Philippe Beardsell and Marc-Antoine Provost, a team of Canadian programmers from Quebec, developed… GTO Wizard AI Explained We are excited to introduce GTO Wizard AI, formerly known as Ruse, the world’s best… GTO Wizard AI Benchmarks GTO Wizard has combined the power of artificial intelligence with traditional solving methods to bring… Table Management in PKOs Perhaps the most important strategic consideration in Progressive Knockout Tournaments (PKOs) is making sure you… Overcalling From the BB In poker, overcalling refers to calling a bet or raise after another player has also… Understanding Which Mistakes Cost You the Most Money I am fortunate enough to have worked for many years with the mental game coach… Overbetting The Flop in Cash Games Although most commonly analyzed on turns and rivers, flop overbetting can be a devastating weapon… Using New Skills at the Poker Table How many times has it

happened to you that you make a mistake only to… Flatting Ace-X Hands Shortstacked Playing out of position is tricky, but it’s an essential part of tournament play. With… Playing Limped Pots as the BB in MTTs Success as the BB in limped pots begins before the flop. The BB’s equilibrium strategy… The Absurd Game Theory of Chopped Boards A “chopped board” in poker is one where the community cards make up the best… Playing Limped Pots as the SB in MTTs MTT confrontations between the small blind and big blind force no-limit players into uncomfortable situations,… The Art of Learning Poker In his book The Art of Learning, chess and Push Hands champion Josh Waitzkin describes… Is Donk Betting for Donkeys? “Donk betting”, or betting from out of position into the player who was the aggressor… Delayed C-Betting This is a companion piece to Probe Betting. It stands on its own, but understanding… Probe Betting As far as rules of thumb go in poker, “check to the raiser” is a… ICM and Blind Battles: The Big Blind This is a companion piece to this article on the SB’s strategy for blind vs… ICM and Blind Battles: The Small Blind ICM incentivizes more conservative play, which means that at stages of the tournament where risk… The Initial Bettor’s Advantage The mathematics of poker holds a little-known secret: the first bettor enjoys better bluffing odds… Mastering the Chiplead: The Scalpel and the Sledgehammer When you have a lot of chips at a final table or in another situation… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in Cash Games Our never-ending quest for money and fame leads us to the flop. We open the… How ICM Impacts Restealing From The Blinds When I first started working with preflop solves, one of the features I found most… The ICM Benefits of Late Registration in Poker Tournaments Why do so many professional poker players register late for tournaments when they clearly would… Flop Heuristics: OOP C-Betting in MTTs Playing against an in-position cold-caller is dramatically different–and dramatically more difficult–than playing against a caller… Counterintuitive Calls Solver outputs such as those provided by GTO Wizard are models of no-limit hold ‘em,… How To Negotiate Final Table Deals Most people’s first introduction to the Independent Chip Model (ICM) is not from studying bubble… How does ICM impact PKO strategy? If you have read The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments you already know why we… Understanding Blockers in Poker Often when looking through a solver’s meticulously crafted grid of deception, one of the following… Flop Heuristics: IP Cold-Caller in MTTs A Cold-call refers to the act of calling a preflop raise when you don’t close… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in MTTs In the world of poker, the flop is a crucial stage of the game that… Flop Heuristics for Defending the Blinds in MTTs The field of Game Theoretically Optimal poker is extensive, and thus, to simplify our strategy,… Multiway strategy in Progressive Knockout Tournaments Progressive Knockout (PKO) tournaments are much more complex than traditional MTTs. The fact that players… How To

Calculate Raises In Poker One of the most frequently asked questions in poker is how to calculate the size… Principles of River Play The river offers the least complicated strategy of any betting street. With no further cards… Exploitative Dynamics GTO solutions are designed to be unexploitable, performing reasonably well no matter how your opponents… How ICM Impacts Postflop Strategy Most players understand how the Independent Chip Model (ICM) in poker impacts their strategy preflop,… 10 Tips for Multiway Pots in Poker While lots of work has been placed into research and explanation of heads-up pot strategy,… What is the Bubble Factor in poker tournaments? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) shows us the real money implications of tournament chip decisions.… The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments In poker, a PKO (Progressive Knockout) tournament is a type of tournament where a portion… How To Analyze Turn Textures In Poker Master the art of turn analysis in poker. Understand how the turn card changes the… Principles of Turn Strategy Learn the principles of turn strategy in poker and discover what makes the turn unique.… Poker Strategies: Tournaments vs. Cash Games Tournament poker is not as different from cash game poker as people sometimes assume. Most… How Solvers Work A Game Theory Optimal solver is an algorithm that calculates the best possible poker strategy.… The Most Powerful Play in Poker The central strategic implication of stack depth is the question of how much equity a… When does ICM become significant in MTTs? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) was invented in 1987 by M. Malmuth and is one… How to Study GTO Solutions Tools like GTO Wizard and other solvers should not be used to memorize specific strategies.… Principles of GTO Game theory, or GTO (for Game Theoretically Optimal), is best understood not as a rigid… Interpreting Equity Distributions GTO Wizard’s range vs range equity distribution graphs are an excellent tool for visualizing which… What is Leverage in poker? Leverage refers to the risk of future betting. When you call a bet on the… Reasons for value betting in poker You’re probably accustomed to thinking of bets as either value or bluff. In this taxonomy,… The Science of Poker Performance Poker is a game of small edges and big swings. Every hand is an investment… What is Valor in poker? Can a poker hand be courageous? How does your ability to value bet future streets… Pot Geometry “Pot Geometry” refers to betting an equal fraction of the pot on each street, such… A Beginner’s Guide to Poker Combinatorics Combinatorics is a fancy term for evaluating the number of possible “combinations” (combos) of any… Stack-to-pot ratio Stack-to-pot ratio, or SPR, is a way of measuring how deep the effective stack is… Equity Realization In poker jargon, equity expresses how much of the pot a hand will win, on… Variance and Bankroll Management Variance and Bankroll Management. Vital Soft Skills for Every Poker Player. How to Become a GTO Wizard Welcome to the wonderful world of game theory optimal poker! This article will serve as… The Three Laws

of Indifference Indifference in poker is one of the most misunderstood concepts. The word “indifference” means that… Poker subsets and abstractions An “abstraction” is a way to simplify the game of poker. This game is so… Mathematical Misconceptions in Poker Pot Odds and MDF are foundational mathematical formulas in poker. How to solve toy games Poker is a complicated game. It’s impossible to calculate GTO strategies on the fly. By… The Value of Fold Equity – Experiment The term “fold equity” is ambiguous in the poker community. Firstly, it’s an EV equation,… MDF & Alpha MDF & Alpha. Minimum Defence Frequency and Alpha are metrics on poker that determine how… What are Pot Odds in poker? Pot odds are a fundamental calculation in poker. In the simplest terms, pot odds tell… Does your range affect your strategy? Advanced players will often tell you that your range affects your strategy. Visualizing implied odds Implied odds are the value you expect to gain over and above your raw equity.… ICM Basics As a tournament player, you may have heard about the concept of “ICM”, but what… What is Equity in Poker? The term “Equity” is ubiquitous throughout poker theory. Equity refers to your chances of winning… Range Morphology “Morphology” is the study of form or structure. You’ve probably heard terms thrown around such… What is Expected Value in Poker? Expected value (EV) is the most fundamental metric in poker. Every decision you make is… Why doesn’t my solution match GTO Wizard? So, you’ve got your own solutions to some spot, compared it to GTO Wizard, and… Understanding Nash Distance Understanding Nash Distance. One of the most common questions when studying with solvers is “Why… Combinatorics Poker Puzzle Today we have a special puzzle for you that will test your intuition as a… The 10 Most Important Concepts for New Poker Players The 10 Most Important Concepts for New Poker Players. Fundamentals are one of the most… What is GTO in Poker? The meaning of GTO in poker is Game Theory Optimal. Game theory is a study… What does GTO aim to achieve? So what exactly is a GTO strategy? What makes it “unexploitable”? What does it try…

Does your range affect your strategy? Advanced players will often tell you that your range affects your strategy. They’ll tell you that you’re playing range-vs-range, and that you need to think about your overall range rather than only looking at your hand. While this is undoubtedly good advice, it leads to a widespread misconception about the nature of poker. So, at the end of this article, you may look at poker strategy in a new light. Fixed vs Dynamic Strategies Firstly, we need to understand the difference between fixed and dynamic strategies. A dynamic strategy adjusts to its opponent. Therefore, a dynamic strategy can change over time. Exploitative strategies are dynamic. A fixed strategy will not adjust to its opponent. It simply plays the same strategy no matter what. GTO is a fixed strategy, always playing its range the same way given the same spot. This distinction is important because it tells us about the nature of indifference, GTO, and exploitative poker. Mixing mistakes vs pure mistakes There are fundamentally two different kinds of mistakes in poker: Mixing mistake – Only loses EV if the opponent adjusts. Incorrect frequencies. Exploitable by an adaptive opponent. NOT punished by fixed strategies. Pure mistake – Lose EV even if the opponent doesn’t adjust. Taking an action that strictly loses EV against the opponent’s strategy. Loses even if the opponent doesn’t change their strategy. GTO strategies gain when your opponents make pure mistakes. However, GTO, a fixed strategy, does not adapt to gain from its opponent’s mixing/frequency errors. When a hand mixes between actions, e.g. raise or call, those actions should theoretically always have the same expected value (against the GTO strategy). This is the definition of indifference. Therefore, changing the frequency of mixed decisions shouldn’t effect your return – so long as your opponent’s strategy stays the same. The calling station experiment Two GTO bots play a HU match (no rake). Bot 1 – Always plays a precise fixed GTO strategy. Bot 2 – Also plays GTO, except they always CALL any hand that’s indifferent between calling and some other action. Which bot has the edge? Click here to see the answer The answer is neither! The calling station bot is calling indifferent, it’s not making any “pure mistakes”. Bot 1 is playing a fixed strategy, and will not adjust to exploit it. Bot 2 is exploitable to value-heavy strategies but doesn’t lose EV because Bot 1 never adjusts. That’s the nature of equilibrium. You can replace the calling station bot with one that always raises any hand that’s indifferent between raising and any other action. We can call this the maniac bot. Maniac Bot, who’s only ever making “mixing mistakes” and never makes pure mistakes, will not lose or gain anything against the GTO strategy. The same goes for Nit Bot – a bot that plays GTO but always folds any hand that’s indifferent between folding and some other action. Nit Bot won’t lose anything against the fixed GTO strategy either, as GTO won’t adapt to punish the nit. Polar toy game experiment Let’s

examine a clairvoyant toy game. Pot = $10 Stack = $10 Board = 33322 Hero has: 50% AA and 50% QQ Villain has 100% KK Hero shoves pot on the river Let’s start by solving this game to find the equilibrium strategy. Then we’ll adjust the strategies to see how much either player gains or loses. Hero should always bet the nuts, and bluff enough such that villain is indifferent between calling and folding. Since we lay 2:1 with a pot-sized bet, we should give villain 33.3% equity. If we bet all of our AA, and half of our QQ, we end up with a value:bluff ratio of ⅔ value and ⅓ bluff. Villain is indifferent facing this shove. If we were too value-heavy, they’d always fold. If we were too bluff-heavy, they’d always call. But they have precisely the right Pot Odds to call. Therefore, they should respond by calling according to the Minimum Defence Frequency. KK should call exactly half the time facing this pot-sized bet to avoid becoming exploitable to bluff-heavy or value-heavy strategies. This has the effect of making our bluffs indifferent between betting and checking. AA – Always shove QQ – Shove 50%, Check 50% Goal: Give villain 33% equity to make them indifferent between calling/folding KK – Call 50% Goal: Make hero’s bluffs indifferent between betting and checking. Expected value: Hero: $7.5 Villain: $2.5 (Hero checks back 25% of their range and always loses, so villain gains $2.5) Quiz 1 Let’s imagine hero ALWAYS uses the equilibrium strategy outlined above. What is the expected value in these scenarios: Villain always folds Villain always calls Quiz 2 Let’s imagine villain ALWAYS uses the equilibrium strategy outlined above. What is the expected value in these scenarios: Hero always bluffs (100% AA and QQ) Hero never bluffs (100% AA, 0% QQ) Take a moment to try and calculate the expected value for each scenario. Click here to see the answers The EV in all four scenarios doesn’t change! IP’s EV is $7.5, OOP’s EV is $2.5. Even though each player is exploitable and making huge mistakes, neither is adjusting to exploit the other because they are using fixed strategies. Does your range affect your strategy? This is a point that even many high-level players do not understand: How can this be? Well, it comes down to very fundamental logic. The expected value with any hand/action is a function of your opponent’s strategy. If their strategy doesn’t change, then you aren’t playing “range vs range”, you’re playing “your hand vs their strategy” in a vacuum. When someone says, “your range affects your optimal strategy”, there’s a hidden assumption. They’re saying that your range influences your opponent’s strategy, and if you change your range, they can change their strategy, which changes the EV of your hand in consequence. Realistically, you’re always trying to maximize your hand vs their strategy. The reason you consider your own range is because your perceived range impacts their strategy. If they perceive you as a nit, then they stop paying off your value bets. If they

