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Hand Range 41: CO vs BB 3-bet • 4-bet 10.3% / • Call 37.6% / • Fold 52.1% Hijack From the HJ you have to worry about four players still to act and two of them have position, which will limit your ability to play many hands profitably. The total hands you can play at equilibrium is reduced to 21.4%, trimming down on smaller pairs, the worst offsuit broadways, suited connectors and weak suited Kx and Qx (Hand Range 42).

Diagram 71: 20bb 3-bet Pot Equity Buckets

On this board Hero can represent very few strong hands at all. He does not have JJ and probably has no two pair hands in his range. His only perceived value hands when he raises here are 22 and 33 and so raising as a bluff is undesirable. Since Hero wants to be balanced here, raising for value when he does have a set becomes a bad idea. Overall So Hero does not want to raise this flop with anything, but he next needs to choose between calling and folding with his actual two hole cards. Pot odds are very good, future fold equity is a possibility if needed given how weak BU's range is, and ace-high can easily win at showdown to boot. Hero does have some equity when behind with an overcard and gutter and so calling is certainly better than folding. In fact even if for some reason Hero did want a raising range here, calling this hand would still make sense given the aforementioned SDV , equity and pot odds. He would find a different candidate hand to fill his bluffing range with in that case. Hero calls 2.5BB Let's summarise the factor-based approach to deciding if we should employ a raising range in an open action spot where we care about being balanced. Figure 44 - Having a Raising Range Let's look at another couple of hands and use our tables in Figures 44 and 43 respectively to

range compels a lot of checking back. Here is the 100bb BTN v CO strategy on 876tt, which is quite similar to the BTN v UTG strategy: There’s a lot of mixing, but some heuristics stand out. Straights are pure bets for the same reason so many medium hands check: this is an easy flop for the caller to check-raise . The other frequently bet hands are draws and strong-but-vulnerable pairs, especially when they are also draws ( TT , 99 ). With 40bb stacks , BTN doesn’t have many straights, but this doesn’t really change their betting frequency. They compensate by betting more overpairs , which can more comfortably stack off with a low SPR: This highlights some of the reasons why many players consider these coordinated flops a nightmare (as the three-better, anyway): With shallower stacks, they see too many monsters under the bed and are reluctant to play their overpairs strongly. With deeper stacks, they construct their three-betting ranges poorly . When stacks are too deep to treat overpairs as the nuts on many flops, you need to three-bet a more diverse range so that you can flop nuts on boards like 876tt. Conclusion The stack depth should also determine the size of these bets. When possessing a nuts advantage, the three-better structures the betting so they have the option to put stacks in across all three streets. With shallow stacks, this can mean continuation bets as small as 10% of the pot to leave room for betting the turn and river. With deeper stacks, they may prefer larger (but still rarely more than half-pot) bets, so they will not need to overbet later streets to get stacks in. Strong-but-vulnerable hands are the best candidates for these larger bets, as they won’t be able to keep value betting on many runouts, and so should prioritize putting more money in sooner. An awareness of the stack-to-pot ratio and the composition of your own range is essential to playing well in three-bet pots. The biggest difference between the three-better’s range and the caller’s is generally the prominence of big pairs and the biggest unpaired hands. When circumstances permit playing these hands strongly, the three-better should continuation bet more frequently. GTO Wizard the #1 App for Poker players Study any spot imaginable Practice by playing vs. GTO Analyze your hands with 1-click START CRUSHING NOW JOIN DISCORD Author Andrew Brokos Andrew Brokos has been a professional poker player, coach, and author for over 15 years. He co-hosts the Thinking Poker Podcast and is the author of the Play Optimal Poker books, among others. Latest article Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first

Pre-flop: A standard call based on the strategy we've already introduced. This hand has decent implied odds in position vs. an earlier position opening range and can hold it's own on some boards even where it misses its set. Flop: Surely now our hand is good enough to raise for value? It certainly is strong enough to be miles ahead when called, but that still doesn't necessarily mean that we should raise. This is a necessary but insufficient condition for raising. There are a few very good reasons to slowplay this hand against a Reg. Reason 1: Playing Our Range Hero wants to protect the weaker hands in his range here. If we zoom out and think about our range as

Hand Range 14: Hands with Over 65% or Less Than 40% Equity Versus a Random Hand Depolarized/Condensed Range A condensed or depolarized range is the opposite of a polar range. It has the top and bottom hands removed and is comprised of middle equity hands. An example is seen in Hand Range 15.

