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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

to have helped your opponent. In all likelihood, he will fold to a bet, fearing the possibility that you are the one holding three of a kind. Opponent Is First When your opponent is first to act and bets into you, call with any pair or big ace. There is just too good a chance that your opponent is trying to pick up this pot with a bet, and you do have a hand that can win without further improvement. If you fold a hand such as 8-8 when the board comes K-K-4 and your opponent bets into you, you are playing far too weakly. There is a very good chance your 8-8 is the best hand here. You won’t win every time, but if you always fold in this situation, you are throwing a lot of winners into the muck. If you hold an overpair to the board and your opponent bets, you should generally raise your hand for value. When you bet or raise “for value,” this means you want your opponent to put more money into the pot because you probably hold the best hand. Your hand isn’t a lock, but is most likely good. You Flop Trips Now, what should you do on those rare occasions when you are fortunate enough to flop trips? First of all, it’s important not to get overly excited. Spilling your drink all over the table after the flop comes down is not a good way of encouraging your opponent to play along with you. In general, you should tend to play your trips aggressively right from the flop onward. Most players expect their opponents to slow-play when they flop a big hand, so your bet may be interpreted as a sign of weakness rather than a showing of strength. This might lead to your getting unmerited action on the hand, particularly if you are up against a very aggressive player. By playing your trips fast (that is, aggressively, not slow-playing), you are taking advantage of your opponent’s aggressive tendencies by turning them against him. Conversely, you might need to check your trips on the flop against very tight opponents to suck any more bets from them. They are unlikely to call a bet on the flop, so you might check one time hoping the turn either makes them a pair, or induces a bluff. However, it is dangerous to give free cards when the turn can bring your opponent a miracle. So, it is best to check when fewer draws are present on the flop. For example, checking a hand like A-8 when the flop is 8-8-2 rainbow is fairly safe. It’s probably not a good idea to check A-8 when the flop is 8-8-9 with a flush draw, however, as too many potential hands can either outdraw you on the turn, or at least develop quality draws. Tip # 25 of 52 Guidelines on playing when you flop a pair of aces in a multiway pot. For this example, we assume that four or more players are in the hand, and

now? Answer: Bad moon rising. The king is a scary card, and Player G doesn't seem to be going away. 120 You should cut your losses right here. Action: You check, and Player G bets $130. You fold, and Player G takes the pot. Hand 5-22 Situation: In the middle of a single-table online tournament. Players A and D are very aggressive. Player B seems solid. Your hand: A♦K♣ Action to you: Player A folds. Player B raises to $200. Players C, D, and E fold. The pot is now $350. Question: Do you call or raise? Answer: You have a fine hand, of course, and you certainly want to raise some amount. Just how much you raise is actually determined by the relative chip stacks and your position at the table. Currently you have $2,980 left and he has $600. You're also out of position relative to Player B throughout the hand. If you raise him a moderate amount, say $200 to $300, and he calls you, he'll have so few chips left that he'll be committed to the pot. If he doesn't immediately reraise you, he'll probably get the rest of his chips in after the flop. Under these circumstances, you should go all-in and put him to a decision for all his chips right now. This move eliminates the positional disadvantage of acting first next round, and gives you the best chance of chasing him away (if that's possible) and winning the pot right now. Ace-king is a nice hand, but remember you're an underdog to just a simple pair of fours. You wouldn't mind taking the pot right now. Action: You raise all-in, and Player B calls, showing 7♥7♦. The flop comes A♣K♠5♠, and your hand holds up to win the pot. Remember that all-in with an ace-king is a common play against a much smaller stack when you can use the move to eliminate a position disadvantage, and guarantee that you'll be able to see all five cards on the board. 121 Hand 5-23 Situation: First hand of a single-table online tournament. Your hand: Q♥J♦ Action to you: Player A folds. Player B calls. Players C, D, and E all fold. Players F and G call. Player H raises to $30. The small blind folds. The pot is now $75. It costs you $20 to call. Question: Do you fold, call, or raise? Answer: Under slightly different circumstances, you'd be delighted to play this hand (Q♥J♦) in the big blind. Suppose, for instance, Player B had raised to $30 and Players F, G, and H had just called. Now the pot would contain $135 and you'd need to put in an additional $20 to call. You'd be getting almost 7-to-1 pot odds, and your hand would easily be worth a bet at that price. What's different about this hand? Although the pot odds are worse (you have to put in $20 for a shot at a pot of $75, slightly less than 4-to-l), that's not the main problem. The real difficulty is that you're caught in a

Bet Any chips voluntarily put in the pot (VPIP) by a player where the amount required to call to see the next street increases.

C-Betting As the OOP Preflop Raiser Position is an extremely valuable advantage in poker. Most players would describe the comfort zone as being in position (IP) coupled with having the stronger preflop range. This situation, known as the ‘bread-and-butter’ of poker, occurs when we raise from late position and are called by one of the blinds. Once our opponent checks, we then have the option of c-betting or checking back for a free turn card. However, the pokerverse expands far beyond this comfort zone. We will inevitably find ourselves in uncomfortable situations, like when we raise from early position and we’re cold-called by late position . We must now play an entire hand out of position (OOP). Despite retaining the advantage of having more nutted preflop hands, what GTO suggests we do may be counterintuitive. In this article, we’ll explore which flops we can continue to be aggressive on, which flops we should be checking often, and some useful rules of thumb to take into your games. For this article, we will use the solutions for NL50 rake, 100bb, UTG raises 2.5bb, BTN flat-calls . Preflop Begets Postflop Before running through our postflop strategy, it’s paramount to understand in what condition we arrive there. We must gauge our opponent; what does BTN’s preflop cold-calling range look like? BTN flats 4% of their playable hands. The better hands, such as AJ s– AT s, 99 – JJ , and KQ s– KT s, are mostly indifferent between raising and calling. Overall, it is a narrow, condensed range that is particularly heavy in lower suited broadways and middling pocket pairs. When we are the BTN in this scenario, it’s easier to implement a solid strategy of 3-betting or folding. But when we are the UTG player, we have to be prepared for our opponent to take us to a different part of the game tree. Something to be mindful of is that in a real-life situation, an opponent that flat-calls you from the BTN is likely playing wider than this range, which will impact optimal postflop strategy. You will probably encounter players flatting all their Ace-x suited, and the lower pocket pairs 22 – 55 , which the solver suggests are very low-frequency flat-calls. Having played around with the different rake parameters, a couple of general guidelines apply when the rake structure is changed: At NL500, the BTN is allowed to flat 6% of hands. At NL50, assuming no preflop rake, there’s more incentive for the BTN to 3-bet and instantly take down the pot without having to pay a fee to the house. First Flop Decision: Bet or Check? It’s time to test your intuition with a quick pop quiz before we show the solutions. Here we go: UTG opens 2.5bb, BTN calls (100bb deep). What is UTG’s c-betting strategy on each of these four flops? Flop#1: Q ♠ 9 ♥ 6 ♦ C-bet 100% of our range for ⅓ pot size C-bet 33% of our range for ⅔ pot size C-bet 33% of our range for ⅓ pot size Check our entire

more potential to win (or lose) chips on later streets, and the higher the implied/reverse implied odds. Let’s compare how the solver opens the HJ at different stack depths in a standard cash game: HJ open: 50BB deep You should also consider how likely your opponent is to put in chips on later streets. For example, your flush draws have lower implied odds if they shut down on all flush-completing runouts. HJ open: 100BB deep As we get deeper, we see a preference towards hands like lower pocket pairs, suited connectors, and generally hands with better implied odds. The effect is subtle, but it’s even more pronounced in tournament charts: We can see the range expanding from high-equity shoves at low stack depth to more “playable” hands with better implied odds at a deeper stack depth. The range retracts at 60BB+ as other players can enter the pot with a wider range due to improved implied odds. Visualizing implied odds through multiway equity retention Implied odds are connected to a hand’s ability to draw to something nutted. We sometimes call this effect “playability”. The following gif is a color-coded equity distribution of 2-14 players with any two cards. Here we can see how equity evolves multiway. Pay attention to the gradient rather than the exact numbers. To my surprise, I’ve found that by tweaking the number of players (adjusting the value of implied odds) you can create equity gradients that roughly resemble GTO opening ranges. For example, here’s the equity gradient for the top 44% of hands next to a standard 100BB BTN opening range. Try this spreadsheet yourself! Even though there are only 3 players left in the hand, the value of implied odds gets exaggerated 100BB deep. In order to replicate the GTO EV gradient, I’ve artificially increased the implied odds by increasing the multiway equity calculations to 8 players. As we add more players, the equity gradient shifts towards more suited and connected hands that have a better chance of drawing to something nutted. In this way, we are treating implied odds as an adjustable parameter to artificially highlight the intrinsic implied odds of different kinds of hands (or more accurately, the inherent ability of a hand to draw to something strong). Even though there are only 3 players left in the hand, the value of implied odds gets exaggerated 100BB deep. In order to replicate the GTO EV gradient, I’ve artificially increased the implied odds by increasing the multiway equity calculations to 8 players. This kind of analysis underestimates blocker effects which makes it harder to replicate early position opening ranges. Regardless, I hope you’ve enjoyed this visual representation of implied odds as much as I enjoyed creating it! 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

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

lojack it would be unlikely that the hijack has a hand like 10 deuce offsuit or queen 3 off suit but it's very possible the hijack would have aces or kings or ace king and if the flop comes king king jack there's a high probability that the hijack will have made a strong hand on this board including over pairs trips full houses and quads and so when the low jack is deciding whether he should call a c bet holding a marginal hand like pocket sixes for example he needs to think about the very real possibility that he may be behind the way a strategic player does this is by assessing how the hijacks range of possible hands intersects with the board and every player even the most unsophisticated one does this at some level even when you're playing against grandpa for pennies he will know that certain boards favor the pre-flop aggressor and this will affect the decisions he makes what differentiates the best players in the world is that they're able to make this type of assessment very accurately by deftly gauging the opponent's range of possible hands at each stage of the game so when we're playing against a strong opponent who is making decisions based on our likely hands in order to make his life difficult we should be simultaneously also thinking about the possible hands in our range and how they want to play at each decision point because this exercise will help us disguise our actual holdings and this is one of the reasons why you often hear the concept of balance being closely associated with gto when we balance our range by playing groups of hands with disparate strength similarly it makes it very difficult for our opponent to put us on a particular holding or to figure out our overall strategy and ultimately poker is a game of subterfuge and deception so this concept is critically important for example we've all played against old man coffee that never bluffs and only bets on the river for value this player is easy to play against because his range and strategies are very transparent we know he always has it so we can easily overfold when he shoves the river we can avoid playing like old man coffee by always being conscious of our range and balancing it so that we can potentially have a variety of different holdings at any given time however the reality is that in real time it's impossible to balance each combination in our range in any sort of precise manner so the way we simplify this balancing process is that instead of trying to formulate a unique strategy for each individual hand we craft overarching strategies that apply to groups of hands in our range and sometimes we can even utilize the same strategy indiscriminately with all of the hands in our range which greatly simplifies the game for example here is a gto check report for a 6 max 100 big blind three bet pot where

who himself is playing gto this strategy may be exploited by an opponent that is closely tracking frequencies so in these instances even if the e regret for a particular action is low it may still make sense to refine the class further so we have now established that we can greatly simplify our learning of gto by developing overarching strategies that can be applied to broad groups of hands or even our entire range to certain circumstances but how do we actually execute these strategies when we're sitting at a table without these charts in front of us well as mentioned earlier it's our philosophy that players should learn poker in the same manner that they play and so gto checks tri-level system is not only a methodology of learning it also provides a structured way to analyze hands which focuses us on the most important factors that drive ev maximizing strategies for every single strategic decision at the felt and for the remainder of this video we're going to delve into the first most abstract level the macro analysis you

extra nine big blinds is like having a second life and tournament poker and as you can imagine if everybody else enters the turn with one life and you have two lives that's excellent so these are the fun most fun boards to manipulate you can throw in that over bet if you have a pissy young kid you can just go for the bigger bad if you just want to spell it out for them you can sucker them in with that small bet and then a big bet one Broadway to low cards can handle the same thing generally alright so that's like king X ax clean X ax Jack X X now if you have a nine in there right if it starts putting flush and straight draws out there you might not want to get as cute with the small bed but generally the bigger bets will work but yeah if it's just king for two again you can do the over bet you can do the one third pot size bet you can do two-thirds pot size back and flush or straight boards this is something I don't hear talked about enough but flushers straight boards are great for double barrels so get some money in the middle on the flop you that is one of the very few situations I really like a half pot bet because what happens is is someone has a pair of any type on a flush draw board or straight job board they're still gonna call if you fire the see bet they're just gonna hope like hell if the card comes out there on the turn that you're just gonna give up so you fire half pot the person's gonna miss the board enough on three to a su as long as it doesn't have to card sign or hire three to a suit or three to a straight 765 they're going to have missed enough to justify the half pot size bed but if they do call in the turn is an 8 on the 765 board are the turn is a fourth heart on the three heart board what happens is they have missed that turn and they did not make a draw 60% of the time minimum so pretty much any bed out there is going if you think is gonna fold out the pair's is going to turn a profit so you can fire a little bit more substantially and just pocket what they put in on the so the problem I find when you bet one third pot on those boards is you kind of tell the person I don't have a big hand because if you think about it if the board came 765 and you had a set of six is you really it's really unlikely you'd be betting one third pot because you'd be justifiably a bit worried about a straight draw coming in right so if you bet half pot it still looks like you could have a little something and

eight just have to fold um and then here's where the solver doesn't like my play it wants to just bet big with this hand is like this one hand that it wants to go all in now I want to tell a story to Fred frenzy Fred I want to say I've got a seven I don't think me going all in or bit import or three quarters pot tells the story that I have a seven I think it tells a story that I've got 10A and I'm desperate for him to fold so I use a size that is just like always a seven and then he can just make easy folds and [Music] um when we look at it so this is not the end that's not the end This Is the End so when you see the Vlog yeah cool 71 raise 27 EV is the same makes no different turn I did actually think about here betting the term because we have like the suit is 7-4 we have suited uh four two suited we've got like all the two pair combos that he just doesn't have and I actually did consider leading the turn I think that's okay and the river it's it's saying it's a minus 70 and why is it minus 70 because when we look at his range he's supposed to call pretty much always a king Jack sometimes Bluff he's supposed to Bluff with Jack 10 so at a high frequency it's going to be missing that uh he's supposed to have nine seven in his range he's not gonna have nine seven years range he's gonna bet the term with nine seven um so gonna be missing that part of his range and I think people were going to be over betting her with all the seven X's because I don't think he expects me to fat too many 9x and he's gonna protect his Equity so he's not going to have a lot of these hands that actually have big hands I don't think pocket sevens are going to check the turn uh I think they're just going to continue barreling through because again that but I have that 1080 in my range um so when we take into consideration he doesn't have these hands and he's going to overfold King Jack Jack 10 Queen 10 uh King Jack and possibly possibly I don't expect them to fold in Ace but possibly folded an ace I'm trying to think what did he fold like because pretty much all of his veins shouldn't fold and he just snapfolded and so when you think like yeah these are these these hands that we're just not going to be in his range and headaches always whistle Bluff jackets always whistle Bluff Queen aids always supposed to Bluff they're just going to be snap Folds so it makes actually my life very easy um for Block bet is to be the most optimal and um I like this so I don't I don't

About David Sklansky David Sklansky is generally considered the number one authority on gam- bling in the world today. Besides his twelve books on the subject, David also has produced two videos and numerous writings for various gaming publications. More recently David has been doing consulting work for casinos and gaming companies. He has recently invented several casino games including Hold ’em Challenge and All In Hold ’em. David attributes his standing in the gambling community to three facts: 1. The fact that he presents his ideas as simply as possible (sometimes with Mason Malmuth and now with Ed Miller) even though these ideas fre- quently involve concepts that are deep, subtle, and not to be found else- where. 2. The fact that what he articulates can be counted on to be accurate. 3. The fact that for many years a large portion of his income was derived from gambling (usually poker, but occasionally blackjack, sports betting, horses, video games, casino promotions, or casino tournaments). There is little doubt that the majority of the successful poker players today attribute a great deal of their success to reading and studying David’s books. Other Books by David Sklansky Hold ’em Poker The Theory of Poker Getting The Best of It Sklansky on Poker Poker, Gaming, and Life Sklansky Talks Blackjack Tournament Poker for Advanced Players Gambling for a Living by David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth Hold ’em Poker for Advanced Players by David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth Seven-Card Stud for Advanced Players by David Sklansky, Mason Malmuth, and Ray Zee Small Stakes Hold ’em; Winning Big with Expert Play by Ed Miller, David Sklansky, and Mason Malmuth vii