perceive you as bluffy, then they call more. If they perceive your range as weak, then they can attack more aggressively. However, if their strategy is unchanging (fixed), your range has no impact on the optimal strategy of your hand. You can simply maximize your hand against their fixed strategy without regard for balance or their perception of your range. Let’s play a GTO bot We’re playing a HU match in the BB. The bot bets 33% on Q95r: The GTO strategy facing this bet looks like this: The bot is playing a fixed strategy. That means we could: Pure raise any hand that’s raised at any frequency Call any hand that’s called at any frequency Fold any hand that’s folded at any frequency These actions are indifferent, and the bot won’t adapt to exploit our mixing imbalances. This is because a fixed strategy like GTO doesn’t punish mixing mistakes, only pure mistakes. This toy game will make you angry Let’s take a look at a BTN vs BB SRP on this T666J: BTN bets 33% on the flop, overbets 175% on the turn, action on BB on the river. Here BB’s best strategy is to rangecheck, regardless of hand strength. Even the nuts should pure check. Here we see the expected value of various actions with Q6s (Quads). As you can see, checking is by far the highest EV action: This is because our range is weak enough that villain should put in a ton of money when checked to. So quads maximize value by rangechecking. What would happen if BB got to this river with ONLY quads, nothing else in range? How should quads play if villain (BTN) will continue to use the same fixed strategy? Should we start leading now that our range is so nutted? A. Should BB start betting? B. Should they mix bets and checks? C. Or should they continue to rangecheck? Click here to see the answer C. BB should continue to rangecheck! BTN is nodelocked to use the exact same fixed GTO strategy on the river. Since checking was optimal before, it’s optimal here, despite our range being comprised of the pure nuts. In other words, we can simply maximize each hand in a vacuum against their fixed strategy. Our own range has no impact on the best move because villain isn’t capable of adapting their strategy. What to take away The three most important takeaways: Understand the difference between mixing mistakes and pure mistakes Learn how each of these mistakes is punished Why it’s important to distinguish between fixed and dynamic strategies Mixed (indifferent) hands are only mixed to prevent your opponents from exploiting you. If your opponents are incapable, unable, or unwilling to adjust, then you shouldn’t be concerned with balancing mixed decisions. Instead, you should focus on maximally exploiting your opponent. It’s important to realize that exact frequencies are less important than overall strategies. So in the Q95r example, it doesn’t matter that J3s is mixing some percentage of folds/calls/raises, what actually matters (in terms of exploitability) is how hero constructs

their overall fold/call/raise ranges. Any mixed action is playable in a vacuum. Any low-frequency play can be justified in a vacuum. You could get 100% accuracy in the hand history Analyzer and still be highly exploitable due to mixing mistakes. Conversely, you could be playing many mixing mistakes and never be exploited by the fixed GTO solution. Instead of focusing on the minutiae of exact frequencies, take a step back and focus on the bigger picture. Look for thresholds. Use the Rangebuilder to practice constructing your entire range. Focus on thresholds, and try to answer questions like “what’s the weakest hand I bet for value?” or “What’s the strongest hand I fold against this bet size?”. Focus on indifference thresholds rather than indifferent actions! These questions sculpt your strategy and define the difference between pure mistakes and indifferent decisions. GTO Wizard the #1 App for Poker players Study any spot imaginable Practice by playing vs. GTO Analyze your hands with 1-click START CRUSHING NOW JOIN DISCORD Author Tombos21 Tom is a long time poker theory enthusiast, GTO Wizard coach and YouTuber, and author of the Daily Dose of GTO. Latest article Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first decade of my career. But after my first… Relationships and Poker In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve… Do Multiple Sizes Matter? Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results… The Science of Learning Applied to GTO Wizard The way we were taught to study in schools was flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN preflop raiser in a 100bb cash… When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody… Protect Equity and Prosper When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend… Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative poker thinking. When you’re value betting against… Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots When the BTN open-limps off a short stack, the postflop play against the BB should… I’d Rather Be Drawing Which is the better hand on a K♥8♦5♦ flop: K♠T♣ or 7♥6♥? OK, I’ll admit… The Curious Case of Open-Limping Buttons Before the advent of solvers, open-limping was considered the province of passive, gambley recreational players… Cleaning Out Sticky IP Callers A “sticky” player on your left, one who calls your preflop raises

too often and… Defending Against Tiny 3-Bets Tournament poker is about precision. Cash games, where stacks typically run into the hundreds of… Heads up! Exploiting SB’s Preflop Mistakes Heads up (HU) tournament play presents unique challenges to the average player. Many tournament players,… C-Betting As the OOP Preflop Raiser Position is an extremely valuable advantage in poker. Most players would describe the comfort zone… Overchoice: Making Sense of Multiple Sizings Solver solutions with multiple bet sizes often involve a lot of mixing between those sizes,… River Refinements: When Your Opponent Won’t Check-Raise One of the biggest strategic differences between playing in versus out of position involves betting… Turn Barreling in 3-Bet Pots There are two articles on the GTO Wizard blog that make good prerequisites to this… The Right Way To Think About Protection Suppose Paul the Protector is in a 200bb cash game and opens A♠A♣ in the… The Importance of Board Coverage The first public version of the GTO Wizard announced AI upgrade already has some useful… How To Adjust When Villain Has No Bluffs “They always have it!” is a common, semi-joking expression in poker to describe the tendency… Adjusting on Later Streets After Exploiting Flop The key to exploiting opponents profitably is knowing when to stop. I’m not referring to… C-Betting IP vs Passive Poker Players A preflop raiser enjoys a significant range advantage over a BB caller, enabling them to… C-Betting Against ICM Preflop Ranges You raise from early position (EP) in a multi-table tournament and the BB calls. Both… The Art of Bluff Catching Bluff catching—calling a bet with a modest hand which you expect to win only if… Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by IP On some flops, it is simply not possible for the preflop raiser to continuation bet… Is Limping Pimping? In a past Discord post, one of our members noted that an upside of implementing… Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by OOP A preflop raiser who continuation bets too often is always a potential target for exploitation,… Preflop Button Mastery in PKOs Playing from the Button presents many unique opportunities in any tournament format, especially in PKOs.… The Worst Turn Card Greetings from GTO land. In today’s article, we will use the Turn Reports feature to… Navigating Range Disadvantage as the 3-Bettor Picture this: We’re playing a NL500 6-max cash game, and we’ve won a few pots,… Mastering Three-Bet Pots In Position in MTTs Playing in position against a three-better is a lesson in playing to your advantages. As… Mastering Three-Bet Pots Out of Position in MTTs Three-bet pots are scary. Playing out of position is scary. Put them together, and you’ve… The Greatest Final Table in Triton History Today, we’ll examine one of the most epic final table battles I’ve ever witnessed! Our… Mastering Thin Value Bets in Checked-Down Pots Valuing your hand appropriately—determining whether it’s strong enough to value bet or so weak you… Maximizing Value on Monotone Flops Monotone flops tend to provoke great anxiety among poker players. It’s easy to imagine that… How to Defend Against Turn Donk Bets Responding effectively to

donk bets on the turn is tricky;, there’s no getting around that.… How and Why You Should Use Turn Donk Bets Donk betting–taking the betting lead away from the previous street’s aggressor–on the flop is rarely… How Stack Sizes Change Your Range In this series, we have looked at factors that can influence ranges in otherwise identical… How to Leverage GTO Wizard’s EV Comparison Tool With the advent of solvers, some troubling new turns of phrase have entered the poker… Should You Ever Cold Call a 3-Bet? When there’s been a raise and re-raise before the action is on you, you will… When ICM Breaks Down If you have read my previous GTO Wizard articles and my books, you’ll know I… When Is It Correct To Fold AA Preflop? One of the criticisms of ICM is that it is boring and robotic. In my… OOP C-betting vs Loose Cold-callers In a previous GTO Wizard article, I asserted that “Playing against an in-position cold-caller is… Short-Stacked Play in MTTs Playing a short stack well is an essential tournament skill. It is extremely rare to… When To Ladder in Tournaments In my last two articles, I wrote about the effect field size and payout structure… How Payout Structures Impact ICM Last time we discussed the ICM considerations in game selection, we looked at field size,… C-Betting IP in 3-Bet Pots When you three-bet before the flop and the original raiser calls from out of position,… C-Betting OOP in 3-Bet Pots Continuation betting from out of position can be a dicey proposition in single-raised pots. Cold… Dynamic Sizing: A GTO Breakthrough Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Dynamic Sizing Benchmarks Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Understanding The Impact Of Field Size On ICM In Poker When people talk about game selection in multi-table tournaments (MTTs), they invariably talk about the… Defending vs BB Check-Raise on Paired Flops This is a companion piece to Attacking Paired Flops from the BB; you will get… Mastering PKO Final Tables Final tables can be the most exciting and rewarding phase of a tournament, and being… Attacking Paired Flops From the BB Paired flops present unique challenges to both a preflop raiser and a BB caller. The… KK vs QQ vs JJ at WSOP Main Event With only fourteen players remaining in the 2023 WSOP Main Event and blinds of 400K/800K/800K,… Responding to BB Squeezes You open raise, someone calls, and the BB squeezes. How should you construct your strategy?… Crushing a Top HUNL Poker Bot In 2022, Philippe Beardsell and Marc-Antoine Provost, a team of Canadian programmers from Quebec, developed… GTO Wizard AI Explained We are excited to introduce GTO Wizard AI, formerly known as Ruse, the world’s best… GTO Wizard AI Benchmarks GTO Wizard has combined the power of artificial intelligence with traditional solving methods to bring… Table Management in PKOs Perhaps the most important strategic consideration in Progressive Knockout Tournaments (PKOs) is making sure you… Overcalling From the

