Datasets:

aniketarahane

/

llmsandpoker

like 0

Hand Range 51: LJ vs SB 3-bet • 4-bet 11.5% / • Call 36.6% / • Fold 51.9%

THE POT SIZE PHILOSOPHY — AN EXAMPLE 23 this sort of bet planning and pot size manipulation is the key to successful deep stack no limit. Learn to think this way during every hand, and you won’t regret it.

well four tabling for four hours as you could well one tabling for one hour you're making 16x as many dollars per day in expected value as you were when you were just one tabling for one hour and this is the power of volume now note when mapping this out it's easy to think you're a robot and say i'm just gonna play eight hours a day for 12 tables at a time seven days a week and then boom i'll be getting like a hundred thousand hands a week which is like five million hands a year but the reality is you're human not a robot i think and it's important in addition to playing poker which is gonna take energy and use focus that you engage in activities that will replenish your energy and renew focus so a couple signs to look for and watch out for if you're getting tired and losing focus you're probably pushing yourself too hard if you're timing out on hands or feeling restaurant decisions you're probably playing too many tables or playing too high of stakes if you're getting emotionally frustrated emotional and frustrated easily then you're probably cramming in too many sessions per day or week so for me the sweet spot for session length is two to three hours and if i'm going to play two sessions per day then the second session is usually going to be shorter than the first something like one to two hours for me the sweet spot for a number of tables depends how tough the games are if the games are very soft then i want to get as many tables as possible something like 9 to 12 however if the games are tough and i'm going to have to make a lot of decisions that's going to require a lot more thinking a lot more challenging spots then the sweet spot lands somewhere around four to six tables for me and i'll do my best to ensure that those four to six tables that i pick are the best ones available no although playing short-handed means more hands per hour it also means making more decisions so if i find a good heads up or three-handed game then i'm probably gonna play less tables than i were if all my tables were six-handed but because that short-handed game is going to be really good it's going to be worth it to play fewer tables as a result and for you it's probably going to be a process that you just kind of feel out so for me the sweet spot for sessions per week depends on what else i have going on in my life if i have no other work i can easily play seven days a week if playing just one session per day but i would still be wise to take at least one full day off to recover if i'm doing those double sessions so if on the other hand i have like work projects then i find it's

at least one here that River not the best Forum um he now beats none of the pairs King x7x are all better and 3DX makes trips so he's beating missed straight draws and missed flush draws I don't know if that's going to be enough to justify calling and uh for an over bet effectively All In feel like to John I'm probably going to find the fold but we'll see we'll see monsman hoping his opponent has either a king or a three going for a size like that can't fault him also probably figures that a seven and a six aren't going to call any bet size anyway so he might as well just Target the strongest parts of his opponent's range to Johnny picking up fives here hasn't opened the question is what size will he go with on the button here goes for men welcome Inferno Big Lick in the big blind get four to one says let's see three flops a gut shot well the jonak flopping an Ender pair here does have the best of it may go for a small bet for protection may also just check it back try to get to The Showdown that's what he's doing welcome Inferno had a hand that could conceivably check raise on the flop it's a similar spot to earlier on the 7-4 deuce board where he's got some Equity with the gut shot and it's also a board where his opponent is going to miss a lot I bet now he turns the best hand but because it's a lower part of the range being third pair with flush and straight draws possible he's going with that smaller bet size wants to take the betting lead wants to be able to get called by worse doesn't want to narrow his opponent's range too much to only being better hands which is what might happen if you went with a large bet size on this River dijonik has the best fit with the straight but if welcome Inferno followed it up with another bet here on the fourth Spade coming through very good chance to jonik would lay that hand down all right monsman could be re-shubving all in here could be taking a flop uh if it was Inferno snapshove dijonic opening pretty wide but not quite as wide as well quinferno also it's coming from under the gun also Mon's been having a few more big blinds here with 18 getting closer to centauros's stock so playing a bit more treading a bit more cautiously here just calling pre-flop and on this board then we gotten two streets of value maybe three Johnny betting small on the flop now if he bets larger on the turn he's looking to get value from a queen but think about it a queen is probably only calling two bets here rather than three so it makes sense to check back see a cheap see a cheap River and um not build the pot against the better Aces

to fire the big third barrel at the pot, he might just get you to fold your top pair with that play. He might force you to make a whole-pot mistake and that’s a disaster. By raising on the turn, you get him to lay the hand down and never have to face that bet. Very few opponents will re-raise bluff you on the turnagainst this line of action. So when you do get re-raised on the turn, you can be sure your hand is no good and now you can safely fold. If you flat-call the turn, the same hand that would fold to a raise might make a bold river bluff and win the pot from you. But no rules, right? It’s not always correct to raise the turn with top pair. Obviously, if your opponent’s hand was turned face up and you could see that you had him crushed, you’d never raise on the turn. So if, for some reason, you have a strong read on your opponent and you know you havehim beat, then flat-call with complete conviction to call the river and pick off his bluff/overly aggressive value bet. Also, the more passive your opponent, the more you should flat-call on the turn; passive players, by definition, never fire third barrel bluffs. If you’reagainst this type of opponent who would never ever bet the river after you call the turn unless he had you 100% beat, you can just call the turninstead of raising with the complete conviction of folding to a river bet. To recap: The more aggressive your opponent, the more likely you should be to invest your river-calling money with a raise on the turn. If you get three-bet, he has the best hand and you have an easy fold. If he does call your raise, he’ll almost always check to you on the river. Then you cancheck behind and either collect the pot or lose no more than you would have by calling on the turn and calling again on the river. Raising the turn is all upside, due to the equity in having your opponent fold the best hand, avoiding getting bluffed on the river, and never having to show your hole cards. That’s what you do if your opponent checks to you on the flop. But what if he calls your pre-flop raise, then leads into you? Well, we alreadynamed this play, remember? It’s called a weak lead. Players who lead into the raiser on a dry board usually have weak hands looking for information. That means you can now surmise that your opponent is on the weak end of the spectrum and your hand dominates his. Many people would raise here, because they think they have the best hand. But if you know you have the best hand, why would you ever raise inthis spot? Why risk raising an opponent who’s betting for the sole purpose of trying to figure out if his hand is any good? Aren’t you just giving himthe chance to make a great fold? If you

3.7 Example Hands It's time to solidify what we've in learned in this chapter and put Hero's ISO skills to the test. It will be most beneficial to first assess these hands on your own and decide upon what you think is the correct course of action. Only then should you look at the answer that follows. Learning how your initial impressions differ from the correct answer is invaluable. You want to train your mind to use the thought processes described in this chapter in a hands-on way so avoid the temptation to form vague ideas of how to play the spot and then skipping straight to the answer. Think about whether or not Hero should ISO, if so what his sizing should be, and if not, whether he should limp along or fold. Frequent strength is not amazing here, but it's far from terrible with a suited medium gapper hand. Fold equity is very good since there are no highly active players to act behind and the limper folds a healthy 55% of the time to c-bets when he doesn't fold pre-flop. Finally, being on the BU grants the best position possible and Hero will always be last to act post-flop even if other players call. Overall, this hand is a clear ISO and there is no reason to deviate from our normal sizing rule. Hero raises to 4BB.

The Advantage to Being Short Stacked Many no limit players will tell you that playing with a stack significantly shorter than the table average will make it hard to win. In tournaments that idea is obviously in one sense true (it’s harder to come in first place with a short stack), but in cash games it is total baloney. In fact, playing a short stack provides you two major intrinsic advantages over your deep-stacked opponents. Definition of a Short Stack For the purpose of this section, a short stack is simply a stack that is signif- icantly smaller than those of at least several of your opponents. For instance, if half or more of the players in your game have $200 stacks, and you have a $50 stack, you have a short stack. Dispelling the Myths Most people seem to think that playing a short stack cripples you for one major reason: Your opponents can “hurt” you, but you can’t “hurt” them. That is, with your $50 against their $200, they have to risk only a quarter of their stack to win your whole stack. That idea is completely true and also completely irrelevant. If you win a quarter of their stack, you’ve won $50. If they win your whole stack, they’ve won $50. Fifty dollars is fifty dollars. When you buy a new shirt with your fifty dollars, the clerk won’t ask you what percentage of a stack that fifty represents. Win the hand and you win a shirt. Lose the hand and you lose your shirt. As long as you have plenty more fifties in your pocket, losing your whole $50 stack hurts you no more than your opponent losing a quarter of their $200 stack hurts them. Some other people think playing a short stack hurts you because you can’t “push anyone offa hand.” With short money, people will just look you up because being wrong doesn’t cost them much. Again, that criticism is true, and this time it’s slightly more relevant. 132

extra bets you are likely to win in the long run are justification for playing your hand in this manner. Playing Two Aces Before the Flop 180 Hands with a pair of aces in them are so frequently misplayed that some additional discussion is warranted. First, it should be noted that hands containing two aces are not always playable, and the value of the hand is hugely dependent upon the number of players in the pot. Against one or two opponents, the strength of the two aces alone will frequently win the high side of the pot. When several players are in, however, you will need to improve to win. This improvement will often come in the form of a low or a flush, so having low cards or being suited will add value to the aces in a multiway situation. Hands with two aces and little else should generally be thrown away if several players have already entered the pot. Some examples of these trashy aces hands include: A-A-7-J, A-A-6-9, and A-A-8-K. If you are first in with this type of hand from early position, folding is probably the best option, unless the game is extremely tight. In this case, a raise will likely narrow the field enough that the aces will have a good chance of winning on their own strength. Hands with double-suited aces, even those without other quality cards, always have enough high potential to justify seeing the flop. Playing this hand for one bet in most cases, rather than putting in a raise, is probably the best approach for three reasons: (1) If the hand does hit, it will likely make a nut hand. Thus, the more opponents in the pot, the more money you will win. Raising before the flop might knock out a hand that would have paid off your nut flush. (2) When the hand misses the flop, as it often will, the pot is small and you can easily fold. (3) Finally, you add a degree of deception to the hand, as two aces are perceived by many to be a raising hand. Should you make a full house, you may get unwarranted action from opponents who misread your hand. If your hand features two aces and marginal side cards, you might sometimes prefer to play them for three bets before the flop instead of two. By putting in the second raise, you make it likely that the pot will be heads-up. This play might not work in some of the loosest Omaha eight-or-better games, but it 181 should be effective in situations where players have at least a little respect for money. When a player to your right has opened for a raise, you can make it three bets with hands like A-A-6-8, hoping to make it heads-up. If it works, you will be in a good situation, holding both the best hand and position. Even fairly loose players will tighten up a bit when faced with calling two raises cold. However, in the same game, if you are first to act

three right now but you have to wait two hours to get in one two well you should probably play one three that said waiting on a list is not ideal it's actually a huge waste of your time so you ideally want to arrive when the casino will have empty seats whenever I used to play cash games all day every day at Bellagio I would arrive at noon because I knew the game really started to get going at about one o'clock so I arrive an hour early I'd always get a seat and I would never be on the waiting list I could never comprehend it though it was almost as if there was something like 14 players who wanted to play in a table that had nine seats and they didn't want to play short-handed either although you should you should always be looking to play shorthand against Bad players so we would get there I would always be at the table I'd always get to play and then four or five players would just be grumbling because they didn't get a seat it's like well obviously just arrive earlier and get your seat lock it up right that said if you do have to wait to get in a game try to make good use of your time this means perhaps reading a book listening to podcasts studying poker do something to make good use of the time that you would otherwise just spend sitting around while you are waiting scope out your table that you will likely be put at because a lot of casinos there's only one table or two tables that you could be seated at and try to pay attention to see who is playing wildly see who is throwing a party see who's going nuts right you want to get in position against that player you want the crazy people on your rights that's very very important if you can get the crazy people on your right it is going to be highly profitable for you so you're gonna get seated at essentially a random seat once you get seated ask to be on the seat change list if your Casino has one and also has to be on the table change list if your Casino has one if there are multiple games of the same steak this way when a seat comes open if it is a highly advantageous seat because it has position on the bad player take it and if a seat comes available that's not a particularly good seat because maybe your seat that you're in initially randomly is good well then fine just stay in your seat also you want to be on a table change list because maybe the other tables of the same stake that you're playing are very different it is very common to have a few people who really induce action and if they're at one table and they're not at your table well you want to get at their table because they're

they'll even tell you i just gotta see it i just gotta see it so if there's a very short stack there and they'll get to see your hand anyway they'll fold a little bit more pre-flopping on the flop now here you do need to know sometimes you'll get an atrocious board and you gotta pump the brakes but there's a good thing here what is it if a player's been limping a lot that's probably because they're a more passive player and passive players don't bluff as much and passive players let's say here you got some showdown value obviously three to a straight flush you want to see the turn in rubber and micro six players they'll just let you see it they're just not gonna be bluffing as much as they should it so you'll be able to get to a lot of showdowns so you don't have to attack this board now i did check fold and he did have king of clubs so there you go and here we have 10 nine of hearts villain four goes ahead and opens now villain four has been helping quite a bit we go ahead and call here a little bit of a dangerous call with that short stack villain one being sure but he'd been doing a lot of this which was just calling all the time when he should be moving all in or folding so we go ahead and take the wrist sure enough we get a nice big multi-way pot now villain two goes in and leads into you here on this board what would you like to do here with the 1090 hearts full color rates let's get to work guys and gals poker lessons can run you 400 an hour you're just grinding right now and grinding you're learning how to play better focus feedback fix it let's get to work okay so a lot of people do want to call there but you want to be careful because villain one is if villain one's gonna do anything with that shortsick oftentimes they're just gonna shove and then that's going to reopen the action and villain 2 will likely blast you off the hand so with the two over cards and the back door flush draw and the gut shot it's very tempting to call there but you need to remember micro six players love getting it in all the time when they've hit anything on the board and you'll see micro six players how many times as come on guys you know this has happened villain one shoves there then villain two re-isolates and then you see villain one's hand and you're like why would you re isolate with that and it's like jack seven of clubs right but guys that's on us we need to know micro six players are trying this is their mo they want to see the flop and then if they kind of hit it in any fashion a lot of times as they're short they want

nan

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

Nut flush The best possible flush available.

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

ICM Basics As a tournament player, you may have heard about the concept of “ICM”, but what does this actually mean? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) is a mathematical formula that converts your tournament stack into a monetary value. This formula was first applied to poker by Mason Malmuth in 1987. The model uses stack sizes alone to determine how often a player will finish in each position (1st, 2nd, etc.), then assigns tournament equity based on the payouts of those positions. Tournament equity is your expected share of the prize pool, given the payout structure, your position in the event, and stack sizes. Table of contents Why is ICM a thing? How do you calculate ICM? How to leverage this information Risk Premium General heuristics and effects Limitations of ICM Alternative models Conclusion Why is ICM a thing? In a cash game, every chip has a monetary value, and the value of chips scales linearly; doubling your stack means doubling your stack’s value. In tournaments, however, the value of chips doesn’t scale linearly; doubling your stack doesn’t double the value of your stack. If the value of chips doesn’t scale linearly, we need a method to transform the value of chips into a monetary value. We need to find the real expected value of gaining or losing chips to make strategic decisions. We need a utility function to transform chipEV into $EV. That’s where the independent chip model comes into play. How do you calculate ICM? The Independent Chip Model assumes all players are equally skilled, and therefore the probability of winning is purely a function of stack sizes. ICM calculates the probability of each player finishing 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on, then multiplies those probabilities by the payouts of each position. To calculate the probability of a particular player finishing in 1st, divide their chips by the total amount of chips in play. Calculating 2nd and 3rd positions take more complex math. Example: Tom, Amy, and Bill are playing a 3-handed SnG. The stacks and payouts are as follows: What are the players’ tournament equity? Let’s start by calculating their 1st place equity. This is the easiest step, as the probability of any player winning is simply their stack divided by the total amount of chips in play. Multiply the probability of winning 1st place by the 1st place prize to get their 1st place equity. There are 1000 chips in play: Now we need to calculate their equity in 2nd place. This step is more complex, but still doable by hand. To calculate the probability of coming in 2nd, we take the following steps: Assume one of the other players wins, remove their chips from play, and divide our chips by the remaining chips in play Repeat 1. for every possible 1st place victory Multiply each outcome by the probability of the other player’s first place win. Ok, that sounds complicated, but it’s not so bad. Let’s get started: 2nd place equity: Assuming Tom wins (50% chance) 2nd place equity: Assuming Amy wins (30% chance) 2nd place equity:

you generally check-raise because you think you have the best hand, it is frequently correct to check-raise with a second-best hand if the play will drive other opponents out. The principle here is identical to the principle of raising with what you think is the second-best hand as it was explained in Chapter Nine and Chapter Thirteen. If the probable best hand is to your immediate right, you can check, wait for that player to bet, then raise so that the rest of the table will fold rather than call a double bet. While you may not be the favorite, you have still increased your chances of winning the pot, and you have the extra equity of whatever dead money is in the pot from earlier betting rounds. Sometimes you can check-raise with a come hand like a fourflush if there are many people in the pot already and you don't expect a reraise, for you are getting good enough odds, especially if you have a couple of cards to come. This play should usually be made only when the probable bettor is to your immediate left; then the other players will call that bettor before they realize you are putting in a raise. You do not want to drive players out because you want to get the correct odds for your raise. Summary The factors you must consider when you plan to check-raise are: 1.The strength of your hand. 2.Whether someone behind you will bet after you check. 3.The position of the probable bettor. 5 This situation occurs when you only call the raiser. Often the better play is to reraise. To check-raise with a hand with which you want to thin out the field, you want the probable bettor to your right so that people will have to call a double bet to stay in. With a very strong hand and with most come hands, you want the probable bettor to your 142 Chapter Fourteen left so the other players in the hand might call that bettor's single bet and then be invited to call your raise. 6 Chapter Fifteen Slowplaying As we saw in the last chapter, check-raising is playing a hand weakly in order to raise later in the same round of betting. It is possible that you will win the pot right there when you checkraise. At the very least, you will probably reduce the opposition to one or two players, which is what you usually want. Slowplaying Versus Check-Raising Slowplaying is not the same thing. It is playing a hand weakly on one round of betting in order to suck people in for later bets. Typical slowplays are to check if there has been no bet or just call a bet rather than raise. In other words, you take no action beyond what is necessary to stay in the pot. You give nothing away about the strength of your hand. When you check-raise you usually want to reduce the number of your opponents, but when you slowplay you are trying to keep as many players in

Frequent strength is similar to Hand 14, only a little weaker due to the hand's lesser ability to flop top pair. On the downside, fold equity is almost non-existent here. There are two limpers already, one of whom seems to have a strong dislike of folding post-flop. Moreover, there's another Fish in the blinds making a three or four way pot post-flop exceptionally likely should Hero raise, not to mention a Reg in position to Hero who is 3-betting 10%. Lastly, position is okay, but this is not enough on its own to make ISOing best. This brings us to the second question: can we call or do we have to resort to folding? With the absence of fold equity comes the promise of implied odds. These two concepts are actually inversely proportionate as where players are reluctant to fold, Hero is getting paid with his strong hands. Pot odds are also very good given that it's just 1BB to call into a pot that's already 3.5BBs and could be even larger when the SB completes or the BU limps along too. This is a great spot to limp behind. Hero calls 1BB.