J Q 10 7. The fourth card is below a 10.' 'I stay regardless of the size of the fourth card, with one exception. If I have only one opponent and he has a king or an ace over me I am beat in sight unless I make a pair or catch an ace. I would fold if I'm beat in sight at this point of the game; that is, if the opponent bets. If he checks, I stay, of course.' 'To be repetitious,' I said, 'you fold holding A x x or K x x or J Q x, and stay holding A x 10 or K x 10 or J Q 10. I gather you stay if the fourth card is below a ten and you're not beat in sight such as A x 10 x.' 'No, you're wrong with the last example. But I do stay on A x 10 J. I want three high cards to draw to. The only reason I draw to A x and K x is because if I hit I probably win the pot with two aces or two kings.' 'But you do stay,' I said, 'on J Q 10 7, if no pair is showing?5 'Yes, I have three high cards to hit.' 'Now suppose you hold J Q Q and your opponent holds ? A 3 and you bet the two queens and your opponent calls. How do you judge the play?' 'If the opponent is a strong player he may be sucking me in with two aces. If he's a simpleton, he's probably betting that the hand is improved on the next card.' 'Well,' I said, 'suppose you draw the fourth card, making J Q Q 4, and your opponent draws a 10, making ? A 3 10. What do you do?' 'The answer is the same,' said Monty. 'If he's a simpleton I bet the two queens again. Ordinarily the simpleton won't stand two bets unless he has you beat. If he's a strong player, I get cautious and check. If the strong player bets, he usually has me beat. Of course he may be bluffing. It's a good play to make. I'd have to judge my man.' Monty was the keenest player I have ever known. He trained like an athlete and seemed almost clairvoyant at times. It may be that some movement on the part of his opponent, a tremor, a flicker of the eye, talkie-talk or what have you, even something unknown to Monty's consciousness, tipped the opponent's hand, telling Monty when to call, bet or raise. Watching him play I was tempted to believe in thought transference, and I am not sure now that he was not clairvoyant. I do not mean this in the sense that he knew the card his opponent was going to draw before it left the deck - but once the opponent knew the card, I often felt that Monty knew it too. III That night I found seated at the table Hairlip Slocum, the banker's son; Salty, the horse

THE CONCEPTS 188 and challenge you with a resteal raise. Your bet size should be somewhat smaller than your “typical” bet because this is really an either/or bluff. Either your opponents hit the flop, or they didn’t. If they missed, they’ll likely fold to your small bet. If they hit, they’d likely call or raise even a pot-sized bet. On more coordinated boards, your opponents could flop marginal draws or other “in between” hands that would call a small bet, but fold to a large one. On this flop, such hands are unlikely, so a small bet should be enough to get the job done. (Any flop with a pair is also a good candidate.) But if you make small flop bets only with bluffs, your opponents will begin to catch on and raise your small bets to resteal. So also make small bets sometimes with good hands. Concept No. 49: If someone makes a big bet on the flop into multiple players, typically he will have a good, but not great, hand. This idea should be obvious if you think about it, but it’s still a powerful hand-reading trick. A big bet says three things, “I’m not particularly afraid of one or two players calling,” “I don’t want all of you to call,” and “I wouldn’t mind winning the pot right now.” Only a player with a good, but not great, hand would say all of these things. Obviously, a player with a great hand wouldn’t want most or all the field to fold. They would generally choose either to check or to make a small bet to encourage action. And bluffing with a big bet into multiple players is dangerous. When several people see the flop, it’s quite likely someone caught something decent. A pot- sized (or bigger) bluffoffers you even money (or less) on your play. For the bluffto be profitable, all your opponents have to fold a large percentage of the time. Most players intuitively realize that the bluffwon’t work often enough to be profitable. So bluffers will likely choose a smaller bet size. That way they don’t have to succeed as often to make money. That leaves hands in the middle — good, but not great hands — like top pair. Usually a big bet into multiple players will come from just this sort of hand. Concept No. 50: If someone bets the flop and gets two or more calls, anyone who bets a significant amount on the turn should get respect. Betting the turn after the flop was bet and called in several places is a powerful move. Anyone who makes such a bet is essentially saying, “I’m prepared to play a large pot, and the threat of someone with a deep stack calling or raising doesn’t worry me.” Usually in these situations, someone willing to make such a bet either has a strong hand or is (rarely) bluffing. With a mediocre hand in a big pot, most players would check, hoping that their hand is strong enough to win the pot in a showdown. In

and myself Alex and Matt are adding new hand quizzes every single week as well so that database is just gonna keep growing and growing Jonathan also has over 30 coaching challenge webinars from his inner circle program and he also has live coaching challenge webinars every month and so do the rest of us instructors about the quizzes they're really great because they get you in the right state of mind they there are a great warm-up it's interactive and forces you to really bring your knowledge there's there's something that happens when we get more engaged in the learning process we were tamed very little when we just listened to things we get a lot more when we write things down so someone wanted to see this slide hit that print screen button so you can capture this slide and then paste it in a paint document and then you can save those notes for later writing down helps us retain more but then thinking things through explaining things gives us the highest level of retention and that's the beauty of these quizzes is you get to test yourself and then you get immediate feedback and you can kind of talk well this is why I did it and and then find out what Jonathan or what Alex or what Matt or what I thought and why we did it and it's not necessarily saying that I'm the coach so what I said is right it's I'm the coach and this is my thought process and this is why I did what I did and you're gonna have your reasons why you did what you did and we can learn from the other perspectives it's not about right or wrong it's about expanding our thought process and learning what other factors to think about I even found what making quizzes myself I didn't like some of the moves I made and I gave myself less points for the play I actually did because I realized in review and thought that there were actually better options out there so a friend of mine who uses these quizzes every time to warm up before a session says the easiest way to get in the zone it's the best way to warm up for sessions it's very fast it's very quick it costs no money you don't have to like drive to a casino to warm up or play online session warm up you can just get in the zone very quickly and poker coaching com has a seven day free trial so you can literally get these quizzes absolutely for free and Jonathan's usually giving out bonuses too so there's a lot of good value to get there on top of that jonathan has as he opened poker coaching com he sadly closed the doors on float the turn comm which was his original training site so Jonathan and I both have something in common is that we go hard on creating content the difference is where I was just like I'm

the flop comes A♣-9♦-3♥ and now you’re in the catbird seat. Generally, in this situation, the pre-flop raiser will bet out. When that happens, most players holding your strength would flat-call, not wanting to scare off the customer. You might flat-call, too, and that’s probably right most of the time, since you could be calling with a wide range of hands, including bluffs. But before you automatically call, first ask yourself how aggressive the lead bettor is. If he’s very aggressive, he might lead into you with nothing. If he’s passive, he’s declared his strength twice, first by raising pre-flop, again by leading on the flop; that means a super-passive player that has astrong holding. This can be a great time to raise. First, you know he has a pretty good piece of the flop. Second, a really good hand usually won’t raise in your situation, so your raise can actually look like a weak line of play. When you raise, be sure to make a bet that matches the story you’re telling. If you make a minimum raise, you’re telling him you’re huge; a minraise screams that you don’t want your opponent to fold. Make your raise about three times his bet, or about the size of the pot. But remember, onlymake this play if you have some reason to believe that your opponent is strong or creative enough to try to three-bet bluff your raise back if he readsyour raise as weak. Interestingly, the one story you’re not telling here when you raise is the story of a set. Who’d be crazy enough to give away the strength of his set with a raise right on the flop? Well, you, that’s who—if you feel that your opponent has a strong hand and is coming along anyhow. Under most other circumstances, where you suspect your opponent to be weak or merely continuation betting, go ahead and flat-call. You’re not that worried about telegraphing strength here; if you’re wrong that he’s strong, you weren’t getting any more earn from him anyhow. But say you know your opponent has something like AQ or AK. He bets. You call. Why would you call? Suddenly, he’s scared. He has to play the turn and the river out of position against someone who liked this dry board well enough to stay in the hand. He’ll definitely slow down. Maybe he’ll check-call on the turn. Probably he’ll check-fold on the river. Let’s see how much you make with that line of play. Figuring half-pot bets on both streets, you picked up 500 by calling on the flop and another 1,000 by betting on the turn. So that’s 1,500. But what if you raise to 2,000 on the flop? Now you’re getting at least that same 1,500 out of him, but maybe more; AQ or AK doesn’t suspect a set here and will probably re-raise, thinking that his hand is good. If he shuts down and just calls on the turn or the river, okay; you haven’t done worse. Maybe you’ve done better. Again, it all comes down

the betting strategy here in the the key takeaway here is that we're gonna polarize and never use a small sizing and always use the bigger sizing here on the turn and then as you'll see here will start bluffing with a lot of our ace highs because of some of the blockers we'll block a lot Bluff a lot with the ace of clubs bluffing bluffing they're strong blocking his strongest flush draws etc so just a quick thing basically we'll about thirteen and then big blind here's a key takeaway when we we start betting large here on the turn the out of position player is going to be folding a lot of air mate it makes it indifferent with his eight so when you see a mix here when it shows like for example a nine eight suited here it has it folding sometimes and calling sometimes when it's mixed here between fold and call that means it's basically zero evie and the big blind is indifferent between calling and folding so by polarizing our range on the turn to an eight or better a stronger eight or better we're basically forcing the big blind to be indifferent calling with his eights and he's basically only calling with like Kings are better and like his over pairs and his even like his queen three of clubs now our folding jack three clubs the strongest flush some of his weakest flush drills are starting to fold the turn now because they just don't have enough equity to continue and so yeah that's a basic overview we're gonna went through these a little quicker because we have four turn cards we want to get to but that's a basic overview of how the deuce of Spades plays so in summary equities are really close and we're gonna start polarizing on the turn so the next turn car we're gonna look at is the flush completers so we're gonna look at the flush completers now so the first one we're gonna look at is the ace of clubs so same question how do equities change on the ace of clubs turn card from the flop so who has the equity advantage and how big of an equity advantage do they think they have on the ace of clubs Mike yes the bet 13 is 13 big blinds I just set it up but everything in big blinds to make it easier alright some people say imposition equity ranges you know MP equity increases high flush completer out of position low flush completer in position in position as an advantage MP gets a boost alright so on the ace of clubs the imposition player gets a big range advantage on the ace of clubs so the out of position players equity on the ace of clubs is 43% and in position player has a 56% range advantage why is this we're gonna go to the top pair column this is why top pair out of position seven and a half percent so if

like in terms of the big game it starts to get a little bit narrower up here um we're going to start to polarize more on the turn so here we're at 60 and I have seven4 dece but this is two tone so we're slightly different stock size here and it's going to change a little bit because it's two- tone so 74 Deuce so what's the main difference here between 74 deuce and King Jack in terms of the small game the big blind has a lot of err here but what happened to the buttons range here the button has a lot of air too we have too much now like Queen Jack King 10 Queen 10 Jack 10 Ace 9 Ace 10 king8 suited King do suited all this we we have a lot of air now as well because we missed this flop because we rais with offit eights and offit N9 and offit 10 and Jacks so we don't hit a pair very often on this board right the big blind doesn't hit a pair pair there very often either both players have a lot of air right it's not that hard on 74 Duce to realize that both players miss this flop a lot but what's the difference here with the big game the overpair advantage is what's going to drive the betting here we have eights nines tens Jacks Queens Kings Aces we also are going to have A7 King seven we have A7 off King seven off A7 suited King seven suited um all the hands that the big blank does not have so now we tie in the small the we we kind of tie maybe the button wins a little bit in the air game cuz you know but both players miss the flop a lot and both players have a lot of air okay and the button wins the big game by a lot because all their over pairs if we look here the big blind doesn't have eights nines tens Jacks Queens Kings Aces they have A7 is basically their best hand they don't have 74 off they don't have four Deuce off they got have pocket fours and pocket Deuces and pocket sevens sure but so we win this big game with our overcards so what's going to be our strategy on this board I already told you we're going to bet very large are we going to bet a lot are we going to check a lot like what's kind of our strategy here so what should happen here is we're going to check and we should bet very large a lot and never check and this is the thing that people screw up is they don't realize that we just check a lot here why can't we bet 100% of the time here why why do we check so much here on 74 Deuce we check a lot because we have too much air so it has nothing to do with balance it has nothing to

two cards nine or higher lots of suited connected hands of suited gapped hands so all the hands that are in white opt to fold all the hands in blue up to shove all right let's talk about small blind strategy here I wanted to show you the main difference where I definitely recommend you don't play the shuffle fold strategy because notice here the small blind can shove if your only options are shove or fold the small blind can only shove 72 percent of hands right but if you're using the GTO strategy or at least a limp or shove strategy you actually get to play 80 of hands so that eight percent difference of hands you get to play is the widest it's going to be whenever you're looking at the differences in mid Rays or shove compared to just openshub only uh that doesn't matter and I think you probably want to do it so here is the actual GTO strategy where you're limping with a lot of your best hands and hands they can call it off again all the hands above the hands that are open shoving limp and then call all the hands below these are going to be the junky suited hands and junkie off suit hands these hands limp and then fold to a shove nice and easy but this is something I would definitely recommend you learn because it matters it does matter to be able to play an extra eight percent of hands in this situation when you are facing it all in this is when someone shoves before you and now it is on you you're going to want to call off with hands that have the correct Equity based on your pod odds while still accounting for the players yet to act as there are more players yet to act you must call off Tighter and Tighter say under the gun shoves and you're in second position you're going to call off really tight but in front of the gun shoves and you're in the big line you're gonna call off substantially wider because there are now well there's now no one yet to act who can wake up with the nuts whereas when you're under the gun all the players you get to act can look at a random hand and have the nuts so that's a very very important thing to note also I would definitely recommend to call off a little bit tighter than these charts are going to recommend because again in tournaments you don't want to go broke and I also think most people don't shove quite as often as they shouldn't also realize your opponents may be using a they may not be using the all-inter fold strategy they may be limping sometimes maybe men raising they may be shoving way too wide they may be shoving way too loose whatever it is you're going to want to figure out what they do wrong so that you can account for it that said

Table 11: EV Gains and Loses Versus Different Villain Types As seen in Table 11, GTO play can’t lose or win EV vs a GTO player, but it gains EV vs suboptimal players depending on the severity of their leaks. MES on average gains 6.4bb/100 more than GTO vs suboptimal players but doing so creates a leak that can, on average, be counter-exploited for -15.62 bb/100. Even vs an extremely bad opponent who is calling 2x more often than they should, MES only captures 6.3bb/100 more than GTO and can be exploited back for -2.5bb/100. If the Villain is calling 50% tighter than they should, MES does very well, yielding 24.6bb/100 more than GTO, but can in turn be counter-exploited by -62.4bb/100. Additionally, the strategy shift is extreme as Hero is now shoving 100% hands instead of 28%, so this exploitative adjustment can easily be spotted by an observant Villain. MES involves a degree of risk, because you are putting yourself in a situation where your opponent could counter-exploit your new strategy to an even greater margin than you were trying to exploit them in the first place, if they figure out what you are doing. Also, if you are wrong with your assessment of Villain’s play (which is inevitable from time to time) and adjust incorrectly, you will be the one deviating to a weaker strategy that will in turn lose value. Thus you must be very careful and have a high degree of certainty in your reads if you are aiming for maximum exploitation. Minimally Exploitative Strategy (MinES) Let’s return to the Clairvoyance Toy game solution. Pot: $100 Stacks: $100 Board: 3♠3♥3♣2♦2♠ Player1: EV $75 AA: Bet $100 (100%), Check (0%) QQ: Bet $100 (50%), Check (50%) Player2: EV $25 Vs Check: Check KK (100%) Vs $100 Bet: Call KK (50%), Fold KK (50%)