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How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance for responding to limpers. This is because players are generally not incentivized to limp from any position save the SB, and even when they are, the ranges with which a solver would limp are quite different from those employed by recreational players and sometimes even professionals who didn’t study these spots. With the help of custom solutions , however, we can actually investigate how a solver would play after the flop against a limp-caller . And we can dispel some common misconceptions along the way. What Do Limp-Calling Ranges Look Like? More than most spots, limp-calling ranges depend heavily on the player . A player who limps and calls a raise is almost certainly playing suboptimally, so there is no correct or standard limp-calling range. With some knowledge of the player, you may be able to predict in what way their play will deviate from the optimum. Common types of limp-callers include: Extreme Loose-Passives These are recreational players who treat poker like blackjack . They aren’t thinking strategically about concepts like equity denial or SPR . They just want to see flops and try to make hands. They will limp all kinds of stuff, from offsuit broadway cards to pocket pairs to random suited hands. Even they usually have folding ranges, though, so the worst hands can still be discounted. You can raise most aggressively into these limpers . Speculators These players draw a sharp distinction between “raising hands” and “speculative hands.” They are more likely than the other types to raise their stronger hands, especially big pairs and offsuit broadway cards. When they limp and call, it is most often with small pairs or suited connectors looking for very specific flops. You can raise aggressively into these limpers , as they rarely have strong hands, but after the flop, you must proceed with caution on the boards most likely to improve them. Extreme Nits Nits are tight-passive rather than loose-passive and are usually extremely risk-averse. They may limp-call hands as strong as AKo on the theory that it’s a “drawing hand” or with KK or QQ waiting to see whether there’s an Ace on the flop before committing more chips. Raising these players is less appealing , especially as they are more likely than the other types to limp-reraise (because their limping range contains more hands that look attractive to reraise). For our examples here, we will assign the limp-caller a range based on empirical data . Though it includes many types of hands, it is nevertheless weighted toward suited hands, broadway cards, and Ace-x holdings , consistent with several of the player types discussed above. LJ limp-calling range vs BTN raise To Raise, or Not To Raise When one or more players limp in front of you, a good rule of thumb is to play a strictly raise-or-fold strategy unless you have the Button (or are in one of the Blinds). Without the guarantee of position after the flop, you

can’t get too out-of-line anyway, so you should mostly be contesting the pot with strong hands that want to grow the pot immediately, and you will benefit from denying equity (or at least charging a higher price) to the players behind you. In fact, one of the biggest risks of overlimping when you do not have the BTN is that a player with position on you will raise and punish you along with the rest of the limpers. With limpers in front of you, play a strictly raise-or-fold strategy unless you have the BTN or are in one of the Blinds. Not To Raise (To Call) When you do have the BTN , overlimping is worth considering. Risking just a single big blind, you do not need to be an equity favorite to enter the pot. You need only realize your share of equity, which should be easy to do in position if you choose the right kind of hands to limp behind. The best candidates are hands that are not strong enough to raise but will perform well in a high-SPR multiway pot . This includes small pairs, smaller suited and connected cards, and possibly even some of the better disconnected suited hands like Q6 s and offsuit connected cards like 98 o. The weaker your competition, the more you can get away with. To Raise We will not consider limped pots further here because they do not lend themselves well to solver analysis, but it’s worth noting that the BTN raising range used in the following scenarios assumes you would also have an overlimp range. If you were to play a strictly raise-or-fold scenario, a few additional hands (such as T8 s, 87 s, and 55 ) could be considered for inclusion in the raising range. BTN raising range vs LJ limp This range is designed to play well with a lower SPR , to have good equity against wide limp-calling ranges , and in particular to dominate those ranges. You may be accustomed to thinking of A9 as an easily dominated hand, but against an opponent playing any Ace and many worse 9-x, you will more often dominate them. Additionally, position will be a useful tool for bluffing, squeezing out thin value, exercising pot control, and even getting away from some second-best hands. Lower your threshold for what counts as a value hand. Aggression actually exploits loose-passive opponents in two ways: Their willingness to call with weak hands makes betting and raising low-equity hands less profitable. However, it increases the value of betting and raising with high-equity hands . And because wider calling ranges are weaker calling ranges, more hands will have good equity against them. This means you can lower your threshold for what counts as a “value hand,” especially when in position. Aggression also exploits passivity. You can bet and raise for thin value without worrying about bluff raises that could push you off the winning hand. Passive opponents may not even raise their strong hands, giving you more opportunities to realize equity and the value of

your position on future streets. In fact, when you raise from the CO or BTN against limpers, you profit not only from the weak ranges of the limpers themselves but also from the passivity of the players who have not yet acted, who could exploit you by 3-betting aggressively but are unlikely to do so. You benefit much more from your opponents’ looseness when you are in position. I have emphasized position several times because you benefit much more from your opponents’ looseness when you are in position. For one thing, calling with weak hands is more often correct when in position. At the very least, your opponents’ loose calls will be less costly mistakes if they will play in position against you on future streets. Before the flop, or in multiway spots postflop, you are not necessarily the beneficiary of your opponents’ loose mistakes when your position is poor. When you raise from early position, and an opponent makes a bad call in middle position, they are often transferring EV from themselves and from you to the players who have not yet acted —whose strong hands will benefit from the weak money in the pot. The best way for them to profit from this scenario is by squeezing aggressively, so again, you may benefit from their excessive passivity. Worst Nightmare Flop Medium connected boards are the ones most likely to improve the many speculative hands in a typical limp-calling range. For a worst-case scenario, 764 tt is really not that bad. And yes, it is a worst-case scenario. On the more connected 876 tt, BTN also flops some straights and more sets. And on more connected low card boards, the limper has more whiffs. Medium connected boards are most likely to improve a limp-calling range. Even on this nightmare flop, the limper does not overcome BTN’s significant preflop equity advantage ; they merely catch up. At the high end, they have the nuts advantage thanks to 85 s, 53 s, and 44 . But they also have more very weak hands , which raises an important point: a player who plays many weak hands preflop will flop many weak hands, even on their best flops. For every 85 s, there’s a K2 s and several combinations of QT o. Very loose players occasionally get lucky and flop miraculous straights and two pairs with hands you wouldn’t expect to see, but far more often, they whiff the flop entirely or connect only weakly with hands like bottom pair and gutshot draws. Equity distributions on 764 tt (left = LJ limp-caller, right = BTN raiser) It’s also important to recognize that, despite the speculator’s preference for suited hands, they flop a flush draw barely 8% of the time. Most hands aren’t suited, and even suited hands match the suit on the flop less than 25% of the time. Open-ended straight draws are slightly more common, roughly 12% of their range. These risks are real, and they provide some incentive to bet the flop, but charging draws is not the all-consuming strategic necessity it

is sometimes made out to be. Charging draws is not an all-consuming strategic necessity. Indeed, BTN checks more than half their range, including some overpairs: BTN flop strategy on 764 tt vs LJ check The pure checks are all unpaired overcards , especially those without backdoor draws. These are great examples of hands that want to preserve equity by not opening themselves up to a check-raise and by keeping the pot small. With a hand like K ♦ Q ♦ , BTN can feel a lot better on a Q ♥ turn after checking the flop than after betting it. BTN also prefers a smaller bet size here because their advantage is at the low end rather than the high end of the equity distribution. The small bet denies equity to the limper’s many weak hands without risking too large a pot against the top of their range. That said, it really is the risk of a check-raise more so than the risk of running into strong hands that motivates BTN’s checks . With position and 50% of the equity, putting more money into the pot with their entire range is not a problem as long as they get to realize that equity. Against more passive opponents who will not check-raise for thin value nor with weak draws, betting a wider range is more appealing. Dynamic Flop Changing a single card on the flop to eliminate the straight possibility (and some of the draws) and introduce more pairs into BTN’s range dramatically changes the dynamics. On J ♠ 7 ♥ 6 ♥ , BTN has 56% of the equity and a stronger range throughout. This facilitates a much higher continuation betting frequency and some bigger bets . Equity distribution graph on J76 tt BTN flop strategy on J76 tt vs LJ check Every hand in BTN’s range is vulnerable to draws and/or overcards. Even if a bad turn card does not cost them the pot, it may cost them action from hands that would have paid off a flop bet. Thus, there is very little slowplaying , with most of the checks coming from hands like medium pairs which gain the least from folds , are most vulnerable to check-raises , and do not want to play a particularly large pot anyway. Against opponents who will not check-raise aggressively enough, this strategy can simplify to a range-bet, with more incentive to bet bigger with stronger hands as well. Ace-High Flop Despite having an even bigger range advantage, with nearly 60% of the equity, BTN c-bets less often on A ♠ 7 ♥ 6 ♥ than on J♠ 7 ♥ 6 ♥ . BTN flop strategy on A76 tt vs LJ check This is because they have more hands with modest, relatively static equity , most notably pocket Kings & Queens, and weak Ace-x. These hands gain little from fold equity and do not want to play a big pot against the top of the limper’s range. Charging draws is nice, but the risk of putting in chips from way behind is substantial.

When BTN does not hold an Ace, the limper has top pair or better about 22% of the time. If the limper continues checking later streets, the weak Ace-x will be strong enough to bet for value on many turns and rivers, whereas the pocket pairs will mostly check it down. With so much Ace-x in the limper’s range, blocking it does a lot to increase a hand’s value! Conclusion Much like when they are heads up against a BB caller, an IP raiser starts with a significant range advantage over a loose limp-caller . Against your average limper, this is true even if they raise a relatively wide range themselves (provided that range is built around strong hands that perform well at a lower SPR). There are no flops that “smack” a loose limp-caller’s range. There are no flops that “smack” a loose limp-caller’s range. The best flops get them up to about even, compelling the raiser to develop a checking range, mostly when raises are a legitimate threat. On all but the most coordinated flops, the raiser can c-bet aggressively for value and equity denial . More static flops also incentivize a checking range not because of any equity disadvantage but simply because some hands will not gain enough from betting to compensate for the risks. This is especially true on Ace-high flops, as both players’ ranges are heavy on Ace-x . Wizards, you don’t want to miss out on ‘Daily Dose of GTO,’ it’s the most valuable freeroll of the year! We Are Hiring We are looking for remarkable individuals to join us in our quest to build the next-generation poker training ecosystem. If you are passionate, dedicated, and driven to excel, we want to hear from you. Join us in redefining how poker is being studied. Check out the available positions here . GTO Wizard the #1 App for Poker players Study any spot imaginable Practice by playing vs. GTO Analyze your hands with 1-click START CRUSHING NOW JOIN DISCORD Author Andrew Brokos Andrew Brokos has been a professional poker player, coach, and author for over 15 years. He co-hosts the Thinking Poker Podcast and is the author of the Play Optimal Poker books, among others. Latest article Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first decade of my career. But after my first… Relationships and Poker In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve… Do Multiple Sizes Matter? Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results… The Science of Learning Applied to GTO Wizard The way we were taught to study in schools was

flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN preflop raiser in a 100bb cash… When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody… Protect Equity and Prosper When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend… Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative poker thinking. When you’re value betting against… Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots When the BTN open-limps off a short stack, the postflop play against the BB should… I’d Rather Be Drawing Which is the better hand on a K♥8♦5♦ flop: K♠T♣ or 7♥6♥? OK, I’ll admit… The Curious Case of Open-Limping Buttons Before the advent of solvers, open-limping was considered the province of passive, gambley recreational players… Cleaning Out Sticky IP Callers A “sticky” player on your left, one who calls your preflop raises too often and… Defending Against Tiny 3-Bets Tournament poker is about precision. Cash games, where stacks typically run into the hundreds of… Heads up! Exploiting SB’s Preflop Mistakes Heads up (HU) tournament play presents unique challenges to the average player. Many tournament players,… C-Betting As the OOP Preflop Raiser Position is an extremely valuable advantage in poker. Most players would describe the comfort zone… Overchoice: Making Sense of Multiple Sizings Solver solutions with multiple bet sizes often involve a lot of mixing between those sizes,… River Refinements: When Your Opponent Won’t Check-Raise One of the biggest strategic differences between playing in versus out of position involves betting… Turn Barreling in 3-Bet Pots There are two articles on the GTO Wizard blog that make good prerequisites to this… The Right Way To Think About Protection Suppose Paul the Protector is in a 200bb cash game and opens A♠A♣ in the… The Importance of Board Coverage The first public version of the GTO Wizard announced AI upgrade already has some useful… How To Adjust When Villain Has No Bluffs “They always have it!” is a common, semi-joking expression in poker to describe the tendency… Adjusting on Later Streets After Exploiting Flop The key to exploiting opponents profitably is knowing when to stop. I’m not referring to… C-Betting IP vs Passive Poker Players A preflop raiser enjoys a significant range advantage over a BB caller, enabling them to… C-Betting Against ICM Preflop Ranges You raise from early position (EP) in a multi-table tournament and the BB calls. Both… The Art of Bluff Catching Bluff catching—calling a bet with a modest hand which you expect to win only if… Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by IP On some flops, it is simply not possible for the preflop raiser to continuation bet… Is Limping Pimping? In a past Discord post, one of our members noted that an upside of implementing… Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by OOP A preflop raiser who continuation bets too often is always a potential target