Principles of Turn Strategy What Makes the Turn Unique? Several factors distinguish the turn from other betting streets: Hand values are more static than on the flop. When you are ahead, you are more likely to remain ahead, and when you are behind, you are less likely to draw out. Hand values are more dynamic than on the river. With one card to come, hands can still change value. This presents a dilemma: bet again to deny equity and risk getting raised, or check and risk a scary river. Lower SPR. If there was action on the flop, then the effective stack will be much shallower on the turn. The turn is often the point where players decide whether to play for stacks. Limited betting opportunities. Only one betting street remains after the turn, making slowplaying a riskier proposition than it was on the flop. This is especially true if there was no action on the flop. As the pot gets larger and betting opportunities fewer, players are more compelled to play according to the incentives of their hand class This all adds up to a street that plays more “honestly” than the flop. As the pot gets larger and betting opportunities fewer, players are more compelled to play according to the incentives of their hand class , even at the risk of revealing what that hand class is: With less to gain from protection, medium-strength hands have more incentive to check and try for a cheap showdown. Strong hands have more incentive to grow the pot with big bets , as they will have only one more opportunity to do so. Weak hands either commit to a big bluff or give up . There is less room to “push equity” with small bets as often happens on the flop. Draws have the trickiest decisions and often end up indifferent at equilibrium. On the one hand, semi-bluffing is appealing because they value fold equity more than ever. However, the risk of getting raised off their own equity offers a competing incentive to check . How Turn Play Differs From Flop Play Many players struggle on the turn because of misguided attempts to apply heuristics learned from flop play. The flop is the more commonly encountered betting street and so more familiar. There are also far fewer flop scenarios than turn scenarios, which makes them easier to conceptualize and study. But as we have seen, turn scenarios entail different range dynamics and incentives, which can cause optimal strategy to look quite different. This K ♠ 8 ♥ 4 ♦ UTG v BB 100BB NL50 cash game scenario is a good example of an undifferentiated flop strategy. There’s some splitting between the 33% and 50% bet sizes, but UTG basically just bets small with their entire range. UTG Strategy vs BB on K ♠ 8 ♥ 4 ♦ After BB checks and calls a 33% pot continuation bet : however, that strategy changes dramatically. On most turns, check is UTG’s most common action. When they don’t check, they mostly overbet ✋💸 UTG Strategy by

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

are held around the world, usually in casinos. The entry fees are typically $2,000 to $10,000, although the final of the World Poker Tour at The Bellagio sports an entry fee of $25,000, hefty even by poker standards. Traditionally these tournaments featured super-strong fields with a scattering of talented and wealthy amateurs. In the last couple of years online sites have begun running massive numbers of qualifying tournaments, so you can get into these events now with a very modest investment and lots of luck. This development has changed the composition of the fields dramatically, and altered the strategy somewhat. Here are the main features of live major tournaments and a brief note on how each feature affects your play. 1. Entry Fee. When everyone pays a big entry fee, players feel they have a real investment in the tournament, one they want to protect. This makes for conservative play, and the best strategy to apply is judiciously aggressive play, probing for the stealing situations which will be available. When players are tight, aggressive play becomes even more successful. An obvious show of strength will be respected until proven otherwise, so raises and check-raises will win lots of pots. 2. Round Length. In tournament terminology, a "round" is the length of time that the blinds stay at a given level before increasing. In a live tournament, this time is typically an hour to an hour and a half, although at a few tournaments (like the World Series of Poker) it's two hours. Although it takes awhile to deal the cards, a round will still consist of 40-50 hands. Long rounds favor good players, because there is more time for their skill to tell and less pressure to accumulate chips quickly. The long rounds in major live tournaments make conservative play more optimal in the early stages. 3. Players per Hand. In major tournaments there are fewer players involved in each hand. The vast majority of hands will involve only two or three players, while a few hands will just be folded around to the big blind. Under these circumstances, high card hands become more powerful and drawing hands less so, since the pot will rarely supply the implied odds needed to make the drawing hands playable. 4. Experience. With long rounds, there is more chance for players to observe the other players at the table and put those observations to use. The better and more experienced a player is, the better his chances for making use of this information. Less experienced players should play more aggressively than usual, to accumulate chips before the experienced players at the table have had a chance to accumulate information about them. 5. Bluffing. Except from the experienced super-aggressive players, there will be somewhat less bluffing than you might expect. The newcomers in the field will be nervous, and afraid that the experienced players will be able to read their bluffs easily. As a result, they'll be looking to play 25 only rock-solid hands. You can generally assume that unknown players will tend to have the hands

or do you want to check raise let's see those answers so we have all over the place can't even I love how active you guys are in the chat oops I mean get that timer going again we have a few people saying it is it is evenly distributed all across a lot of people saying see a lot of people saying be a few people saying these some people saying a-all right now okay so we're done there this is a really fun one I love this as a thought experiment because now that you're looking at all of them it's kind of crazy you pick B all the time right when I started playing I used to do be there all the time like shet call them check not really thinking like what is he bluffing most people when they see that that boar did you check the turn that got always got Mary's like okay I'm done now here's a better question I'll let you guys know every single one of these turns a profit obviously you have the deck hammered which one do you think makes the most money the one I found makes the most money on average I have actually tried this out a lot of different ways is the check raised check called lead works very well but people are getting a little weary to it I notice a lot of you guys pick that one that's a good option as well check I'll check I don't think gets as many Bluffs as maybe it used to back when people were a little bit more flippant about what they did donc lead does turn a profit the problem is that if the guy has like ten eight of diamonds you just lose that see that that you're most likely gonna get when you just completed from the big line so the one that tends to make the most money is the check raised every time I do this against an aggressive player they seem to have this one thought he wouldn't do that with amazed he's so polarized here so I get 600 more from eight 8 nine 9 ten 10 Jack Jack Queen Queen even though I lose them on the turn a lot but even though there's not much difference the aces in this guy's range seem to go broke a lot good players that I've never really seen make a mistake before will really overcome it here it blows my mind when I see people not wanting to put players in this spot now especially now when hero Colin has become so invoke and he can't know for a fact he's raising King 3 here King 3 suited there but for sure he's raising all of his suited aces in most likely most of his offsuit aces so the ace high board is a great board to play fast for value because he has so many hands you're gonna be making so much money from that's why the 4th post-flop trick

Why doesn’t my solution match GTO Wizard? So, you’ve got your own solutions to some spot, compared it to GTO Wizard , and noticed that the strategy isn’t the same. So what’s going on here? Shouldn’t you get the exact same results? This is one of the most common questions we get on the GTO Wizard Discord . This article will explore how small changes to initial parameters or solver algorithms can drastically change the strategic output. Compare apples to apples Before you go comparing solutions, please ensure that you are comparing “apples to apples”. Ask yourself these 5 questions: Are you using the same preflop ranges? Are you using the same bet sizes? Are you using the same rake structure? Are you using the same SPR? Did you solve to sufficient accuracy? It’s important to realize that small changes to the initial parameters can cause a butterfly effect that changes the solution’s output. Solvers are the embodiment of chaos theory. The first part of this article will explore how different starting parameters can drastically change the strategy. What if you use the exact same parameters? It may surprise you to learn that different solver algorithms can produce different strategies in strategically similar spots. However, that doesn’t mean one strategy is superior. In fact, strategies that look very different can and often will be extremely close to the same levels of EV and exploitability. How starting parameters change the strategy Example 1 – BvB with and without limp Different preflop ranges result in different postflop strategies. If your preflop ranges are designed for different preflop bet sizes, chances are you aren’t using the same ranges. Here’s an example. Let’s compare a SB opening range, with and without limps . On the left we have the General Solution ; on the right we have the Simple Solution : SB RFI Comparison – 500NL Cash Game 100BB deep The limping strategy (green) slightly polarizes the RFI. The strategy on the right contains proportionally more medium cards in the 9-T region and slightly fewer low/high cards compared to the opening strategy on the left. For example, the General solution checks this QT8 flop 55% of the time, whereas the Simple solution (which doesn’t limp and has more middling cards) only checks 46%. General (With preflop limps): Simple (No preflop limps): Example 2: SB vs BTN 3BP with different preflop 3bet sizes This example will compare the SB flop cbet strategy between the 500NL Complex and General Solutions on AKKr. The Complex Solutions use a smaller (10BB) 3bet size with a more linear range . The smaller 3bet causes BTN to call wider. Additionally, Complex has many small bet sizes available, which become relevant for this kind of a flop. These factors together mean SB cbets more often (72% cbet frequency) in the complex solutions: The General Solutions use a larger (12BB) 3bet size with a slightly more polar and top-heavy range. The larger size results in BTN calling tighter. Additionally, the smallest bet size available in General is 33% pot, which leads to more checking.

a hand that’s worse than mine?” Amazingly, people don’t really ask that question and here’s why: They’re so keyed into the concept of value betting and they know it’s bad to miss a value bet, so they focus all their attention on making a really good value bet—without stopping to consider what a value bet actually means. It means betting a hand that can get paid off by a worse hand than yours. But what if no hand worse than yours can pay you? Then you’re not valuebetting. You’re bluffing. And it often happens when you’re considering a river bet that you don’t know which side of that equation you’re on. By this point in the book, of course, you’re familiar with mysteries of this sort. We saw it when betting AQ into AK or AJ and bluffing into hands that might be better or might have missed. In those circumstances, we paid close attention to the risk of reopening the betting, such that if we get raised, we have to fold and maybe end up folding the best hand. So we want to value bet and extract every ounce of earn we can.At the same time, we don’t want to step in something sticky. Say you have KQ and the board is J-T-x-x going into the river. Now a queen comes off and, huzzah, you just hit top pair. Your opponent checks and you have to decide whether to bet. There was betting on the flop and turn, so you can be confident that your opponent has at least something. Before you value bet your top pair, you need to assess what hands are paying you off here. And you have to measure the likelihood of them making a crying call with AJ or AT against the possibility that they were dragging two pair or maybe just made two pair with QJ or QT. This isn’t an easy thing to measure, but it helps if you break things down. There are several issues to consider, each in turn. First, do you have position? Are you first or last to act? Second, what does your opponent have? Obviously, you don’t know for sure, but you’ve had three good looks at him: pre-flop, on the flop, and on the turn. All those looks add up to a story of some kind. By now you should have a good idea of what it is, at least in terms of whether he’s weak, medium, or strong. Third, evaluate your own hand’s relative strength. If you’re weak or strong, it’s easy to think clearly. Weak, you’re certain you’re bluffing, not value betting. Strong, you’re reasonably confident of betting the better hand. It’s those medium-strength hands, especially when you judge your opponent to be likewise medium-strength, that put you on iffy ground, the placewhere the edgy value bet lives. Say you’ve determined that you’re medium-strength and your opponent probably is too. You’d like for him to pay you off with a weaker pair, but you’re aware he may be ahead of you now. Ask yourself, “How aggressive

and then everything else is calling notice a lot of folding 41 right because again we're out of position deep stack we're going to under realize our equity as you see here the flush draws that are raising are mostly the high equity ones right so we see 10 9 raising a lot combo draw 9 6 combo draw 6'5 combo draw ace highs are really good then we see a lot of the weaker ones doing a little bit more calling like the um 5 4 6 5 5 3 4 3 right a lot of these weaker combo draws do more calling okay so realize we're not always raising every flush draw here a lot of people make the error of taking literally every flush draw and raising so you're gonna find the cards that wrap around the eight and the six i'm sorry eight and a seven so nine six ten nine six five these are the ones that do more raising because they're gonna make more premium hands on more run outs than the naked flush draws right also notice that hands like ace track and ace ten do a lot of calling because they can um they can just check call flop check check turn check check river and win some portion of the time they have more showdown value also notice the stuff like um eight five and eight six pair plus flush draw i gotta imagine same thing with the seven i actually don't have any sevens for whatever oh i'm sorry we don't have sevens obviously um seven's on the board but yeah eight six and eight five do a lot of calling right notice all the eights do a lot of calling so pair plush flush draws are often doing a lot of calling in the spot because they again have showdown value all right let's talk about big blind strategy versus cut off on eight queen eight seven six so big blind checks cut off bets big blind raises cut off calls on the six turn so in this scenario while we do have a lot of draws a lot of the rest of our range is really really good right like again all these two pairs are really good these hands that are very high frequency are mostly like really really good hands in this scenario right so this is a spot where we have sets that are still very very strong and high equity draws right which are also very very strong notice also a lot of our draws in this scenario are gonna have a nine which bumps up their equity a bit right this is a spot where we are going to continue betting very very frequently we're checking 38 what are we mostly checking notice marginal made hand here draw that did not complete at all here some top pairs right top pairs make sense to check if we have them at this point if you do check raise the top pair here like ace queen or

Or if I have to call a double-raise cold, I probably won’t be able to play it there either. There are always exceptions, but in general, I play the hand in order to get a flop with it. For the most part, you don’t want to put a whole lot of money in the pot with small connecting cards before the flop. It’s best to take a lot of flops with these hands. You want to get a flop, hoping to make a little straight, a little set of trips, a little two pair, and so on. With any two cards to a straight flush, connected or not—except for the top and bottom cards of a straight-flush, such as the 8? 4? or J? 7?—I’d come in from any position. In a late position, I’d raise with them. When I come in with this hand in an early or middle position I’m really looking to get raised. In fact, I’m hoping someone has a big pair in the hole and raises behind me. Then I can put a relatively small amount of additional money in the pot, and if I get a flop, I can break him. The beautiful part about having the small connecting cards is that if I don’t get any help, I throw them away. If the flop comes 9-9-2, for example, I don’t get involved with a 7-6. I’m through. Normally, I wouldn’t want to get more than 5 percent, maybe 10 percent, of my money involved before the flop with this type of hand. I’d only get as much as 20 percent of my money in with that hand if I was rushing. I wouldn’t do it unless I was on a streak. 392 There are also times when I might raise from early or middle position with something like a 7-6. I noted that I generally just call. But if the tempo of the game were just right, I’d raise in an early or middle position. For example, if I were winning a lot of pots, I’d do it. I said that I usually play the next pot after I win a pot, regardless of what position I’m in. And when I play that pot, I usually raise it. Also, if the game had tightened down to the point where everybody was playing the nuts, I’d shoot it up with a couple of small connecting cards. Of course, you always try to keep from getting reraised with that hand. So, the ideal situation is when you think your muscle will keep anyone from playing back and will make your opponents think you’ve probably got big cards or a big pair. I raise with this hand in a late position because I don’t think I’ll get reraised. Also, since nobody’s raised in front of me, I’ll be able to use some deception. I usually don’t raise in an early position because I’d have to go through six or seven players without getting reraised. With a lot of top players in the game, that’s not likely. Also, I