Hand Range 94: Stack Depths for UTG+1 Push

weak, like a squeeze. Remember that your profit in this situation comes from lesser made hands or pure air. Lesser made hands might bet again on the turn if you flat-call on the flop, but pure air certainly won’t. Your best chance to get his chips is to raise and let him read you for weak. The same would be true if player B bet and player C called. If the pre-flop leader gives up the lead and someone else takes it, your action will be determined by whether anyone calls between you and thenew leader. With calls, you raise. Without calls, you call, playing the hand as you would heads-up. And if everyone checks to the player on your right, you again just call his bet, giving early-position players the chance to raise and denying them the chance to fold. In all of these circumstances, the two controlling ideas are, first, default back to your heads-up strategies when it’s appropriate to do so andsecond, take actions most likely to be read as a bluff. Big Hand, Multi-Way, Out of Position, With the Lead, Untextured Board Same cards, same board, same multi-way pot. You have pocket 9s, raised in early position, and got three callers behind you. You’re now out of position with the lead on the hand and a monster holding. With a hand like nines and a board like A♣-9♦-3♥, this becomes the easiest of hands to play: Just bet. Look, you were the pre-flop raiser, so a bet is natural for you. After all, you’ll continuation bet here quite a bit (though not as often as when headsup). Betting out makes sense in the context of the rest of your play. A check, I guess with the intention of check-raising, will just look supersuspicious. But here’s the real reason to bet: What on Earth do you think all those people are calling with anyway? Don’t you think at least one of them has anace in his hand (it’s not like you have one)? They have to be calling with something and the single most likely card out against you is an ace. If youbet out, an ace is never folding and may be nice enough to raise you. If you get called, you can go for the check-raise on the turn. If you get raisedon the flop, well, you’re just golden. Maybe you’re thinking that if you check, an ace will bet and you can get in a check-raise. Maybe, but it still won’t be as profitable as leading out. When you check, your opponent will bet about 1,000 into that 2,000 pot, while being somewhat suspicious because you checked away the lead. Then you raise, he freaks, and you lose him. But as we’ve seen in similar heads-up situations, if you lead out, he’s at minimum calling that same1,000 bet and likely raising it to 3,500 or 4,000. If he doesn’t raise, you’ll get more out of him on the turn anyway. In fact, it’s even better than that heads-up situation, because with three players holding position on

to outlast the other players now you may say why wouldn't the big side just go along with anything then and make you fold a ton because when you do actually wake up with a hand that can call like aces and kings and you do call it is just an absolute disaster for that player because they took their stack that was very big and had a lot of equity and just do it in the garbage notice if you're the big stack against the short stack though now the risk premium is basically none so let's say you have 50 big blinds and the short stack has eight let's say you find a scenario where you need to win 30 of the time maybe you need to win like 32 percent of the time to adjust for the risk premium instead which doesn't change things a ton uh and then we go through and explain how medium stacked it changes some and then shorts that can change some as well and if you're not thinking like this when you are deep in the tournament you're gonna end up making errors because you are gonna call in appropriately or fold inappropriately and that's not gonna work out well for you you wanna make sure that you are always playing well and this book ensures you are playing well so make sure you check it out secrets of professional tournament poker the essential guide you can get it right now at d and be poker.com secrets that is d-a-n-d-b-com secrets i hope you enjoy it i've worked very hard on this book it's been 10 years in the making it's important to realize that i've improved my skills a lot over the last 10 years when i first wrote the book i actually knew roughly what to do in a lot of the spots that come up very frequently but i had no clue why and there were some spots that i was just kind of clueless about a good example i used to fold my big blind too often when shallow stacked i would defend like 60 of hands but you're supposed to be defending more like 80 of hands in a lot of scenarios and that's a leak that's a mistake but i have improved my skills and i have learned also in shallow stacked i used to never lead all in whenever i was in the big blind and someone raised but for example say you're playing 12 big blinds deep and the cutoff raises and you call the big blind with a wide range if it comes all low connected cards like let's say 764 you should be leading all in for 2x pot some portion of the time and i never did that back in the day because well i had not studied with gto solvers and i didn't know nobody else was doing it either nobody knew but now we have all worked hard we've improved our skills we have studied and i've taken all of

example of a hand like 10 9 suited 10 9 suited yeah I can make two pair but it can also make a ton of straights and flushes so we're really looking at suited miss and connectedness when we're playing 150 big blind seed that's the biggest thing you need to take away from this when we're 50 big blinds deep you want hands they can make good top pairs so for example let's look at a hand like King Jack offsuit versus 10 9 suited at 150 big ones deep 10 9 suit is an amazing hand because you make a ton of straight so you can make you know I don't even know how many combinations are straight is but the 6 7 8 the 8 Queen Jack and then you can also make flushes versus King Queen you can make Broadway a couple different straights but you can't make any flushes and it makes the playability to him much worse but at 50 big blinds King Queen on a King 8 4 board becomes a really really powerful hand and as we get into stack to pot ratios later on we will find out that it's easier to stack off with good top pairs when you're 50 big blinds deep versus when you're 150 with one steep you need a lot better than a good top pair to stack off so I want to look at these two ranges here on the right that we have the top range is gonna be kind of a this is like a middle position opening range at 150 big blinds as you can see we're playing all suited aces all the suited eights all these suited connectors suited one gap was like nine seven stood at eight six suited seven five student and all pocket pairs but take a look at the offsuit combos we're only raising Ace King off ace queen off King Queen off and ace Jack offsuit so that's only four different types of off suit hands that we're gonna be raising and that's really important when we're playing 150 big blinds deep in middle position just take a look at how suited heavy this range is and it's very suited pocket pair heavy and this sets us up really well post flop at 150 big blinds because we're playing hands that can make flushes straights sets strong two pairs and so we're not opening a lot of garbage hands you know King 10 off is 10 off ace nine off etc now this bottom range is a 50 big blind range and we have three different colors here and I'll point out at the bottom at the end here so the color in the red are all those same hands in 150 big blind range the blue the blue hands are now hands that we are folding preflop at 50 big blinds so 50 big blinds were no longer raising deuces reach fours 5 4 suited 65 suited 7 6 2 2 8 6 suited Jack 8 10

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normally would. Competent Regs normally float flops quite wide in position. It's natural to balance your strong flop calling hands with some weaker ones that expect future fold equity, especially when in position vs. wide ranges like in BB vs. SB battles. This means that Hero must not play turn cards in a fit-or-fold manner where Villain is likely to be capable of floating wide. Hero must make sure that he doesn't c- bet the flop too wide and that he continues bluffing enough of his range on the turn to stop Villain's floats from being easily profitable, even on safe turns that don't change the texture. The wider Villain floats the flop, the more unbalanced towards bluffs we should be on the turn. If in doubt, balance is a healthy starting point. Having a roughly even ratio of bluffs to value in your turn barrel range often equate to a balanced strategy on the turn as we'll come to see later in Chapter 13. See here for a recap of how to interpret the Fold to F Cbet stat. Factor 6 - SDV SDV has been a very frequently recurring factor throughout the manual. The trend is clear: the less SDV Hero has, the more inclined he should be to bluff provided there is the expectation of some fold equity. Bad showdown value hands gain much more EV than good SDV hands do by bluffing since they almost never win the pot unimproved at showdown. The fold equity that a bluff or semi-bluff reaps for low SDV hands is precious as it turns a hand that usually loses into one that wins X% of the time where X is fold equity plus any sliver of SDV Hero might pick up on the river. Hands with greater SDV don't jump so drastically in EV when they bluff. If a hand already wins 40% of the time without fold equity, it is not much use to make 40% of Villain's range fold. That 40% is almost certainly the same chunk that Hero was already beating at showdown. Hero does however, in the process of turning the hand into a misguided bluff, lose more money against the stronger parts of Villain's range that aren't folding. Example Turn Spots Let's put what we've just learned into practice and decide whether or not Hero should continue bluffing or semi-bluffing the turn in the following three hands. Hero's HUD reads the same as before.

conservative so we're not gonna give them the king queen and you know even if we start to take out some of these like queen ten to the king ten cities that we're not sure if he's shoving or not it'd be pretty optimistic you know ace Jack here is pretty break-even at like 0.3 0.2 so basically what I figured out now is ace Jack is somewhere between a really really bad call and a okay call you know it's never a wow this is an amazing hand to call with ace Queen as you can see here like in this scenario ace queen is two point five five which is like a fist pump have to call every time so there's a big difference here between ace Jack and ace Queen because ace Jack only dominates a few of the suited aces that he shows but ace queen dominates all the ACE Jack's that he shoves so we kind of come on in the median range here and it's still kind of a marginal call so I think the key takeaway here is that in my analysis of this hand I would say that I have a pretty good skill edge in this tournament it's really soft that the one case started with a 8,000 players there's like 500 left I heard a really good quote from Matt Berkey last week on a podcast and I've always known this in my head but just hearing stuff again just reiterate and he kind of made a point about when they were deep in a tournament and he felt like one of his friends kind of made a mistake and he's told them you know if you had the option 1 out of 10 times to be the chip leader or 10 out of 10 times to just be in the tournament with 10 big blinds or any chips at all which would you choose and he said you should without a doubt choose being in the tournament 10 out of 10 times rather than being the chip leader 1 out of 10 because in these soft filled tournaments the quote he is was your button the seat is worth way way more than the chip lead in any tournament because just having you you know being in the tournament he's gonna turn into the chip lead some of the time to so I think ace jack-off here is to marginal of a call I think the ACE Queen is for sure I call ace Jack suited almost for sure a call so I'd probably be calling like 7th + ace Jack suited + ace Queen off + that would be my calling range in this spot and the key takeaway I want you to take away from this spot is how I played around with the ranges so I did the theory in theory it was a really good call was one point to the worst case it was so let's do this it was plus one point - I think

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

cards matched by the board. A low can still be made, provided some combination of five cards can be played without a pair. In Omaha jargon, you have a “live ace” for low. Example Five Your hand: A-A-4-7 Opponent: 2-5-6-K Board: 2-4-7-8-9 This time, your opponent wins the whole pot. His 9-high straight beats your two pair, and his low is good as well. You must play an 8-7-4-2-A low, but your opponent can play a 7-6-5-4-2. Example Six Your hand: A-3-J-J Opponent: 4-4-8-Q Board: 3-9-10-J-Q 168 This hand is likely to send you shuffling off to the dice tables shaking your head. You have a set of jacks, but lose to a queen-high straight. Note that you also have a trey in your hand matching the trey on board, but you cannot make a full house, as this would require three cards from your hand. It is impossible in Omaha, as it is in hold’em, to hold a full house when there is no pair on the board. Example Seven Your hand: A? 2? 8? 10? Opponent: 3-4-5-8 Board: 6-7-9-J-K (four hearts) You win this pot, but not with a flush. You must hold two hearts in order to make a flush, so the ace by itself is meaningless. However, the 10-8 in your hand produces a jack-high straight, barely edging your opponent’s 9-high straight. No low is possible here. Example Eight Your hand: A-2-4-J Opponent: 4-5-7-7 Board: 3-3-7-J-J You take another tough loss on this hand. Again, no low is possible, and the best you can do for a high is play the A-J from your hand with J-J-7 from the board, giving you trip jacks with an ace kicker. Be careful not to think you have a full house. It could turn out to be an expensive mistake. Playing his 7- 7 with the 7-J-J on the board, your opponent does make a full house, with sevens full of jacks. Note that if you held A-2-3-J rather than A-2-4-J, you would have won the pot with a bigger full house. Example Nine Your hand: 2-3-3-Q Opponent: A-2-3-Q Board: 8-8-8-8-9 So, you finally decide to take an inferior starting hand up against your opponent, and you emerge victorious. Do you see why? Since only three 169 board cards can be used, you take 8-8-8 from the board and combine it with your pair of threes for a full house. The best hand your opponent can make, however, is 8-8-8-A-Q. By the way, any player holding two nines in his hand would have the nuts, as nines full of eights would beat all varieties of eights full. The second nuts? Two aces. Example Ten Your hand: A-4-5-8 Opponent: A-4-5-K Board: A-4-5-8-9 You win the entire pot. Your aces and eights nip your opponent’s aces and fives. Neither one of you can make a low hand, as you must be able to play five unpaired cards. If there had been a low card on the board instead of the nine, both you and your opponent would be able to make some kind

If you hold a hand such as A-Q or T-T, you are generally better off just calling a limp by a tight player. Conversely, you can play aggressively behind a loose player’s limp, in an attempt to isolate him in the pot. It is nearly always a desirable situation if you can play a pot heads up against a weaker hand. If a loose player has limped and you are on or next to the button, you can raise with any of the hands you would have played had it been folded around to you. This can include hands as weak as K-T, which still figure to have a decent chance at being the best hand in this situation. Plus, you hold the benefit of position. Tip # 11 of 52 You are generally receiving good odds on your hand when faced with calling half a bet in the small blind. Suppose three players have called the initial bet. You are in the small blind with half a bet in. What price are you receiving from the pot on this call? You must put in half a bet, and the pot contains nine half-bets (including the big blind and your small blind) already. So, the pot is laying you a price of 9-to-1. This means you must win only 1 time in 10 for calling to be correct, assuming no additional betting. However, there is additional betting, and your positional disadvantage should also be considered here. Therefore, you should be holding a halfway decent hand to complete the bet. A broad range of hands are worth a call, though. Any two suited cards will do, as well as any hand containing an ace. Also, any two connecting cards 9-8 or higher are worth a call. Hands with one gap (cards not adjacent in rank, but separated by one rank) smaller than Q-T should typically be folded (T-8, for example). Any pair is playable from the small blind. Some of these hands need to be hit pretty solidly by the flop for you to continue, but they do possess the potential to develop into big hands. The preceding guidelines apply to games with a 1-2 chip blind structure (such as the $1 and $2 blinds in a $2-$4 game or $3 and $6 in a $6-$12 game), in which the small blind is exactly half the amount of the big blind. However, you may find yourself in a game with either a 1-3 or 2-3 structure. This has a huge effect on how the small blind should be played. For 1-3 chip games, treat the small blind as you would a late position hand. If the hand isn’t worth a full bet from late position, it isn’t worth two-thirds of a bet from the small blind. Of the types of hands listed earlier as playable, suited trash and bad aces should now be folded, as should connectors such as 9-8 and T-9 offsuit. Small pairs are still worth a call, as are medium to large suited connectors. In 2-3 chip games, playing the

said Ling, awaking me after what seemed only a moment. There was no pounding on doors this time but a ceremonious announcement. I told Ling to show the Donkey in. The Donkey, standing in the doorway, bowed respectfully, and Ling grinned. "The General offers his apologies,' Ling translated. 'The Honourable Adviser has displayed great skill and patriotism and the miserable German is already in prison and his radio seized. He swallowed his code and is awaiting trial.' It would be some trial, I thought, if the poor wretch was not indeed already dead. Miss Emily Hahn in China to Me gives a good description of the arrest: In actuality he [meaning the author] was a secret agent and everyone knew his real name, and his reason for keeping the German mistress who hung around the Hostel. Once when we were suddenly caught by the blackout she was noticed by Morgan sneaking into the Hostel when we had all been ordered to stay out of doors. She must have crept up the steps during the raid and indulged in her nefarious trade in the room of a German soidisant refugee. A few nights later the refugee was arrested by Chinese soldiers. It was just like a movie; the German protested he had nothing to hide, though they searched his rooms and found a transmitter there. He chewed up a paper and tried to swallow it. It had a code on it, exactly like the movies. Everybody was badly shaken by the scene. Hitherto we had accepted him as a perfectly pukka refugee. He didn't seem surprised at the arrest, or even very indignant. He was angry and violent - he pulled a gun on the soldiers, and there was a struggle - but he wasn't surprised. 'Let me get dressed, will you?' he said. The soldiers let him dress, tied his hands with rope, and then marched him out past all of us, standing there in our pyjamas in a row, our mouths hanging open. He didn't look at any of us. That was queer too. If it had been me I should have appealed to the crowd, but he didn't. Next day several people at the Hostel were all for Taking Steps. There was an uneasy feeling that we Europeans should stick together, and that no doubt it was all a fantastic mistake. Suppose it was a mistake? Allegedly he had been tortured by the Nazis before he escaped from Europe. So how could he possibly have been a spy for the Axis? Certain newspapermen, as usual, acted as if they knew all about it but weren't talking. The American secret agent certainly did know, but he isn't talking either. I wonder if he tells his friends the things he used to tell us while playing poker. I shouldn't think so. Most of his conversation in those days was about women, and everyone in the Hostel knew exactly what money he was giving the German lady, and for what specific purpose. He didn't talk about those visits upstairs during the blackouts, though.