for exploitation,… Preflop Button Mastery in PKOs Playing from the Button presents many unique opportunities in any tournament format, especially in PKOs.… The Worst Turn Card Greetings from GTO land. In today’s article, we will use the Turn Reports feature to… Navigating Range Disadvantage as the 3-Bettor Picture this: We’re playing a NL500 6-max cash game, and we’ve won a few pots,… Mastering Three-Bet Pots In Position in MTTs Playing in position against a three-better is a lesson in playing to your advantages. As… Mastering Three-Bet Pots Out of Position in MTTs Three-bet pots are scary. Playing out of position is scary. Put them together, and you’ve… The Greatest Final Table in Triton History Today, we’ll examine one of the most epic final table battles I’ve ever witnessed! Our… Mastering Thin Value Bets in Checked-Down Pots Valuing your hand appropriately—determining whether it’s strong enough to value bet or so weak you… Maximizing Value on Monotone Flops Monotone flops tend to provoke great anxiety among poker players. It’s easy to imagine that… How to Defend Against Turn Donk Bets Responding effectively to donk bets on the turn is tricky;, there’s no getting around that.… How and Why You Should Use Turn Donk Bets Donk betting–taking the betting lead away from the previous street’s aggressor–on the flop is rarely… How Stack Sizes Change Your Range In this series, we have looked at factors that can influence ranges in otherwise identical… How to Leverage GTO Wizard’s EV Comparison Tool With the advent of solvers, some troubling new turns of phrase have entered the poker… Should You Ever Cold Call a 3-Bet? When there’s been a raise and re-raise before the action is on you, you will… When ICM Breaks Down If you have read my previous GTO Wizard articles and my books, you’ll know I… When Is It Correct To Fold AA Preflop? One of the criticisms of ICM is that it is boring and robotic. In my… OOP C-betting vs Loose Cold-callers In a previous GTO Wizard article, I asserted that “Playing against an in-position cold-caller is… Short-Stacked Play in MTTs Playing a short stack well is an essential tournament skill. It is extremely rare to… When To Ladder in Tournaments In my last two articles, I wrote about the effect field size and payout structure… How Payout Structures Impact ICM Last time we discussed the ICM considerations in game selection, we looked at field size,… C-Betting IP in 3-Bet Pots When you three-bet before the flop and the original raiser calls from out of position,… C-Betting OOP in 3-Bet Pots Continuation betting from out of position can be a dicey proposition in single-raised pots. Cold… Dynamic Sizing: A GTO Breakthrough Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Dynamic Sizing Benchmarks Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Understanding The Impact Of Field Size On ICM In Poker When people talk about game selection in multi-table tournaments (MTTs), they invariably talk about the… Defending vs BB Check-Raise on

Paired Flops This is a companion piece to Attacking Paired Flops from the BB; you will get… Mastering PKO Final Tables Final tables can be the most exciting and rewarding phase of a tournament, and being… Attacking Paired Flops From the BB Paired flops present unique challenges to both a preflop raiser and a BB caller. The… KK vs QQ vs JJ at WSOP Main Event With only fourteen players remaining in the 2023 WSOP Main Event and blinds of 400K/800K/800K,… Responding to BB Squeezes You open raise, someone calls, and the BB squeezes. How should you construct your strategy?… Crushing a Top HUNL Poker Bot In 2022, Philippe Beardsell and Marc-Antoine Provost, a team of Canadian programmers from Quebec, developed… GTO Wizard AI Explained We are excited to introduce GTO Wizard AI, formerly known as Ruse, the world’s best… GTO Wizard AI Benchmarks GTO Wizard has combined the power of artificial intelligence with traditional solving methods to bring… Table Management in PKOs Perhaps the most important strategic consideration in Progressive Knockout Tournaments (PKOs) is making sure you… Overcalling From the BB In poker, overcalling refers to calling a bet or raise after another player has also… Understanding Which Mistakes Cost You the Most Money I am fortunate enough to have worked for many years with the mental game coach… Overbetting The Flop in Cash Games Although most commonly analyzed on turns and rivers, flop overbetting can be a devastating weapon… Using New Skills at the Poker Table How many times has it happened to you that you make a mistake only to… Flatting Ace-X Hands Shortstacked Playing out of position is tricky, but it’s an essential part of tournament play. With… Playing Limped Pots as the BB in MTTs Success as the BB in limped pots begins before the flop. The BB’s equilibrium strategy… The Absurd Game Theory of Chopped Boards A “chopped board” in poker is one where the community cards make up the best… Playing Limped Pots as the SB in MTTs MTT confrontations between the small blind and big blind force no-limit players into uncomfortable situations,… The Art of Learning Poker In his book The Art of Learning, chess and Push Hands champion Josh Waitzkin describes… Is Donk Betting for Donkeys? “Donk betting”, or betting from out of position into the player who was the aggressor… Delayed C-Betting This is a companion piece to Probe Betting. It stands on its own, but understanding… Probe Betting As far as rules of thumb go in poker, “check to the raiser” is a… ICM and Blind Battles: The Big Blind This is a companion piece to this article on the SB’s strategy for blind vs… ICM and Blind Battles: The Small Blind ICM incentivizes more conservative play, which means that at stages of the tournament where risk… The Initial Bettor’s Advantage The mathematics of poker holds a little-known secret: the first bettor enjoys better bluffing odds… Mastering the Chiplead: The Scalpel and the Sledgehammer When you have a lot of chips at a final table or in another situation… Flop Heuristics:

IP C-Betting in Cash Games Our never-ending quest for money and fame leads us to the flop. We open the… How ICM Impacts Restealing From The Blinds When I first started working with preflop solves, one of the features I found most… The ICM Benefits of Late Registration in Poker Tournaments Why do so many professional poker players register late for tournaments when they clearly would… Flop Heuristics: OOP C-Betting in MTTs Playing against an in-position cold-caller is dramatically different–and dramatically more difficult–than playing against a caller… Counterintuitive Calls Solver outputs such as those provided by GTO Wizard are models of no-limit hold ‘em,… How To Negotiate Final Table Deals Most people’s first introduction to the Independent Chip Model (ICM) is not from studying bubble… How does ICM impact PKO strategy? If you have read The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments you already know why we… Understanding Blockers in Poker Often when looking through a solver’s meticulously crafted grid of deception, one of the following… Flop Heuristics: IP Cold-Caller in MTTs A Cold-call refers to the act of calling a preflop raise when you don’t close… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in MTTs In the world of poker, the flop is a crucial stage of the game that… Flop Heuristics for Defending the Blinds in MTTs The field of Game Theoretically Optimal poker is extensive, and thus, to simplify our strategy,… Multiway strategy in Progressive Knockout Tournaments Progressive Knockout (PKO) tournaments are much more complex than traditional MTTs. The fact that players… How To Calculate Raises In Poker One of the most frequently asked questions in poker is how to calculate the size… Principles of River Play The river offers the least complicated strategy of any betting street. With no further cards… Exploitative Dynamics GTO solutions are designed to be unexploitable, performing reasonably well no matter how your opponents… How ICM Impacts Postflop Strategy Most players understand how the Independent Chip Model (ICM) in poker impacts their strategy preflop,… 10 Tips for Multiway Pots in Poker While lots of work has been placed into research and explanation of heads-up pot strategy,… What is the Bubble Factor in poker tournaments? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) shows us the real money implications of tournament chip decisions.… The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments In poker, a PKO (Progressive Knockout) tournament is a type of tournament where a portion… How To Analyze Turn Textures In Poker Master the art of turn analysis in poker. Understand how the turn card changes the… Principles of Turn Strategy Learn the principles of turn strategy in poker and discover what makes the turn unique.… Poker Strategies: Tournaments vs. Cash Games Tournament poker is not as different from cash game poker as people sometimes assume. Most… How Solvers Work A Game Theory Optimal solver is an algorithm that calculates the best possible poker strategy.… The Most Powerful Play in Poker The central strategic implication of stack depth is the question of how much equity a… When does ICM become significant in MTTs? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) was invented in 1987 by

M. Malmuth and is one… How to Study GTO Solutions Tools like GTO Wizard and other solvers should not be used to memorize specific strategies.… Principles of GTO Game theory, or GTO (for Game Theoretically Optimal), is best understood not as a rigid… Interpreting Equity Distributions GTO Wizard’s range vs range equity distribution graphs are an excellent tool for visualizing which… What is Leverage in poker? Leverage refers to the risk of future betting. When you call a bet on the… Reasons for value betting in poker You’re probably accustomed to thinking of bets as either value or bluff. In this taxonomy,… The Science of Poker Performance Poker is a game of small edges and big swings. Every hand is an investment… What is Valor in poker? Can a poker hand be courageous? How does your ability to value bet future streets… Pot Geometry “Pot Geometry” refers to betting an equal fraction of the pot on each street, such… A Beginner’s Guide to Poker Combinatorics Combinatorics is a fancy term for evaluating the number of possible “combinations” (combos) of any… Stack-to-pot ratio Stack-to-pot ratio, or SPR, is a way of measuring how deep the effective stack is… Equity Realization In poker jargon, equity expresses how much of the pot a hand will win, on… Variance and Bankroll Management Variance and Bankroll Management. Vital Soft Skills for Every Poker Player. How to Become a GTO Wizard Welcome to the wonderful world of game theory optimal poker! This article will serve as… The Three Laws of Indifference Indifference in poker is one of the most misunderstood concepts. The word “indifference” means that… Poker subsets and abstractions An “abstraction” is a way to simplify the game of poker. This game is so… Mathematical Misconceptions in Poker Pot Odds and MDF are foundational mathematical formulas in poker. How to solve toy games Poker is a complicated game. It’s impossible to calculate GTO strategies on the fly. By… The Value of Fold Equity – Experiment The term “fold equity” is ambiguous in the poker community. Firstly, it’s an EV equation,… MDF & Alpha MDF & Alpha. Minimum Defence Frequency and Alpha are metrics on poker that determine how… What are Pot Odds in poker? Pot odds are a fundamental calculation in poker. In the simplest terms, pot odds tell… Does your range affect your strategy? Advanced players will often tell you that your range affects your strategy. Visualizing implied odds Implied odds are the value you expect to gain over and above your raw equity.… ICM Basics As a tournament player, you may have heard about the concept of “ICM”, but what… What is Equity in Poker? The term “Equity” is ubiquitous throughout poker theory. Equity refers to your chances of winning… Range Morphology “Morphology” is the study of form or structure. You’ve probably heard terms thrown around such… What is Expected Value in Poker? Expected value (EV) is the most fundamental metric in poker. Every decision you make is… Why doesn’t my solution match GTO Wizard? So, you’ve got your own solutions to some spot, compared

it to GTO Wizard, and… Understanding Nash Distance Understanding Nash Distance. One of the most common questions when studying with solvers is “Why… Combinatorics Poker Puzzle Today we have a special puzzle for you that will test your intuition as a… The 10 Most Important Concepts for New Poker Players The 10 Most Important Concepts for New Poker Players. Fundamentals are one of the most… What is GTO in Poker? The meaning of GTO in poker is Game Theory Optimal. Game theory is a study… What does GTO aim to achieve? So what exactly is a GTO strategy? What makes it “unexploitable”? What does it try…

Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative Exploitative Strategy A strategy designed around exploiting the mistakes of your opponents. Often used in contrast to GTO, which is designed to decrease the exploitability of your own strategy. See: MES/Nemesis. poker thinking. When you’re value betting against a predictable opponent, it pays to think about what the likely second-best hands are that could pay you off and how much they’re likely willing to call with those hands. Likewise, when bluffing that same predictable opponent, it pays to think explicitly about what better hands they might fold and what the smallest amount you could risk is to get those folds. This is not exactly how Game Theory Optimal Game Theory Optimal (GTO) The least exploitable fixed strategy, resulting in the highest possible expected value against an opponent that can perfectly exploit you. A strategy is considered to be GTO if it conforms to the principles of Nash Equilibrium; a state where no player can unilaterally change their strategy to increase their expected value. GTO is more loosely used to describe optimal play, although the term is often used in contrast with exploitative strategies. strategies work, but it isn’t as far off as it may seem. Solvers do not make predictions about what opponents will do. Indeed, the entire point of GTO strategies is to perform reasonably well regardless of what your opponent does . The way they do this is by putting opponents in situations where they have no good options . A river bet with the right mix of value bets and bluffs makes your opponent indifferent to calling with their bluff catchers. In other words, it creates a situation where neither calling nor folding is a particularly good option. If they fold, they forfeit the entire pot to your bluffs. If they call, they lose even more money to the many strong hands in your betting range. This strategy shows a profit whether your opponent always calls, always folds, flips a coin, or plays any other mixed strategy. GTO strategies do not target hands for calls or folds; they target them for indifference. Here’s where the targeting comes in: not every hand in your opponent’s range will be indifferent when faced with this bet. Some will be so strong they will happily call. Others will be so weak they would have folded to an even smaller bet. The hands that are indifferent are the targets of the bet, the ones that have a tough decision only because you bet exactly this amount with exactly this range . GTO strategies do not target hands for calls or folds like exploitative strategies. They target for indifference. Let’s walk through some examples—one for each postflop street—to see if theory shows up in practice. Flop Example We can see these principles in action in a simple, custom solution for a common 100bb BTN vs BB single-raised pot (SRP) cash game scenario . For the sake of simplicity, I limited BTN to one flop bet size and two on the turn and river.