the Independent Chip Model (ICM) in poker impacts their strategy preflop,… 10 Tips for Multiway Pots in Poker While lots of work has been placed into research and explanation of heads-up pot strategy,… What is the Bubble Factor in poker tournaments? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) shows us the real money implications of tournament chip decisions.… The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments In poker, a PKO (Progressive Knockout) tournament is a type of tournament where a portion… How To Analyze Turn Textures In Poker Master the art of turn analysis in poker. Understand how the turn card changes the… Principles of Turn Strategy Learn the principles of turn strategy in poker and discover what makes the turn unique.… Poker Strategies: Tournaments vs. Cash Games Tournament poker is not as different from cash game poker as people sometimes assume. Most… How Solvers Work A Game Theory Optimal solver is an algorithm that calculates the best possible poker strategy.… The Most Powerful Play in Poker The central strategic implication of stack depth is the question of how much equity a… When does ICM become significant in MTTs? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) was invented in 1987 by M. Malmuth and is one… How to Study GTO Solutions Tools like GTO Wizard and other solvers should not be used to memorize specific strategies.… Principles of GTO Game theory, or GTO (for Game Theoretically Optimal), is best understood not as a rigid… Interpreting Equity Distributions GTO Wizard’s range vs range equity distribution graphs are an excellent tool for visualizing which… What is Leverage in poker? Leverage refers to the risk of future betting. When you call a bet on the… Reasons for value betting in poker You’re probably accustomed to thinking of bets as either value or bluff. In this taxonomy,… The Science of Poker Performance Poker is a game of small edges and big swings. Every hand is an investment… What is Valor in poker? Can a poker hand be courageous? How does your ability to value bet future streets… Pot Geometry “Pot Geometry” refers to betting an equal fraction of the pot on each street, such… A Beginner’s Guide to Poker Combinatorics Combinatorics is a fancy term for evaluating the number of possible “combinations” (combos) of any… Stack-to-pot ratio Stack-to-pot ratio, or SPR, is a way of measuring how deep the effective stack is… Equity Realization In poker jargon, equity expresses how much of the pot a hand will win, on… Variance and Bankroll Management Variance and Bankroll Management. Vital Soft Skills for Every Poker Player. How to Become a GTO Wizard Welcome to the wonderful world of game theory optimal poker! This article will serve as… The Three Laws of Indifference Indifference in poker is one of the most misunderstood concepts. The word “indifference” means that… Poker subsets and abstractions An “abstraction” is a way to simplify the game of poker. This game is so… Mathematical Misconceptions in Poker Pot Odds and MDF are foundational mathematical formulas in poker. How to solve toy games Poker is a complicated game. It’s impossible to calculate

player should never need to provide a reason for leaving a game. The common notion that you’re being unfair if you sit down for a short time and leave with a big profit is nonsense. In poker, you put your money at risk. If you win, it’s your money, and you can get up and leave anytime you feel like it. Still, this is sometimes hard to do in the real world. If you hit and run too often, you’re apt to get a reputation as the type of player some don’t like to play against. It never bothers me when players win and leave quickly, but it does bother others. Personally, I usually prefer to play longer sessions, but I don’t frown on those who’d rather play short ones. Online, you won’t encounter any resistance when you take the money and run. Opponents realize that you might only have ten minutes to play right then, and you can just click Leave Table and be out of the game without fanfare or making excuses. In fact, players need to pay attention to even notice who comes and goes in a game, because it happens so quickly online. If you’re one of those players who likes to play short sessions and leave with your winnings intact, online play is your kind of poker. For the most part, nobody cares or even notices. 64 WHAT ADJUSTMENTS WILL YOU NEED TO MAKE ONLINE? Finally, I’ll give you some basic advice about how to win online. Almost everything in this book applies. Online poker is real poker. Keep in mind how I advise playing against bad players, because you can just assume most of the players you’ll confront online are bad. Or at the very least, you’ll find yourself up against more unsophisticated and too-loose players than you will in real-world casinos. The trick to beating games against that type of player is to seldom do anything fancy. You don’t need to. Most of your profit will come from choosing to do the obviously correct thing. Raise when your logical first choice is raising. Fold when your hands are weak. Bluff sparingly in limit games. Against the type of player you meet online, you should try a lot less tricks than you would in the real world. Mike Caro and I are in the process of making instructional videos about realworld poker and online poker. Some of these videos will be given away at doylesroom.com exclusively. Many others will be available to the public. We expect this project to do for poker videos what Super/System did for poker literature. Use all the professional techniques you’ve learned in this book, but keep it simple whenever possible. That’s the purest path to online poker profit. 65 EXCLUSIVE SUPER/SYSTEM 2 TIPS FROM MIKE CARO UNIVERSITY Mike Caro From his earliest days as “Crazy Mike” to his current stature as the legendary “Mad Genius of Poker” and “America’s Mad Genius,” Mike Caro has pioneered some of the most important concepts used by the top players today. In public, he can

big blind three bets so we're using slightly larger sizing now from the big blind 4.5 4 and 3.5 very very tight versus Under the Gun and we're using a ratio of a 50 value fifty percent Bluffs so we are going polar the small blind was played as a linear three bet the big blind is played as a polar uh three bet and why do you ask well the big blind can call a bunch of hands profitably there's no one left to act behind um so it just plays much differently than small blind so we're bluffing a lot we're value betting a lot five percent total three bat versus Under the guns we're not three betting almost every versus Under the Gun and then versus late position that gets brought up to 16. and the Bluffs are pulled from pseudo connectors and then just some random nice hands with blockers asex uh King X and um just kind of like a sporadic amount of different combos I don't think it matters too much what you have uh what's combos you're using as long as your your three bet is at least 16 from the big line versus LP I think that's going to be more important and also just be pipping a lot in general UH 60 vpip versus about an open I don't think population uh could ever hit that so I'm sorry this is 60 call so it's going to be a 76 percent uh versus a button a button open off of 100 bigs and you see this actually increase as the stack sizes get shorter and that's because reverse implied odds are much less significant you know if you hit a low pair uh it's just worth a lot more when you're shallower stacked and when you're deeper stacked so you see the vpip climb here it's uh 79 and here it's 82 so it goes from 76 to 82 uh let's see 60 big blinds we're using a 4X sizing from the big blind um three betting six percent very very tight versus Under the Gun F value half plus like 47 of hands and then versus light position we have three batting 16 of hands half Value Plus calling 63. so very tight strategy versus uh under the gun and middle position opens in pretty aggressive versus blind opens 3.5 x sizing off of the 30 big blind stack three betting six percent you notice here the value to Bluff ratio is is constant and it's it was almost exactly constant in the other three betting uh grids as well so when you when you played 200 big blind poker with uh with no Annie you actually get it it becomes like 67 Bluffs and 33 value um and then as your stack size decreases it becomes more balanced like this just kind of like the post-wop theory that we always discuss so versus Under the Gun tight MP tight versus the button very uh aggressive three Bet 19 calling 63 so

case of the Fundamental Theorem of Poker, but it is vital. Wanting to win the present pot instantly — even with the best hand — depends on your chances of winning if the hand continues and upon the pot odds you are giving your opponents. You must ask yourself whether an opponent would be correct to take those odds knowing what you had. If so, you would rather have that opponent fold. If not — that is, if the odds against your opponent's making a winning hand are greater than the pot odds he's getting — then you would rather have him call. In this case, instead of winning the pot right away, you're willing to take the tiny risk that your opponent will outdraw you and try to win at least one more bet. If, in the seven-stud example of the preceding paragraph you had four-of-a-kind instead of three-of-a-kind, you would not want to put in a raise to drive people out. Your hand is so good you'd want to collect a few more bets with it. It's rare to catch a monster hand like four-of-a-kind in the first four or five cards. With just about anything less than that, you should try to win large pots right away instead of letting players in cheaply or free. Nor do the pots you go after have to be 74 Chapter Nine Win the Big Pots Right Away 75 gigantic, just fairly large relative to the betting structure of the game you're playing. Your opponent or opponents may fold after you bet or raise, but while you might have won another bet or two, you still have the reward of having locked up a good-sized pot. Betting (or Raising) With the Second-Best Hand There is a curious corollary to the principle of trying to win the big pots right away. Obviously you want to bet or raise to drive out as many players as possible when you have the best hand. But if the pot is very large, it is frequently desirable to do the same even when you suspect you have the second-best hand, especially when you believe you're not that far behind. A good example of this concept comes up in razz: You You have four cards to an 8, and you suspect the player to your right, Player C, has four to a 6. If there are a few raises on third street, creating a good-sized pot, it is important that you raise the 6,4 when he comes out betting, even though his hand is probably better than yours and he will probably reraise. Why should you be willing to add two bets to the pot when you suspect you don't have the best hand? The answer is that you want to force out the other two hands. With a large pot they might call a single bet, but in the face of a bet, a raise, (and a probable reraise), they should now fold. You have succeeded in reducing the opposition to one, and you now have about a

hands but these blue hands this is kind of where you want to be start mixing it in and um the reason some of these hands like king deuce offsuit or even like a hand like let's take a hand like uh six three off suit why it's a good hand to raise up against a small blind limp and the reason like I hand like six three off suit um is a good hand to raise sometimes uh I have it in here as like 25 of the time the reason 6-3 off suit can be a good hand to raise is because when you raise it up let's look at that range that is folding against your uh limp so this is the range that we were going to play as the small blind when we raise six three off suit now they're folding King six off to Queen six off suit Jack six off suit ten six nine six and then now they're folding hands like Ace three King three Queen three so we get all those hands that are you know six three is obviously a really poor hand and doesn't have much equity and doesn't play well post flop but now we get all these hands to fold that had us dominated post-flop so when we do raise and they call our outs are normally more live we're less likely to be dominated with the 6-3 offsuit and a lot of the time they're just going to be folding when we raise it up so that's why these kind of high low hands like 10-3 off we get them to fold hands like that Ace three King three are gonna fold when we raise and then they're also going to fold hands like 10 6 off suit 10-5 off suit and ten four off suit so the adjustment here the exploit that I think a lot of players are not making is they don't raise enough from the big blind when the small blind limps into the pot um pretty much at all stacked UPS so that's the adjustment that you kind of want to be making from the big blind versus a small blind limp so we've kind of looked at a couple of different um exploits you could be making versus players when you're playing in the small blind knowing how often your player is Raising from the big blind and that kind of determines what your strategy is from the small blind in terms of what hand you want to limp and what hands you want to raise and um also from the big blind pretty much across the board a lot of people are not raising enough in the big line what you guys should be taking out of this webinar is making sure you're raising enough from the big blind when it folds to the small blind and they limp into the pot and also learning how to identify who the opponent is in the big blind and knowing how aggressive they're

forces me to ‘retrieve’ what I think the correct strategy would be and highlights a gap in my knowledge when I get it wrong. For example, this spot is LJ vs HJ, 50bb effective, single-raised pot, on a J ♠ 7 ♥ 2 ♦ flop. This is LJ ’s first action: LJ flop-strategy When the LJ bets 1.4bb, rather than simply look at the next action, I like to attempt to speak out loud, or write down, what I think the response will be from the HJ , who has this range: Range HJ arrives on the flop with I’ll walk through this exercise here to demonstrate the process. Perhaps you can too, before scrolling any further. This is what I wrote down: Show prediction I suspect that the HJ will fold rarely, but the hands they do fold will be perhaps the weakest suited Ace-x some of the time, K6 s, and perhaps 44 – 33 . I also suspect that the raises will be small in frequency, but likely to be QQ , AJ – QJ , 22 and the bluffs will be hands like T9 s, 89 s, T8 s, etc when they also have a backdoor flush draw. These hands will all mix. The rest of the hands will be calls. If you like this experiment, you can go one step further and use GTO Wizard’s Range Builder to make your own ranges to compare to the GTO Solution. This is what I quickly put into Range Builder before I looked at the actual solution: My estimated build of HJ’s responding strategy And only now we look at the actual solution, which I promise I have not looked at: The actual solution of HJ’s responding strategy Show evaluation of prediction It looks like I got the frequency of hands and which ones fold close, though I was expecting some pure folds. I was right to suggest 22 , for bottom set, was a raise. I was also correct not to suggest top set would be raised. I didn’t even think about middle set, which is sometimes raised, so I got that wrong. I missed a trick with the bluffs. I didn’t even consider that K8 s and A8 s would be bluffs. In hindsight, these make good bluffs because they have double backdoors that can hit runner-runner straight and runner-runner flush. They also likely block value hands like AJ , AA , KK , and KJ . I also missed perhaps the best straight draw bluff, which was Q9 s. I am shocked to see AT o in there as a bluff, and I’m actually not sure why it is. My guess is that it blocks AJ / TJ and can also make a runner-runner straight. But clearly, I would need to study this as it was an oversight on my part. Finally, KJ s, QJ s, and KJ o are all mostly played as calls instead of raises. Looking at the range again, I suggested we raise all our Jack-x essentially, which would cap our calling range

Table 7: Equity Distribution on Various Flops Comparing range vs range equity, we can see that pre-flop, Hero has the advantage, but the equity distribution will change depending on the texture of the flop. It is important for Hero to understand how equities shift on various boards because that has a dramatic effect on the way the hand will play out. Let’s consider a specific example with a flop of 8♥7♠5♠. According to the equities table, this flop favors the BB. It improved their range equity from 41.5% to 50.33%, making them a tiny favorite. Your overall range equity was reduced from 58.5% to 49.67% which means that, in general, you should play much more cautiously because BB will have many high equity hands such as straights, sets, two pairs and combo draws. If you choose to c-bet the flop with a high frequency, the BB can x/r you very effectively. If you choose to check back the flop, the BB can start betting aggressively on many turns and rivers. Even if the equity of your actual hand A♦A♣ is high (70.83%) you should, in general, look to play passively and check behind with a high frequency of hands that can improve on a variety of turns, allowing them to easily call bets from the opponent. Since A♦A♣ can call most turn bets and bluff-catch effectively, you check back. Play continues as follows: Turn: (6.125bb) 8♥7♠5♠J♥ [2 players] Villain bets the full pot, 6.125bb, Hero calls. River: (18.375bb) 8♥7♠5♠J♥2♣ [2 players] Villain moves all-in for 1.7 × Pot (31bb). Hero calls. Villain shows T♥3♥ for a busted draw. In this spot A♦A♣ is an excellent bluff catcher. All the draws missed and you hold no hearts or spades in your hand, which makes it a little more likely Villain is bluffing because you do not block the obvious bluffing hands (flush draws). Of course, it is impossible to memorize all possible equity matchups between hands and

the button, we mean the button, not one or two offthe button. When you’re licking your chops in a good game, it’s easy to say, “Well I’m close enough to the button,” and throw in your $5 with total trash. Reserve total trash for the button only. You can still play loosely on the button even when someone has already raised. As a rule of thumb, if the raise represents only a few percent of the

Q1. Villain's RFE on a river bluff is 55 / (55 + 91.5) = 38%. Hero needs to call 62% of his river

Table 118: UTG C-betting Range Breakdown on 5♥5♦4♥ The IP player strategy breaks down as follows: Strong hands Strong hands are slowplayed ~28% of the time. Quads are mostly checked back, full houses are checked back about 22% of the time, trips are almost always c-bet and overpairs get c-bet in a reverse linear fashion. TT gets c-bet 76%, JJ 64%, QQ 50%, KK 40% and AA 22%, as the bigger pairs need less protection and make great hands to call down on many runouts after checking back the flop. A-high combo draws get c-bet ~55%. Good hands Good hands are c-bet ~59% of the time. Mid pairs 66-99 are c-bet almost 100%, OESD gets mostly c-bet, gutshots mostly like to check back and A-high flush draws are c-bet linearly, with the strongest kickers being c-bet more often than the ones with weak kicker. K-high and Q-high flush draws gets c-bet reverse linearly, with the highest kickers being checked back more often and weaker flush draws being c-bet ~ 2/3 of the time.

vs. BB against the type of player described above. This board is perfect for the delayed c-bet against our fit-or-fold friend. Any hand that Villain is folding on the flop has at most four outs to improve to a hand that he won't fold on the turn (eg. QJ). This means that protection is less of a worry. Villain's flop folding range very often remains weak on the next street and so Hero can happily check behind and wait a street before he c-bets. If Villain checks again, then the green light of fold equity now shines brighter. If Villain leads, then it turns red and Hero saves a precious bet which will add to his long-term win-rate. Finding subtle improvements in spots like this is one thing that separates the great players from the merely good ones. But beware, if Hero isn't sure that Villain plays fit-or-fold on the turn then passing up a profitable flop c-bet and then sometimes folding the turn to a bluff lead from Villain is disastrous. Reason 3: Hero Plans to Give Up, but the Turn Card Improves his Range and Therefore his Fold Equity In these spots our flop check is always made with the intention of being finished with the hand. We're usually showdown bound if we're allowed to get there, but if not, it's no great loss and we're happy to fold to a bet from Villain. Perhaps we have 4c4s on some medium coordinated board and c-betting is very unattractive with such bad equity when called, a miserable texture for fold equity and some SDV to win the pot if we can get to showdown. Villain checks to us on the flop and we check behind. On the turn the board now looks like this: The Kh is somewhat of a saviour of a turn card. It improves a lot of our flop check/folding range. Now our 4c4s has even less SDV but a lot more FE. This makes it a very tempting choice to turn into a bluff. Our FE has not necessarily improved here due to Villain's second check, but due to the turn card itself. In fact, Villain is advised to check his whole range on this turn where balance is his priority since Hero's range is comfortably ahead. Extreme changes in board texture should cause Hero to reconsider his plan.