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Win rates tend to be a lot higher in live games compared to online games because live games are almost always softer than online games. Casinos attract all kinds of recreational players looking to gamble, socialize and have a good time. These players do not play anywhere near fundamentally sound poker, resulting in strong players having higher win rates. Live players also lack the experience of online players. If a live player plays 300 hands per day on average then, after one year, they will have played 72,000 hands. Online poker rooms offer the possibility of multi-tabling, allowing players to play two, four, six, 10, or even 20 tables at the same time. This, combined with the faster pace of the dealing software compared to the speed of a human dealer, and the limited timebanks for decision making, results in an exponential increase in the number of hands online players get dealt. A typical online player can easily play 3,000 hands in a day, or 720,000 hands in a year. In one year, an online player will play as many poker hands as a live player will in 10 years! Of course, there are other factors that come into play and not necessarily all online players are better than live players, but this difference alone is more than enough to make the average online player a lot tougher than the average live player. Your overall win rate is the average of the win rates you have at each position of the table. At a 6-max table, if the pot was to get split equally among all six positions, the win rate in each position would be 25bb/100 but, as we will see, there are many factors that affect players’ profitability according to their position at the table. In some positions, the win rate can be higher than 25bb/100, and for others, it will be lower (Table 15). Table 15: Online 6-max Win Rate Examples (bb/100) The win rate in the blinds is always negative. The BB starts the hand posting 1bb, and the SB posts 0.5bb, so their win rates start off at -100bb/100 and -50bb/100 respectively. Starting with such a disadvantage, no matter how good a player is, their win rate in the blinds can never be as

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

Unless Villain is particularly aggressive facing c-bets it's very likely that a c-bet will have an immense amount of fold equity. The reason for this is two fold: Villain already folds to a large amount of c-bets according to our HUD. The most common hand he'd call a bet with (top pair) is now far less likely due to Hero holding two of the remaining three queens. Checking here and inducing Villain to take a stab with his air heavy range while giving him the chance to improve his hand in order to extract value later on is a sensible option. Note that if Villain does have an 8 or a Q, he will in all likelihood bet the turn and Hero's position ensures that he will be able to raise and build a large pot any way. Being in position is always nice for ensuring that money goes in on a later street one way or another. Hero Checks.

Now, how can we adjust our own 3-bet game to maximise our EV vs. an opener with 60-80BB? BU is just the type of player Hero would love to 3-bet bluff a wide polar range against for fold equity purposes. Hero's value range will be narrow and his bluff range will span quite far down into his would-be folding range (hands too weak to call with.) This strategy is made even more lucrative by Villain's terrible cocktail of huge sizing and high Fold to 3Bet After Raise stat. This unique stack- size allows Hero to pick sizing that makes both shoving and 4-bet bluffing unattractive means of defence for Villain. A standard 3x 3-bet to 10.5BB would be too large and would allow shoving to be a reasonable counter strategy. Hero wants to hurt Villain's RFE on a shove but still maintain a reasonable degree of pre-flop fold equity. For this reason he should err on the smaller side. A 3-bet of 8.5BB here should still mop up a reasonable amount of EV in fold equity and renders a shove by Villain a little ridiculous due to a poor risk:reward ratio. Note though that a smaller 4-bet to 20BB with the intention of folding to a shove is probably even worse since Villain will be pot committed and have to call off the rest anyway with most reasonable 4-bet bluffing hands. Hero will make a great deal of money in this spot and needs to attack it aggressively with smallish sizing. Hero 3-bets to 8.5BB.

several hundred dollars sitting on the table that you still consider yours. Of course, the money is not yours because of that one last improbable card on the end that beat you. With so many people staying to the end in each hand, implied collusion is rampant. Bad beats are an unavoidable cost of play. Putting people on hands. When there are six hands up against you, how do you figure out what they all are? Someone is on a straight draw; someone is on a flush draw; someone flopped two-pair; someone has a small pocket pair and is waiting for a set. But which one of your opponents is in each of these situations? A Common Mistake: Over aggression, particularly raising after the flop. You flop a flush draw; a person in front of you bets. How strong is their hand? You raise to find out and expect that you will also get a free card. Three players after you call your raise and so does the original bettor. You have learned nothing, and with this many players, odds are that you will not get your free card. Often it is better to get your flush draw as cheaply as possible and worry about raising if you do hit the flush because someone will still call at the end. Strategy: Fold frequently. If you watch the game and see ten hands in a row ending with a showdown, will that change with your presence? If no one's bets are respected, yours will not be either. To claim the pot, you must have the best cards at showdown. Forget about bluffingit won't work. What you can be loose on in these games is the position requirement for your starting cards. You can play drawing hands from an early position because you can safely assume that the re- 78 THE INTELLIGENT GUIDE TO TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER quirements for playing a drawing hand-large pot, no pre-flop raisewill always be present. However, don't start playing garbage for starting cards and think that, because there are always many callers, anything is playable. Playing garbage is a seductive trap in loose-passive games because any two starting cards can hit the flop and win a big pot. All the pots are big, so don't compete unless you have an edge at the beginning. One way to think about loose-passive games is to imagine a poker player's dream where every hand has a large pot and you are always dealt the best starting cards. Want to realize that dream? Then fold every garbage hand that comes your way.'With correct strategy, loosepassive games are the most profitable to play in. Loose-aggressive Games (Play-money Poker) Go onto the Internet and join one of the play-money games. You will find poker play at its most aggressive-raising wars with raises frequently capped, people betting heavily on the flimsiest of cards, and no caution shown when scary cards appear on the board. Of course, everyone can afford to be aggressive because the money is truly meaningless-there isn't any. Play-money poker is an extreme example

Effective nuts A hand that is not the literal nuts, but given the actions throughout the hand, can effectively be played or treated as though it is the nuts.

RAISING BEFORE THE FLOP 69 Reasons to Raise There are at least six main reasons to raise before the flop in no limit hold ’em. Depending on the stack sizes and your opponents’ tendencies, some reasons may become more important than others at different times. The six reasons to raise before the flop are: • For value • For isolation • To steal the blinds • As a semi-bluff • For deception • To manipulate the pot size Raising for Value Raising for value is the most straightforward reason to raise. You have a strong hand likely to win a showdown, and you’d like to force your opponents either to fold or to risk more money (presumably with you having the best of it). The shallower the money, the more importance raising for value gains relative to other preflop considerations. For example, you are playing $10–$20 blind with $4,000 (deep) stacks. You are in the small blind with A♢Q♠. Two players call $20. You raise to $100 (for value), the big blind folds, and both limpers call. You likely have the best hand of the three, so you have gotten much the best of it on your $100 bet. But there is $3,900 left to bet, and your raise has changed the course of the hand. Having raised preflop might allow your opponents to read your hand better or make sharper postflop betting decisions for the remaining money. If that’s the case, your $100 “value” raise may not be worth quite what you think it should be. Now contrast that example with a similar one. You are playing $10–$20 blind, but with only a $100 (extremely shallow) stack. (Please ignore for now how you arrived in a situation with such a tiny stack.) You are in the small blind with A♢Q♠. Two players call $20. Raising to $100 is now a no-brainer. With no wagering left, you should get your money in with the best of it and hope your hand holds up. The shallower your stack, the more compelling raising for value becomes. Put another way, the larger the percentage of your stack (or your opponents’ if theirs are shallower) a preflop raise constitutes, generally, the stronger your hand “hot and cold” must be to make the raise.17 If a raise is only two percent of your stack, you need not raise with all your strong hands, and you need not necessarily have a strong hand to raise. If a 17“Hot and cold” strength means having the ability to win often when all-in.

so, you have so little time to make money that you just have to forget about those possibilities and push your good hands to the limit. You should assume you have a lock hand, and try to figure out the best way to get Player F's remaining $590. I'd bet $200 to $250 here, figuring that the pot odds would force him to call, then go for the rest on fifth street. (This play is not correct if you feel your opponent will only call with a set or a high club. If so, you may need to bet more to give him lesser odds.) Action: You actually go all-in, and Player F calls. He shows down Q♣T♣, and takes the pot with a better flush. Hand 2-2 Situation: Very early in a one-table satellite. Your hand: 8♦6♥ Action to you: Players A, B, C, and D all fold. Question: Should you try to steal the pot? If you think so, how big a bet should you make? Answer: You shouldn't try to steal here, even if you're consciously trying to play an aggressive or super-aggressive game. True, you've had four folds in front of you, which is a nice sign. The 30 table is effectively only six players. The trouble is that you're early in the tournament, there aren't many chips in the center of the table for you to win, and there are still five players to act behind you. That adds up to a poor risk-reward ratio in my book. If you make a smallish bet (say three to four times the big blind) you may just get a few callers behind you, because the amount isn't large enough to chase anyone out. If you make a large bet, you'll chase out everyone who doesn't have a good hand, but you've put a lot of money in play to win the pathetic little pot out there, and the strong hands will still look you up. When the blinds are very small relative to your own, and the chip counts of the other players, conservative play should be your default strategy except in unusual circumstances. Here you have eight-six offsuit, and there's nothing unusual about your circumstances at all. Just fold. Action: You bet $30, in an attempt to steal the pot. Player F folds. Player G calls. Player H calls. The small blind puts in another $25 to call. The big blind folds. The pot is now $130. Disaster. You got three callers, you'll be second to act out of four players, and in all likelihood your hand is fourth-best right now. Flop: 9♥8♠7♠ Action: The small blind checks. What do you do? Answer: Not a bad result for you. You've got middle pair, plus the idiot end of a straight draw. (The low end is called the idiot end - only an idiot would have been playing the cards to hit that end!) You should bet here. You have a hand now, and the texture of the flop is good. It will have missed the players calling with

aces up in my book.' He raked in the pot. 'Where's the geldings T 'Hitched out in front.' Hairlip tore up his cards and snarled at Monty. 'You common son-of-a-bitch, you tricked me!' 'You tricked yourself, simpleton.' He turned to Jack who was watching. 'Take over, Jack, if anyone wants to continue.' To me he said, 'Check out, kid, and let's go see our new ed wagon.' W found the rig at the hitch ring where Hairlip had said it was. Monty stood off admiringly, then examined the black geldings' teeth to see their age, stood back again to regard their cropped tails. 'Four-year-olds,' he said. 'Matched like two black peas in a pod.' 'And cost you nothing.' I grinned. 'Nothing!' he exclaimed. 'How much money do you think I lost back East before I got some sense?' M hadn't thought about your ever having lost.' 'Well, I did, and for higher stakes than we play here. You're lucky, kid. You're learning as you go along. I had no one to point out my mistakes. I had to learn the hard way.' He seemed lost in thought. I broke the silence by asking, 'Why did you use your right hand when you bet Hairlip? For a moment you had me fooled.' Monty grinned. 'Just in case Hairlip had observed my damned-fool habit of betting with my right hand when 1 am bluffing. But I was taking needless precautions.' 'I knew from the play that you had two sevens backed up and made the third seven on the third card, so I wasn't worried too much. But do you always draw to small pairs if you have them backed up?' 'If they are eights or less I take only one card, and if I don't make threes at once, I fold. It's a sucker play to draw the limit to a small pair. If you don't help, you're licked. The betting gets too expensive. But if they are nines or better I draw the limit unless meanwhile the play indicates I am beat.' Monty lifted the buggy whip from the socket at the driver's seat and climbed in the rig. 'Hop in, kid, and we'll see how fast these geldings can trot.' Monty started the geldings at a fast clip, then eased them down for a breather two miles farther at the Devil's Tea Table, which actually looked like a table some thirty feet in the air, formed doubtless by the glacial age. He walked the horses along a grove of maple trees called Lovers' Lane. The moon was shining through the leaves. 'Got a girl, kid?' he asked suddenly. 'Sure,' I said. 'There's something seductive about the smell of horses, moonlight, and wet dew glistening on the green grass, isn't there?' 'Why, Monty,' I said, laughing, 'I didn't know you were a poet. What's the order of seduction?' 'Separately, they're not compelling. As a whole, no girl can withstand them.' 'My girl isn't that kind of a girl,' I said. 'Any girl is - with no reflection on her morals.' 'Monty, you're

say OOP bets half-pot on the river. How much equity would IP need to make this call? The classic way to solve this is to use the simple equation: Required equity = (call) / (pot after you call) For a halfpot bet: 0.5 / 2 = 25%; IP needs at least 25% equity to call this bet. Another way to say this is that IP needs to recoup at least as much money as they put into the pot. However, this can also be calculated using the expected value. The benefit of this method is that it allows you to calculate more than just the break-even point. You can see exactly how much you’d gain or lose given some bet size and a certain amount of equity. EV = (Win% x $Won) – (Lose% x $Lost) $Won = 1.5 (the pot plus villain’s half pot bet) $Lost = 0.5 (the amount to call) Win% = EQ Lose% = 1-EQ EV = (EQ x 1.5) – ((1-EQ) x 0.5) We can find the break-even point by setting EV to 0: 0 = (EQ x 1.5) – ((1 – EQ) x 0.5) 1.5 EQ = 0.5 (1 – EQ) 3 EQ = 1 – EQ 4EQ = 1 EQ = ¼ EQ = 25% In other words, you need 25% equity to break even. Alpha – refers to how often the villain needs to fold for you to break even with a 0% equity bluff. The classic equation looks like this: risk/(risk+reward) Where risk is the amount to bluff and reward is the pot you gain if they fold. For a half–pot bluff, the risk is 0.5 and the reward is 1. 0.5 / (0.5 + 1) = 33.3% But what if they fold more or less? How profitable is the bluff then? Well, we can use an expected value equation to find out! EV = (pot x fold%) – (bet x call%) Now let’s derive alpha using EV: Set EV to 0 in order to find the break-even point: 0 = (1 x fold%) – (0.5 x call%) 0 = fold% – (0.5 (1 – fold%)) fold% = (1 – fold%) / 2 2 fold% = 1 – fold% 3 fold% = 1 fold% = ⅓ = 33% OOP MDF: Refers to the % of time OOP must call in order to prevent IP from having a profitable bluff with a 0% equity hand. We won’t go through the exact derivation as this is just equal to 1-alpha which we’ve already calculated above. MDF = pot/(pot+call) MDF = 1 / (1 + 0.5) = 66.6% Or simply 1- alpha. Conclusion The art of valuing a hand is nuanced, complex, and can take a lifetime to master. Expected value is a key metric to every poker decision you’ll ever make. Does this mean you need to be performing complex math in your head at the table? No, of course not, poker is more intuitive in practice . But you do need to understand how EV works in order to correctly think through your decisions,

got to bet the flop for a cheap shot at denying their opponent’s equity , and when that didn’t pan out, they enjoyed high equity realization themselves by seeing the turn and river cards. If they still haven’t improved by the river, they may get some equity denied by a bluff, but they’re no worse off than they would have been by having to fold to a flop check-raise against a more aggressive opponent. In practice, you should fold even more than this solution indicates. Nothing about BB’s river strategy is nodelocked , so the response shown here acknowledges that BB may well act on their incentive to bluff aggressively. Even so, UTG does not do a lot of bluff catching. If your assumption on all earlier streets was that BB would be too passive, then you could stick with that read and lean on the side of folding all your bluff catchers on the river. It’s also worth noting that the nodelocked solver strategy has BB floating the flop quite aggressively, in anticipation of profitable river bluffs if the turn checks through. This is the next best thing to check-raising the flop and donk betting the turn, both of which BB was restricted from doing optimally by our nodelocks. An opponent who over-folds the flop won’t have enough weak hands to bluff. A real life opponent who does not check-raise this flop aggressively enough may well over-fold rather than float from out of position with hands like 6 ♦ 5 ♥ as the solver sometimes does. Even if this player wanted to bluff this river aggressively, they wouldn’t have enough weak hands to bluff as aggressively as the solver does, in which case all of the mixed strategy calls in the chart above would be more profitable as pure folds. The bottom line is: if you bet the flop aggressively because you expected a passive response from your opponent, then don’t feel compelled to keep barreling the turn or to bluff catch the river . Take your equity when you can, and be ready to fold when a passive opponent gets aggressive. Following Up An Exploitative Check-Raise Things play out a bit differently after BB check-raises a BTN who c-bets too often on the flop . On a 6 ♥ 3 ♦ 2 ♣ T ♠ board, BB has a wider check-raising range but nevertheless follows it up with a turn bet 71.3% of the time when BTN is nodelocked to continuation bet their entire range , compared with 61.3% of the time in an unlocked simulation : This is because BB widened their flop raising range to exploit a mistake BTN had already made , not one BB anticipated them making in response to the raise. After BTN’s initial mistake, everything else is in proportion . Because BTN’s betting range is so wide, BB can check-raise a wider range themselves without fear of exploitation. It is then correct for BTN to call the raise more liberally so both players take wider ranges to the turn than they would at equilibrium.