The same principles apply to more complex solutions. When the solver mixes across four different continuation bet sizes, each of those bets has slightly different targets. But the principles are easier to see when we restrict ourselves to just a few options. In this scenario, BTN bets 67% pot with roughly half their range. BB’s response to this bet is shown in the image below. BB response vs BTN c-betting 67% pot on A ♠ T ♥ 8 ♦ BB’s worst second and third pair hands are the primary hand classes to face tough decisions. This includes hands like T9 and K8 without a backdoor flush draw. All of BB’s third pair appear to have mixed strategies from the chart, but in fact, they mostly play pure strategies based on whether they have a backdoor flush draw: Hand matrix revealing the influence of suits on strategies You can see from BB’s Manhattan graph where the weaker and stronger hands are that always or never fold and roughly which part of BB’s range has tough decisions: The correspondence is not perfect because equity is not the only determinant of whether a hand folds; how it will play on later streets is also a consideration. This bet accomplishes many other things besides giving these hands tough decisions . Most of the betting range benefits to some degree from causing even the weakest hands to fold. The strong hands in the betting range benefit from getting called by all the never-folds. But those are not the targets of the bet. They are not the purposes for which the bet size and range are optimized . Many of these folds could be bought at a cheaper price. The stronger hands would have called larger bets. The distinctive thing about this exact bet size, with this exact range, is that it accomplishes those other purposes reasonably well while making hands like K8s and T9o indifferent. This bet also gives BTN the tools to challenge BB with more tough decisions on future streets , which is what we will investigate now. Turn Example After betting 67% pot on the flop and getting the 2 ♣ on the turn, the solver either checks or bets the size that accommodates geometric growth of the pot . It has the option to choose a second bet size, but doesn’t really use it. The geometric growth of the pot, in this case, is 147% pot. Faced with this bet, BB has a new set of tough decisions. It’s a different bet compared to the flop bet, with a different target. Here is BB’s response: BB response vs BTN c-betting 147% pot on the turn A ♠ T ♥ 8 ♦ 2 ♣ Now, stronger hands have a tough decision . That includes BB’s best second pair and even some top pair. This is partly because the turn bet is larger than the flop bet but mostly because BB’s range is stronger after having already called the flop bet. Hands that were toward the middle of their range for seeing the flop and

faced with tough decisions are now toward the bottom of their range for seeing the turn, and so trivial folds. Hands that were strong enough to never-fold flop get into trouble when facing another bet. Stronger hands have tough decisions on the turn because BB’s entire range is stronger after having called the flop bet. As before, this bet accomplishes other purposes as well. It gets folds from hands that would have folded to smaller bets, it continues to grow the pot for BTN’s strongest hands, and it sets up yet more tough decisions on the river… River Example After barreling the turn and getting called, we finally see an example of BTN making substantial use of two different bet sizes on the 5 ♣ river. Each of these bets has different targets and works better for some hands than for others. BTN’s river strategy after having bet flop and turn A ♠ T ♥ 8 ♦ 2 ♣ 5 ♣ This time, we will look at BTN’s Manhattan graph and use that to extrapolate the targets of each bet: The pattern is straightforward: stronger hands, including the better two pair and almost all sets, prefer the larger bet size . Weaker two pairs, specifically T8 , prefer the smaller size . This suggests that top pair calls the smaller bet more consistently, while the larger bet maximizes value against BB’s two pairs. Sure enough, facing the 67% pot bet, top pairs as strong as AJ have a tough decision: BB response vs BTN c-betting 67% pot on the river A ♠ T ♥ 8 ♦ 2 ♣ 5 ♣ Facing the all-in (147% pot) bet, top pair almost exclusively folds, which would make it a waste of betting two pair T8 so large: BB response vs BTN c-betting 147% pot (all-in) on the river A ♠ T ♥ 8 ♦ 2 ♣ 5 ♣ Conclusion All bets have targets, even in GTO strategies. Understanding which part of an opponent’s range will have tough decisions when faced with a bet of a certain size can help you determine whether and how much to bet with various hands. This concept is also useful retroactively, to help you make sense of solver solutions . When a solver strategy employs multiple bet sizes, looking at the GTO response to each bet to see which hands have tough decisions can help you understand why each bet is worth making. However, solver strategies are complex, and giving tough decisions to the target hands is rarely the sole purpose of a bet. Especially on early streets, solver strategies are negotiating the incentives of many different hand classes that take the same action. A small flop bet, for example, will immediately present some hands with tough decisions. But it will also deny equity to other hands, set up future value bets and bluffs, induce some check-raises, and discourage others. Identifying the target does not give you the full story, but it’s a useful starting point . But it will also: Deny equity and extract value from different parts of

a range Set up future value bets and bluffs (that will, once again, give rise to tough decisions) Induce some check-raises, and discourage others Identifying the target does not give you the full story, but it’s a useful starting point. GTO Wizard the #1 App for Poker players Study any spot imaginable Practice by playing vs. GTO Analyze your hands with 1-click START CRUSHING NOW JOIN DISCORD Author Andrew Brokos Andrew Brokos has been a professional poker player, coach, and author for over 15 years. He co-hosts the Thinking Poker Podcast and is the author of the Play Optimal Poker books, among others. Latest article Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first decade of my career. But after my first… Relationships and Poker In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve… Do Multiple Sizes Matter? Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results… The Science of Learning Applied to GTO Wizard The way we were taught to study in schools was flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN preflop raiser in a 100bb cash… When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody… Protect Equity and Prosper When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend… Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative poker thinking. When you’re value betting against… Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots When the BTN open-limps off a short stack, the postflop play against the BB should… I’d Rather Be Drawing Which is the better hand on a K♥8♦5♦ flop: K♠T♣ or 7♥6♥? OK, I’ll admit… The Curious Case of Open-Limping Buttons Before the advent of solvers, open-limping was considered the province of passive, gambley recreational players… Cleaning Out Sticky IP Callers A “sticky” player on your left, one who calls your preflop raises too often and… Defending Against Tiny 3-Bets Tournament poker is about precision. Cash games, where stacks typically run into the hundreds of… Heads up! Exploiting SB’s Preflop Mistakes Heads up (HU) tournament play presents unique challenges to the average player. Many tournament players,… C-Betting As the OOP Preflop Raiser Position is an extremely valuable advantage in poker. Most players would describe the comfort zone… Overchoice: Making Sense of Multiple Sizings Solver solutions with multiple bet sizes often involve a lot of mixing between those sizes,… River

Refinements: When Your Opponent Won’t Check-Raise One of the biggest strategic differences between playing in versus out of position involves betting… Turn Barreling in 3-Bet Pots There are two articles on the GTO Wizard blog that make good prerequisites to this… The Right Way To Think About Protection Suppose Paul the Protector is in a 200bb cash game and opens A♠A♣ in the… The Importance of Board Coverage The first public version of the GTO Wizard announced AI upgrade already has some useful… How To Adjust When Villain Has No Bluffs “They always have it!” is a common, semi-joking expression in poker to describe the tendency… Adjusting on Later Streets After Exploiting Flop The key to exploiting opponents profitably is knowing when to stop. I’m not referring to… C-Betting IP vs Passive Poker Players A preflop raiser enjoys a significant range advantage over a BB caller, enabling them to… C-Betting Against ICM Preflop Ranges You raise from early position (EP) in a multi-table tournament and the BB calls. Both… The Art of Bluff Catching Bluff catching—calling a bet with a modest hand which you expect to win only if… Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by IP On some flops, it is simply not possible for the preflop raiser to continuation bet… Is Limping Pimping? In a past Discord post, one of our members noted that an upside of implementing… Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by OOP A preflop raiser who continuation bets too often is always a potential target for exploitation,… Preflop Button Mastery in PKOs Playing from the Button presents many unique opportunities in any tournament format, especially in PKOs.… The Worst Turn Card Greetings from GTO land. In today’s article, we will use the Turn Reports feature to… Navigating Range Disadvantage as the 3-Bettor Picture this: We’re playing a NL500 6-max cash game, and we’ve won a few pots,… Mastering Three-Bet Pots In Position in MTTs Playing in position against a three-better is a lesson in playing to your advantages. As… Mastering Three-Bet Pots Out of Position in MTTs Three-bet pots are scary. Playing out of position is scary. Put them together, and you’ve… The Greatest Final Table in Triton History Today, we’ll examine one of the most epic final table battles I’ve ever witnessed! Our… Mastering Thin Value Bets in Checked-Down Pots Valuing your hand appropriately—determining whether it’s strong enough to value bet or so weak you… Maximizing Value on Monotone Flops Monotone flops tend to provoke great anxiety among poker players. It’s easy to imagine that… How to Defend Against Turn Donk Bets Responding effectively to donk bets on the turn is tricky;, there’s no getting around that.… How and Why You Should Use Turn Donk Bets Donk betting–taking the betting lead away from the previous street’s aggressor–on the flop is rarely… How Stack Sizes Change Your Range In this series, we have looked at factors that can influence ranges in otherwise identical… How to Leverage GTO Wizard’s EV Comparison Tool With the advent of solvers, some troubling new turns of phrase have entered the poker… Should You Ever Cold Call a

3-Bet? When there’s been a raise and re-raise before the action is on you, you will… When ICM Breaks Down If you have read my previous GTO Wizard articles and my books, you’ll know I… When Is It Correct To Fold AA Preflop? One of the criticisms of ICM is that it is boring and robotic. In my… OOP C-betting vs Loose Cold-callers In a previous GTO Wizard article, I asserted that “Playing against an in-position cold-caller is… Short-Stacked Play in MTTs Playing a short stack well is an essential tournament skill. It is extremely rare to… When To Ladder in Tournaments In my last two articles, I wrote about the effect field size and payout structure… How Payout Structures Impact ICM Last time we discussed the ICM considerations in game selection, we looked at field size,… C-Betting IP in 3-Bet Pots When you three-bet before the flop and the original raiser calls from out of position,… C-Betting OOP in 3-Bet Pots Continuation betting from out of position can be a dicey proposition in single-raised pots. Cold… Dynamic Sizing: A GTO Breakthrough Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Dynamic Sizing Benchmarks Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Understanding The Impact Of Field Size On ICM In Poker When people talk about game selection in multi-table tournaments (MTTs), they invariably talk about the… Defending vs BB Check-Raise on Paired Flops This is a companion piece to Attacking Paired Flops from the BB; you will get… Mastering PKO Final Tables Final tables can be the most exciting and rewarding phase of a tournament, and being… Attacking Paired Flops From the BB Paired flops present unique challenges to both a preflop raiser and a BB caller. The… KK vs QQ vs JJ at WSOP Main Event With only fourteen players remaining in the 2023 WSOP Main Event and blinds of 400K/800K/800K,… Responding to BB Squeezes You open raise, someone calls, and the BB squeezes. How should you construct your strategy?… Crushing a Top HUNL Poker Bot In 2022, Philippe Beardsell and Marc-Antoine Provost, a team of Canadian programmers from Quebec, developed… GTO Wizard AI Explained We are excited to introduce GTO Wizard AI, formerly known as Ruse, the world’s best… GTO Wizard AI Benchmarks GTO Wizard has combined the power of artificial intelligence with traditional solving methods to bring… Table Management in PKOs Perhaps the most important strategic consideration in Progressive Knockout Tournaments (PKOs) is making sure you… Overcalling From the BB In poker, overcalling refers to calling a bet or raise after another player has also… Understanding Which Mistakes Cost You the Most Money I am fortunate enough to have worked for many years with the mental game coach… Overbetting The Flop in Cash Games Although most commonly analyzed on turns and rivers, flop overbetting can be a devastating weapon… Using New Skills at the Poker Table How many times has it happened to you that you make a mistake only to… Flatting Ace-X Hands Shortstacked