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

PLAYING STRONG DRAWS ON THE FLOP 110 Thus, the total expectation of moving in is given by EVallin = (A)(−$120) + (1 −A)($400) So, for example, if he will call your move in 60 percent of the time, your EV is $88. $88 = (0.60)(−$120) + (1 −0.60)($400) If you just call, then you’ll make your hand on the turn (and win a showdown) about 22.5 percent of the time.27 Since your opponent will call $800 if you make your hand, your expectation in that case is $1,200. The 77.5 percent of the time you miss, your opponent will either check (with probability B) or bet $800 (with probability 1−B). If he bets $800, you’ll have to fold, as you would be getting only 3-to-2, and you are a bigger dog than that to make your hand on the river. So if you miss, and your opponent bets, your expectation is −$200. If you miss, and your opponent checks, then you have another 22.5 percent chance to make your hand. Thus, the expectation of calling looks like: EVcall = (0.225)($1, 200)+ (0.775) { (B)(−$200) + (1 −B) [ (0.225)($1, 200)+ (0.775)(−$200) ]} = $270 + (0.775)[(B)(−$200) + (1 −B)($70)] = $324 + (B)(−$210) Here are the two expectations (in terms of the probabilities A and B): EVallin = $400 + (A)(−$520) EVcall = $324 + (B)(−$210) Moving in is better than calling when EVallin > EVcall: $400 + (A)(−$520) > $3244(B)(−$210) A < 0.15 + 0.40B Plugging in some numbers, if your opponent will call your move in about 30 percent of the time (A = 0.30), and will bet the turn if you call 60 percent of the time (B = 0.60), then 0.30 < 0.15 + (0.40)(0.60) 0.30 < 0.15 + 0.24 0.30 < 0.39 27This number follows from our 40 percent estimate above.

for UTG . J♠ 5♣ 3♦ K♠ Q ♥ 9♦ K♠ Q ♥ 5 ♥ K♠ 7♦ 5 ♥ Flop: J♠ 5♣ 3♦ What turn cards will BB donk most often on J♠ 5♣ 3♦ ? Show Answer BB does virtually all their donk betting on the following cards: 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , and 6 . The low board pairing cards ( 5 and 3 ) promote their modest pairs which are under-represented in UTG’s flop c-betting range. The low straight filling cards ( 2 , 4 , and 6 ) fill straight draws which, again, UTG is unlikely to have opened preflop. A board-pairing J is not such a great card to donk bet because UTG will have plenty of those in their preflop opening and flop c-betting ranges as well, and with a better kicker, on average. This card does not shift the nuts advantage to the caller. Flop: K♠ Q♥ 9♦ What turn cards will BB donk most often on K ♠ Q ♥ 9 ♦ ? Show Answer This was an especially good flop for UTG , so BB does less donk betting, in general. A 9 is the main card that helps BB more than UTG. While UTG has some 9-x, it is a much bigger part of BB’s range. The same can’t be said for Queen-x, and certainly not for King-x. At this stack depth, trips are good enough to treat as the nuts. Technically, UTG is still more likely to have a full house, but those are rare enough that BB doesn’t try to play around them when they have trips. Note that the straight completing cards ( J and T ) are not particularly good donk betting candidates because UTG has AJ and AT at full frequency. Flop: K♠ Q♥5♥ What turn cards will BB donk most often on K ♠ Q ♥ 5 ♥ ? Show Answer As with KQ9 r, the bottom card pairing is the main impetus for donk betting, with the second card pairing being a decent candidate as well. There’s a new contender on this board, however, which is any flush-completing card. Although UTG makes some flushes as well, BB’s range is more concentrated around such draws, making these especially good turn cards for them. Flop: K♠ 7♦ 5♥ What turn cards will BB donk most often on K ♠ 7 ♦ 5 ♥ ? Show Answer Once again, we see the lower board pairs showing the highest frequency of donk betting, followed by the straight-completing 6 . But why not 9 , 8 , and 3 , which complete the more obvious open-ended straight draws? BB does a bit of donking on these, but not nearly as much as on a 6 . Two things are happening here: 98 is a much bigger part of BB’s range than 86 or 64 . BB has 98 o in their preflop calling range at almost full frequency and more than half their combos of 98s, whereas they have very little 86 o and no 64 o.