ninety percent of the time. It’s important to use a new set of flops each time, as the goal is to hone your ability to predict betting frequency from flop texture, not to memorize frequencies for a specific subset of flops. Step 3: Big or Small For each flop on your list, predict whether UTG will most commonly use a “small”, “medium”, or “large” size when they bet. These terms are relative; a “medium” size when short stacked might be a “small” size for a deeper stacked scenario. Don’t worry about the exact size; “small”, “medium”, and “large” are good enough for this circle. For example, in this 100bb scenario, UTG splits evenly between the small and medium sizes but never uses the larger ones. It makes the most sense to group 130% pot and All In together as the “large” sizes since All-In will never see much use. Pro Tip – Press ‘S’ to group small, medium, and large bet sizes together. Check your answers and repeat as necessary until you can get them right with 90% accuracy. Step 4: The cards Which hand classes show a clear preference for betting or checking? Now we get down to the nitty-gritty. And even here, we’re most concerned with broad strokes: which hands or hand classes show a clear preference for betting or checking? Don’t get bogged down in the details of why A6 bets 62% but A7 only 21%. All you need to know is that they are both close decisions. This step is considerably more complex than the previous ones, so consider using only a subset of the flops you’ve been working with, ideally those with a robust mix of bets and checks. Your objective here is to record, in two separate columns, a list of hands you expect to continuation bet most frequently on a given flop and a list of hands you expect to check most frequently. As before, don’t worry about bet size: simply recognizing that the hand benefits from betting is good enough. You want to be thorough here, listing as many different types of hands as possible for each category. Be sure to consider monster hands, modest made hands, draws, and complete air. There won’t always be examples of each in both categories, but you should aim to identify them when they belong there. In the example above, an A ♠ Q ♦ J ♠ flop from a 100bb cash game , you’d want to identify AA , QQ , JJ , and KT as virtually pure bets but also 98 s and unpaired diamond draws. There are no pure checks, but the most frequently checked hands are Q x, A x with a low kicker, and small pairs without a spade. There’s not such an easy way to score this step, but that’s okay, because it’s the final one. Once you have a good handle on how to bucket hands on all different types of flops in this configuration, it’s time to move on to a different one. Rinse & Repeat Train scenarios that are

bluffing? Of course not. First, he knows there’s an all-in player who can’t fold. So he can’t be bluffing that guy. Second, you look awfully pot-committed anyway, potcommitted and strong. So he shouldn’t be bluffing you. If he can’t be bluffing, then your queens or jacks can’t be good. So if someone wakes up withaces or kings (and it would have to be those hands exactly to come in behind an all-in player and pot-committed you) and he re-raises, you canactually get away from the hand. At the same time, players you wouldn’t like to fade, guys on AK off-suit, look at your flat-call and think, Well, he’s pot-committed. Why didn’t heshove? Then they put you on aces or kings and they fold. That’s called leveraging pot commitment and when you’re short-stacked and imperiled ina tournament, it can be just the life preserver you need. I hear you. You’re saying, “But if I fold to a raise from that guy who’s supposed to have aces or kings, I’m really short-stacked and imperiled.” Well, yeah. But which would you rather be? Short-stacked and imperiled or on the rail? You need to remember that raising isn’t necessarily the strongest move you can make. As we’ve seen in this book many times, the flat-call behind looks so strong it’s scary. When you don’t shove in a situation where most people would, it makes you look scarier still. Competitive hands fall away and dominating hands turn themselves face up for you. Don’t Just Check It Down When a Player is All-In In tournaments, a situation comes up all the time where one player goes all-in, two or more players call him, and now there’s a main pot withwhat’s called a “dry side pot,” a side pot among the remaining players that as yet has no money in it. Most often, all the remaining players will now conspire to knock the all-in player out of the tournament by checking the hand down. The idea is that, because the side pot has no money in it, a bet by any of the remaining players can’t win anything extra, so there’s not much point in making it.As well, if you bet out, forcing a hand that might have beaten the all-in guy to fold, you just screwed everyone in the tournament by allowing the all-in player to stay in when he “should” have gottenknocked out. In fact, if you do bet into a dry side pot and knock out a winning hand, the players at the table will generally scold you for not checking it down. The first problem with this plan of attack is that it’s collusion. The remaining players are acting together, implicitly or explicitly, to gang up on the all-in guy to increase the chances that he gets knocked out. Thus, we have players not working to their own advantage, not maximizing their personal chances of winning the pot, but rather acting according to what’s best for the group. That’s bald-faced collusion. Sometimes it’s evenopenly discussed. “Let’s check it down,” you hear them say. You hear

High Donk Bet Frequency Flops (50%+) There are about 34 distinct flops that result in an average donk bet over 50% of the time against both the BN and UTG. They are in ranks 7-x-x and 6-x-x with one to three possible flopped straights. The higher the number of flopped straights, the smaller the donk bet-size and the higher the donk bet frequency used. Rainbow flops are donked at a higher frequency than two- tone flops and, in general, monotone flops get donked a lot less frequently.

1.2 EV - The Currency of Poker Contrary to what you might think, the currency of poker decision-making is not money, at least not as we know it. In the real world, money is a stable currency that reliably represents the worth of what we buy and sell. If I sell my car for $5000, I'll get $5000 for the car. I make a transaction for X dollars and so I gain or lose exactly X dollars. In poker, things don't work like this, not in the short- term. You might make a raise that on average earns you $15, but end up losing $100 because of bad luck on that one occasion. You lost $100 in money, but you gained $15 in EV . So what exactly is EV? 'EV' stands for 'expected value' and is the real currency of poker decision-making. As we cannot control the monetary result of our poker transactions in the individual instances in which we make them, we need a stable currency that does not fluctuate with short-term luck. EV is simply the amount of money we gain or lose on average in the long-term due to our poker actions. Some plays are described as '+EV' meaning that they make us money in the long run, while others we call '-EV' because they'll costs us money over a large sample. EV is what we're trying to maximise each and every time we have a choice to make in a hand. For this reason, every range of hands I recommend playing in a certain way, every adjustment I advise against each type of opponent in every situation, and basically every piece of advice in the whole manual is geared only towards maximising our overall EV . So luck is entirely irrelevant. I don't care whether you gain or lose money over one hand, or 10,000 hands for that matter, just that you gain EV over that sample. The upshot is that in 100,000 hands of playing in a +EV way, there's a very good chance you'll have gained money. This is what beating poker is - a long term grind, churning out EV knowing that sooner or later it will become real money. Now look at Figure 1:

Player2 Solution We know that P1 always bets with AA, so when they check, they are giving up with QQ. This means that when P2 sees P1 check, he should check back and win at showdown with KK because there is no value in betting, as P1 will always fold QQ. To solve the game for P2, all we need to do is find his strategy and EV when P1 bets. If P1 is betting a balanced strategy by bluffing 1/3 of the time (bet AA 100% and QQ 50%) P2’s calling EV is: If P1 plays their equilibrium strategy, it doesn’t matter if P2 calls or folds because the EV of both actions is 0. That said, P2 still needs to call at some frequency, otherwise P1 could deviate from the equilibrium to exploit them by bluffing more often. For example, if P2 chooses to never call with KK, P1 could start bluffing with QQ 100% of the time and win the entire pot. If P2 chooses to always call with KK, then P1 could exploit P2

Here our absolute hand strength is very good. A straight is a fairly difficult hand to make and one that wins more often than not, but we don't care about that. How's our relative hand strength? It's incredible! This hand is the nuts since nothing can beat it. The question is: how is our hand's equity relative to our opponent's continuing range should we bet? The answer: it's immense! We have answered yes to the first question on our flow chart with ease and can proceed to the second question for which we'd need a more complete context. No to Q1 (Poor Relative Hand Strength) = Check In absolute terms, we still have a straight, so we still have a hand that wins more often than not, on

some equity with trash hands or start bluffing with them, while keeping the pot size under control when you are beat. This action is often referred to as pot controlling. Weak hands Weak hands benefit from checking back when the Villain’s range is strong and you risk getting x/r and pushed off your hand. However, they do well as semi-bluffs when your opponent’s range is generally weak and cannot x/r you at a high frequency. Trash hands Trash hands will not improve too often when checked back, so they are in general c-bet more often than weak hands. They mostly benefit from having fold equity. If called, they will still have some equity in the pot, but their equity is sufficiently low that you don’t mind having to bet/fold them vs a x/r. Betting your trash is often referred to as a pure bluff. Diagram 40 UTG’s c-bet frequency and bet-sizes are bigger than the BN because the UTG range is stronger than that of the BN. In general, the more strong hands your range has compared to your opponent’s, the more frequently you can bet. This is because the more strong hands your betting

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

from early position in a raked game is that your opponents are strongly incentivized to 3-bet if they choose to contest the pot. Small raises enable you to lose the least with your weaker opens while still often getting you the big pots you want with your stronger hands. In games with more casual, inexperienced players, calling is common and 3-bets relatively rare. This could make a larger open raise size, with a stronger range, a good exploit. Conclusion The case for small raises in Early Position is compelling . So much is unknown, with plenty of players still to act behind you, that it is hard to determine whether you are interested in investing in the pot unless you have one of a very few premium hands. Small raises offer a cheap opportunity to steal the blinds or get heads up in position while hedging against the risk of 3-bets and cold-calls. This is especially true in games where the rake undercuts the odds a small raise would otherwise offer, incentivizing your opponents to call even less than they otherwise would. On the BTN, the situation is more complicated . No one can cold call you in position, and 3-betting is risky and expensive for the Blinds. This makes larger opens beneficial not only to your strongest hands but also (in “no flop, no drop” games) to some of the weakest you’d consider opening. 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 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

you one of the best flops for the big blind and they only have 47% and because of that they have to check every single time because well they have nowhere near you know like 54% Equity okay so as you have more of an advantage you bet more often position also is going to heavily impact your strategy in general you're going to be betting more often from in position than from out of position and pretty much all situations and the main reason for this is because position is going to inform range Advantage a lot meaning the if you raise and someone calls in position against you yes they're going to be missing Aces King's queens and Ace King but they're going to have a lot of good strong suited and high card hands that are going to connect pretty well with the board so they're not going to have quite as much junk in their range but they're also not going to have quite as many very strong pre-f flop hands in their range but your ranges are kind of going to be on top of each other right so when the ranges are on top of each other imagine both players have the same range is 50/50 so when you are out of position that's going to make you bet less often right so when you're in position you bet far more often compared to when you're out of position position and we're going to go through some examples of this soon from a GTO point of view next how much do we bet all right size is determined by nut Advantage range connectivity and stack depth however there's also a general relationship between frequency and size typically not always but typically as you bet more frequently you typically bet smaller because you're just nudging money in pot with a small range Advantage as you bet less frequently because you don't have much of a range Advantage meaning you're only betting with premium hands and draws right when you're only betting premium hands and draws you're betting with a very polarized range where your good hands are just happy to get it in and your Bluffs are sometimes happy to get it in and sometimes not in that scenario usually you're going to be betting bigger okay let's discuss the idea of nut Advantage a player has a nut Advantage when they have more combinations of Premium hands which is usually two pair or better than their opponent on any particular board and as you have the nut Advantage you bet much larger and as you do not have the nut Advantage you bet much smaller so let's consider two spots let's say under the gun raises and the big blind calls here's the under the gun range here's the big blind range flop comes Ace King Jack who has more premium hands on Ace King Jack well take a look at the ranges the under the gun player has like all of the nuts pretty much

have flopped a full house. Now you need a lot of money in the pot to continue playing a straight or flush draw. On the other hand, if the flop is it is unlikely that you are looking at a full house. Rational players, even those who do not play well, generally throw away hands like 92. Thus, not only should you at least call with your flush draw if someone else bets, you should bet it yourself if they don't. 11 8 Part Three: Miscellaneous Topics Similarly, what about calling with a straight draw when two flush cards have flopped? Many of the same ideas apply. Basically, since you may run into a flush, you need better than normal pot odds to call. If the pot is very small, it is clearly best to fold. However, folding is not an automatic play, and the pots are large enough most of the time to make a call correct. (Also, as previously noted, your best play may be to bet.) Now suppose the board pairs on fourth street. Should your drawing hands now be thrown away? The answer is, only rarely. However, you need somewhat better pot odds than normal to continue playing. In addition, consider which card has paired and what the other two cards are. Remember. that certain cards will make it more likely that someone has made a full house. However, ifthe board pairs on fourth street, someone bets, you are next, and there are several players behind you, you need to be aware that you may be raised if you call. Thus you may be forced to put a lot of money in the pot on a 4-to-1 shot that may not be good if the flush or straight card comes. To continue playing in this spot the pot will again need to offer enough extra money to compensate. (Again, in many of today's games this will still be the case. That is, there will have been enough previous action to make it worthwhile to continue playing. Once again consider the board, exactly which card has paired, and the players that you are against.) Playing When There Is No Raise Before the Flop Suppose there has been no raise before the flop. How should you play from the flop on? In many situations, you actually should play tighter since more possible hands may be out and you are getting smaller pot odds. For example, suppose the flop comes with a small pair. If there was an early-position raiser and a couple of callers, you could be fairly sure that no one has a third card of the appropriate rank. However, this would not necessarily be the case if there was no raise, especially if many players took the flop (or if the raise came after many players had already called). A similar example is when three small cards flop, such as that possibly could give someone a straight. It is unlikely that an opponent would play a 52 or a 75 if the pot was raised preflop, especially if

When to (and When Not to) Use the Sklansky-Chubukov Rankings In the last section, we explained what Sklansky-Chubukov (S-C) numbers are, and we gave you a basic idea of how you might use them to make decisions. But we gave you only a basic idea, and we would be remiss if we left things there, as there are right and wrong ways to interpret the S-C numbers. We offer you extra guidance in this section to help you make the most of this tool. Adjusting for an Ante Although the precise S-C numbers apply to a precise situation — you have a $1 small blind, and your lone opponent has the $2 big blind — it is only slightly inaccurate to look at it in terms of the odds you are laying. In other words, if a hand has an S-C number of 30, it basically means that you have a positive EV if you lay 10-to-1 or less (30-to-3). Thinking of it this way is very useful if there is an ante. When there is, you should divide the S-C number by three to see what odds you can lay. For example, say the blinds are $300 and $600 with a $50 ante. The game is ten-handed, so there is $1,400 in the initial pot. You have K♡4♠in the small blind, and your stack is $9,000. If everyone folds to you, and you move in, you are laying about 6.5-to-1. The S-C number for king-four offsuit is 22.8, so divided by three, you can profitably lay up to about 7.5-to-1. Thus, moving in is profitable, but only because of the ante. Without it, you would be laying 10-to-1. 149

When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs PKO I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody asked me… 19/02/2024 12 min. / 48 sec.

board coverage. These stack depths are deep enough for the BB to call a SB limp/raise with many suited hands due to being in position, so being re-raised isn’t such a disaster because the best suited hands can always call and play post-flop (Hand Ranges 151-154). Hand Range 147: BB vs SB Limp (15bb) • All-in 8.2% / • Raise 3x 33.7% / • Check 58.1%

10.1 Polar 3-Betting Let's start with a generic example of a polar 3-bet range and introduce the colour scheme we'll be using throughout this chapter. Warning: The polar range example below (Figure 50) is not intended for use in any old 3-bet spot. While there are real poker situations in which it would be a fine choice, I am not dealing with when and where to use the range just yet so please don't deploy it for no reason. Read on and we'll soon come to building the correct polar range the applicable situation.

Combinatorics Combinatorics is a term for evaluating the number of possible “combinations” (combos) of any given hand: the combination of 2 cards of certain ranks and suits. For example, there are four combinations of As: AK, AK, AK, AK.

Load – Unnecessary distractions. This can be from an external source like having the TV on in the background, something internal like anxiety, or even poorly created study materials that make the task more confusing. Germane Load – Otherwise useful learning techniques (like the ones we are about to explore) that are simply too much for the student to use right now. A big takeaway from the Cognitive Load Theory for improving learning is that it is more useful for students to study worked examples (problems that include the detailed solution) when learning something new rather than the student trying to solve the problem themselves. The student should have access to answers; they shouldn’t be arriving at the answers themselves at first. Learning something new is best done by way of using “worked” examples which consist of a problem, its solution, and the intermediary steps to get to the solution. A classic worked example we have all used and seen the benefit of are ‘How To’ videos on the internet. If, for example, you didn’t know how to change the tire on your car. Most of us would look up the relevant video on YouTube and follow the steps along with the instructor, rather than consult a car manual. You will no doubt know how much easier and simpler this can make an otherwise daunting process. After a few iterations, however, we have the confidence to change the tire ourselves without the video. Cognitive Load Theory acknowledges that learning new things is tough, especially when the Intrinsic Load is high. The following worked examples shoulder some of that burden and allow us to build the prerequisite knowledge and procedural fluency needed to take our next steps into developing a skill like poker. How To Use Cognitive Load Theory With GTO Wizard In many ways, using GTO Wizard in and of itself is an example of embracing Cognitive Load Theory. For example, you don’t need to work out the equity of A ♥ 7 ♥ against your opponent’s range, that has been done for you. You can literally follow the worked example from start to finish without stretching yourself. All the answers are there for you in the form of solver outputs without needing to reach for a spreadsheet or a calculator. Cognitive Load Theory also suggests a better way to study videos or direct coaching . Watching poker videos is a very passive way to learn at the best of times, but if the content creator is reviewing a hand (especially in a poker solution library), why not open the solution and follow it alongside the coach as you watch? Just like how you would do when first changing a flat tire. At a very basic level, Cognitive Load Theory should demonstrate the importance of removing distractions as you use GTO Wizard, to reduce the pressure of Extraneous Load, as well as using Focus Mode so you don’t get distracted any further by the tool itself. More than anything, Cognitive Load Theory shows us the importance of not trying to run before

♦ GTO Player: This player will call a 15bb SB push optimally with a 28.5% range. ♦ 10% Loose Player: This type of Villain is a bit sticky and calls a 15bb SB push with a 31.4% range. ♦ 25% Loose Player: This type of Villain is a bit stickier and calls a 15bb SB push with a 35.6% range. ♦ 100% Loose Player: This type of Villain really hates folding and calls a 15bb SB push with a 57% range. ♦ 10% Tight Player: This type of Villain is a tighter and calls a 15bb SB push with a 25.7% range. ♦ 25% Tight Player: This type of Villain is a lot tighter and calls a 15bb SB push with a 21.4% range. ♦ 50% Tight Player: This type of Villain is a massive nit and calls a 15bb SB push with a 14.3% range. In Table 11, we summarize the SB EV gains of playing GTO and MES vs the various opponents, as well as Hero’s potential EV loss if Villain plays GTO, instead of the suboptimal strategy, or counter-exploits Hero.