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

my cards instead. Be aware that to make such plays, you must know what's going on at the table, and be very cautious after a questionable flop. If you call against four people, and the flop comes A♦K♠T♣, you're in big trouble. To make the call in the first place, you have to be cheerfully able to let a situation like that go. Resolution: You fold. Hand 5-2 Situation: A few hours into a major tournament. Players B and C *Ј>& like solid, tight, good players. Player G is very loose. Other players tend to the conservative. Your hand: A♣4♥ Action to you: Player A folds, B and C call $I00. Players D and E fold. Pot is now $350. Question: Do you fold, call, or raise? Answer: Fold. You have to get used to letting these hands (ace-small) go, especially in multiway pots. What, actually, are you rooting for on the flop? Since the other players are also trying to stay with aces, and since another ace is likely to have a higher kicker than yours, hitting an ace on the flop could be very expensive. If not, you're really pulling to flop a small straight, which would win but which is very unlikely. The risk-reward ratio here is terrible. Let it go. Resolution: You fold. 98 Hand 5-3 Situation: Major tournament, early in the first round. Player B likes to play a lot of pots, and has won a couple of big ones so far-No information yet on Player D. Player E has shown down a couple of good hands, and seems to bet what he has. The big blind has just arrived from another table. Your hand: A♠8♦ Action to you: Player A folds, B calls $20, C folds, D calls $20, E raises to $80, F and G fold. Pot now $150. Question: Do you fold, call, or raise? Answer: Despite the good position, ace-eight isn't that strong a hand. Here it's up against two callers and a raiser, with the big stack yet to be heard from. You should simply fold. If the action had been folded around to you, then you could raise with this hand. If you were up against only one caller, and he seemed to be a tight player, then venture a call. The minimum hand you should call with in this position would be ace-jack or ace-ten. You could also call with any pair. With ace-king or ace-queen you can reraise on the button. In the actual hand, Player H does elect to call. Action: You call. The small blind and big blind fold. The original two callers put in another $60 each. Pot now $350. Flop: T♥7♦3♠ Action: Player B checks, Player D bets $20, and Player E raises to $16O. Question: What do you do? Answer: The flop missed you completely, and a solid player says he has something. Believe him and fold. Action: You fold. 99 Hand 5-4 Situation: Early in a one-table satellite tournament. Your hand: A♦T♣ Action to you: Player A folds, Player B calls $20. Pot

a little more raising from top pair, but their range is still polarized to mostly trips and low-equity bluffs: Shallow Stacks With 20bb , BB does far more thin value/protection raising, even against UTG. The low SPR enables them to treat even a 3 with a bad kicker as the nuts and on 322 r. Their strategy on this flop looks almost identical to the 722 r with deeper stacks, featuring many small raises from a pair-heavy range . BB even slowplays some trips now that building the pot is no longer a concern: BB’s strategy vs UTG on A22 r remains largely unchanged, however: Facing a BTN raiser on the same board is a different story. BB’s raising range is actually still polar, even though it’s much wider: Thanks to BTN’s wider range and the fact that BB had a lot of incentive to shove A x and pocket pairs preflop, BB can raise all their A x for value, balancing those raises with many bluffs. In fact, they have no good candidates for calling ! All their hands are either strong enough to raise for value or so weak they must rely on fold equity. Conclusion BB’s response to a continuation bet on paired flops varies with the stack depth , position of the preflop raiser , rank of the pair on the board, and rank of the unpaired board card . It always involves more raising and more folding than on the average flop, but the composition of that raising range can change dramatically with the circumstances. At one extreme are circumstances where the preflop raiser enjoys an especially large range advantage, which is usually when they are in early position and one or both board cards are highly ranked. In these cases, BB mostly raises trips and low equity bluffs for a large size. As stacks get shallower, it becomes easier for BB to check-raise for thin value. Slowplaying trips becomes more appealing with a lower SPR as well. At the other extreme are boards where the preflop raiser’s range consists of many unpaired hands and contains several pocket pairs below the unpaired board card. This occurs more commonly when the raiser is in late position but can arise even against an UTG raiser on an especially dry flop like T22 r. In these cases, BB raises a less polar range consisting of higher equity bluffs, and thin value/protection raises from medium pairs. They also include most of their trips in this range, making it difficult for their opponent to three-bet them. 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…

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

Poker Rooms As of this writing, online poker rooms operate from offshore locations. It is illegal to operate an online casino from within the United States, although the law on this is changing rapidly. Some casinos in Nevada are pressing for laws allowing their United States-based businesses to operate over the Internet. The law on playing in online casinos for real money is unclear. In no manner should this book be construed to offer legal advice on the issue of online gambling. The law in this area is vague and changing. It is your responsibility to know and follow the laws that apply in your state and jurisdiction. Seek appropriate legal advice from a qualified attorney if unsure. It is my opinion that observation of real-money play in online poker rooms and participation in play-money games are valuable activities for learning the structure, mechanics, and strategies of various forms of poker. However, playing for real money in an online venue is a risky activity. It is difficult to know for certain if the games and operators are completely legitimate. If you choose to play poker online, proceed with caution. TEXAS HOLD'EM ONLINE Setting Up To Play Online To play poker online, you will need: A computer A software package called a Web browser A connection to the Internet. I will make some general comments on all of the above; in particular, how your choices relate to online poker games. It is not my intent to review specific computers or make recommendations. Consumer choice changes weekly and there are thousands of publications on computers, software, and accessories for those who need guidance. Computers: Personal computers come in two basic types that are defined by their operating system. The operating system is the program that appears when you first turn on the computer and allows the user to perform all the basic tasks-launch application programs, manage files, connect to peripherals. The Windows@ operating system published by Microsoft runs on more than 90% of the personal computers manufactured. The Macintosh0 operating system runs only on computers manufactured by Apple@ Computer and accounts for less than 10% of the market There are other operating systems (for example Unix and its variants), but most people rarely encounter them. Windows dominates the market so most online poker rooms require use of a Windows-based computer. If your primary purpose for owning a computer is for online activity, poker or otherwise, a Windows-based computer will give you more online options. The Macintosh operating system is used heavily for education, graphics design, and desktop publishing (this book was produced on a Macintosh). If you have an Apple computer, you can still play online poker, but your choices will be limited. While all online poker rooms work on Windows machines, not all work on a Macintosh. The online cardroom profiles in Chapter 10 specify which ones are Macintosh compatible. 28 THE INTELLIGENT GUIDE TO TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER Web browser: The software that allows you to download and view Web pages is called a Web browser. The most popular browsers are Netscape@ and

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

check-raise from a polarized range remains a threat. LJ’s weaker pairs benefit from multiple promotion effects after this action. The combination of the flop check and the blank turn leaves A5 fairly high up in LJ’s range, even though it’s just third pair. Compare this to a K s turn, which improves many of the weaker hands in LJ’s flop checking range. Now A5 is no longer so high in LJ’s range and so never bets. The medium pocket pairs bet less often as well. Conclusion Taking the pot immediately is always nice, but an in-position player can sometimes do better than stabbing into the dark by gathering more information before investing. By checking behind, they get to see the next card and their opponent’s next action, both of which help them value their hand more accurately. Medium-strength hands benefit most from this additional information, so checking weights the aggressor’s range toward such holdings. As a result, they are not terribly aggressive after checking. If the opponent bets, they mostly play a bluff-catching game, aiming to call down at a frequency that makes the opponent indifferent to bluffing and rarely raising. This is not the primary branch of the game tree where the check pays off . Some of your hands will face some tough decisions if your opponent bets into you, and it’s ok to have no good options when that happens. You got unlucky that they bet and unlucky to hold the kind of hand that would face a difficult decision. Sometimes you just have to make the best of a bad situation. It is better to think of these scenarios as the price of doing business, a cost you occasionally pay in exchange for the benefit of getting a lot of profitable opportunities when your opponent checks a second time. If the opponent checks again, as they should do relatively often on all but the most favorable boards, the in-position player now has a lot more leeway to make thin value bets , to bluff into a twice-weakened range , and to keep the pot small depending on what their hand prefers. This opportunity to make better decisions when armed with more information is a big part of what the aggressor buys themselves by checking on the previous street. GTO Wizard the #1 App for Poker players Study any spot imaginable Practice by playing vs. GTO Analyze your hands with 1-click START CRUSHING NOW JOIN DISCORD Author Andrew Brokos Andrew Brokos has been a professional poker player, coach, and author for over 15 years. He co-hosts the Thinking Poker Podcast and is the author of the Play Optimal Poker books, among others. Latest article Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An

contest pots than some of his opponents, who are more incentivized to bide their time and hope that short stacks like Payne get eliminated before taking on too much risk themselves. So, while Payne has an extremely strong hand in this instance, there is no reason for his opponents to assume so much strength; he should be opening roughly 20% of the deck. Aguilera’s Three-Bet From the Button Jose Aguilera, with a stack of 42M (roughly 52bb), three-bet to 4.5M (5.6bb). While three-betting QQ is almost certainly correct (it’s actually a low-frequency call in our sim), Aguilera’s size is likely too large. A smaller three-bet–our simulation uses just 4bb–still applies huge pressure to Payne while allowing Aguilera to cut his losses with the weaker portion of his range should Payne four-bet him. It also enables him to fold more cheaply should another player cold four-bet, something he might wish to do even with some hands that would have called a shove from Payne. Despite having the BTN, GTO Wizard recommends very little calling with any hand in Aguilera’s shoes. In fact, it folds 87% of its range : ICM prioritizes picking up small pots consistently. For comparison, this is the BTN’s Chip EV strategy with 25bb effective stacks facing a 2.1bb raise from the LJ : In this ChipEV sim, BTN VPIPs nearly twice as many hands and barely uses the small three-bet option at all, preferring to call or occasionally shove . ICM prioritizes picking up small pots consistently over taking on extra risk to try to win a larger pot (by flatting with AA, for instance). It also puts a premium on protecting the last of your chips , which makes shoving less appealing. Even though Aguilera covered the other players and would not technically put the last of his chips in jeopardy, the chips he stood to lose were still more valuable than the ones he stood to gain. Weinman’s Four-Bet From the SB With a raise and three-bet in front, Daniel Weinman must play extremely tight from the SB. Of course this is true in any game, but it is especially true at the final two tables of a tournament. In our model , SB is indifferent between folding JJ and making a tiny four-bet. Shoving is a rarely used option , reserved mostly for AK and KK : A small raise is generally preferable here for the same reasons it was for Aguilera: it would buy Weinman a disproportionate amount of fold equity while limiting his risk. It would push Payne off nearly his entire opening range (though not KK , of course), and Aguilera, despite having position and a covering stack, would be incentivized to fold more than half the time : A small raise would buy Weinman a disproportionate amount of fold equity while limiting his risk. With Aguilera three-betting to 5.6bb in the actual hand, Weinman did not have room to make such a tiny four-bet. He could still have made it 11bb or so, however, and likely should have. Even if he intended

has to be much stronger than a hand with which you check-raise. Check-raising can drive opponents out and may even win the pot right there, while slowplaying gives opponents either a free card or a relatively cheap card. The Ethics of Check-Raising There are some amateur poker players who find something reprehensible about check-raising. They find it devious and deceitful and consider people who use it to be less than well-bred. Well, check-raising is devious and it is deceitful, but being devious and deceitful is precisely what one wants to be in a poker game, as is implied by the Fundamental Theorem of Poker. Checking with the intention of raising is one way to do that. In a sense, check-raising and slowplaying are the opposites of bluffing, in which you play a weak hand strongly. If check-raising and slowplaying were not permitted, the game of poker would lose just about as much as it would if bluffing and semi-bluffing 137 138 Chapter Fourteen were not permitted. Indeed the two types of play complement one another, and a good player should be adept at both of them. The check-raise is a powerful weapon. It is simply another tool with which a poker player practices his art. Not allowing check-raising in your home game is something like not allowing, say, the hit and run in a baseball game or the option pass in a football game. Without it poker loses a significant portion of its strategy, which, apart from winning money, is what makes the game fun. I'm much more willing to congratulate an opponent for trapping me in a check-raise than for drawing out on me on a call he shouldn't have made in the first place — and if I am angry at anyone, it is at myself for falling into the trap. Necessary Conditions for Check-Raising Two conditions are needed to check-raise for value — that is, when you expect you might be called by a worse hand. First, you must think you have the best hand, but not such a great hand that a slowplay would be proper. Second, you must be quite sure someone behind you will bet if you check. Let's say on fourth street in seven-card stud someone bets with you're getting sufficient pot odds to call. Now on fifth street you catch a king to make kings up. Here you might check-raise if you are pretty sure the player representing queens will bet. This second condition — namely, that someone behind you will bet after you check — is very important. When you plan to check-raise, you should always keep in mind that you could be making a serious, double-edged mistake if you check and no one bets behind you. You are giving a free card to opponents who would have folded your bet, and in addition you are losing a bet from those who would have called. So you had better be very sure the check-raise will work before you try it. Check-Raising and Position When you plan to check-raise with several players still in

don't get to raise all that often because this bet is not quite pot but it is bigger than the 25 pop bat so raising pretty infrequently and when we do raise we have a straight A straight top pair good kicker two pair and then flush draws with straight draws for the most part then we have a few King X Bluffs as well probably with a with a backdoor hard draw so we gotta be pretty tight on boards that do not connect with the big lines range very well at all and do connect with the lojax range you have to be cautious so on flops that are terrible for you you do not a whole lot of raising not a whole lot of calling and a lot of folding but some flops are going to be a little bit better for you these are going to be boards that contain more middle cards so let's suppose the low Jack raises big blind calls flop comes Queen six four two Spades big blind still checks everything low track well again bet everything for roughly 25 pot now compared to the previous scenarios where you were folding 45 percent of the time or so now you're going to be continuing way more often also before you were raising maybe 15 of the time or so now we're raising about 20 something percent of the time so let's take a look at this against the small bet of 1.5 big wines you're going to be raising to about five big wines 21 of the time a pretty good amount at the time let's take a look at what likes to raise again against a small bat top pair good kicker and better likes to raise but on this queen six four board with a flush draw you have a lot of drawers available notice we have lots of flush draws in this region are raising and we also have a lot of straight draws so stuff like eight five seven five eight seven seven three five three these hands like to raise a large chunk of the time notice in the spot we also have a few interesting Bluffs Bluffs that I would not naturally consider notice we have a lot of back door flush draws that opt to raise we have a lot of asex and a lot of King X that go for the Rays because the A6 and the King x with the Acer King of Spades actually has pretty good Equity because if you get an ace or a king and you make a top pair that's probably good if you raise because you have to remember whenever you check raise your opponent they're going to fold out a lot of the time and if you get a spade on the turn you can keep bluffing a large chunk of the time because you would have check raised with a lot of flush draws which would have made the nuts so you want to make sure you

to go play go up on thursday night play in the big game stay overnight play friday night stay overnight if still feeling it play saturday night if not feeling it's too tired go back home and let's say there's work on friday on friday then the move was to go up on friday play friday night stay overnight saturday night go home and the more you go the more you speak with people the more you'll figure out what the best days are the best times and that knowing when last call is super helpful knowing if the last call never happens people can drink all night pretty helpful all the useful information so number three call ahead to minimize wait time and maximize your table time but don't forget to leave a cushion for traffic unforeseen events the last thing you want to do is really you know get super nitty and try to time it within the minute and then you get bought from the list because you were too slow number four watch while you wait to identify the most profitable positions in the card room because once you've identified what they are you can make the efforts to try to get yourself in those positions and once you're in those positions time to sit back apply your strategy and collect your profits number five know the value of your seats if possible be on the lookout for more valuable seats but don't undervalue your seat truly value your seat um a lot of times your seat's worth more than you think it is and that's all about keeping up with who's who's who's even even keeled steady footed still minded who's tilted who's stuck how many people in your game are losing how many people are winning uh look for games where people are losing look for games where people are stuck look for games where people are frustrated look for games where people are drinking look for games where people are going a lot of smoke breaks because clearly they're they're they're tilted and they're looking to calm down um but don't necessarily put yourself in a game where everyone is flaming out with anger right you got you got to think about the environment you're in but consider those things and the more that's why i say your game may be better than you think it is because if you're winning steadily and a lot of people are losing and they're getting frustrated that's good for you because they're going to be misplaying against you because they're stuck and they want to see they want to get even with you a lot of these emotional players they don't want to see the same person win they want you know someone else to get their turn somebody start going after you as long as they're out of position versus you that's going to be profitable for you finally number six your net worth will increase your poker net worth and that's what we're going to talk

would probably continue as well six five of diamonds would probably continue obviously any flush draw is going to continue king queen of diamonds would continue so backdoor flush draws would continue there as well i would not call it stuff like king queen of hearts though because you know it's just slightly weaker it has a little bit less equity six five no back door draws probably no good four three no back door draw is probably no good again as your opponent bet smaller like say about one big blind you should probably continue but if they bet three or four big blinds you should probably fold okay then what about oh one thing worth noting say it was instead seven two two seven two two now the idea of over cards the seven becomes way more uh relevant because on seven two two now if your opponent has a seven you'd much rather have an over card right because if you have nine eight on seven two two you if you have a nine eight and you get a nine you win right whereas on seven seven two if your opponent has a seven and you get a nine you still lose so over card to the pair on the board doesn't really matter overcard to the other card on the board the unpaired card is what is relevant all right what about queen ten seven all spades okay relevant floats here are gonna be stuff like pocket nines probably not good could be maybe but it has the spade um ace two with the ace of spades pretty great hand king jack of hearts for open-ended not a great hand but it's reasonable enough 9 8 for open-ended same thing jack age of spades uh this is obviously a flush this should be like jack of spades eight of clubs this is a gut shot with jack of spades pretty reasonable what should not be floated pocket twos with the two of spades pocket twos is almost never good here and when it is your opponent has loads of equity and if you get a spade that's also likely not good if you face any aggression the tough thing about the hand like the two of spades is that if you do improve to the flush and your opponent keeps betting on the turn and river you probably lose but they could be bluffing and if they check very often they're gonna have a marginal speed themselves that doesn't plan on bowling so when they keep betting you lose and when they check you lose right so it's just not quite as good of a hand ace of clubs two of spades you might rather have the ace of spades right instead of the two of spades same same story if you get the two of spades you're just not happy and jack gate of heart for just a gut shot also not a particularly great hand because if you make the gut shot and your opponent keeps