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

a function of protecting your bankroll, you now have to play smaller. And since earn is tied to the limits you play, you just lost earn. So by not leaving a game that’s beating you, you’re negatively impacting not just today’s results, but your long-term poker equity, both psychologically and mathematically. Show of hands. Who thinks that’s good? And by the way, you should apply stop-loss techniques even when you’re winning. Say you’re up $300 and your stop loss is $150. If you lose that $150 back, you just quit. Why? Because how you’re playing, what your psychological state is, and what the quality of your table image is are all determined by local, not global, results. You might be winning overall, but if you just lost a few bad hands in the last half-hour, trust me, you aren’t playing well. You’re probably tilting a bit and everyone at the table will treat you like a loser. So we’re back to the same problem. You might be playing well and getting unlucky or you might be playing poorly, but it doesn’t matter which; you’ve just lost $150 and your judgment has sailed off too. So it’s time to quit. It doesn’t matter why. Maybe the game’s lineup has changed. Maybe you’ve gotten tired. You’ve hit your stop loss. So just quit because: LOSS LIMITS APPLY AT ANY POINT IN THE GAME, NOT JUST THE STARTING POINT When you buy in to a $1/$2 game, don’t go in saying you’re willing to lose $200 as your net result for the night. What if you’re up $500 at somepoint, then bottom out at minus $200? Didn’t you just lose $700? Not really, but trust me, you’ll treat it that way psychologically. If you break even in a game where you never had much of a result during the course of your play, you don’t have much of an emotional reaction to the result, right? But if you’re down $200 in a game, then come back and break even, now you’re super-happy to have broken even, yes? And if you’re up $500 and slide back to even, you’re really pissed off, no? In each case, your net result was the same. You broke even. Why do we have such different reactions? Psychologically, it matters howyou got there. That’s why you have to set loss limits from your highpoint in the game. You never want to be in a spot where breaking even, or even winning a little, leaves you grumpy and playing poorly, not just today, but tomorrow as well, because you feel like you need to get that money back. Obviously, if you were just a computer, you could react the same to the break-even result no matter how you got there. Money in your stack doesn’t belong to you till you cash out. So the road you took to get to your result shouldn’t matter. But you aren’t a computer, so it does matter. And making sure you aren’t tilting about a breakeven result is really important. So be strict about your stop

Table 14: Bet-sizing and Alpha Example If you bet half-pot with a polarized range on the river, you are giving your opponent 25% odds to call (3-to-1). Your range should have 75% value-bets and 25% bluffs (3-to-1). Your bet needs to work 33% (Alpha) of the time to instantly profit. Your opponent must defend 67% (1-Alpha) of his range to make your zero equity bluffs indifferent. 03

going to work for everyone so let me know in the comment section below what actually does work extremely well for you because maybe it'll help somebody else out who is unaware of those things and then give it a try and maybe it'll work maybe it won't enjoyed this video do me a favor click the like And subscribe button down below click the notification Bell if you like these more longer Forum videos where we discuss specific topics these mastering the fundamental series let me know if you don't like it well that's okay too good luck in your game have fun I wish you the best of success in life and I'll talk to you next time

Since folding frequency and calling frequency are complementary numbers, they should add up to 1. So, if you know one, you can always easily calculate the other. P1’s minimum defense frequency can also be calculated as: These two results: Alpha and MDF are key GTO concepts and will be revisited throughout this book. Player2 Final EV Numbers Since KK always beats QQ at showdown: P2 EQ vs QQ is 100%

FINAL WORD We have covered a lot of ground in Modern Poker Theory but there is far, far more to the game of poker than could ever be covered in a single volume. My goal when writing this book was not to solve the entire game and give all the answers but to provide the reader with the tools needed so that they can find the answers themselves. As science and technology progress they shape our world and, with it, the game of poker we all love. New software and strategies will continue to emerge but they will be useless unless we understand the fundamentals of the game. Once we have achieved this learning, we can use the tools to increase our edge. Realize that the results from tools are not oracles that should be followed blindly. Writing this book has been an amazing experience. I am incredibly thankful for having the opportunity to share my thoughts with you all and I sincerely hope I was able to help you get a step closer to achieving all your poker goals and dreams. Best of luck and see you at the tables. Michael Acevedo