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decreases the chance that our opponent has an ace the suited kings can make the king high flush and also these hands have the ability to make top pair one way and then our drawing hands have the ability to still make sets and straights now a polarized range is used more for aggressing as opposed to defending because with aggressing we can win when our opponents fold to our bet and what did we learn last webinar that the weakest hands those with the least equity benefit the most from getting their opponents to fold so we throw these hands in here because they benefit the most from getting the opponents to fold and we'd rather use you know the ace 10 suited through a6 and the suited 9x and the ace 10s to call so this is where if we're gonna have a calling range and a raising range and we want to have some good hands in the calling range we raise the best hands call with the next best hands three bet as a bluff with the next best hands and then fold the worst hands that's kind of some basics of pre-flop range construction so when building a range we want some value hands and some bluffs uh when we're playing you know with with the aggression and especially if there's going to be multiple streets of betting and this is an example of a pre-flop range with both now if were playing against an opponent who never folded there'd be no need to include the bluffs we would just use the linear range whereas if there was an opponent who folded all the time to bluffs we may add more of the um weaker hands to the mix because they'll benefit even more from just getting the opponent to fold on later streets and we'd be better off playing them as bluffs than playing them as folds because our opponent folds too much so that's kind of adding in an exploit and a counter in how we can construct our ranges to plan for the opportunity to take advantage of that weakness in our opponent's strategy and it's the same post flop which is why opponent tendencies are so important they affect how you should shape your range hope that makes sense so choosing the best hands to play pre-flop we have our tier one hands which are our big pairs and our big suited aces suited broadways tier two hands which are our medium pocket pairs suited aces and suited connectors suited broadways in our tier three hands we have our smaller pocket pairs suit connectors and offsuit broadways and then tier four suited connectors through the gap pursuit kings tier v suit two gappers queens and jacks and the the key with these hands is the properties of them um the better hands pre-flop will make better hands post flop and with these tier one hands when they flop a set it's gonna be top set on a lot of boards they're gonna have

unraised pot. You shouldn’t. If I don’t have anything in the pot to protect, I never jeopardize very much money without a real good hand. I don’t go out of my way to win nothing pots. Another important part of my playing philosophy I want to remind you about is this: You should constantly be trying to get as much value for your hand as you can. And the way you do that is by betting. That should be clear by now. You become a big winner at poker by betting, raising, and reraising—by playing aggressively. Of course, there are times you have to play defensively, when an aggressive strategy would be wrong because it could get you shut out of a pot. But in general, you want to be aggressive. That means you can’t let every card that hits the board threaten you. As I said, if you’re always worrying about somebody having the nuts, you never will get to play a hand. This applies to all the hands I’ve discussed, but it’s especially meaningful when it comes to playing small connecting cards when you get a good flop. That’s what you’re playing them for in the first place. So when you make something with them, you want to get value for them. So you should always apply this principle: If you’re going to call, you might as well bet. You should do that at all the stages of play, but it’s particularly important on 403 the end because you’ll get paid off with hands that aren’t what you thought they were. I mean, there’ll be many times you’ll put your opponent on a hand completely different than what he’s got. I’m not Kreskin, and neither are you. You might think a man is drawing to a flush, but maybe he’s got a pair, just one pair. He might have been running you down with a lot less than you thought he had. So, when a flush card hits the board on fifth street, it may not have helped him at all. I mean, you’ll know he’s got something when that flush card comes, either the flush you thought he was drawing at or some other piece of the flop. Or maybe he’s got two pair and you’ve got a straight. You really don’t know what he’s got. But you’ve got a good hand with your small connecting cards, so you’re going to pay it off anyway. Therefore, you might as well bet. The only time I make an exception is when the board pairs on the end. Then I’ll check it, and may or may not call, depending on how I feel about the situation. But assuming that doesn’t happen, if I’ve made a real good hand with my small connecting cards, I’d go ahead and bet. Although there are times when I might be a little concerned because I don’t have the nuts, there will also be times when I do have the nuts. Naturally, in that case, I’ll do whatever I think will get the most money in

pot. A rank beginner bets all-in when he hits his straight because he's excited and doesn't know any better. "I've got a big hand! I can bet all my chips! Yee-haw!" 164 Then he's crestfallen when everybody folds. A normal player with some sophistication would think "I've got the nuts, I need to make something more on this hand. I'll bet $150, maybe the 3- to-l odds will induce a call. Better than nothing." But if this guy is just a beginner, why did he check on fourth street? After all, the deuce didn't make his straight (unless he had ace-trey, in which case his first two calls don't make much sense). If he has a straight, he had it on fourth street, where he checked. Was he planning to check-raise? That's not the mark of an excitable beginner who can't control himself. I'm thinking this betting pattern doesn't add up. Looks to me like there's a good chance this bet is just a potstealing bluff. You should seriously consider calling. One last thought. A world-class player is quite capable of shoving all his chips in the pot with a straight in a situation like this, hoping that his opponent will go through the same reasoning I just did and call. When you're up against someone really good, watch out, and take nothing for granted! Resolution: You call, and the small blind shows down A♥7♥. Your jacks win a $2,220 pot. Let's make a couple of notes about our opponent's play. His bet on the end was a big mistake - a standard example of a no-win bet on the end. He had only top pair, and almost no one would call this bet in the face of the straight possibilities on the board unless they could at least beat top pair. But since he had top pair, there was no need to throw in all his chips to force you out. Top pair might be good enough to beat whatever you had, so he should have been happy to show the hand down. His hand was also good enough to make a play on the flop. At that point he had top pair (sevens) plus an ace plus four cards to a flush. He could reasonably think he had 14 outs twice (9 hearts, 3 aces, 2 sevens), which meant he was a slight favorite, plus a bet might win the pot right there. Checking was a mistake. Hand 7-3 Situation: Early in a one-table satellite. The table is generally tight. Your hand: A♠Q♣ Action to you: Player A raises to $60. Players B, C, D, and E all fold. Pot now $105. Question: Do you call or raise? Answer: Call. At a tight table with a full complement of players, you need to assume that bets mean pretty much what they're supposed to mean. The guy in first position put in a raise under the gun, so he's supposed to have a good hand - a pair, or maybe ace-king or ace-queen. 165 According to the Gap Concept, you need

this include? A pair (including bottom pair) or a draw. 26. Are we saying that you should never check-raise? No. If your strategy was to never check-raise, your opponent would begin to realize that when you do check you don't have anything. 27. Do you call as much on fourth street as you do on the flop? No, except against the wildest players. 28. Does this mean you revert to a tight strategy? No, you still have to do a fair amount of calling. 29. If you are last to act (on the flop) and are against an extremely aggressive player, what should you do? Slowplay some hands that don't seem to merit this strategy. 30. When making this play what do you need to keep in mind? The lower the hand, the less likely this tricky play is worth it. 31. On fifth street, since it often doesn't take that much to win, what must you do? Pay off with a lot of hands. 32. What if you are first to act (on fifth street) and you have a mediocre hand? It is usually better to try to induce a bluff. 33. What happens if your opponents only see you thinking in borderline situations? They will have a big advantage. Reading Hands 1. What is the most common way to read hands? Analyze the meaning of an opponent's check, bet or raise, and look at the exposed cards to try to judge from them what his entire hand might be. You then combine the plays he has made throughout the hand with the exposed cards and come to a determination about his most likely hand. 2. Is it a mistake to put an opponent on a specific hand early and to stick to your initial conclusion no matter how things develop? Yes. 3. Suppose when two suited cards appear on the flop an opponent raises after there has been a bet and a couple of callers, but then checks on the turn when a blank hits. What is a likely hand for him? A flush draw. 4. In practice, what do most players try to determine? Whether an opponent has a bad hand, a mediocre hand, a good hand, or a great hand. 5. If your opponent bets on the end, what type of hand is he unlikely to have? A mediocre hand. 6. What is a complimentary way to read hands? To work backward. 7. If the last card is a deuce and an opponent who has just been calling suddenly bets, is it likely that he has a set of deuces? No. It does not seem possible that he would have called this far with only two deuces in the hole. Reading Hands 301 8. Suppose the flop comes K4Q+2+. The first player bets, and the second player raises. A third person, who is also in an early position and is a solid but not overly aggressive player raises again. Also suppose that several opponents remain to act behind the reraiser, and that this reraiser had just called before

Pre-flop: To recap, Hero can develop a flatting range out of the small blind due to the open not being in a steal spot as this reduces the likelihood of facing squeezes from the BB. This hand is just about playable enough vs. Villain's likely range, even out of position. Flop: Hero could develop a raising range on this flop since range advantage is not hugely in Villains favour. Both players can have JTs, JJ and TT. The only really strong hands Villain can have that Hero can't are 44 and [QQ-AA]. Even if Hero does have a raising range, this draw is a bit too good to raise/fold and not anywhere near good enough to raise/not fold and so it functions best in Hero's

Consider a gambling game where there are 20 total chips in play. Hero is P1, what is Hero’s probability of winning with different stack sizes when: ♦ The game is fair (both players are equally likely to win) ♦ Hero has a skill edge (52% probability of winning each individual gamble) ♦ Hero has a skill deficit (48% probability of winning each individual gamble)

because hands like AQ and AJ actually have some showdown value. A ♥ 4 x and A ♥ 3 x are better shoves, and even A ♥ 2 x shoves because the value of blocking two pair outweighs its showdown value. BTN shoves most of their worst unpaired hands , even without a heart blocker. Higher unpaired hands like QJ are undesirable bluffs even with a heart blocker because they block more of BB’s folding range. Two pair or better is a snap call for BB. Beyond that, top pair is not necessarily better for bluff catching than middle or bottom pair. Most pairs are indifferent, with a big heart blocker providing additional incentive to call. Playing Heart Rivers On a 6 ♥ river , BB still has no donk bets, having already raised most of their strong hearts on the flop or turn. BTN still plays a mostly shove-or-check strategy. They need the J♥ (the third nuts) to shove for value . Most lower flushes check back, but with the T ♥ , they can consider a thinner value bet for about ⅔ pot. The main danger here is opening themselves up to a check-raise from a polarized range. Most human players are not great at check-raising the river, so you should seriously consider this thinner value bet as an exploit against such opponents. Blockers do not play a significant role with four hearts on the board because you can’t really block a flush without having one yourself. At this point, your hand is too strong to bluff . So, BTN mostly just bluffs their lowest-ranked hands; unpaired hands and even their smallest pocket pairs are reasonable shoves. BB simply calls if they have a flush and folds if they don’t , making rare exceptions for hands that block especially many or few bluffs. Playing Heart Rivers On a 6 ♥ river , BB still has no donk bets, having already raised most of their strong hearts on the flop or turn. BTN still plays a mostly shove-or-check strategy. They need the J♥ (the third nuts) to shove for value . Most lower flushes check back, but with the T ♥ , they can consider a thinner value bet for about ⅔ pot. The main danger here is opening themselves up to a check-raise from a polarized range. Most human players are not great at check-raising the river, so you should seriously consider this thinner value bet as an exploit against such opponents. Blockers do not play a significant role with four hearts on the board because you can’t really block a flush without having one yourself. At this point, your hand is too strong to bluff . So, BTN mostly just bluffs their lowest-ranked hands; unpaired hands and even their smallest pocket pairs are reasonable shoves. BB simply calls if they have a flush and folds if they don’t , making rare exceptions for hands that block especially many or few bluffs. Playing Heart Turns BB does not donk bet heart turns because even on the rare occasion that they

really really don't want to be against a range that is well protected and contains those hands so this is a spot where even though we very likely have the best hand when we go check check we're going to win this pod almost every time if we bet and get raised it is awful and if your opponent's anywhere near decent they realize this river is not so great for all of their marginal made hands either and they're gonna start folding out a lot of their bluff catchers so we're gonna have a hard time getting much value from worse this is a spot where maybe if you're playing against a really really bad player perhaps you can go for a 60 bet exploitatively to try to get caught by a weak king or even a hand like ace 10 but that would be awful against good players good players are going to absolutely punish you if you do that so check it back check check we win sometimes we lose sometimes but we're probably going to win let's take a look at another spot button raises we call big blind with ace 10 easy check call easy check call again notice if the opponent started using a bigger size kind of like i was just recommending this would be a tougher spot still probably call though river we check opponent bets 70. they're getting uh they're doing perhaps what i just recommended you do against the weaker players who will find calls with ace 10 in the spot right but this is a situation where i think we don't really want to be calling all that often so you want to be raising in this scenario with hands that block your opponent's auto calls remember you always won't be looking for spots to put in bluffs so what are the opponents auto calls here auto calls are gonna be flushes right just so happens we block the nut flush also it's really nice that the opponent uses a 70 bet because this almost always indicates a not a range containing not a whole lot of premium hands because remember if they had a very premium hand they'd also be betting polarized right when people use this half pot size from a gto point of view at least they usually are gonna have hands like a lot of kings or two pair type hands so look this is a spot where i'm assuming your opponent's not a big calling station this is just a pretty easy all-in we block the nuts we also block the like sets that may call blast it this is a scenario where the opponent has to be very very cautious betting right i mean imagine in our previous hand if our opponent rips it in on the river here if we bet any mount on the river the opponent rips it in we gotta fold right gotta fold they're gonna fold a ton in this scenario you're gonna find that again the blocker to their

especially in live cash games most of the time when you raise everyone else is either gonna call or fold right but there are going to be times where you raise and then you get three bets re raised the term three bet will be used throughout this masterclass as opposed to re-raise because re-raise is not necessarily clearly defined right because let's say there's a raise and re-raise and re-raise well now is that the the third bet or the fourth bet the way the term three men came around by the way is from Limit Hold'em where there'd be a small blind of big blind if you called wellyou've calling the first bet right the blind does the first bet so when you raise that's a theory of to bat and when you re raise that is a three bet so if free bet here means someone raises so let's say three big blinds an O or let's say we raise the three blinds or three and half P blinds and our opponent makes it 10 big blinds that is the third bet because the small blind was the first or the big blind was the first back the initial raise that you made was the second bet this is a third bet so whenever you get free bet very often sometimes you're gonna be again strong hands and sometimes they're gonna be against weak hands and we have to figure out how to defend right so if your opponent plays well you should tend to defend at the minimum defense frequency or more and again very often more because if you defend right at the minimum defense frequency your opponents probably going to prop it a little bit too much with their preflop Bluffs because a lot of their hands that they're bluffing with have plenty of equity so you probably need to defend a little bit more so let's take a look at a very clear example let's say you raise two three big blinds and your opponent three bets to ten big blinds right minimum defense frequency we discussed this before is one - the opponent's bet right divided by the opponent's bet plus the pot and the pot here is your three big wine raise plus the small blind plus the big blind so if you do this math it comes out to 31% which means you need to defend with at least 31 percent of your range now kind of go back to the example I gave where if you are defending the big blind you should be way over defending same thing when facing three bets because you're gonna have lots of equity with your range especially if you balanced it well by playing the ranges I recommend it so since your preflop hands will have lots of equity you need to defend wire Brad 60% of your opening range or more depending on the range you expect to be against from your opponent so let's take a look at how the natural lowjack

The following equity realization heatmaps (Heatmaps 1-4) were generated by Pio Solver. They show results for situations where the BB is playing a single raised pot against either an EP or the BN in short stack and mid stack scenarios and they account for a 12.5% ante.