Kill A game element present in some poker games where after something specific happens (such as a pot over a certain size or a player winning two pots in a row) the player will be required to post a "kill", which is an additional blind—usually double the size of the big blind—that can be posted from any position.

board they have way less air for you to Target so uh yeah first decision point understand they need to check a lot in this hand I mix I go with the best 60 on the flop the opponent calls we get three of clubs so hopefully you can Implement that for a late position for a small blind we've got 60 call we get the three of Clubs the opponent checks and now we need to figure out if we want to Barrel or not so we have a lot of flushes here right we have all these ace high flushes um we definitely have more flushes than the opponent we get to bed at a reasonable frequency the board pairs so we now have more boats than the opponent too uh yeah way more 3x 10-3 pocket tens Etc so we do get to bet a reasonable frequency here and then when we think about our Bluffs Jack and I know with the club from everything we've talked about it's going to be through the same line right High V uh rivers that we get to Bluff on we have Equity to Barrel um we're blocking continues Etc so one interesting thing here is that the nine of clubs doesn't Barrel let's try to figure out why that is we bet 132 why don't we want to have the nine of Clubs hmm I actually don't think it's about the nine of clubs it's more about the off suit non-club Jack there we go so when we have the non-club Jack we're blocking their Queen Jack Ace Jack folds um so yeah it's not it's not about that we don't want the night of clubs it's that we really want to have the track of clubs because we're blocking a lot more that continues from the opponent Jackson of clubs right they have to just afford Jack 10 no Club so yeah that's kind of a uh a fun one to find in this I probably wouldn't have thought about that in game I would have probably just mixed Jack and I know with the nine of clubs too but um yeah I mean you we can always be better so this is it's a good one to learn um so yeah I bet for this exercise the opponent calls again and then we get the seven of diamonds so I made a little bit of a mistake in this spot and I essentially go all in the opponent calls it's gonna be hard to win this one so it was a good one to run good one to look over but let's look at it in the solver and see how a frequency should operate so on the river I thought that our hand would Bluff at a higher frequency um then what we're seeing here and I thought we blocked flushes we matched our value Etc but this tough thing about this small blind range is that if we think about the folds in the river when we

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

Also called Texas hold 'em. An increasingly popular form of poker in which players use five community cards in combination with their two hole cards to form the best five-card hand. See Appendix A. Hole: In seven-stud games, the first two concealed cards. In five-card stud games, the first and only concealed card. Hourly rate: The amount of money a player expects to win per hour on average. 284 Appendix В Implied odds: The ratio of the total amount of money you expect to win if you make your hand to the bet you must now call to continue in the hand. Inside straight: A straight which can be made only with a card of one rank, usually somewhere in the middle of the straight. When you hold 6,7,9,10, only an 8 will give you a straight. Thus, you are drawing to an inside straight, or you have an inside-straight draw. Jacks or better to open: Draw poker in which a player needs at least a pair of jacks to start the betting. Joker: A fifty-third card in the deck, which may be used either as a wild card or as a bug. Kicker: A side card, usually a high one. Someone holding 9,9,A has a pair of 9s with an ace kicker. Late position: A position on a round of betting in which you act after most of the other players have acted. Lay the odds: To wager more money on a proposition than you hope to win. Legitimate hand: A hand with value; a hand that is not a bluffing hand. Limit: The amount a player may bet or raise on any round of betting. Limit poker: A poker game where the minimum and maximum amounts a player may bet or raise on any given round of betting are fixed. Glossary of Poker Terms 285 Live card: In stud games a card that has not yet been seen and is therefore presumed likely to be still in play. Live one: A loose, weak player with a lot of money to lose. A rich sucker. There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, about a poker game in Gardena in which one player had a heart attack and died. The player to his left shouted to the floorman, "Hey, Louie, bring us a live one." Lock: A cinch hand. A hand that cannot lose. Long odds: The odds for an event that has a relatively small chance of occurring. Long shot: An event that has little chance of occurring. Hence, in poker a hand that has little chance of being made. Loose: Playing more hands than the norm. Lowball: A variety of poker games in which the best low hand wins in the showdown. See Draw Lowball and Razz in Appendix A. Mathematical expectation: The mathematical calculation of what a bet can be expected to win or lose on average. Middle position: A position on a round of betting somewhere in the middle. In an eight-handed game, the fourth, fifth, and sixth players to act would be said to be in middle position.

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

one with a decent, but not good, hand like queen-eight suited. Since you can see the flop with certainty if you check, bluff-raising costs

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

some action here boys and girls so i like my uh sizing here i think anywhere between three times his bed or a little bit higher is good um because of all the straddles the effective stacks are shorter so no need to go too big here um but the reason i wanted to talk about this hand is because i think that this is one of those situations where it's okay um trapping with kings here on the button so calling here on the button is also fine and the reason for that is because we have two very aggressive players still left to act on our left uh we have land entice and we have the poker traveler who are both very solid aggressive players and i know that they're capable of cold forebeding me um polarly so to incentivize them from either calling or four bet squeezing here um i think flatting is pretty it is fine um especially versus uh the poker um gypsy the point of the poker traveler and the poker gypsy the poker gypsy is the guy that just opened the cutoff um because his range is pretty wide in the cutoff um i think that that's another reason why we could be uh trapping here with kings um but we decided to three bet which i think is definitely fine but like we suspected we did squeeze out everybody on our left we actually got a really tight fold from uh the poker traveler here who folded ace queen of spades which um is questionable on on his part just because i i know that he knows that i'm capable of three betting pretty wide here on the button uh especially versus um a tighter player in the cutoff so because i'm certainly capable of three betting um a a completely wide range here you know we have all of our strong hands that we're going to be three betting plus we're going to be three betting uh a lot of our weaker connected hands like jack 10 off king 10 off hands that are a little bit too weak to flat uh we could also be three betting you know some some ace combos like ace five off ace five suited even um so because he because poker traveler knows that i am gonna be three betting wide here i think he might have i think he could have either called or for bet to be honest um but he did decide to make a very tight fold which i was very surprised about so let's see what the poker gypsy decides to do here something from finding nemo poker clubs in austin so the poker gypsy does wind up making the fold good fold by him because yeah that would have been pretty bad for him all right so that is just one example of how you you know a flat on the button with kings is appropriate uh sometimes more so when you have aggressive players on your left if i

hands. A relatively small four-bet size is essential to accommodate thinner four-bets , the hands you might be tempted to call with, as these hands need to keep weaker hands in the three-better’s range to be profitable and benefit from cutting their losses should they wind up folding to a five-bet. With 100bb stacks, GTO Wizard four-bets to 20bb over an 8bb three-bet when in position and to 21bb when out of position. It only gets smaller from there. With 40bb stacks, it four-bets to 12bb when in position against a 6.3bb three-bet or to 13bb when out of position. It’s not that more fold equity wouldn’t be nice when four-betting in these spots; it’s more about these being the largest sizes that facilitate folding to a shove . If you were to put more than this in with your four-bets, you’d be pricing yourself in to call a shove and could no longer afford to four-bet thinner hands. If you had to commit 40bb to any hand you played in this spot, you’d have to play even fewer hands. Some hands suffer more than others from offering these appealing calling odds , especially when out of position. Thus, it is not uncommon to see a split strategy with the middle of the four-betting range shoving while the strongest hands, which want to induce additional action, and the weakest, which want room to get away from a shove, make this small four-bet. For example, here is the SB’s response to a HJ open and CO three-bet with 40bb stacks : Even at 100bb , there is a case for simply shoving some especially difficult-to-play hands rather than risking a call from the in position three-better: This effect is even more pronounced in ICM models. With 25bb stacks and 25% of the field remaining , SB has a range for four-betting to 10bb and folding to a 25bb shove: In a ChipEV model , the solver would never make this raise, as it would consider itself priced in to call a shove with any hand and so it would prefer simply to shove itself. In an ICM model , however, the chips remaining in a player’s stack are more valuable than those in the pot. So, when measured by the ICM cash value of the chips, the calling odds are not so appealing and SB does still have room to fold. Although they will fold to a shove, these thinner raises are not bluffs . They are all hands that anticipate defensible equity in the more likely event that the three-better calls the four-bet. This is what it means to say the range is linear: given the likelihood of postflop play, you should cold four-bet only your best hands. It won’t matter what the bottom of that range is when your opponent shoves, as you’ll be folding it, but if your four-bet is called, you’ll be grateful to hold AQ o rather than 72 o. Conclusion Very few hands are strong enough to continue with a raise and re-raise in front of you

right so when you have a straight draw let's let's look at a straight draw so with a straight draw say you have five six on the on the seven eight Deuce flop right so you have eight outs right you have four uh fours and you have four nines right you have five six you can make a straight if the four comes or you can make a straight if the nine comes right five six the board is seven eight nines or fours will give you a straight so that's eight outs so on the Flop you have eight times four is thirty two percent equity on the turn eight times two is sixteen percent equity if you missed you're straight on the turn all right so I hope you guys understand that okay next we're gonna talk about position um you know we talked earlier with the race first in ranges uh understanding you know what hands you should be opening you're always going to be tighter in early position and wider in later position um when you're in early position you're out of position on everybody so you have a positional disadvantage anyone that acts after you has more information on you so therefore you're at a disadvantage post swap so the idea is you want to try to play as much in position and as little out of position as you can so that's why we stay super tight in early position and we widen up quite a bit as we get closer to the button and the button we we can play the most hands because on the button we are guaranteed to be in position on everybody at the table post spot so therefore we can play a wider range of hands and because we have more information on everybody else um position you know it's it becomes more important as Stacks become deeper so when you're short stacked in early position um you don't have as many options you have to play you know more of a if you're like 10 big lines or 15 big blinds you're gonna play more of a shove or fold type of strategy um so it doesn't when you're when you're deeper you're gonna it it's just more important to play a more like a more like pot controlled type of strategy when you're super super deep so what I mean is like say you're 200 big blinds deep and you flop a draw um you don't necessarily say you flop like a flush draw with nine eight of hearts or something and there's two hearts on the board you don't necessarily want to play a 400 big blind pot with you know with a nine High flush draw so you're going to be doing a little bit more like Puck controlling when the stacks are deeper and you want to play tighter in early position because you don't want to like have to play Big pots in out of position post-flop so try to but on the

quest or whatever gps app you have on your phone it'll tell you what the distance to the casino is and if you called ahead and you know how long your seat is held for well let's say they hold your seat for 60 minutes you have a 90 minute drive you can go ahead and call when you're 40 minutes into your drive 50 minutes away from the casino and know that you're going to get close to the maximum of that 60 minute wait time now you don't want to time it where it's exactly 60 because if you run into traffic you're not going to make it on time and usually if you show up too late your name is going to be off the list but if you show up early before your name's there but your name is at the top you're welcome to go on the table you know you don't have to wait till it's exactly your max time your name is just moving up the list and the more time your name is on the wait list the farther up the list your name is going to be by the time you get there so ideally you want to set it where you have about a 10 to 15 minute forgiveness window but otherwise call in the maximum time ahead so that you have as much time as possible for your name to move up the list while you're driving there you know so you're making the waitlist work for you well you have to do travel time anyway um so for that you want to call ahead and you need to know how long they'll hold your spot this is where your research from before can work or just when you call them you can say hey how long do you hold my seat for and if they say you know 90 minutes but you're two hours away don't know why you'd really play a casino that's two hours away but just for the case of example it's fine you'd say okay i'll call you back in about half an hour you wouldn't put your name on the list then because it's an extra thing they'd have to do and they have to move you you say okay i'll call back in half an hour so you call ahead next thing to do when you put your name on the list put your name on multiple lists because the same way we were speaking about how the the more time you call in ahead the more time your name is working up the list well if you're on multiple list you're working your way up multiple lists at the same time and whichever list is shorter is the one you're more likely to to get to the top of first now if you're someone who enjoys playing two five no limit hold them and the 510 game is quite big maybe don't put your name on that list but put your name on

A Preflop Strategy This section will detail a preflop strategy for playing in a full (nine- or ten- handed) $5–$10 blind no limit game where most players (including you) have stacks of at least $1,000. We assume that you are one of the best players at the table, but that no one particular player is a “live one.” Your opponents make plenty of mistakes, but they aren’t overly weak-tight or loose. You should know, however, that we were reluctant to write this section at all because hand values are extremely fluid in deep stack no limit. Whether a hand is playable or not, and how you should play it if it is, depends strongly on numerous factors. Among these factors are the following: • The precise relationships between the size of your stack, the size of your opponents’ stacks, the size of the blinds, and the size of the ante • The starting standards of the players who have entered the pot, as well as those who haven’t yet acted • The postflop tendencies of your opponents, particularly their willingness to make bad folds in large pots or bad calls (or raises) in small ones • The predictability of your opponents’ play, both preflop and after the flop • Your image • The psychological impact previous hands may have had on you or any of the other players Many more factors also enter into preflop decisions, making them quite com- plex. Thus, trying to develop “one preflop strategy to rule them all” is folly. So before we begin, we want to make one thing unmistakably clear: This strategy is but one of a great many possible strategies that a good player could use with success. Our inclusion of it in this section does not, in any way, imply that another strategy is inferior or losing. Nor does it imply that deep stack no limit hands can or should be categorized and ranked or that this, or any other, strategy should be followed rigidly. We absolutely do not hold that this strategy is, in any way, the one “correct” strategy. 83

and examples using uh solvers so counting combos the basics so there's six combos of each pocket pair um if we look at pocket aces we have the Ace of Spades and that can be matched with the Ace of Hearts Ace of clubs Ace of Diamonds twice 16 combos of any two random cards um Ace king queen ten six five Etc so basically Ace King uh you're going to get Ace King about three times as much as uh pocket aces there's 1326 prefall combinations of hands possible um so a shortcut if someone if the button is raised in you know the button's raising uh 50 of hands uh what I do to find out how many combos that is in game is I just multiply that by 10. so he's gonna have about 500 Combos and then you just increase it by about a third so you know a third of 500 is 160 so I say roughly he has 660 combos pre-flop if the guy is Raising under the gun and you're trying to figure out how many combos that is that's um he's raising 20 under the gun that means on average he's going to have if if there were a thousand pre-flop combinations he would have 200 combos but there's about a third more than a thousand so he's going to have about 250 pre-flop combinations hopefully that makes sense it's not too confusing so here are your six uh combos of aces the Ace of Spades Ace of Diamonds Ace of Spades clubs Ace of Spades ace of hearts um and then you just you know Ace of Diamonds has three combinations as well but we already counted them here is the visual of your 16 combos of all other hands so the Ace of Spades can be accompanied with the King of Spades the Ace of Spades can be accompanied with the King of Clubs the Ace of Spades can be accompanied with the King of Hearts and the Ace of Spades can be accompanied with the king of diamonds so that's four one two three four ace of spades combos Ace King is four combos here and then you're just gonna do that same thing with with each suit so we just went over Ace of Spades then you go to Ace of clubs while the Ace of clubs can be matched with the King of Clubs the King of Hearts the King of Spades and the King of Diamonds uh and then the same thing with heart combinations Ace of farts with the King of Hearts and then ace of hearts with the three other suits so there's four combinations that start with the Ace of Spades Ace King with the Ace of Spades there's four combinations of hands that start with the Ace of clubs Ace of clubs and the Four Kings ace of hearts and the Four Kings and the ace of diamonds and the four different Kings so that's 16 combinations total um and then out of those

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

off King Jack off we're gonna take that off King Queen off it's a pretty marginal shove here in his position so we'll take that out ace jack is clearly a plus e V shove form we're gonna give them take out threes and fours let's take out five and say yeah let's say he shoves this and then I think people way over shove you know these weak suited ace is so let's leave let's take H five shoot it out shoot it out Queen nine King nine Jack nine so yeah let's give them this range which is H unite let's even let's give them tons because we're flipping against ten so tens through six is big off suit aces and then all the suited broad ways in the strongest suit of connectors like Jack ten suited ten nine seeded this is I think reasonable these are hands that are he doesn't really want to raise and then have to fold like I could see a scenario where this guy goes well have Kington suited I have 17 big blinds I don't want to raise and then when someone goes all-in I have to fold my hands so I'm just gonna go online myself so you know it's okay if I get called I have a pretty good hand so I think this is a optimistic but also a realistic scenario that someone could shove with so we lock that range in we go back to us we click best response it recalculates it and we get to this where it's okay sevens plus a stents to did a screen off so now we can see our hand ace Jack offsuit is about 0.7 not as profitable as a lot of these other hands that you see but it's still profitable but it's not like a fist pump slam dunk call it still it's still kind of close so the worst scenario we found out that it's a bad call really really bad called the best-case scenario it's like alright it's a good call but it's not a slam dunk call so let's kind of figure out I ran it earlier which one did I run okay so this is the range I kind of settled on I gave them king queen in this one sure let's just go with this so this is kind of a range that I gave them and best response so this one is the main difference through this one basically is the king queen let's take that out really quick and then see this response so yeah so you see how I'm kind of just playing away when we took out king queen it went from when we give him king queen [Music] it goes to ace jack is a 1.16 so a really good call it's winning over a big blind and at mp2 if we take out the king queen then it's not only now it's like almost a point five difference it doubles in value so we always want to be