Playing out of position is tricky, but it’s an essential part of tournament play. With… Playing Limped Pots as the BB in MTTs Success as the BB in limped pots begins before the flop. The BB’s equilibrium strategy… The Absurd Game Theory of Chopped Boards A “chopped board” in poker is one where the community cards make up the best… Playing Limped Pots as the SB in MTTs MTT confrontations between the small blind and big blind force no-limit players into uncomfortable situations,… The Art of Learning Poker In his book The Art of Learning, chess and Push Hands champion Josh Waitzkin describes… Is Donk Betting for Donkeys? “Donk betting”, or betting from out of position into the player who was the aggressor… Delayed C-Betting This is a companion piece to Probe Betting. It stands on its own, but understanding… Probe Betting As far as rules of thumb go in poker, “check to the raiser” is a… ICM and Blind Battles: The Big Blind This is a companion piece to this article on the SB’s strategy for blind vs… ICM and Blind Battles: The Small Blind ICM incentivizes more conservative play, which means that at stages of the tournament where risk… The Initial Bettor’s Advantage The mathematics of poker holds a little-known secret: the first bettor enjoys better bluffing odds… Mastering the Chiplead: The Scalpel and the Sledgehammer When you have a lot of chips at a final table or in another situation… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in Cash Games Our never-ending quest for money and fame leads us to the flop. We open the… How ICM Impacts Restealing From The Blinds When I first started working with preflop solves, one of the features I found most… The ICM Benefits of Late Registration in Poker Tournaments Why do so many professional poker players register late for tournaments when they clearly would… Flop Heuristics: OOP C-Betting in MTTs Playing against an in-position cold-caller is dramatically different–and dramatically more difficult–than playing against a caller… Counterintuitive Calls Solver outputs such as those provided by GTO Wizard are models of no-limit hold ‘em,… How To Negotiate Final Table Deals Most people’s first introduction to the Independent Chip Model (ICM) is not from studying bubble… How does ICM impact PKO strategy? If you have read The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments you already know why we… Understanding Blockers in Poker Often when looking through a solver’s meticulously crafted grid of deception, one of the following… Flop Heuristics: IP Cold-Caller in MTTs A Cold-call refers to the act of calling a preflop raise when you don’t close… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in MTTs In the world of poker, the flop is a crucial stage of the game that… Flop Heuristics for Defending the Blinds in MTTs The field of Game Theoretically Optimal poker is extensive, and thus, to simplify our strategy,… Multiway strategy in Progressive Knockout Tournaments Progressive Knockout (PKO) tournaments are much more complex than traditional MTTs. The fact that players… How To Calculate Raises In Poker One of the most frequently asked questions in poker is

how to calculate the size… Principles of River Play The river offers the least complicated strategy of any betting street. With no further cards… Exploitative Dynamics GTO solutions are designed to be unexploitable, performing reasonably well no matter how your opponents… How ICM Impacts Postflop Strategy Most players understand how the Independent Chip Model (ICM) in poker impacts their strategy preflop,… 10 Tips for Multiway Pots in Poker While lots of work has been placed into research and explanation of heads-up pot strategy,… What is the Bubble Factor in poker tournaments? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) shows us the real money implications of tournament chip decisions.… The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments In poker, a PKO (Progressive Knockout) tournament is a type of tournament where a portion… How To Analyze Turn Textures In Poker Master the art of turn analysis in poker. Understand how the turn card changes the… Principles of Turn Strategy Learn the principles of turn strategy in poker and discover what makes the turn unique.… Poker Strategies: Tournaments vs. Cash Games Tournament poker is not as different from cash game poker as people sometimes assume. Most… How Solvers Work A Game Theory Optimal solver is an algorithm that calculates the best possible poker strategy.… The Most Powerful Play in Poker The central strategic implication of stack depth is the question of how much equity a… When does ICM become significant in MTTs? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) was invented in 1987 by M. Malmuth and is one… How to Study GTO Solutions Tools like GTO Wizard and other solvers should not be used to memorize specific strategies.… Principles of GTO Game theory, or GTO (for Game Theoretically Optimal), is best understood not as a rigid… Interpreting Equity Distributions GTO Wizard’s range vs range equity distribution graphs are an excellent tool for visualizing which… What is Leverage in poker? Leverage refers to the risk of future betting. When you call a bet on the… Reasons for value betting in poker You’re probably accustomed to thinking of bets as either value or bluff. In this taxonomy,… The Science of Poker Performance Poker is a game of small edges and big swings. Every hand is an investment… What is Valor in poker? Can a poker hand be courageous? How does your ability to value bet future streets… Pot Geometry “Pot Geometry” refers to betting an equal fraction of the pot on each street, such… A Beginner’s Guide to Poker Combinatorics Combinatorics is a fancy term for evaluating the number of possible “combinations” (combos) of any… Stack-to-pot ratio Stack-to-pot ratio, or SPR, is a way of measuring how deep the effective stack is… Equity Realization In poker jargon, equity expresses how much of the pot a hand will win, on… Variance and Bankroll Management Variance and Bankroll Management. Vital Soft Skills for Every Poker Player. How to Become a GTO Wizard Welcome to the wonderful world of game theory optimal poker! This article will serve as… The Three Laws of Indifference Indifference in poker is one of the most misunderstood concepts. The word

“indifference” means that… Poker subsets and abstractions An “abstraction” is a way to simplify the game of poker. This game is so… Mathematical Misconceptions in Poker Pot Odds and MDF are foundational mathematical formulas in poker. How to solve toy games Poker is a complicated game. It’s impossible to calculate GTO strategies on the fly. By… The Value of Fold Equity – Experiment The term “fold equity” is ambiguous in the poker community. Firstly, it’s an EV equation,… MDF & Alpha MDF & Alpha. Minimum Defence Frequency and Alpha are metrics on poker that determine how… What are Pot Odds in poker? Pot odds are a fundamental calculation in poker. In the simplest terms, pot odds tell… Does your range affect your strategy? Advanced players will often tell you that your range affects your strategy. Visualizing implied odds Implied odds are the value you expect to gain over and above your raw equity.… ICM Basics As a tournament player, you may have heard about the concept of “ICM”, but what… What is Equity in Poker? The term “Equity” is ubiquitous throughout poker theory. Equity refers to your chances of winning… Range Morphology “Morphology” is the study of form or structure. You’ve probably heard terms thrown around such… What is Expected Value in Poker? Expected value (EV) is the most fundamental metric in poker. Every decision you make is… Why doesn’t my solution match GTO Wizard? So, you’ve got your own solutions to some spot, compared it to GTO Wizard, and… Understanding Nash Distance Understanding Nash Distance. One of the most common questions when studying with solvers is “Why… Combinatorics Poker Puzzle Today we have a special puzzle for you that will test your intuition as a… The 10 Most Important Concepts for New Poker Players The 10 Most Important Concepts for New Poker Players. Fundamentals are one of the most… What is GTO in Poker? The meaning of GTO in poker is Game Theory Optimal. Game theory is a study… What does GTO aim to achieve? So what exactly is a GTO strategy? What makes it “unexploitable”? What does it try…

Dynamic Sizing Benchmarks Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the highest EV Expected Value (EV) The anticipated value one expects from any hand, position, or play. EV is calculated as a weighted average of all possible outcomes weighed by the probability of each of those outcomes. bet size(s) at each decision point! Dynamic Sizing uses a machine learning algorithm (learn more in this article ) to estimate optimal sizing. This begs the question – how accurate is this algorithm? How often does it find the best sizing, and how do we measure its performance? We ran extensive benchmarks to find out! Table of Contents Performance Summary Methodology Dynamic Performance: Compared To Complex Strategy Dynamic Performance: Compared To Single-Size Strategy What is the Optimal River Size? Benchmarks Against Slumbot Conclusion Performance Summary Dynamic Sizing captures 99.95% of the available river EV compared to the optimal one-size betting strategy. Dynamic Sizing finds a near-optimal (less than 0.25% EV loss) bet sizing 95% of the time. Dynamic Sizing outperforms any fixed sizing strategy. Dynamic Sizing captures 99.7% of the available river EV compared to playing a very complicated strategy. Dynamic Sizing outperforms more complex strategies in practice when time/convergence is a factor. Dynamic strategies are easier to study, easier to implement, and less noisy than complex strategies. All tests were done on the river, where we anticipate the largest EV losses from simplifying. The Dynamic Sizing algorithm should perform even better on earlier streets! Methodology We simulated hundreds of 100bb Heads Up hands using self-play and benchmarked the accuracy of 500 river spots. The benefit of using self-play to sample rivers is that more common spots are more heavily represented in the data. To gauge performance, we started by measuring the expected value (EV) of playing a complex strategy where both players have 8 bet sizes and 5 raise sizes. Then, we gave one player a simplified one-size strategy, re-solved and measured the EV loss. We repeated this process separately for both positions. Rivers were solved using CFR to an accuracy of 0.05% pot. Donk bet spots were excluded from the OOP calculations. We simulated hundreds of 100bb Heads Up hands using self-play and benchmarked the accuracy of 500 river spots. The benefit of using self-play to sample rivers is that more common spots are more heavily represented in the data. To gauge performance, we started by measuring the expected value (EV) of playing a complex strategy where both players have 8 bet sizes and 5 raise sizes. Then, we gave one player a simplified one-size strategy, re-solved and measured the EV loss. We repeated this process separately for both positions. Rivers were solved using CFR to an accuracy of 0.05% pot. Donk bet spots were excluded from the OOP calculations. The Dynamic Sizing Algorithm averages an EV loss of only 0.05% pot on the river as compared to the single best size strategy. It averages an EV loss of only 0.30% compared to playing a complex river strategy with 8 different sizes, outperforming any fixed single-size

strategy! Single Best Size represents performance relative to playing the best one-size strategy. Complex Strategy represents performance relative to playing a complex strategy with 8 bet sizes. In all cases , Hero is playing against a complex exploitative opponent, doing everything in their power to punish our simplification. Dynamic Performance: Compared To Complex Strategy Our first test involved seeing how well a single-size dynamic strategy performed compared to playing a more complex strategy. Keep in mind simplifying 8 sizes down to 1 will always carry some theoretical EV loss, even if you always choose the best size . The following chart displays how often (vertical ⇅) the Dynamic Algorithm achieves different EV losses (horizontal ⇆) as compared to playing a more complex strategy: We were happy to find that a Dynamic single-size strategy captures, on average, 99.7% of the river EV . EV Losses are most often in the range of 0.1% – 0.5% pot, very rarely exceeding 1% of the pot. Dynamic Performance: Compared To Single-Size Strategy The fairest performance test involves measuring EV loss relative to the best single size we could have chosen. The following chart displays how often (vertical ⇅) the Dynamic Algorithm achieves different EV losses (horizontal ⇆) compared to playing the optimal single-size strategy. The Dynamic Algorithm managed to choose the optimal river bet size 78% of the time, and chose a near-optimal bet size that lost less than 0.25% EV about 95% of the time. Dynamic sizing has more variability in spots where many sizes yield similar payoffs. There are other scenarios where one size is clearly preferred, and that’s where Dynamic Sizing is most likely to choose the optimal bet size. What is the Optimal River Size? If you were to simplify your betting strategy on the river down to one size, what size would perform best? We measured the EV loss of playing a one-size-fits-all river strategy. Again, this is measured relative to playing a complex exploitative opponent doing everything in their power to punish our simplification. The following interactive chart displays EV losses of using one fixed bet size on the river. You can filter by position! Each data point here represents the EV loss of using just that one bet size or check on the river. For example, bet 100% means we measured the EV loss of using just a pot-sized bet or check on the river. The optimal fixed river bet size seems to be about 75%-100% pot in position (IP), and around 50% pot out of position (OOP). We were surprised to see that fixed size EV losses were relatively low compared to playing a complex 8-size strategy. This data suggests you can get a fairly strong fixed bet sizing strategy on the river just playing 50% OOP and 75% pot IP. This opens up some interesting theoretical questions about why OOP prefers smaller bet sizes than IP. One explanation is that IP reopens the action when they bet, meaning they should use a more polarized strategy with larger sizes. OOP, on the other hand, doesn’t reopen the action,