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I'd raise, too, if I hit Kings-full at the river, but with this board, would I completely discount the possibility of my opponent having the remaining two Aces or even one Ace and the remaining King? Player 2 with Kings-full has seen 7 cards, which leaves 45 unseen cards, 2 of which his opponent has. Pick 2 cards from 45 unseen cards and there are 990 possibilities, only three of which (AK, AA, AK) beat Kings-full for this board. However, Player 1's cards are not two random unseen cards from 990 possible combinations. He has seen them and acted in such a way that eliminates from consideration almost all of these 990 possibilities. Player 1 would not be reraising if he held 2, 5 or J, 7 or 4, 8, so why is he re-raising? It is not correct for Player 2 to assume that the odds of losing are remote (3 in 990), given Player 1's behavior. Many beginners make the mistake of Player 2 above: They only play their cards and never consider why their opponents are in the hand. As a further example of how behaviors change the probabilities, consider a hand I played in the now-defunct Prince George's County Maryland cardrooms. I was playing $5-$10 Omaha when a woman joined the game, sitting to my left, whose play immediately changed the dynamics of the table (See the Appendix I for an explanation of Omaha). She played very aggressive poker and rarely called. Her actions were bet, raise, or fold, and she played in most of the hands. She raised pre-flop, regardless of her position, for almost every hand. Since I sat on her right, I knew that any bet I called would be raised, so I tightened my starting requirements for hands, folding hands I ordinarily would call with, calling with my premium hands and letting her put in the raise for me. I was the only player at the table who made this adjustment. Everyone else, seeing that her pre-flop raises conveyed little information, called her raise. Soon almost every player at the table called her pre-flop raise every single hand. With so much money seeding 102 THE INTELLIGENT GUIDE TO TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER the pot, no one wanted to fold before seeing the flop. The entry of this one player changed the entire table dynamics, causing an extremely loose-aggressive game to develop. In a loose-aggressive game, so-called "bad beats" are actually highly probable. One hand in particular stands out as an example of how the new table dynamics distorted the probabilities. Of my four starting cards, two were Kings. I called, she put in her raise, and every single person at the table (there were eleven including me) called her raise. The three cards that came on the flop were K, A, and 8, all of different suits. I bet my set of Kings. She raised, the man to her immediate left called her raise, and everyone else dropped returning the action back to me. Because two players were up against me after seeing the flop,

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actually consider this a blunder I think it's actually a very well played hand especially when we want to keep our chips for as much easier we can make against um little pump but yeah he he folds so that's nice and sometimes we have to like step away from the silver a bit and think like what's our opponent really going to think because it'd be a great spot to exploit maybe Jam all in when you have a four right because our opponent's going to be like oh he's got 10 8 he's got 6A he's gonna like oh and just like maybe make a miracle with King Green right but against the block bat maybe he's like oh he's always got seven you know so we still want to not be like too married to the soldiers especially at the lower Stakes where you can actually think what my opponent would think when I bet this size and I think it kind of does lay down um but that's also why he should be bluffing so much because um maybe I have got7x there um and he wants to put me in complete uh like torture right um especially when it wants to check back pocket seven is on the turn and and uh actually has some decent hands checking back the turn he gets a little Pond and now we play a heads up always going all in here nothing to do other than going all in and we've got our second game and it's now going to be a 20 till a game and I think I'm just gonna exit quickly The 100 and the other 50. and and now we're with it okay so Ace a gonna be one of our better hero calling hands um when we check back I'm not interfering with clubs not interfering with 10x not interfering with Jack X so checking back is is pretty standard uh River ax a big part of our range um yeah just still and I'm gonna be bluffing here with a hand like uh like three four four five suited stuff like that I'm not gonna bet hands that don't have equity on the Flop or turn there because our opponent's gonna I would unblock all of his folds having twos and threes and fours and fives in my range and because those are the hands we would be targeting for folds and he would end up having just more like hands that can continue um here everything's fairly standard nothing to really talk about I miss anything here at these stack sizes I don't expect them to to Really Ever like check back Queen X especially on this like web board and now we have another situation uh we have another situation where we've got uh 9x being a big part of his range and do we want to do do you want to check cool not really and just got Perfect combo for a chick Jam um I think he should always be

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

pot. He said in a subdued voice, 'There's my five hundred and I raise two thousand. I'll have to give you an IOU.' 'You will in a pig's ass. Go get it.' 'How can I? The banks are closed.' 'You ain't got no two thousand in the bank. Put up or shut up,' said Bones. 'Monty, will you take my IOUT asked the producer. *Let me tell you bastards something,' Monty replied. Tm not financing this poker game. I'm just playing in it. If I'd wanted to stay I'd have stayed and financed myself if I got in trouble. And another thing. You bastards slow up a game. I only get fifty cents cut. This one I should cut five hundred.' No one offered to agree to this but I had a sneaking feeling that Monty was going to profit in this transaction somehow. The producer placed some chips on his cards resting on the table and got up and pulled along the actor with him. They went in the other end of the room and I couldn't hear what they said, but the actor was protesting and the producer was really telling it to him. Finally, they both sat down. The producer addressed Monty. 'You know my reputation. You know I own three other tent shows and I can tell you I don't owe a dime on them. My leading man here owns one-third of this show. I'd like to own that farm even if it is mortgaged.' 'Well,' said Monty, 'what's your proposition?* "This farmer gave you an IOU for one thousand. Put it in the pot and take out one thousand in cash. That makes you square. I'll make out a bill of sale for my show for two thousand, if this farmer will make out a bill of sale for his farm for three thousand. The extra thousand covers the money you take from the pot.' 'Bones, do you understand the deal?' asked Monty. 'Is the show worth two thousand?' 'I'd like to own it for that.' 'But I'm pledging three thousand and my equity is five thousand.' 'You'll get the difference if you lose.' 'Goddammit, I'm not going to lose. I'd like to own a show. More money in it than following a plough around a field, I reckon.' 'It's your funeral,' said Monty prophetically, and directed Runt to bring in bills of sale, pen and ink. When Monty looked over the papers he pointed out that the producer's bill of sale needed the actor's signature because of a one-third interest. He put Bones's IOU in the pot and took out a thousand according to the agreement. 'Just a minute, Monty. I didn't pledge my prize bull. Nobody's going to plaster him with a mortgage.' 'He'll get plastered if you fill your hand.' Monty laughed. 'How many cards you want, Bones? You take cards first.' 'I want one,' Bones said and tossed his discard towards Doc. Doc was so nervous he could scarcely get a card off the top of the deck. Monty didn't help much by

THE SKLANSKY-CHUBUKOV RANKINGS 145 Hopefully, that’s a startling conclusion for you. Very few people’s instincts would tell them to move in for over 150 times the big blind playing with their hands face-up with anything less than aces or maybe kings. The reason this conclusion is hard to “get” is that most people generally dislike laying odds. Ask someone to lay you $100 to win $1, and you’ll get turned down virtually every time, no matter what the bet. “It just isn’t worth it to risk $100 to win one measly dollar,” is the thinking. But it is worth it, at least in terms of expectation. Furthermore, in real poker you try not to show your hand to your opponents. When your opponent doesn’t know that you have ace-king, it’s even better for you, and you can move in profitably with a somewhat bigger stack than $332. After all, pocket deuces is a favorite against you, but who is going to call $300 with that hand? In reality, a player might call you only with pocket aces, kings, or queens and fold everything else. Since they are folding so many profitable hands, you can move in profitably with stacks even greater than $332. Now, before you get too excited, realize that we’ve shown only that moving in is better than folding if you have less than $332. We’re not saying that moving in is the best possible play; raising a smaller amount or even just calling could be better than moving in. But you’d better not fold. So you may say, “Great, so now I know not to open-fold ace-king heads-up. Thanks, I really needed to read a book and wade through calculations to find that out.” But you’ll be glad you did, as this method of calculation can be used for any hand, not just ace-king. And the conclusions for some hands are quite surprising. The precise definition of a Sklansky-Chubukov number is this: If you have a face-up hand and a $1 blind, and your sole opponent has a $2 blind, how big does your stack have to be (in dollars, not counting your $1 blind) such that it would be better to fold rather than move in, assuming your opponent calls or folds perfectly. Here is a list of a few representative hands and their corresponding Sklansky- Chubukov numbers. You can find the entire list of hands in the “The Sklansky- Chubukov Rankings” starting on page 197. With some qualification and adjustment, you can use the Sklansky-Chubukov number for a hand to help you decide how good a “move-in” hand you have. You do have to make a few adjustments, however. Remember, the S-C numbers are calculated with the assumption that your opponent knows your hand and will play perfectly against it. This assumption makes the S-C number a bit of a worst-case estimate. You can’t possibly go wrong (have a negative expectation) moving in with less than the S-C number (as opposed to folding), but you may well be right to move in even with a significantly bigger

All-in When a player in a hand bets all of the chips in their stack. Some people will say that they "stacked off", which means the same as "went all-in".

Whenever we are exploitatively opening a wider range than usual and face a 3-bet, it’s fine to over-fold. You are exploiting the fact that you won’t get 3-bet often enough by playing off-range hands. So, when you get 3-bet, your adjustment should be to fold all off-range hands and even hands that would be the bottom of your regular calling range. The most important players to consider when deciding whether or not to open marginal hands are the BN, SB and the BB because those positions are the most likely to give you action. If the players in those positions are tight, you can get away with a lot of blind stealing. In poker, randomizing refers to the employment of aleatoric selection between equivalent EV actions to guarantee unpredictability. For example, if a hand is indifferent to calling or folding (the EV of both actions is the same) and the GTO solution is to call 50% and fold 50%, the player can randomize these two actions by flipping a coin. Online players can use a random number generator (e.g. random.org) to help them stay unpredictable with hands that have mixed strategies. Live players can use a number of randomizers such as the seconds hand on a clock or the suit of their hole cards. For example, the probability of the top card of a two-card hand being a red card is 50%, so a player can randomize using the color of the top card of their poker hand. Players can also choose a suit such as hearts, and if their first card is a heart, choose various 25% plays. They can also simply look at a random number generator app before starting each hand. There are many tricks players can use to randomize their actions in live games. However, live games are often particularly soft, so wise decisions tend to be more binary, and there are regularly additional pieces of information players can use to tie-break close decisions, such as body language, history, population tendencies, etc. All of this, along with the fact that it will be tough for your opponents to get a large enough sample on you to be able to unravel your exact frequencies makes randomizing less needed in live poker than online poker. The best approach when exploitatively widening your ranges is to start by increasing the frequency of hands that are played with a mixed strategy. This is because the threshold hands are the first hands to become profitable against Villain leaks. For example, if a hand such as A9o is bet 25% of the time in some spot, the best exploit against a player who overfolds will be to bet A9o 100% of the time. From there, you can add hands that are very close to the borderline hands, such as perhaps A8o and A7o, instead of randomly adding something like Q4o. This type of adjustment is more difficult to spot by the Villain, decreasing the likelihood of them counter-exploiting you, and when you do get counter-exploited or are

get out of line like that you're going to beat them up with the fundamentals by the way the hands not over if you call here guys there's still a river to play you gotta let this one go so let's go back to the big board of exploits and discuss this one put it simply when loose passive players start bombing the pot get the hell out of there if you have not noticed them before that means they're probably not that aggressive which means there wasn't even an opportunity for them to be bluffing earlier it's very unlikely this is their first bluff it's possible it's just not likely so you're not going to gamble on it it's like a pitcher who throws a really terrible breaking ball five percent of the time could you knock that one out of the park yeah should you be looking for it no why because 19 out of 20 times it doesn't come if he's got a mediocre fastball that's the one you're looking at if he throws that sixty percent of the time what's their mediocre pitch they can't call down correctly they don't know how to do it they just call down all the time so just focus on that when loose passive players start bombing the pot get the hell out of there now if you see something you see some kind of bluff you see them getting aggro you see them consistently too not like no showdowns they played a few parts aggressively because that's most likely the hand but if you see them get caught bluff and you see that kind of thing then by all means start calling it down okay continuing all right guys let me show you how to do this on flopzilla real quick so the board came uh the way we did this the board came three seven jack the person limped in so we put their hand there over here we put jack ten hearts the person limped in we check called let's assume they take a shot with the entirety of their range on the flop because it's a pretty hit or miss board now that's not totally accurate but i by the way guys this is just a thought experiment i'm not saying this is 100 accurate i'm saying this is how you would do it at home right you can adjust any assumption i'm making here really i'm making assumptions for the purpose of expediency is that the five dollar word for that but to be quick so all right so he fires so we put a blue filter next to everything air and okay then we turn this from red to grain now he fired all of that turns the ace of diamonds as you can see our equity is pretty swell here all right 73 percent things are looking good ace of diamond comes not good all right so he fires again now what is he firing let's go through arranging uh now a set two pair

going to make everyone go crazy and if everyone's going crazy at the other table and your table is a bunch of good players or players playing reasonably the table where everyone's going nuts is going to be substantially more profitable so do not be opposed to changing seats and changing tables ideally with the intention of getting the loose and aggressive and the crazy players on your right now this implies you're paying attention right do not just go to the poker table and put on headphones and listen to music and put on your sunglasses and only look at your cards right you need to be actively paying attention to what's happening at all the tables of your buy-in level okay you want to make sure that you're aware of what is happening in the games and if someone's angry or Tilted or going all in every hand get at that table because that's going to be beneficial I do have this note here at the bottom do your best within reason to get a seat to the bad players left you don't want to like get in a fight with the other good player at the table making it clear that you want to get positioned on the bad player right you need to be a little bit easy going maybe when you go to take that seat blame it on I want to watch that sporting event that's over there and I can't see it for my seat over here right so you want to not make it as if hey I think you're terrible at poker and I won't position on you don't do that but you always want to make sure that you are in the most profitable game for sure and you also want to do your best to get the most profitable seat and if you do this your win rate is going to go through the roof and if you don't I don't know exactly how much you're going to lose compared to if you just had good seats but I would not be shocked if it's like half your win rate or more so make sure you get a highly profitable seat in your games after you've put in a nice poker session you have to figure out when to actually quit this is something that a lot of players are oblivious too they quit whenever they run out of money that's usually not a good thing because they almost never go home a winner some players quit way too early they get up seven dollars and they think all right I'm a winner let me go home but it's very important that you have a predefined strategy for when you should quit your session but also you need to be fluent enough to the point that you know that sometimes you do need to stay at the table longer because you're in a highly advantageous situation when your opponents are giving away their money so I think it's ideal to have

a sign to me hey wake up Sir wake up sir why are you on tilt what's going on in your head why are you frustrated and the answer is all almost always I'm frustrated because something silly happened and I'm acting irrationally and that's stupid don't be stupid Jonathan little and to be fair I'm a little bit harsh on myself a little bit harsh on my students you know like because I think you need to be whenever you're in the heat of battle playing for lots of money the last thing you need is yourself doing something stupid for a lot of money especially if it's for a rational reason which it basically always is so when you feel yourself tilting maybe your head gets a little hot maybe you put your chips into aggressively maybe you start cursing at your opponent or the poker gods or the dealer who knows who in your head whatever it is something probably happens to you before you actually start playing poorly when that happens realize it and do something about it maybe stand up and take a stretch maybe take a five minute break maybe walk around the poker room and go outside and get some air maybe if you're particularly tilty maybe you need to quit your current session I am all for putting in a lot of volume and actually playing hands at the poker table but if you're gonna be playing them poorly that's not ideal understand though that the idea of taking a break or taking a rest or quitting my current session is definitely just a bandage you make money when you are dealt in and when you're not built in you're not making money but if you are dealt in and you're playing poorly you're going to be losing money which is obviously worse than not playing but I at the end of the day look tilt is irrational it happens whenever you're annoyed about something that you should not be annoyed about and if your goal is to make as much money from poker as possible you need to understand that variants exists and a lot of things out of your control exists and your entire job is to show up and play excellent poker throughout your entire session and if you do that you are probably going to win money in the long run if you don't do that if you're consistently making plays that you know lose money well obviously it's not going to work out for you and I want things to work out for all of you to win at poker all you have to do is find a game you can beat play it a lot and keep a prop or bankroll find a game you can beat implies you are better than your opponents either because they're terrible or you have studied way more to the point that you're better than even the best players you have to play it a lot you actually have to sit at