76 / (76 + 124.5 ) = 37.9%. The dangerous assumption to dismiss is that Hero needs to be good half of the time or more in order to call. Now that we know our RE, we need to work out our equity against Villain's range. We'll do this first by using an equity calculator and then we'll come back to combos to explain why the calculation comes out as it does. The calculator tells us that Hero's equity with QQ vs. the range of [KK+ AK] is 39.9% and that this is indeed a comfortable call, but why is this the case? It is true that vs. AK Hero has close to 50% equity and vs. KK and AA he has significantly less. My students' claim that Hero is 'flipping or crushed' is loosely correct. Hero's equity being sufficient to call here is a direct result of the combos in Villain's range weighting that range away from the bigger pairs that crush us and towards the AK portion against which we're a slight favourite. Applying what we've learnt about combos so far, we know that there are 16 combos of unpaired hands (12 offsuit and 4 suited) and only 6 of a pocket pair. This means that Villain's range contains 16 combos of hands we are a slight favourite against (AK) and only twelve combos of hands that are crushing us (KK and AA). This is what gives us almost 40% equity here. The flawed thought that here is that because there are two outcomes, one neutral and one bad, that the equity situation must be very bleak. The failure to realise the immensely different frequencies of occurrence of these two outcomes is something I call the Equal Chance Fallacy. When I leave my house to go for a run in a few minutes time we can stipulate two potential outcomes. It is certain that either of these two things will happen: A: I will be pecked to death by ravenous seagulls. B: I won't be pecked to death by ravenous seagulls. I am almost entirely certain that B will occur and not A, and that's why I can go for a run without suicidal desires. The chances of A and B occurring are vastly different. There are far more ways that B can happen than A. In poker speak, there are far more combos of B than there are of A. This might seem obvious and even insulting to your intelligence to state here, but I want to use the absurd seagull case to dispel what is actually a very common mistake made in poker thinking, namely, the disregard of combos and how likely they make one part of a range compared to another.

tournament quite as often so say there are 45 players in your tournament like a small local tournament that happens in many casinos around the world you only need something like 69 70 100 buyin something like that for these 45 to 100 person tournaments which is again may seem like a lot but it's not really that much money if you're playing a $100 buying tournament you need something like $7,000 or $10,000 in your bankroll to ensure you do not go broke maybe that sounds like a lot but I promise it's really not you are going to go on big down swings in tournaments and again if you're not properly bankrolled you should probably be playing smaller games a lot of people don't like to hear the idea they need to be playing smaller the great thing about playing smaller though is that well you have a much larger bank roll proportionately to compared to the buyin and also as you play smaller games typically your opponents are far weaker which means your Edge is going to be higher there's nothing wrong with moving down if you were playing large field events like uh you know series that happen once a year in your local casino or WPT events or WSOP events or EP events or whatever now when we're having something like 1,200 players in the field you need something like 300 buyin that's a lot if you're playing A1 thousand World Series of Poker event with 1,200 players you need $300,000 in your bank rooll that's a lot almost no one is playing properly bankroll in this situation and that may actually be okay if they are not playing these events all that often now what you don't want to do is you don't want to play local $100 tournaments all year and then take your winnings to Vegas and play $3,000 Buy in 1,200 person tournaments that's a really bad idea you're going to want to make sure that your spread of buyin that you play is not all that big let's say you normally play $100 buyin locally maybe when you play a big buyin at something like $300 or $500 don't go play 1500s or 5Ks that would be a big big big mistake the big takeaway here though is that first off you need a pretty B big amount of buyin in your bankroll to ensure you do not go broke when you're playing tournaments and as you're playing tournaments with more and more and more players you're going to need a larger and larger bankroll so that previous chart presumed we had a 30% return on investment but what you need to do is determine your actual return on investment this implies that you are keeping track of your results you absolutely must keep track of your results if you don't have any chance of succeeding at poker you can't just go there and Gamble and hope it works out you need to know your Edge so how do we determine our

The original Super/System, published in 1978, is the single most influential poker book ever written. Back then, the original price of $100 was a lot of money for a book, but this was no ordinary book; this was the bible of poker. Super/System was a steal at that price. The same holds true today. And why not? This book changed the way players looked at that game and, for the first time, gave away secrets that brought readers to a new level of expertise. The master of poker had spoken, and the game would never be the same. I had always admired this book and through my friendship and association with Mike Caro, the “Mad Genius of Poker,” Doyle and I got together. We made a deal to get Super/System out to the mainstream bookstores as a paperback for the very first time, and people who had never been exposed to this great work just went gaga over this bonanza of poker riches. Did they ever! Super/System hit #1 worldwide on Amazon, ahead of the Harry Potter books and best-selling authors like Steven King and John Grisham. Even as I write this, Super/System holds steady in the top 100 of all titles—usually in the top 40. Pretty heady stuff. In the bookstores themselves, Super/System sales eclipsed those of all other titles in the gaming category. Doyle just keeps going. He’s somewhat past the age where the government kind of suggests you collect your paychecks and retire, but the competitive fire that has powered his entire career still burns fiercely. So what does the legend do? In late August 2004, at the Bicycle Club, Doyle plays against the largest field ever to play a World Poker Tour event to date—667 players. And he wins it all. Again. He takes home more than a million dollars cash. The legend grows. And the accolades and accomplishments keep coming—a World Poker Tour event named after him, a poker-playing website that bears his name, an autobiography due in spring 2005, a movie based on his life that may see the big screen one day soon. And on and on. I’ve had the honor of getting to know Doyle away from the tables and have 4 always enjoyed his company. He’s gracious, wise, and has the big heart of a Texan. After spending time with him, you walk away feeling a little taller, because this ex-basketball player makes you a bigger person, and richer, because he’s a man who’s been a big winner in life—and you take a little bit of that away with you. I’ve seen the respect he gives and the respect he gets. All earned. Doyle is more than a great man in poker; he’s a great man, and I say that with the utmost respect. Well, it’s time you move on and see the gems of knowledge this book has in store for you. My friend Doyle has taken good care of you in these pages. When you’re done studying the wisdom within and have profited from that very powerful advice, you’ll feel like

Figure 13 - A Defensive CO Range

Four-bet pot (4BP) A pot that was 4-bet preflop. In other words, someone raised a 3-bet preflop.

winning the hand, they can help players estimate the profitability of making a call. Simply put, pot odds are a reward-to-risk ratio. For example, consider a hypothetical poker situation where you know Villain holds A♠K♠ on A♣8♥7♥ and you hold Q♥J♥. The pot is $100, and Villain goes all-in for another $100. You need to decide which line is best, calling or folding. So, how do you know if calling with your draw is a profitable play? First, you need to figure out your pot odds. You need to risk $100 to win $200 (Villain bet + starting pot) so pot odds are: Pot odds can also be calculated as a percentage using the formula: So, in this case: This means you need to win at least 33.3% of the time to justify calling, assuming no abnormal tournament payout or bankroll implications. Now to calculate your probability of winning the hand, let’s introduce the concept of outs. Outs An out is any unseen card that if dealt will improve your hand. In the case of Q♥J♥, any heart will improve us to the best hand because we know Villain has AK with no hearts (unless both

of both worlds: a better chance of being paid offand for a larger amount too. ln deep stack no limit, the player who thinks on the deepest level and, therefore, has greater hand reading insight, often possesses an insurmountable edge. 30 Although as a general rule we do not advocate a strategy of being more likely to call a bigger bet on the river than a smaller one, this hand appears to be an exception.

the pot odds, as we saw in our last example. But the presence of two live players with big stacks behind you changes everything. If you call, either one could raise and make you throw your nowexpensive hand away. If you don't make your hand on the flop, you won't be able to stick around for fourth and fifth street unless the hand is checked around, which is unlikely. Always remember that the presence of active players behind you has a huge effect on your decision-making. Their presence makes many hands unplayable which are trivially easy calls in a one-on-one situation. Resolution: You fold. Hand 4-6 Situation: First round of an online tournament. Your hand: Q♥Q♦ Action to you: Player A calls $10. Player B raises to $40. Player C folds. Players D and E call $40. Player F folds. Pot is $145. Question: What's your play? Answer: This is the sort of action you like to see when you have a pair of queens on the button. The other players are building the pot for you, and the action is fast and furious. You should stick in a good-sized raise, about $200, and see what happens. There is a school of thought that advises just calling with the queens here, trying to see a flop, then making a move if no ace or king shows. It's not an unreasonable idea, and I've played that way myself on occasion. But my normal play is to raise. Action: You raise to $200. The blinds fold. Player A folds. Player B puts in $160 to call, and Player D folds. Player E goes all-in for $2,200. The main pot is now $1,255, and it costs you 71 $750 to call. (There's also $30 in a potential side pot between B and E, in which you will not be involved.) Question: Call or fold? Answer: If B folds and the main pot stays as it is, you're being offered 5-to-3 odds to call. If B gets in as well, the pot will be just over $2,000 and you'll be getting 8-to-3 odds. Your first job is to make some guesses as to what Player C has. There are four possibilities: 1. He has aces or kings. Now you're about a 4.5-to-l underdog, and you're not getting the odds you need to call. 2. He has ace-king. You're actually an 11-to-10 favorite, so the pot odds are very favorable. 3. He has a lower pair, something like jacks or tens. Now you're a 4.5-to-l favorite, and you're getting odds besides! 4. He's bluffing, or playing something pathetic like ace-jack suited. Again, you're a huge favorite. So unless you're sure, for some reason, that he's really holding aces or kings, the other three cases are so favorable that, on balance, you have to call. Keep in mind, also, that in online poker people are much more likely to shove all their chips in the pot with nothing, or just a low pair, than in live poker. That's just another reason to call, so call. Action: You call,

Hand Range 18: A Calling Range with at Least 45% Equity Each hand EV calculation is done independently, so all hands that are +EV calls on their own are called and all hands that are -EV are folded. There is no such thing as “loss leader” type plays where one hand is played less profitably than it should for the sake of the whole strategy, “balance”, or protecting one’s range. Each hand is either profitable or it is not and should be

draws here because i think hands like three four are folding pre-flop certainly all of the off-suit three four combos are to be folding preflop so there's really not too much to worry about and we have top pair which means we block top pair which means we block a lot of their calling range so the reason you want to choose a small sizing here is to incentivize them from floating or calling wider on the flop right so when we go small here so we're going uh 55 here when we go 55 then i think we're gonna have some more like ace high floats maybe a hand like um ace ace eight of spades would call here or something like that um you know hand like pocket threes pocket fours would call whereas if we had bet a little bit bigger like half pot or sixty percent pot then those lighter floats those lighter calls are going to be folding the flop so we go small here and of course because john has flop top pair with second nut kicker he is going to come in for the call as well poker gypsy does fold and now i am heads up with john to the turn so the turn here is a three now i think for a little bit and i believe i check right so the reason i am checking here is because when john cold calls my raised preflop i do think he is going to have a lot of hands like king queen king jack that beat me um if i bet here i don't necessarily think i'm gonna be getting called by worse considering i raise pre-flop and i c-bet into two people i mean if he had a hand like pocket nine's pocket tens there is a good chance that he does call one more straight but i don't think that i'm going to get three straights of value um with this hand and if i were to bet i i think that i would kind of be value owning myself like value betting myself um because like i said i don't think there's like much worse that can call so if he had checked back the turn then i am going to be barreling a lot of rivers for value because when he checks back the turn i i um i definitely think he could have a hand like you know an underpair to the king like sevens eights nines that might call a bet on the river because we checked the turn but it looks like he is going in for the bet so there's 260 in the pot and he bets 125. so when we check this turn we're never checking to give up we're not checking to check fold right our hand is still pretty strong um in the event john just had hearts or something um i could see him um putting in the bet here once we checked to him on the flop especially if he had

45 percent chance of winning the pot. Your underdog status is more than compensated by all that extra dead money in there. On the other hand, with the other players involved, you would have only about a 30 percent chance of winning the pot. Player В Player С Player A 76 Chapter Nine Let's look at a similar situation in seven-card stud. You have two queens and the raising on third street has produced a large pot. The man to your immediate right has Your hand may or may not be the best hand. You don't think it is, but you are quite sure it is second-best and not much of an underdog. If the man to your right with the comes out betting on fourth street, you should raise to drive the other players out. In the event your two queens is the best hand because the is a four-flush or two 9s, you don't have to worry about any of the other players outdrawing you. On the other hand, if the is in fact two kings, you have a better chance of winning the pot against him alone than you would if you let in other players who could outdraw you even if you made queens up or three queens. The same principle comes up in hold 'em. The man to your right bets, putting you in a position to raise immediately to make other people fold. When the pot is large, you should do it with a good hand even if you suspect it might not be the best. Delaying One Round to Drive Opponents Out In structured games the size of the bet doubles on the third round of betting — for example, from $5 to $ 10 in a $5-$ 10 game and from $10 to $20 in a $10-$20 game. In these games you may want to wait until the bet doubles in size before putting in a raise — not as a slowplay but as a better way of driving people out. If in $10-$20, for example, you raise a $10 bet to $20 on the second Win the Big Pots Right Away 77 round, some players behind you may be willing to call; but if you wait until the next round to raise a $20 bet to $40, these players will not be so willing to pay the price. The greater likelihood of driving opponents out with a big raise on the third round of betting offsets the cheap $10 card you allowed them on the previous round. Summary The basic concept set forth in this chapter is a simple one. When the pot is big, you want to win it right away. To try to win it right away, you should bet and raise as much as possible, hoping to drive everybody out, but at least reducing the opposition. You should bet and raise with the best hand, and you should frequently do the same even with a hand you think maybe second best. The fewer opponents you have in a pot, the

when using this size. This big raise loses appeal with deeper stacks of 50bb or 60bb. Stealing the blinds and antes is worth less, and even the big pocket pairs (besides AA ) are not appealing to stack off with if SB calls or three-bets the big raise. When the BB Covers In a scenario where the SB has 35bb but the BB has 40bb , the BB’s risk premium is reduced from 12.2% (when stacks were symmetric) to 11.3%, while the SB’s risk premium is slightly increased to 13.1%. The result of this risk advantage is a slightly more aggressive strategy from the BB, who raises to 7bb with 7% of hands (up from 5% with symmetric stacks) and to 3.5bb with 28% of hands (up from 24%). Facing a raise from the SB, the BB’s response does not look much different than with symmetric stacks: they call 28%, three-bet 14%, and never shove. However, as we have seen before, the SB’s increased risk premium is built into their raising range , so the BB’s response is similar despite the SB having a stronger range. When the SB Covers Facing a limp from a 100bb SB , a 35bb BB never uses the 7bb raise. Instead, they have a small shoving range of about 4% of hands. These are not quite the same hands as raised to 7bb with symmetric stacks. When covered, BB’s shoving range relies heavily on blocking calls, with A9o – AQo and A2o comprising the majority of it. Despite being covered and facing a risk premium of 15.2%, the BB raises to 3.5bb with 29% of hands, more than the 24% they raise with symmetric stacks. This is a response to the covering SB limping a much wider and weaker range. The SB in this scenario almost never folds, and they mostly raise their strong hands. If anything, a combined raising frequency of 34% seems low compared to the SB’s wide and weak limping range. SB Limping Range Conclusion With symmetric stacks, the BB has just as much interest as the SB in avoiding big confrontations when under ICM pressure. They have an extra tool for doing so, however, which is using their position to control the pot size after the flop. Consequently, it is safer for them to start growing the pot with a pre-flop raise even when covered by the SB at a final table. At certain stack depths, they have some unconventional options to consider as well, notably a tiny three-bet and a big raise over a limp. Many human players will be unfamiliar with these plays and respond poorly to them, so with a little experimentation, they should yield especially good results. 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,