has more incentive to block-bet, and can even value bet with hands that are slightly behind when called due to the EV of checking being lower. But this is a discussion for another article! Benchmarks Against Slumbot We were thrilled to find that when battling vs. Slumbot , the highest performing 150,000 hand trial was the one using 1-size dynamic sizing , meaning that we only used one bet size per node. Theoretically, a complex strategy should outperform a simple strategy, but the 7-second move limit allowed the simpler approach to reach higher accuracy. Here you can view the graphs of both matches against Slumbot. In both cases, Ruse (now GTO Wizard AI ), outperformed Sslumbot significantly, however the Dynamic algorithm had a 50% higher win rate and experienced less variance during the match. Complex Strategy vs Slumbot: Win rate: 13.1 bb/100 70% confidence interval: 8.8 to 17.3 bb/100 95% confidence interval: 4.5 to 21.6 bb/100 Dynamic Strategy vs Slumbot: Win rate: 19.4 bb/100 70% confidence interval: 15.3 to 23.5 bb/100 95% confidence interval: 11.2 to 27.6 bb/100 Conclusion Poker players sometimes fear that they will lose EV by simplifying their strategy, but we can confidently say from experience that the opposite is true. Rest assured that simplified strategies improve your learning experience and win rate . You will find improvements to both your accuracy and your confidence as you start to cut away unnecessary complications from your game and focus on what matters most. To recap the benchmarks: Poker players sometimes fear that they will lose EV by simplifying their strategy, but we can confidently say from experience that the opposite is true. Rest assured that simplified strategies improve your learning experience and win rate . You will find improvements to both your accuracy and your confidence as you start to cut away unnecessary complications from your game and focus on what matters most. To recap the benchmarks: Dynamic Sizing captures 99.95% of the available river EV compared to the optimal one-size betting strategy. Dynamic Sizing finds a near-optimal (less than 0.25% EV loss) bet sizing 95% of the time. Dynamic Sizing outperforms any fixed sizing strategy. Dynamic Sizing captures 99.7% of the available EV as compared to playing a very complicated strategy. Dynamic Sizing outperforms more complex strategies in practice when time/convergence is a factor. Dynamic strategies are easier to study, easier to implement, and less noisy than complex strategies. All tests were done on the river, where we anticipate the largest EV losses from simplifying. The Dynamic Sizing algorithm should perform even better on earlier streets! A simple strategy executed well will invariably outperform a complex strategy executed poorly. If you’d like to learn more about how our Dynamic Sizing Algorithm works, check out this article : GTO Wizard the #1 App for Poker players Study any spot imaginable Practice by playing vs. GTO Analyze your hands with 1-click START CRUSHING NOW JOIN DISCORD Author Tombos21 Tom is a long time poker theory enthusiast, GTO Wizard coach and YouTuber, and author of the Daily Dose of GTO. Latest article

Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first decade of my career. But after my first… Relationships and Poker In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve… Do Multiple Sizes Matter? Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results… The Science of Learning Applied to GTO Wizard The way we were taught to study in schools was flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN preflop raiser in a 100bb cash… When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody… Protect Equity and Prosper When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend… Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative poker thinking. When you’re value betting against… Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots When the BTN open-limps off a short stack, the postflop play against the BB should… I’d Rather Be Drawing Which is the better hand on a K♥8♦5♦ flop: K♠T♣ or 7♥6♥? OK, I’ll admit… The Curious Case of Open-Limping Buttons Before the advent of solvers, open-limping was considered the province of passive, gambley recreational players… Cleaning Out Sticky IP Callers A “sticky” player on your left, one who calls your preflop raises too often and… Defending Against Tiny 3-Bets Tournament poker is about precision. Cash games, where stacks typically run into the hundreds of… Heads up! Exploiting SB’s Preflop Mistakes Heads up (HU) tournament play presents unique challenges to the average player. Many tournament players,… C-Betting As the OOP Preflop Raiser Position is an extremely valuable advantage in poker. Most players would describe the comfort zone… Overchoice: Making Sense of Multiple Sizings Solver solutions with multiple bet sizes often involve a lot of mixing between those sizes,… River Refinements: When Your Opponent Won’t Check-Raise One of the biggest strategic differences between playing in versus out of position involves betting… Turn Barreling in 3-Bet Pots There are two articles on the GTO Wizard blog that make good prerequisites to this… The Right Way To Think About Protection Suppose Paul the Protector is in a 200bb cash game and opens A♠A♣ in the… The Importance of Board Coverage The first public version of the GTO Wizard announced AI upgrade already has some useful… How To Adjust When Villain Has No Bluffs “They always have it!” is a common, semi-joking expression in poker to describe the

tendency… Adjusting on Later Streets After Exploiting Flop The key to exploiting opponents profitably is knowing when to stop. I’m not referring to… C-Betting IP vs Passive Poker Players A preflop raiser enjoys a significant range advantage over a BB caller, enabling them to… C-Betting Against ICM Preflop Ranges You raise from early position (EP) in a multi-table tournament and the BB calls. Both… The Art of Bluff Catching Bluff catching—calling a bet with a modest hand which you expect to win only if… Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by IP On some flops, it is simply not possible for the preflop raiser to continuation bet… Is Limping Pimping? In a past Discord post, one of our members noted that an upside of implementing… Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by OOP A preflop raiser who continuation bets too often is always a potential target for exploitation,… Preflop Button Mastery in PKOs Playing from the Button presents many unique opportunities in any tournament format, especially in PKOs.… The Worst Turn Card Greetings from GTO land. In today’s article, we will use the Turn Reports feature to… Navigating Range Disadvantage as the 3-Bettor Picture this: We’re playing a NL500 6-max cash game, and we’ve won a few pots,… Mastering Three-Bet Pots In Position in MTTs Playing in position against a three-better is a lesson in playing to your advantages. As… Mastering Three-Bet Pots Out of Position in MTTs Three-bet pots are scary. Playing out of position is scary. Put them together, and you’ve… The Greatest Final Table in Triton History Today, we’ll examine one of the most epic final table battles I’ve ever witnessed! Our… Mastering Thin Value Bets in Checked-Down Pots Valuing your hand appropriately—determining whether it’s strong enough to value bet or so weak you… Maximizing Value on Monotone Flops Monotone flops tend to provoke great anxiety among poker players. It’s easy to imagine that… How to Defend Against Turn Donk Bets Responding effectively to donk bets on the turn is tricky;, there’s no getting around that.… How and Why You Should Use Turn Donk Bets Donk betting–taking the betting lead away from the previous street’s aggressor–on the flop is rarely… How Stack Sizes Change Your Range In this series, we have looked at factors that can influence ranges in otherwise identical… How to Leverage GTO Wizard’s EV Comparison Tool With the advent of solvers, some troubling new turns of phrase have entered the poker… Should You Ever Cold Call a 3-Bet? When there’s been a raise and re-raise before the action is on you, you will… When ICM Breaks Down If you have read my previous GTO Wizard articles and my books, you’ll know I… When Is It Correct To Fold AA Preflop? One of the criticisms of ICM is that it is boring and robotic. In my… OOP C-betting vs Loose Cold-callers In a previous GTO Wizard article, I asserted that “Playing against an in-position cold-caller is… Short-Stacked Play in MTTs Playing a short stack well is an essential tournament skill. It is extremely rare to… When To Ladder in Tournaments In my last

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Overcalling From the BB In poker, overcalling Overcall To call a bet when at least one other player has already called. refers to calling a bet or raise after another player has also called. Should you call an open raise wider or tighter once another player has called? One common misunderstanding around pot odds is that it is more profitable to call preflop raises with weak hands if others have already called before you because there is more money in the pot. While it is true that you are getting better odds on a call, you also need better odds because multiway pots are harder to win . Getting 4:1 odds to beat a single player is a lot more appealing than getting 8:1 odds to beat three players. Getting 4:1 odds to beat a single player is a lot more appealing than getting 8:1 odds to beat three players. This is true even for the BB, who gets disproportionately better odds as more players call. In a game without antes, a BTN facing a 2bb open is getting immediate odds of 3.5:2, requiring them to realize about 36% equity to call profitably (ignoring the risk of further action behind them). With a caller already in the pot, they are getting 5.5:2, requiring them to realize about 27% equity. A BB facing the same raise is getting immediate odds of 3.5:1, requiring them to realize 22% equity. With a caller already in the pot, they are getting 5.5:1, requiring 15% equity. Where the BTN needs to realize about 25% less equity to call, BB needs to realize about 33% less. This is because the live blind they posted becomes more valuable as more players match it. Even this effect is not large enough to make calling better in multiway pots than in heads up pots, however. It merely makes overcalling less bad for the BB than for players in other positions. This is true at all stack depths and regardless of the positions of the other players contesting the pot. illustration This is true even for the BB, who gets disproportionately better odds as more players call. In a game without antes, a BTN facing a 2bb open is getting immediate odds of 3.5:2, requiring them to realize about 36% equity to call profitably (ignoring the risk of further action behind them). With a caller already in the pot, they are getting 5.5:2, requiring them to realize about 27% equity. A BB facing the same raise is getting immediate odds of 3.5:1, requiring them to realize 22% equity. With a caller already in the pot, they are getting 5.5:1, requiring 15% equity. Where the BTN needs to realize about 25% less equity to call, BB needs to realize about 33% less. This is because the live blind they posted becomes more valuable as more players match it. Even this effect is not large enough to make calling better in multiway pots than in heads up pots, however. It merely makes overcalling less bad for the BB than for players in other positions.