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or two players, neither of your opponents has much of a hand. Often both have been on draws that never materialized. As your hand-reading skills develop, you will learn when bluffs have the greatest chance of success, and you can limit your attempts to those times. Do bluff when scare cards hit. We discussed this in Tip 38, but it is worth repeating. A bluff has a much better chance of success if your opponents can fold confidently. Bluffing when a random card comes often leads to calls out of curiosity as much as any other reason. However, when the fourth card of a suit appears, or the fourth consecutive card to a straight, or possibly when the board double-pairs, it should seem pretty obvious what you hold if you bet. Now, your opponents can fold, convinced not only that they are beat, but also of how it happened. Do bluff when an aggressive player shows weakness. Aggressive players tend to bet when they have anything at all (and sometimes when they don’t). So, if they check, it often means that they have given up on the hand. Although they may be checking something like middle pair (which they will call you with), it is probably worth a shot to bluff in this spot, as you know they can’t have too much. Dont's Don’t attempt to steal multiway pots. Someone nearly always calls a bet when five or more players are in the hand. Your opponents often realize that a stronger hand is required to win in this situation; consequently, they may choose to check and call with all but their best hands. Don’t bluff behind a passive player’s check. Passive players check hands that aggressive players routinely bet for value. So, don’t make the mistake of interpreting a passive player’s check as a sign of weakness. Rather, it’s just an indication that he does not hold the nuts. It certainly doesn’t mean you won’t get called, though, so save your bluff for a better time. Don’t bluff when chronic calling stations are in the pot. These players often call with next to nothing. If you are the one holding nothing, then a calling station’s hand will win. You are throwing away money if you try to bluff these guys. Tip # 50 of 52 Going on tilt will destroy your bankroll. This tip is here for encouragement, although the wording may not appear to be uplifting. Tilt is a poker player’s enemy when it happens to him, and friend when it happens to other players in the game. You can use tilt to your advantage by not falling victim to it, even though your opponents do. What is tilt? Quite simply, tilt occurs when a run of bad luck causes a player to make irrational decisions in a poker game, letting emotion guide him instead of reason. Tilt can be instigated by the turn of a single unfortunate card, or as the culmination of a two-week streak of bad luck. Each player has a different “tilting point,” and it is important

can't really defend to a three bet in this position so if you're at a passive table you can play it but uh looser aggressive tables you're probably just going to want to throw this away so under the gun plus one and under the gun plus two so for utg plus one uh we added in a rough roughly another three percent we've included all suited Aces now added hands like a strap off which is like what I was saying about the king queen off under the gun um only play this if your table is on the softer side under the gun too we're adding in roughly another three percent so now we're opening 17 of hands we're opening all pairs more um more pseudo connectors with some high suited double gappers like King Nine is King Nine Suited so middle position we're now at roughly 19 I added hands like Queen jack off again this is a bit loose so only play it if your table allows for it and the low Jack uh we're now opening around 21 of hands adding in hands like Jack eight suited 10 8 suited six five suited and up in the hijack here we're opening roughly 25 percent of hands as you can see we're loosening up quite a bit with hands like teammates suited and up um I added jacket suited but not Queen eight suited because jacket suited you have more straight possibilities we added suited gappers like eight six suited and up in the cut off we're now opening roughly 30 of hands a little less um here your opens will start to depend on who the blind who are in the blinds so if you have aggressive players in the blinds you may want to fold hands like four three suited or King seven suited if there are weaker players in the blinds you can never you you can even widen this up this range up a little bit and I don't want you guys to worry about memorizing this this is these are just general guidelines um some people have tighter ranges some people have looser ranges I think that mine is a little bit more on the looser side so if you're just new to Poker and just starting out um you may want to tighten this up just a bit small blind so small blind strategy is one of the trickier spots in poker some players recommend limping a wide portion of your range the big blind is often incentivized to raise versus limp so we want to balance our range and add some limp calls or limp re-raises with some strong hands so in blue I have your raises at roughly 19 percent the hands in red are your calls um not necessarily your your calls folds um these could be calls phrases um yeah you get the point um so you should always be aware of who is in the big one if the big line is a fish you can complete

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♦ When you have no blockers, it is irrelevant, or slightly negative. River Call Decision Points ♦ Use their value range as a starting point. Even against very tight players, always call hands in their value range. ♦ Never call with bluff-catchers if the Villain doesn’t have enough bluffs. ♦ If there is a lot of air in the Villain’s range, they will be more likely to be bluffing. ♦ Perception matters. If we are perceived to be a calling station, assume an expanded value range. If we are perceived as weak, expect a narrow value range (and wider bluffing range). ♦ Defending close to 1-Alpha is a good approximation in most river spots. You can use the knowledge of the river set-ups to improve your pre-flop, flop, and turn play. If you know beforehand what the best possible river scenarios are for you, then all your earlier street play should focus on arriving to those beneficial river situations. At the same time this maximizes the likelihood of you getting there more often with the correct range composition. Your opponents will be doing the same and this is exactly how GTO solvers work out the equilibrium strategies on earlier streets. They work out turn strategies that lead to the optimal river situations, then they also work out the flop strategies that lead to those turn situations. They then repeat this for pre-flop play. All of this is done with the single goal of maximizing each player’s EV by creating the most profitable situation possible that leads to the most profitable future situations. This happens until equilibrium is reached and both players are playing GTO. Failing to do so at any point during a hand creates imbalances that will inevitably lead to unfavorable situations that your opponents can exploit, and that is what exploitative play is all about.

looking for when i was watching was trying to find the best table in the room uh you're i'd be looking for drinking i'd be looking for laughter i'd be looking for cash on the table i'd be looking for sloppy chips i'd just be looking for crazy action people who look like they're having a party i wouldn't just look at where the big stacks were or tables that had a lot of chips and play but who are they in front of if the big stacks are in front of a bunch of regulars well the game might already be you know running down but if the big stacks are in front of players you've never seen before or players who look wasted or players who look exhausted like they haven't slept for two days that's probably a really good game right and if you know what the best table in the room is then as soon as you get on a table you can request a table change to that specific table right we'll talk a little bit about table changes at the end of the slide but it's good to think about and since you're going to invest time acquiring information later that's what you do once you're sitting at the table between hands anyway why not invest that same time before you sit down at the table and save yourself the time so you can go straight to practice straight to execution as soon as you get in the game it's the same as putting your name on the waitlist while you're driving there and making most of the time while you're just driving you're going to be waiting anyway why not make the most of that time so that once you get in the game you can get straight to action same as you put your name on the waitlist so when you get to the casino you can get straight to play next up take the seat you're given time on table increases expectation as long as you didn't put your name down for like a 10 20 less when you're a one three primary when you play one three primarily whatever seat you're given you're going to have a positive expected value by being on that table and you're better off being on a table than waiting for the best table so always take the seat you're given you can immediately start getting hands you can start making decisions start making money but also once you're on a table you can put your name on the table change list to get on a better table and you stay at the top of the list if you don't take the seat you're given sometimes you will be bumped down to the list again so just just take it next up once you get your seat take it seriously um i remember when i was going to the casino i would play you know 2-5-5-10 my main game was 5 10 but i played 2-5 while

Yes, you did avoid a trickysituation on the turn. If you got someone with a straight draw and flush draw to lay down his hand, you got someone to fold on a board that could turnsour for you, which is good because it reduces your variance. And while your opponent probably doesn’t have both a straight draw and a flush drawhere, you’re not playing against him, you’re playing against the deck and all those awful cards. Look at it this way: If your bet always punishes any draw by offering a bad price, then it doesn’t matter which draw your opponent has. And if he has no draw and no hand, you’re not making any more money off him anyway. Moral of the story: PUNISH THE DECK Give any draw the wrong price to call. Don’t worry about losing value with monster hands. Just win the pot. Save your milky moves for when theboard bears no texture. Believe it or not, all the discussion about big hands and draws was the easy stuff; at least you know what the hell you have. In the case of a set, you know you have the best hand. In the case of a draw, you know with certainty you don’t have the best hand right now, but you also know your odds of ending up with the best hand. These hands offer you clarity. Clarity makes things easier for you. Let’s look at a hand that’s something less than a monster and a lot less clear: flopped top pair. First things first, we set our goal. As we’ve seen, with huge hands, our goal is either to make the most money (on non-textured boards) or simplify our decision-making process (on textured ones). With drawing hands, our goal is to increase the probability of making the hand in such a way as to maximize fold equity and earn. Now we’re at top pair and the situation is more complex, because top pair is a murky holding. Do you have the best hand? Most people jump tothe immediate conclusion that they do. Show most players holding a hand like AQ off-suit and a board like A-9-3 no suits and they’ll probably say, “Wow, I’ve got a really strong hand.” But they don’t. They have a medium-strength hand, for the simple reason that plenty of hands are both better and worse than AQ, but none in the middle. Hands like AK, two pair, or trips are much better than AQ here, being at worst about 80% to beat you with two cards to come (if you’re against bottom two pair). Hands like AJ, T9, and pure rags are just the opposite, at best 20% to beat you with two cards to come (if your opponent has a hand like T9). Lots of better hands. Lots of worse ones. But none in between. You either have way way way the worst of it or way way way the best of it. And because you can’t see your opponents’ hole cards, you have no idea which. How’s that for murky?

little's youtube channel and it's just an absolute gold mine yours free if you've already watched them congratulations you are well on your way to becoming the best player you can be goals of today's presentation first we're going to talk about range construction and why thinking about it is important rather than just you know flying by the seat of your pants we're gonna talk a little bit about the concept of balancing your range then we're going to go into when and a little on y you don't always need to be perfectly balanced next we will talk about uh continuance frequency huge shout out to ed miller and james sweeney for teaching me about this really really cool concept makes a lot of sense and as we go through the slides you'll see why next we're going to talk about kind of the best hands to continue with and the various properties of different hands and finally which situations lead to favoring different properties we're going to look at the properties of the various hands and then learn how to rank them a little bit based on the situation that we're in combining points five and six is how we really choose the best hands and we learn kind of the art of range construction so first let's talk about the benefits of optimal range construction the first benefit is building your ranges enables you to play more hands in the first presentation in the series we discussed how ranges adjust as position changes and when you understand how to build your range's post flop you can do the same and play wider ranges because you'll be in more advantageous positions fedor holtz talked about this in his studies that finding out how to get the most value out of each part of your range is a major key to success at the highest levels next the second benefit is that gets you thinking about the game on a higher level and if you want to play higher stakes or against harder competition you're going to need to know how to think in terms of ranges and see the big picture you know looking at the game from a holistic perspective and kind of zooming out a little bit this is something i'm also currently working on personally so i definitely don't have this perfect i don't know many players in the world that do there are some solvers and bots that have it pretty good but you know the best thing we can do is just practice learn iterate refine and get a little bit better uh every day speaking of seeing the bigger picture building your ranges properly ensures that each hand gets its maximum expected value which is a lot of what we're trying to the poker table is maximize our ev some hands are best for big pots some are for big bluffs some are good for cheap showdowns some are for bluff catching and so on by planning ahead and building out your ranges

(holdemresources.net) were the tool of choice for MTT and SNG players. They are great at approximating pre-flop push/fold strategies, particularly for shallow stacks in situations where players don’t have calling ranges. However, they do not support post-flop play, so if you try to calculate ranges for stacks that are deep enough to have non-all-in bet-sizes, you would be forced to apply action abstractions. You can either completely remove players’ options to call non-all-in raises, or allow for calls, but assume no more betting will happen after the flop is dealt, having both players check their hands down. Both abstractions produce incorrect pre-flop strategies. Removing the calling option hurts the defending players by forcing them to play tighter ranges, so the calculator suggests wider opening ranges than optimal and is more biased towards having good blockers, while ignoring post-flop playability. Checking down post-flop benefits the calling player because all of their marginal hands will realize 100% of their equity, which leads to wider calling ranges than optimal. Both options limit Nash calculators’ applications for deep stack poker and make them suitable for only push/fold situations. Pros ♦ Great for calculating unexploitable shoves ♦ Fast calculations ♦ Pre-flop MES calculations ♦ Reports pre-flop strategies and EV ♦ Supports tournaments bounty calculations ♦ Independent Chip Model (ICM) and Future Game Simulations (FGS) for SNGs and MTTs ♦ Final table calculations Cons ♦ Does not support post-flop play ♦ Does not account for card removal or bunching effects

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,

make your decisions much easier in situations where someone has limped.

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

check and your opponent bets. Furthermore, you have little reason to think your opponent will raise because he now fears that you have made a pair of aces or even aces up. In fact, your 94 Chapter Eleven opponent may fear what you are representing so much that he might fold the best hand. The added equity of possibly winning right there when your opponent folds is the primary reason to semi-bluff. If you had checked your pair of 8s with an ace, king and called your opponent's bet, you would have a reasonable chance of making kings up, aces up, or three 8s to beat his queens or queens up. By betting out instead of checking and calling, you add to these chances the possibility of winning right away. This possibility gives a semi-bluff greater mathematical expectation than checking and calling since it adds another way to win besides winding up with the best hand in the showdown. If you know there is no chance that your opponent will fold a pair of queens, the semi-bluff becomes more debatable, for by definition a semi-bluff is a bet where there is some chance your opponent will fold a hand he should have played. However, since you would call your opponent's bet anyway, betting yourself still has certain advantages. Your bet suggests more strength than you actually have. Suppose you catch something like two running 6s. When you bet with nothing but 8s and 6s, your opponent will probably fold a hand that he shouldn't have if he knew what you had. Even when a semi-bluff has no chance of making an opponent fold immediately, it may lead him to fold later when your board appears to improve to a better hand than you actually have. This situation comes up only in stud games, both high and low, where your opponent can see you "improve." It does not occur as much in hold 'em, where everyone shares a common board, nor, of course, in draw. In the second semi-bluff example from seven-card stud, you are more of an underdog if your opponent has the hand he is representing. Nevertheless, a semi-bluff is indisputably the correct play: Opponent Your opponent raised on the first round, and you called with a three-flush. Now when you pair fours in sight, you must bet even though you have only a small pair with no overcard and your chances of making a spade flush are about 9-to-1 against. Your opponent will fold without a pair, which is to your advantage, and he may fold a higher pair, thinking you've made three 4s, which would be great. On the other hand, if he calls your bet, you still have several ways of beating him. Advantages of the Semi-Bluff First, the semi-bluff tends to make your opponent play incorrectly according to the Fundamental Theorem of Poker. When you semi-bluff, you presumably do not have the best hand. If your opponent could see your cards, his correct play would be to raise. However, since you are representing something with your semi-bluff,

Hand Range 279: LJ 15bb (2x vs BN All-in) • Call All-in 51% / • Fold 49%

The Art of Bluff Catching Bluff catching—calling a bet with a modest hand which you expect to win only if your opponent is bluffing—is not a significant source of profit in most situations. It is often a roughly breakeven proposition against a well-constructed betting range, and even when it is profitable, it tends to be only by a slim margin. Bluff catching is not a significant source of profit. Much of the strategy in big bet poker games like No-Limit Hold’em and Pot Limit Omaha revolves around not ending up in spots where you’re making decisions about whether to call or fold with a bluff catcher in the first place. If you’re torn between calling and folding, then the EV of both options must be similar, which means your hand is basically worthless no matter which you choose. In this article, we will investigate why bluff catching is so unappealing , how to handle bluff catching decisions when you end up in a tough spot, and how to avoid ending up in that tough spot in the first place. When Bluff Catching is Worthless Perhaps you’ve heard of the AKQ game (sometimes called the Clairvoyance Clairvoyant A player that is clairvoyant knows their opponents exact range and strategy at all times. This term is commonly used in reference to solvers and toy games. Game). In this toy game , both players are dealt a single card from a deck containing one Ace, one King, and one Queen. They ante and are allowed to bet as they could in a real poker game. If the hand goes to showdown, the player with the highest card wins. Because hands never change value in this game, it is analogous to playing the river in hold ‘em. By analyzing how bluff catching works in this game and how much it is (not) worth, we can better understand bluff catching on the river in real poker situations. Then we can work backwards to think about bluff catching on earlier streets. Perhaps you’ve heard of the AKQ game (sometimes called the Clairvoyance Clairvoyant A player that is clairvoyant knows their opponents exact range and strategy at all times. This term is commonly used in reference to solvers and toy games. Game). In this toy game , both players are dealt a single card from a deck containing one Ace, one King, and one Queen. They ante and are allowed to bet as they could in a real poker game. If the hand goes to showdown, the player with the highest card wins. Because hands never change value in this game, it is analogous to playing the river in hold ‘em. By analyzing how bluff catching works in this game and how much it is (not) worth, we can better understand bluff catching on the river in real poker situations. Then we can work backwards to think about bluff catching on earlier streets. First, let’s think about the decisions you could face holding each card in the AKQ game : Queen – This is the nut low . It

Villain’s full range (76.47% hands) contains 1,014 combos. So, if Villain is defending with fewer than 334.62 combos, you have an immediately profitable bluff.