OOP in 3-Bet Pots Continuation betting from out of position can be a dicey proposition in single-raised pots. Cold… Dynamic Sizing: A GTO Breakthrough Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Dynamic Sizing Benchmarks Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Understanding The Impact Of Field Size On ICM In Poker When people talk about game selection in multi-table tournaments (MTTs), they invariably talk about the… Defending vs BB Check-Raise on Paired Flops This is a companion piece to Attacking Paired Flops from the BB; you will get… Mastering PKO Final Tables Final tables can be the most exciting and rewarding phase of a tournament, and being… Attacking Paired Flops From the BB Paired flops present unique challenges to both a preflop raiser and a BB caller. The… KK vs QQ vs JJ at WSOP Main Event With only fourteen players remaining in the 2023 WSOP Main Event and blinds of 400K/800K/800K,… Responding to BB Squeezes You open raise, someone calls, and the BB squeezes. How should you construct your strategy?… Crushing a Top HUNL Poker Bot In 2022, Philippe Beardsell and Marc-Antoine Provost, a team of Canadian programmers from Quebec, developed… GTO Wizard AI Explained We are excited to introduce GTO Wizard AI, formerly known as Ruse, the world’s best… GTO Wizard AI Benchmarks GTO Wizard has combined the power of artificial intelligence with traditional solving methods to bring… Table Management in PKOs Perhaps the most important strategic consideration in Progressive Knockout Tournaments (PKOs) is making sure you… Overcalling From the BB In poker, overcalling refers to calling a bet or raise after another player has also… Understanding Which Mistakes Cost You the Most Money I am fortunate enough to have worked for many years with the mental game coach… Overbetting The Flop in Cash Games Although most commonly analyzed on turns and rivers, flop overbetting can be a devastating weapon… Using New Skills at the Poker Table How many times has it happened to you that you make a mistake only to… Flatting Ace-X Hands Shortstacked Playing out of position is tricky, but it’s an essential part of tournament play. With… Playing Limped Pots as the BB in MTTs Success as the BB in limped pots begins before the flop. The BB’s equilibrium strategy… The Absurd Game Theory of Chopped Boards A “chopped board” in poker is one where the community cards make up the best… Playing Limped Pots as the SB in MTTs MTT confrontations between the small blind and big blind force no-limit players into uncomfortable situations,… The Art of Learning Poker In his book The Art of Learning, chess and Push Hands champion Josh Waitzkin describes… Is Donk Betting for Donkeys? “Donk betting”, or betting from out of position into the player who was the aggressor… Delayed C-Betting This is a companion piece to Probe Betting. It stands on its own, but understanding… Probe Betting As far as rules of thumb go in poker, “check to the raiser” is a… ICM

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

a big pot on a semi-bluff and that’s not too shabby. But if you don’t think a re-raise will get you the pot, you’ll generally fold. If you call, a ton of bad things can happen. The original bettor might shove, in which case you won’t have odds to call, so you’ll fold. If the original bettor folds, you’re also not getting the right price. Now here comes the turn and, yikes! 1) If you miss completely, you’ll get bet off your hand. 2) The ace or the king are less likely to be gin outs. 3) If you hit the ace or king, you have no idea if your hand is good. 4) If you hit the flush, you probably lose your customer. All I can say there is ugh. This means that the only time you’d consider calling is if you know you won’t be facing significant action on the turn, for instance if the raiser is allin and the original bettor either won’t play or doesn’t have enough in his stack to put you to tough choices. Otherwise, there is no harm in just foldingwhat’s surely only a flush draw there. Allow me to remind you to stop and think in these types of multi-way situations. You’d be amazed at how many players insist on calculating their pot odds based on a theoretical clean nine outs, or even 15, without bothering to consider the obvious reality of the situation at hand. Don’t fall intothat trap. No matter how big your draw started out, the flop isn’t that tasty anymore. If three people love it, there has to be a reason, or two, or three. In sum, in active multi-way pots, your big draw generally gets devalued to an ordinary flush draw. Sometimes your ace outs will still be good, against raising or re-raising pocket kings, say, so you’ll still need to take a read on the situation. But count your outs objectively, taking into account your opponents’ likely holdings, and not taking into account any feeling of entitlement that your big draw creates. Remember, a big draw is onlypotential: the potential to get opponents to fold, or the potential to see two cards as a favorite. Sometimes, that potential is thwarted by the actionsof others in the hand. In such cases, just be realistic and fold when folding is the right thing to do. To review, when you’re facing a bet and the action was: Check, check, bet, you raise. Check, bet, fold, you raise. Bet, call, fold, you raise. Bet, fold, call, you raise. Bet, call, call, you just call unless you have a strong reason to think you can fold everyone with a raise. Basically, when you’re in position, you’re looking to slam them with that big raise at most opportunities. Easy enough. Big Draw, Multi-Way, Out of Position, With or Without the Lead Let’s make things even less complicated, shall we? You’re in a four-way pot in early position and first to bet, meaning you’re in first position, or in second position and the first-position player

I like just calling here especially against an under the gun open you're just facing a pretty tight range if Dee had decided a three bet and Rampage four bet which he probably would have because he had 10 Kings uh Sean would be in a tough spot so I like just flatting the tens there to avoid that so Queen 74 rainbow flop and Ethan continues for 500 I definitely don't see deeb going anywhere here he has um second pair dry texture again Ethan should probably be seting this dry board at a high frequency four of Hearts now on the turn de checks and Ethan is going to bet again I like betting here especially I love having overp pairs um on a like a queen High Jack High board like kings and Aces is really good because uh deep could definitely have a lot of Queen X I mean he does block king queen but deep could have a Queen suited Queen Jack suited things like that and like pocket Jacks pocket 10 pocket NES is going to have a hard time folding here so on once especially once the board pairs so de makes another call and five of clubs on the river I imagine deep is just going to check to the aggressor and I would imagine for uh his 11 big blinds 12 big Ace queen queen Jack maybe even make a loose call here with pocket tens I don't really think Ethan has anything to worry about Dee shouldn't have like hardly any fours in his range I mean I guess e i I guess deep could have like ace4 suited four five suited but four five might have check raised the turn so Ethan is betting 6,500 here and Dee has a decision to make Dee probably going through all the the combinations of hands that beats him um he does make the call and I can I can understand de's call here because Ethan is a very good player and applies a lot of pressure um and Ethan can definitely represent like the strong Queens as well like top set of Queens Ace Queen things like that um so I think that it's a it's an understandable call on Dee's end so commercial commercial now we're back with it okay so it looks like there is a $100 straddle this game might as well have just been oh it's it's okay so it's a straddle double straddle triple straddle here so they're playing 2550 100 200 400 Dental with the Ace King of Diamonds poor Dental he just got crushed this session he raises to 11,00 again since effective Stacks are shorter it's okay to size your pre- flop bets down so you could Min R you can go 1100 here uh sha deep here with the ace four off is going to defend his straddle here and they're going to be heads up 3532 clubs uh both players Miss but deeb does have that gutshot and the four clubs blocker dentali

As in any variation of poker, money is obtained by winning the pot-all the bets made during the course of a hand. There are two ways to win the pot: Be the last remaining playel: During the play of a hand, players will fold and forfeit their interest in the pot. You win if you are the last remaining player. Have the highest ranking hand. If more than one player remains after the last round of betting, there is a showdown. All remaining players show the contents of their hands. If you have the highestranking hand, you win the pot. A Hand in Hold'em At the beginning of a hand, each player is dealt two cards face down-their pocket cards. During play of the hand, a total of five additional cards are exposed in the center of the table in three stages, creating the board. Each stage of dealing has a different name, and before each stage is a round of betting. There is a fourth and final round of betting after the last card. Theflop-the first three exposed cards. The turn-the fourth card. The river-the fifth and last card. 6 THE INTELLIGENT GUIDE TO TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER In Hold'em, cards on the board are community cards-they are used by all the players in forming their hands. Your hand is the best five-card combination possible, using your two pocket cards and any of the five community cards. If the best five-card hand consists of the five cards on the board, that is your hand. Your pocket cards only matter if one or both of them improve what is on the board. Hand Rankings The recognized five-card combinations are summarized next in order of rank (the highest-ranked hand, wf ich is the least likely to occur, is listed first). To reinforce the concept of pocket cards and community cards, a sample hand is shown for each hand ranking. Pocket cards are on the left, and the complementing community cards follow each description. Learn to spot patterns in the formation of hands. The use of community cards creates possibilities for hands in Hold'em that players of Seven-Card Stud don't think about. For example, in contrast to Stud, it is possible for two Hold'em players each to have three cards of the same rank. However, it is impossible for two Hold'em players to have flushes in different suits. These new possibilities and new limitations are discussed. STRAIGHT FLUSH-five sequentially ordered cards of the same suit. The value of the highest card determines the value of the straight flush. Therefore the highest-ranked hand possible is a royal$ush: -A, K, Q, J, 10 (all of the same suit). RULES 7 FOUR OF A KIND-four cards of the same rank, such as four 9s or four Aces. In Hold'em, at least one pair must appear on the board for someone to PI *% have four of a kind. For example: if you are dealt two 9s, the other two 9s must appear on the board for you to have four 9s. You can also have four 9s if

7. Donking ranges are often very depolarised.

Manipulating Your Opponents Learning to manipulate your opponents is a skill of marginal importance in many forms of poker, but in no limit hold ’em it’s very important. If you play at medium stakes or higher, most of your opponents will be at least somewhat competent, and it may sometimes be hard to get their money. Particularly, it can sometimes be difficult to make a lot offyour big hands: Flopping a big hand is fun, but if you can’t convince someone else to lose their stack to you when you do, it isn’t worth all that much. To win the most on your big hands (and other hands too), you need to concentrate actively on manipulating your opponents. Trick their hand-reading processes into thinking you have the wrong hand at just the right time. Or cloud their judgment so they’ll make the wrong play even if they do read your hand correctly. This section is by no means a complete exposure to the topic. Indeed, one could easily write ten times this amount on the topic and still not cover every technique available for manipulating your opponents. Consider this section an introduction, and allow it to pique your imagination. Get Pigeonholed Being pigeonholed is usually bad, but it’s definitely not in poker; that is, as long as you don’t fit well into the perceived hole. Poker players of all skill levels love to categorize their opponents: “He’s weak, she’s a bluffer, he’s wild, and she always has the nuts.” Some players play so one-dimensionally that a few words can describe their play almost entirely. Not you!44 Your play is complex, and you are capable of incorporating a number of factors into your decision-making, making your plays difficult to read. But that won’t stop your opponents from trying to sum your play up glibly. Raise a few hands in a row, and you “play fast.” Fold for a long period of time, 44Unless, of course, you are in a game that calls for it. 155

He might look you up even if you go all-in, although I've seen good players fold in that situation. If Case (1) applies, even a modest bet may not get called here. I like to think of a range of plausible bets, then shade my decision toward the top and bottom of the range, depending on whether my opponents have acted loose or tight. Here the right range looks like $100-to-$200. It's small enough so they're getting great pot odds to call, and it's also small enough so they'll have reasonable sized stacks left if they call and lose. In a situation like this, I definitely don't want to bet more than half of anyone's stack. Losing more than half your stack is a real psychological barrier, and I don't want to push anyone across that barrier. Seems like $150 is about right. Players C and E seem a bit on the tight side, just from the action this hand, so this is probably the best you can do to pick up a few extra chips. By the way, in online play you can be much more aggressive here. The rounds are so short, and players are under such pressure to accumulate chips quickly, that even an all-in bet has a reasonable chance to be called. Action: You bet $150, and Players C and E both fold. You take the pot. C'est la vie. Don't waste any time second-guessing the size of your bet. Just take your chips and get on to the next hand. The time for second-guessing is after the tournament is over. Hand 4-9 Situation: Early in a single-table online tournament. You don't have any solid information about the other players. Your hand: A♥K♠ Action to you: Player A calls, Player B folds. The pot is now $25. Question: Do you call or raise? Answer: Your hand is certainly strong enough for a raise. Three, four, or five times the big blind 76 would be a good amount. Action: You raise to $40. Player D folds. Player E calls. Players F and G fold. The small blind calls for $35. The big blind folds. Player A puts in another $30 to call. The pot is now $170. There are four players in the pot, and you will be third to act after the flop. Flop: K♣9♥3♣ Action: The small blind and Player A both check. What should you do? Answer: You have top pair with top kicker, so you're in excellent shape. You're going to take the lead and bet. The only real question is: how much? Your hand is quite strong, so you don't want to bet so much that everyone runs away. But there are two clubs on board, so you don't want to bet so little that the flush draws have the proper odds (including implied odds) to stick • around. This is a very common situation after the flop, and the right bet is something in the range of three-quarters of the pot to a little more than the pot. In this case, you should

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

Burn card A face down card discarded on each street before face up community cards are dealt. Used to prevent cheating in live poker.

nan

complicated than plugging the phone line into your computer and entering a number. Often the set up takes several weeks and requires an on-site visit from a technician. Unless you live in a densely populated area, dial-up may be your only choice. If broadband is available and you try it, you will quickly get addicted to the increased download speeds. You will also not tie up your phone line. If you are a serious Internet user, consider getting broadband. The extra cost (compared to dial-up) is about the cost of the extra phone line that you might want if you spend hours online using a dial-up connection. If you are just getting started, try dial-up first and find out what the Internet is about. One final note on Internet service for users of WebTV deserves mention. Televisions do not have computer processors and hard drives and therefore cannot download and run poker playing software. WebTV users are only able to view (browse) sites. You cannot play in any online poker room that requires a software download unless you have a computer. 30 THE INTELLIGENT GUIDE TO TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER Conduct of Online Games The usual method in which online games operate is for the participant to download software from the poker room's Web site, that runs locally on the user's computer. Each online poker room has its own proprietary software. Most poker rooms require the user to download software that runs in a Windows environment, meaning that the choices of online poker rooms for the Macintosh user are limited. One notable exception is Pokerroom.com. Their URL is http:// www.vokerroom.com. Pokerroom software runs entirely from within a Web-browser, using scripts written in the Java@ programming language. The Java-based method is completely cross-platform. A participant in games at htt~://www.pokerroom.com can use any Windows-based or Macintosh computer with a Web-browser current enough to support Java scripts. It is not necessary to install additional software, an advantage for people who do not always use the same computer when going online. Once you register and download the required software, you usually can observe games in progress and participate in play-money games against other online players. When the software is in operation, it provides you with a real-time view of the games in progress through animations complete with sound effects. First you are presented with a window listing all active games, betting limits, number of active players and available seats, and play or real money status. When you choose a game, a graphic of a poker table is displayed with the button, cards, and chips. Your.cards and the community cards are displayed face up to you; the other players' cards are face-down. A menu of action buttons appears on your screen. When it is your turn, you point and click with your mouse to one of the actionsCheck, Fold, Call, Bet, Raise. Each online poker room has its own software with its own look and feel. You can try out several poker rooms to see which interface is more comfortable. I recommend a lot of practice in play

let's discuss mastering multi-way fundamentals I realize that many of you play in small and medium Stakes games where it is quite common for there to be a raise and a bunch of callers before the Flop and then you have to figure out what to do pre-flop and also what's to do Post lock once you see the Flop with multiple players in the pot so in this video we are going to discuss all the fundamentals you need to understand to play these situations well I'm going to do my best to make this video concise but we are going to discuss pre-flop and post flop and go through a bunch of examples so it might be a little bit long let's get right to it before the flop as more players enter the pot you must proceed with more and more caution that's because the initial razor is likely to have something and the caller has something right and you need a much stronger hand to continue against two reasonable ranges compared to only one and that's especially true as you're against three or four reasonable ranges now if your opponents call with all sorts of trash you still have to proceed with a little bit of caution because what's going to happen is before the flop while your opponents do have somewhat wide ranges after the Flop if you're playing a six-way pot well someone's really likely to have something even if they are playing a bunch of nonsense so this generally forces you to play a tighter range and you're going to find that across the board off suit hands like King jack off suit are especially terrible multi-way because you're a bit more likely to be dominated also marginal suited hands lose a lot of value because you're way more likely to get flush over flushed you're also going to find that your three betting range your re-raising range before the Flop is going to become typically more linear and usually tighter although there are some spots where you may end up three betting more that's especially true as there's a raise and a bunch of callers especially if the callers have a lot of trash in the range because you're in a re-raise and then they're going to fold so let's go through a few dto pre-flop charts to show what the game theory optimal strategy is in a heads up bot and then compare it to a multi-way pot if there is a caller in between you and the initial razor we're going to look at Deep stacked all the way down to shallow sacked here we are 80 big blinds deep on the button versus an under the gun eight-handed raids so under the gun eight-handed raises holds around us on the button here's what we're supposed to do we're supposed to re-raise the hands in red call the hands in green notice deep stacked ASAC suited and King X suited really likes the re-raise also we have some blockery raises with Ace

card that is suited to his first two, you should definitely check here. You can call, but if your opponent catches another suited card on sixth street, you’ll probably have to fold—unless you 238 have two pair. If Player One catches another low on sixth street that is offsuit, you should use a crying call here and on the end. If Player One catches another suited baby card, you should fold and run screaming from the table. Disregarding the suits, if Player One makes four open babies in any of these examples, it’s probably best to fold a pair of kings. Remember, it’s going to cost two big bets to see the hand out, not just the one put in on sixth street. If you have improved to trips or kings-up, you will just have to hold your breath and check-call on sixth and seventh streets, hoping for the best. You’re not breaking the Platinum Rule here because at this point, the best is still a scoop, as Player One could have made two pair and missed his low, or he could have started with a buried pair or a three-flush. Against Multiple Opponents Let’s move on to the second and trickier half of this concept: Playing the big pair against multiple opponents going low. When holding a high pair against multiple opponents going low, don’t put extra bets in on third street unless you feel that you can narrow the field by doing so. Wait until fourth street, when some people catch bad, to put the pressure on. Example One You: K-9 K Player One: x-x 4 Player Two: x-x 6 Player Three: x-x 2 Let’s say that in Example One, you complete the bet and are raised by Player One, only to be called by Players Two and Three. As I stated earlier, you should just call here and see what develops. Now let’s say the next round of cards looks like this: You: K-9 K-10 Player One: x-x 4-7 Player Two: x-x 6-J Player Three: x-x 2-J 239 Now is the time to weed out the field. Bet out, knowing that Player One will raise you. If Player Two or Three is stubborn enough to call the double bet here, go ahead and really punish them with another raise and make them pay to draw. It will rarely happen that players catch bad and call multiple bets once an opponent catches good, but even a so-called expert recently wrote that he would call a cap with A-2-3 on fourth street in this spot after he caught a big card. That’s a terrible move because that player would then have the worst high and the worst low. Calling would be suicidal. Now, let’s say the hand develops as follows instead: You: K-9 K-10 Player One: x-x 4-7 Player Two: x-x 6-5 Player Three: x-x 2-5 Proceed with extreme caution. Check, and if it’s two bets back to you, get out early and save those bets. Even for one bet you may want to concede the hand here and now, rather