This is true at all stack depths and regardless of the positions of the other players contesting the pot. Overcalling Analytics The following chart shows the BB’s response to an UTG raise with no calls, with a call from the BTN, and with calls from the BTN and SB in front of them. Notice that at all stack depths, BB folds more and calls less as more people call in front of them. Comparisons across stack sizes are not precise here, as the size of the initial raise is not constant. BB does call slightly more often with shallower stacks because being out of position is less of a liability . But the main reason why the BB’s calling frequency goes up as stack size goes down in this chart is the smaller raise size UTG uses with shorter stacks. Notice also that the BB 3-bets and/or shoves more often if other players have called the raise. Although the additional opponent makes it less likely tBB will take the pot down immediately, they can still benefit from fold equity by pushing one opponent (usually the caller, who has fewer strong hands in their range) out and trapping their dead money in a pot that will be easier to win when contested heads up. The same patterns hold when the initial raise comes from late position: BB calls less, folds more, and raises more often as more players call in front of them. Which Hands Fold? Take a look at this side-by-side comparison of BB’s response to an UTG raise at 30bb and their response to an UTG raise plus a BTN call . All the hands that drop out of BB’s calling range in favor of folding are offsuit disconnected hands, such as A8 o, Q7 o, and weak Kxo. Lacking the potential to make straights and flushes , these hands perform especially poorly in multiway pots. Whereas pairing a Q or even a 7 gives the BB a fair chance of winning a heads up pot, these modest pairs are less likely to be good in a multiway pot, and harder to get to showdown when they are. These hands have worse equity and equity realization in a multiway pot , so BB folds them despite getting better immediate odds. A few hands do benefit from the improved calling odds. 74 o, 63 o, 52 o, and 42 o all fold when heads up against the UTG raiser but call if the BTN has called. That 74 o is a call while Q7 o and K4 o are folds demonstrates how much more valuable it is, in a multiway pot, to have an outside chance of making a monster hand as opposed to making marginal hands more consistently . If the SB also calls UTG’s raise , the least connected of these hands– 74 o, 85 o–start folding again, but the most dramatic change is how many unsuited hands BB now folds. Every hand BB overcalls has the potential to make a two-card straight or flush. Even making a pair of

Aces is no longer worth much without a decent kicker. With the exception of exactly A9 o, every hand BB overcalls in this scenario has the potential to make a two-card straight or flush . These offsuit hands don’t perform much better with the action starting in late position. Facing a CO raise and BTN and SB calls, BB’s overcalling range looks similar, with the exception of more calls from A x: These offsuit hands don’t perform much better with the action starting in late position. Facing a CO raise and BTN and SB calls, BB’s overcalling range looks similar, with the exception of more calls from A x: With more players in the pot, you need stronger hands to contest it. Even low straights and flushes don’t always provide sufficient firepower. BTN and SB both have more incentive to 3-bet their strong A x against a CO raiser, so BB is in less danger of being dominated with, say, A7 o. All these players have more suited connectors in their ranges, so hands that consistently make the low end of straights– 42 o, 32 o, even A3 o and A2 o–fold. There’s even a bit of folding from a suited hand, which never happens against an early position raise. With more players in the pot, you need stronger hands to contest it. Even low straights and flushes don’t always provide sufficient firepower. The BB’s decision to overcall is much less about pot odds than it is about giving themselves the tools they need to contest a pot against multiple opponents. This effect is more pronounced when stacks are deeper. With 100bb stacks , BB’s positional disadvantage is amplified , and disconnected suited hands perform much more poorly, as do the big offsuit hands like K9 o, Q9 o, and Ax o: Which Hands Raise? In heads up pots with fairly deep stacks, BB does not three-bet often, especially against early position opens. Building pots out of position is undesirable, and the pot odds make calling an attractive proposition with hands as strong as AQ s and AK o. When BB does three-bet into a lone raiser, they do so with a somewhat polar range, preferring to call their modest-to-good hands rather than risk a four-bet . Shoving is not in the cards; it risks too much to win a small pot. This is BB’s response to an UTG raise with 50bb stacks . If the BTN calls , then BB’s strategy shifts to a more linear 3-bet range. They no longer three-bet small suited connectors and suited Aces but more consistently 3-bet their strongest hands. Throwing a SB caller into the mix makes this effect even more pronounced. In fact, with so much money in the pot and BTN and SB having fairly capped ranges, shoving for 50bb is now a viable option. (Note that this spot below has not fully converged.) It is not BB’s very best hands that shove. Big pairs and big suited Aces prefer to induce more action with a smaller three-bet. Rather, it is hands like

medium pairs and big offsuit Aces which value fold equity and can be tricky to play when a smaller three-bet is called. More money in the pot incentives opponents to call with weaker hands than they would when no one called the initial raise, but this is not the main reason BB three-bets a wider value range . The fold equity from pushing one or more other players out subsidizes the raise, so BB does not need as much equity when called. This squeeze often ends up being +EV for both the BB and the player who calls, with that EV coming from the other player(s) who fold away their equity or put in more money from behind. This dynamic will be familiar to fixed limit players, especially those who play split pot games, which more commonly see multiway pots. Fold equity from pushing other players out subsidizes the BB’s squeeze, so they do not need as much equity when called. Facing a raise from UTG and no calls, AQ s in the BB has an EV of 2.39bb when calling and 2.25bb when raising, so it always calls. If the BTN calls, the EV of calling goes down to 2.25bb, which remains the EV of three-betting, so BB mixes both actions. If BTN and SB call, the EV of calling for BB goes down again, to 2.15bb. The EV of three-betting, however, skyrockets to 3.21bb. Thus, a three-bet that was unappealing when heads up with an UTG raiser becomes a slam dunk equity bonanza once those other two players have called, despite the fact that nothing has changed about the UTG raiser’s range. This is entirely a subsidy provided by BTN and SB, who almost never show up with hands that dominated AQ s. Adapting to Late Position Raises BB’s polar three-betting strategy in heads up pots is more apparent against a CO raiser . As with the UTG raise, BB’s three-betting range grows more linear if the BTN calls . There are fewer “light” three-bets , hands weaker than some of BB’s pure calls, compared to their strategy in a heads up pot. There are two major differences from the response to an UTG raise and BTN call: Expansion of the value range . Hands like 99 and AT s, which were too weak to raise into an UTG open, will perform better when contesting a three-bet pot against the CO wider range. More shoving . With CO and BTN holding wider, weaker ranges, BB can go for the 50bb shove with more suited broadway hands. The robust equity of these hands makes shoving into wide ranges a win-win proposition. If the opponents only call with very strong hands, your equity is less good, but you win more pots without showdown. If the opponents call with wider ranges, you have less fold equity but better equity when called. These trends continue if the SB also calls . We see even more shoving , and also a lower threshold for how strong a hand must be to squeeze. Conclusion Multiway pots

are hard to win . Making multiple opponents fold is difficult, so you must often triumph at showdown . But the average winning hand at showdown will be stronger, because you will typically go to showdown against the strongest of several hands that saw the flop, which means you must have an even stronger hand. Being out of position is also more of a liability in a multiway pot. As bad as it is to be out of position to one opponent, it is even worse being out of position to two. These factors lead to poor equity realization , primarily for disconnected offsuit hands when the BB faces a raise and one or more calls. Despite the appealing pot odds, BB folds more often with more players contesting the pot. When they do continue, the callers provide extra incentive to three-bet rather than call . These three-bets are not bluffs; taking the pot down immediately is unlikely. Rather, the BB three-bets primarily strong hands (with “strong” being relative to the position of the original raiser), in the hopes of folding out one or more opponents, trapping dead money into a pot they can contest heads up. GTO Wizard the #1 App for Poker players Study any spot imaginable Practice by playing vs. GTO Analyze your hands with 1-click START CRUSHING NOW JOIN DISCORD Author Andrew Brokos Andrew Brokos has been a professional poker player, coach, and author for over 15 years. He co-hosts the Thinking Poker Podcast and is the author of the Play Optimal Poker books, among others. Latest article Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first decade of my career. But after my first… Relationships and Poker In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve… Do Multiple Sizes Matter? Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results… The Science of Learning Applied to GTO Wizard The way we were taught to study in schools was flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN preflop raiser in a 100bb cash… When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody… Protect Equity and Prosper When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend… Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative poker thinking. When you’re value betting against… Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots When

the BTN open-limps off a short stack, the postflop play against the BB should… I’d Rather Be Drawing Which is the better hand on a K♥8♦5♦ flop: K♠T♣ or 7♥6♥? OK, I’ll admit… The Curious Case of Open-Limping Buttons Before the advent of solvers, open-limping was considered the province of passive, gambley recreational players… Cleaning Out Sticky IP Callers A “sticky” player on your left, one who calls your preflop raises too often and… Defending Against Tiny 3-Bets Tournament poker is about precision. Cash games, where stacks typically run into the hundreds of… Heads up! Exploiting SB’s Preflop Mistakes Heads up (HU) tournament play presents unique challenges to the average player. Many tournament players,… C-Betting As the OOP Preflop Raiser Position is an extremely valuable advantage in poker. Most players would describe the comfort zone… Overchoice: Making Sense of Multiple Sizings Solver solutions with multiple bet sizes often involve a lot of mixing between those sizes,… River Refinements: When Your Opponent Won’t Check-Raise One of the biggest strategic differences between playing in versus out of position involves betting… Turn Barreling in 3-Bet Pots There are two articles on the GTO Wizard blog that make good prerequisites to this… The Right Way To Think About Protection Suppose Paul the Protector is in a 200bb cash game and opens A♠A♣ in the… The Importance of Board Coverage The first public version of the GTO Wizard announced AI upgrade already has some useful… How To Adjust When Villain Has No Bluffs “They always have it!” is a common, semi-joking expression in poker to describe the tendency… Adjusting on Later Streets After Exploiting Flop The key to exploiting opponents profitably is knowing when to stop. I’m not referring to… C-Betting IP vs Passive Poker Players A preflop raiser enjoys a significant range advantage over a BB caller, enabling them to… C-Betting Against ICM Preflop Ranges You raise from early position (EP) in a multi-table tournament and the BB calls. Both… The Art of Bluff Catching Bluff catching—calling a bet with a modest hand which you expect to win only if… Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by IP On some flops, it is simply not possible for the preflop raiser to continuation bet… Is Limping Pimping? In a past Discord post, one of our members noted that an upside of implementing… Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by OOP A preflop raiser who continuation bets too often is always a potential target for exploitation,… Preflop Button Mastery in PKOs Playing from the Button presents many unique opportunities in any tournament format, especially in PKOs.… The Worst Turn Card Greetings from GTO land. In today’s article, we will use the Turn Reports feature to… Navigating Range Disadvantage as the 3-Bettor Picture this: We’re playing a NL500 6-max cash game, and we’ve won a few pots,… Mastering Three-Bet Pots In Position in MTTs Playing in position against a three-better is a lesson in playing to your advantages. As… Mastering Three-Bet Pots Out of Position in MTTs Three-bet pots are scary. Playing out of position is scary. Put them together, and you’ve… The Greatest Final

Table in Triton History Today, we’ll examine one of the most epic final table battles I’ve ever witnessed! Our… Mastering Thin Value Bets in Checked-Down Pots Valuing your hand appropriately—determining whether it’s strong enough to value bet or so weak you… Maximizing Value on Monotone Flops Monotone flops tend to provoke great anxiety among poker players. It’s easy to imagine that… How to Defend Against Turn Donk Bets Responding effectively to donk bets on the turn is tricky;, there’s no getting around that.… How and Why You Should Use Turn Donk Bets Donk betting–taking the betting lead away from the previous street’s aggressor–on the flop is rarely… How Stack Sizes Change Your Range In this series, we have looked at factors that can influence ranges in otherwise identical… How to Leverage GTO Wizard’s EV Comparison Tool With the advent of solvers, some troubling new turns of phrase have entered the poker… Should You Ever Cold Call a 3-Bet? When there’s been a raise and re-raise before the action is on you, you will… When ICM Breaks Down If you have read my previous GTO Wizard articles and my books, you’ll know I… When Is It Correct To Fold AA Preflop? One of the criticisms of ICM is that it is boring and robotic. In my… OOP C-betting vs Loose Cold-callers In a previous GTO Wizard article, I asserted that “Playing against an in-position cold-caller is… Short-Stacked Play in MTTs Playing a short stack well is an essential tournament skill. It is extremely rare to… When To Ladder in Tournaments In my last two articles, I wrote about the effect field size and payout structure… How Payout Structures Impact ICM Last time we discussed the ICM considerations in game selection, we looked at field size,… C-Betting IP in 3-Bet Pots When you three-bet before the flop and the original raiser calls from out of position,… C-Betting OOP in 3-Bet Pots Continuation betting from out of position can be a dicey proposition in single-raised pots. Cold… Dynamic Sizing: A GTO Breakthrough Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Dynamic Sizing Benchmarks Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Understanding The Impact Of Field Size On ICM In Poker When people talk about game selection in multi-table tournaments (MTTs), they invariably talk about the… Defending vs BB Check-Raise on Paired Flops This is a companion piece to Attacking Paired Flops from the BB; you will get… Mastering PKO Final Tables Final tables can be the most exciting and rewarding phase of a tournament, and being… Attacking Paired Flops From the BB Paired flops present unique challenges to both a preflop raiser and a BB caller. The… KK vs QQ vs JJ at WSOP Main Event With only fourteen players remaining in the 2023 WSOP Main Event and blinds of 400K/800K/800K,… Responding to BB Squeezes You open raise, someone calls, and the BB squeezes. How should you construct your strategy?… Crushing a Top HUNL Poker Bot In 2022, Philippe Beardsell