Table of Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 About The Manual 1.2 EV - The Currency of Poker 1.3 The Bottom Up Learning Model 1.4 The Other Two Aspects of Poker Success 2 Opening the Pot 2.1 The 6 Handed Table 2.2 Rating Starting Hands 2.3 UTG 2.4 HJ 2.5 CO 2.6 BU 2.7 SB 3 When Someone Limps 3.1 The ISO Triangle 3.2 Frequent Strength 3.3 Fold Equity 3.4 Position 3.5 Limping Behind 3.6 Sizing An ISO 3.7 Example Hands 4 C-Betting 4.1 Light C-Bet Factors 4.2 C-Bet Sizing 4.3 More C-Bet Spots 5 V alue Betting 5.1 Introducing the V alue Bet 5.2 Relative Hand Strength (Question 1) 5.3 Building the Pot (Question 2) 5.4 Slowplaying (Question 3) 5.5 Thick and Thin V alue 5.6 Sizing and Elasticity 6 Calling Opens 6.1 Reasons to Call an Open 6.2 Cold Calling In Position 6.3 Calling Out of Position 6.4 Calling Blind vs Blind 7 Facing Bets - End of Action Spots 7.1 The Two-Part Thought Process 7.2 Stats and Examples 8 Facing Bets - Open Action Spots

Laydown A term that literally describes making a fold, but often used in the context of making a tough decision with a relatively strong hand.

lot of hands we don't necessarily want to bet really big with like 108 for example or Jack eight we want to bet smaller because we don't want to narrow their range too much to these combo draws in general when there's a flush draw on the board it caps the size you want to bet so but again here a lot of checking on this low card board um I want to change the situation completely though okay and we're going to go to my favorite flop here we're ajck 10 rainbow okay um so I don't want to click it yet so what this situation is for 40 big blinds effective the cut off raises the button calls and the Flop comes ajack 10 rainbow and I want you to guys to describe using the terms the big game and the small game what our strategy is going to be on the Flop from the cut off give you guys one minute and I want you to think about this everyone needs to think about this and yep so cut off raises you can look up here if you need it cut off versus button 40 big blinds so using the term small game and big game what is the cut off strategy going to be give you guys a hint because I'm seeing some of the answers now you need to think about both players ranges here so here's the cutoff range okay so Ace Jack 10 ace high hands obviously doing good these King High hands are doing all right because they have a gut shot these Queen High hands are all right CU they're doing a gut shot Jack High hands have a pair 10 high hands have a pair and then we have all these small Pairs and these pseud connectors that are doing right so everything down here is kind of doing everything else is fine okay now let's go button ver raise from the cut off well cut off has all the ax cut off has all the king X they have you know Queen Jack Queen 10 note here they don't have King Nine they don't have king8 they don't have King seven they don't have King six you know they have the same Pairs and some of the pseud connectors the cut off the button wins this small game why does the button win the small game the button calls 17.7% of hands the button calls 17.7% of hands the cut off raises with 38% of hands they have more king8 they have more King induc more King 3 more Queen 4 more Jack six suited 10 six suited 86 suited you know yes ace5 is doing slightly better on this board but not really now the small game maybe it's a little bit more tied You could argue that as well but certainly like both players don't have much air who wins the big game so we can look here at the ranges I can show you here's the butt range

with a jack, just in case. If your opponent bets into you on the river after you stayed pat, chances are he made his hand and you’ve been beat. By this time there are often so many bets in the pot that you better be pretty certain your opponents aren’t going to bluff before folding. Raising on the River As a rule, you should never lose five bets on the river. If you are putting in five bets on the river, you better have precisely 2-3-4-5-7. While 2-3-4-6-7, number two, is a strong hand, if you put in five bets on the river with this hand, you’ll lose. Let’s look at an example: You make a 2-3-4-6-7 after the first draw, but on the last draw your opponent bets into you. Of course you would raise here, but what should you do if your opponent reraises you? What could he possibly have to reraise you with? Most players would never reraise with an eight, so your opponent most likely has a seven. Knowledgeable players won’t even raise with number four (2-4-5-6-7), so that leaves 2-3-4-5-7, 2-3- 4-6-7, or 2-3-5-6-7. You can beat one of these hands, tie another, and lose to another. The fact that you were reraised to three bets makes it even more likely that you are up against a wheel or number two. If you decide to make it four bets with your number two, you will probably win an extra bet against the number three, but you will lose two bets to the wheel. The best play here is just to call. In general, you should only raise the river with a strong eight or a seven. Any other hand might be worth a bet or a call, but if you are raising, you better have the goods! The Value of Pairs While pairing your cards seemingly doesn’t help you at all, the fact that you may have blockers against your opponent’s draw increases the chances that you’ll win the pot. Let’s look at an example. Suppose with one draw left: YOU (46%) 323 YOUR OPPONENT (54%) Notice that the 2-3-4-7 is a significant favorite here. Now let’s suppose that along the way you pair fives, sixes, and eights. What would that do to your chances? YOU (52%) YOUR OPPONENT (48%) DEAD CARDS Amazing. Even though your opponent appears to have the better draw, the fact that you’ve already burned three of the cards he would need makes your chances of winning the pot go from 46 percent all the way up to a 52 percent favorite! Knowing that, you should understand why a hand like 2-2-3-3-7 is so much better than a hand like 2-3-7-K-K. It would essentially be the same draw (2- 3-7), but your chances of winning the pot with the first draw will be much better than with the second draw. So how do we use this information to our advantage? There are several ways: (1) You are in position drawing two going into the last draw against a lone opponent who drew one.

most notably reducing variance Chip Chop deals benefit big stacks at the detriment to short stacks Short stacks are worth more than people think in ICM deals Big stacks are worth less than people think in ICM deals ICM deals assume equal skill Edge deals are rare and there should be a big gulf in skill to consider them 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 Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first decade of my career. But after my first… Relationships and Poker In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve… Do Multiple Sizes Matter? Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results… The Science of Learning Applied to GTO Wizard The way we were taught to study in schools was flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN preflop raiser in a 100bb cash… When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody… Protect Equity and Prosper When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend… Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative poker thinking. When you’re value betting against… Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots When the BTN open-limps off a short stack, the postflop play against the BB should… I’d Rather Be Drawing Which is the better hand on a K♥8♦5♦ flop: K♠T♣ or 7♥6♥? OK, I’ll admit… The Curious Case of Open-Limping Buttons Before the advent of solvers, open-limping was considered the province of passive, gambley recreational players… Cleaning Out Sticky IP Callers A “sticky” player on your left, one who calls your preflop raises too often and… Defending Against Tiny 3-Bets Tournament poker is about precision. Cash games, where stacks typically run into the hundreds of… Heads up! Exploiting SB’s Preflop Mistakes Heads up (HU) tournament play presents unique challenges to the average player. Many tournament players,… C-Betting As the OOP Preflop Raiser Position is an extremely valuable advantage in poker. Most players would describe the comfort

Major tournament, down to the last three tables, 28 players left. The table has been generally tight. You've been playing more aggressively than most. Player F has been a solid, tight player. Your hand: Q♠Q♦ Action to you: Players A, B, and C all fold. Question: Do you raise, and if so, how much? Answer: The standard raise with this hand is three to four times the big blind. You don't want drawing hands to come in cheaply, but unlike the case with jacks or tens, your hand is strong enough so that you don't want to discourage action entirely. Here $4,000 seems like a nice even number to raise. Action: You raise to $4,000. Player E folds. Player F raises to $10,000. The blinds fold. The pot is now $18,000. It costs you $6,000 to call. Question: What do you do? Answer: Your first job is to figure out what this bet might mean. Your second job will be to decide if you want to put him all-in or not. You can never tell, from a player's bet before the flop exactly what he has. The best you can do is put him on a set of possible hands, then decide how you like your chances against each hand in the set. From that analysis you should be able to get a sense of what the right play is. Be very skeptical of players who claim they can look into their opponent's soul and do better than that. They're just messing with your head. So what hands might he hold here? The first possibility, obviously, is aces or kings. If he holds those hands, you're a 4.5-to-l underdog, and very unhappy. The next possibility is ace-king. (Ace-queen is less likely since you hold two of the queens and he probably won't play ace-queen this way.) Here you're a slight favorite. On a strict probabilistic calculation, there are more ace-king combinations than pairs of aces or pairs of kings combined. (There are 16 ways to deal an ace-king from the deck, against just six possible ace-ace pairs and six possible king-king pairs. Ace-queen in this scenario has eight combinations but again is not something he would reraise with. Ace-queen suited has only two combinations here.) The third possibility is a medium pair, say jacks though eights or even sevens. Here you have to consider both how likely these hands are, and how likely it is that he chose to raise with these hands. With aces or kings, he would almost certainly elect to raise. With pairs of jacks or tens, it's possible, but not at all certain, that he would have stuck in a raise. It's a little more likely than 52 usual because you've been the aggressive player at the table. He might have decided that your initial raise was a bluff, and these were good hands for making a stand. (It's important to remember that in addition to noting how your opponents are playing at the table, you must also note how you appear to them. Sometimes that will provide

Table 113: UTG C-betting Range Breakdown on A♥Q♦3♠ On A♥Q♦3♠, UTG has all very strong hands, such as AA, QQ and AK, while the BB would 3- bet AA and QQ all the time and AK most of the time. This lack of nutted hands in the BB’s range allows IP to bet big across multiple streets, over-realizing the 72% equity and capturing 85% of the pot. Facing a Min x/r On this flop, IP has a massive range advantage and, at equilibrium, should only face a flop x/r about 5% of the time. OOP’s x/r range contains hands such as 33, AQ, A3, Q3, AJ, a few AT- A7, and bluffs such as gutshots and some bottom pair plus a BDFD and BDSTD. UTG’s typical response should be to fold about 30% of their range, including most pocket pairs, K-high without a gutshot and pure air. UTG’s 3-bet range contains hands such as AK, AJ, a small frequency of AQ, and about 5% of sets for value, plus some KJo, QJs and QTs without a BDFD and about half of JJ as bluffs. 52% of UTG’s range calls vs the x/r and plays the turn including any top pair, middle pair and gutshots. Flop Strategy Example 2 High c-bet % and small bet-size: BB vs UTG on Q♥J♥T♥ (40bb)

which is an even-money proposition. Now the answer about when you’re supposed to re-raise becomes crystal clear: You re-raise when you believe that your raise increases the likelihood of winning the pot by at least 50% over just calling. I can’t help you be certain about hitting that 50% mark. You’re playing the game, not me, and this is all about how your opponents react to you. So you’ll have to use your judgment. But for sure you won’t get a fold from a solid player who raises early, because his hand is probably better thanyours. If that same player is raising out of late position, though, and he’s reasonably active at the table, that’s probably a fine time to re-raise, sincehis range is wide enough that he’ll fold more than half of them. And even if he doesn’t, you still have position and you probably also have the lead, because most players who do call in that situation will “check to the raiser” (our old friend) and fold on the flop when the board comes bad for their hand (our other old friend). On the flip side, if you’re playing against an opponent who never folds once he has chips in the pot, that’s a good opponent to just call. Your raise won’t make him go away, so you have no chance of winning the pot right there. Nor will you get much useful information. Obviously, you also want to avoid re-raising a player who’s likely to come over the top of you, since a lot of your raising hands, TT or AQ, can’t really stand the re-raise. A lot of loose and overly aggressive players nowadays love to re-raise the re-raiser. It’s better to flat-call them, especially considering that when you hit your hand on the flop, they’ll probably overplay whatever they have. By flatting here, you get to trap the overly aggressive player and punish him after theflop. Knowing when to call and when to re-raise is nuanced. If you’re on the fence, lean toward the re-raise, which will make your decisions easier inthe long run. Think, for example, about how much easier it is to play TT on a flop when your re-raise has won you the lead. More than half the time, an overcard will flop, and if you flat-called pre-flop, the hand can be very tricky to play. Your opponent will bet into you the majority of the time and you won’t know where you stand. This is even truer ofAQ, since you’ll miss the flop with that hand about two-thirds of the time and will have to fold to a bet. On the other hand, if you re-raise before the flop, your opponent will check to you on these bad boards. Then you put the decision on him, asopposed to him putting the decision on you. That right there should compel you to re-raise whenever you think the conditions are favorable. I understand that re-raising a raiser is scary to many players. But when you think it all the way through, you realize that calling

pretty good right but you just always end up broke because you spend the money you win whenever you do run hot in the big games and usually you lose in the big games right be quick to move back down i know put this here at the bottom of the slide but uh this is very important be quick to move back down go back to the previous slide don't be in a rush poker is a great way to get rich slowly do not have ego problems this is important very important many decent players go broke because they refuse to accept reality whatever reality actually is look at your situation observe it intelligently and realize the spot that you are in maybe you're in a great spot maybe you're in a bad spot ask yourself for example tournament players out there who win a thousand buy-ins or 100 buy-ins in a tournament ask yourself am i actually adequately skilled to play games five times the size just because my bankroll indicates it with me when i used to play five ten no limit that need i needed a thirty thousand dollar bankroll for when i'm saying there was a million dollars was i adequately skilled to beat the 2550 game maybe but like why there's no point because i know your win writing that game's just never going to be that big right but my butt was in a chair waiting for the super soft big games to run right that you know maybe i'm not even probably bankroll for but we'll take a shot so you a lot of people think they are better than they are they don't keep good results they don't keep good records of their results they um they just don't observe reality properly and this it's a hard thing to do if you have poker playing friends who you can ask their opinion and you respect their opinion ask their opinion get out get input from other people who you respect now make sure you respect good people ask like poker coaching coaches if you ask any poker coach and coach here questions about your skill level compared to the opponents or whatnot they're gonna be able to give you a reasonably good answer like probably a very good answer right and i've told many students look you're not skilled enough to beat these games some care some don't those who don't usually don't win i mean i can give my opinion but if you know you're welcome to not take it so ideally you whenever you're like you want to make sure you understand what's actually happening and if you understand what's actually happening then there will be no surprises whenever things inevitably go poorly or they go well or whatever right a lot of people a lot of people more than you would think or maybe not more than you think i don't know a lot of people think that once they move up that they are a failure at life

percent of the time. Net result? The 4-5-6 is about a one percent overall favorite against the A-4-6. I know this is hard to believe, but it goes to show you the strength of the straight potential with a 4-5-6. This shows that 231 you’re better off getting 49.5 percent of a heads-up pot with some dead money in it, than 32 percent of a three way pot. So try and get those kings to fold! Hands with an 8 On a final note in this concept, I’d like to touch on eights, because you’re in jeopardy almost anytime you have one in your hand. This point is so complex that Concept 12 is totally devoted to it, but I still wanted to touch on it here. When you start with an 8—be it in a straight draw, with an ace and another baby, or even when you have the proverbial monster of three suited babies— your hand is almost always marginal. This is true unless you are only up against a high hand. Remember, an 8 loses to all other low hands except other eights. If your 8 is the upcard in your starting hand, be very careful. You might even want to fold on third street against a scary board. Your opponents might be able to force you out with a worse concealed 8 of their own, knowing that with an 8-up, you’ve got your hands tied. If your 8 is concealed, your opponents can’t see your weakness, which will probably stop them from jamming you out of the pot. I’m not suggesting that you pass all hands containing an 8. Just keep these factors in mind and don’t get married to the hand. These are marginal situations that take years of experience to handle correctly. Now that we’ve covered all the low playable hands, let’s move on to the high hands. CONCEPT 4: THE VALUE OF BIG PAIRS If you’ve ever played seven-card stud high-low split with no qualifier, you’re used to throwing away big pairs in almost any situation, because it’s nearly impossible to scoop a pot with these starting hands. Conversely, in sevencard stud high-low with an eight-or-better to qualify, these hands have great value. Why? Here’s the difference: In eight-or-better, players must qualify for low. If your opponent fails to do so, your high hand will scoop the entire pot. With a qualifier in play, your opponent can’t freeroll with his unmade hand. For instance: 232 Example One You: 3-4 6-7-J-Q Player One: K-K 9-2-7-9 If you were playing without a qualifier, you would have the low half locked up with your jack-low—the best low hand Player One can make is a king— and you would be freerolling with your gutshot. However, playing with a qualifier for low, you now have to catch the 5 to hit your gutshot for the scoop, or an ace, 2, or 8 for a low. You go from a huge favorite to a huge dog as we shift between the two different games. Aces Obviously, aces are the best pair

Hand Range 201: SB vs UTG (40bb) • 3-bet 6.6% / • Call 12.7% / • Fold 80.7%