IP’s range connects well on boards where there are possible straights and boards with straight draws, because the BN’s cold call range has a lot of suited connectors and middle to small pocket pairs. For this reason, OOP plays more passively on this type of dynamic board, while static disconnected boards with no possible straights are better for Hero because they don’t improve IP’s range as much. C-betting in 3-bet Pots In a 3-bet pot, the ranges in play are generally narrower than in a single raised pot. Additionally, the way pre-flop ranges are constructed generally result in a more polarized post-flop equity distribution for the pre-flop aggressor and a more condensed distribution for the pre-flop caller. In this section, our study will focus on both IP and OOP c-betting strategies, with starting stacks of 40bb and a typical MTT 12.5% ante structure with pre-flop GTO ranges. I recommend going over Chapters 8 and 9 and reviewing the pre-flop 3-betting and calling ranges for the following match-ups. 40bb Effective Stacks: Hero is the pre-flop aggressor and the Villain is the caller. IP 3-betting BN vs CO / BN vs MP / BN vs EP / CO vs MP / CO vs EP / EP vs EP OOP 3-betting BB vs BN / BB vs CO / BB vs EP / SB vs BN / SB vs CO / SB vs EP Post-flop SPR: 1.7 to 2. C-bet-sizes: all-in, 1/2-pot, 1/3-pot, 1/4-pot.

obviously if that income stream changes usually this only matters when it decreases or goes away you gotta knit up and don't look for poker as a way to gamble and try to get rich quick unless you very clearly have proven that you have an edge and even then it's it's very tough poker is a great hobby hard profession all right uh if you do not have an income stream like most professional poker players don't have any other money coming in you need to keep a lot of cash on hand not necessarily cash like liquid cash it can be in stocks or other semi-liquid assets you want to put it in things like a house because if you put all your money in a house and you need some money you may have a problem this happened to me in the past i remember when i said i had to sell gold while i was sitting there with i don't know 500 000 in property that i could not reasonably liquidate i would have loved to take five hundred thousand dollars out of houses and just sell twenty thousand dollars of it right um instead i had to sell little chunks of my gold and i had less than 500k in gold i don't know let's say i had 50k in gold i had to sell 20k of it had to sell 40 of my gold i would have much rather sold you know five percent of my house or houzz is so you don't really want to be taking your money and locking it up too much locking up something's good but at the same time if you are clearly a professional you don't want to super lock it up because then you can't access it and sometimes you will need to access it especially if you are playing in games that reasonably push the boundaries of your bankroll um okay so assuming you have a decent edge keep roughly 30 buy ends for soft cash games usually live cash games i think 30 buy ends is fine if you start dipping down below to like 20 you should probably move down for sure um if you get down like 29 i'm not gonna say you should move down but if you get down to 20 you probably should move down the nice thing about moving down when things go poorly is that you basically double your bankroll in terms of buy-ins right um in cash games like buy-in is in my mind about 100 big blinds okay so that's that's relevant uh for tough cash games these will be like online cash games need something like 100 buy-ins okay so 100 100 blind buy-ins for tournaments for small field tournaments where you have a reasonable edge let's say 30 50 something like that you're gonna need roughly 100 buy-ins it's a lot remember there's a lot of variants in tournaments and for large field tournaments you need substantially more buy-ins because the variance is going to

Hand Range 91: Stack Depths for HJ Push

table dynamics and the individual play of each opponent is one of the most important edges that will help you take home more money in your poker career. Remember, losing your stack once with a pair of aces but doubling up two times is profiting within probability. You are playing correctly even if you lose a few times in a row. It may not feel like it but these things ALWAYS even out. Of course, knowing when your pocket Aces are beat after the Flop and tossing them in the muck is the best play. However, we cannot always determine when someone has a better hand if the flop throws off rags. It is amazing how many players online go with 4 5 suited against a big raise trying to trap someone. A loose game is one with six or more players regularly seeing the flop with sparse or no pre-flop raises. Essentially, you need at least a 15% chance of winning the hand if you are going to play the more speculative hands. That is assuming another hand does not dominate your cards or someone is not limping with a very strong hand. I would actually want cards that have a 15% minimum to 20% win percentage (6+ players) to play a speculative suited connector hand. Many loose players will play even poorer cards so you will be slightly ahead. Of course, you cannot always determine if you will get the correct pot equity up front in early position so limp in with speculative hands only in the later positions. A typical game is three to five people seeing the flop with one out of every four hands having a pre-flop raise. You have to consider the reality of preflop raises cutting into your bottom line. If one out of every four times you are run off your hand by a pre-flop raise then you should consider only going in with cards that have a 20% minimum (five players) or 33% minimum (three players) chance of winning at the showdown compared to the number of players limping in. One question to ask before limping into the pot is, “Would I call a raise with these cards?” If the answer is no most of the time then do not even put in that first bet. Save that money for the times when you have the strong starting cards and you want to raise the pot. Consider the table a tight game when one or two people are seeing the flop and there is a pre-flop raise three out of every four hands. Furthermore, there are very few contested pots and a player that bets on the flop usually takes down the pot. You want cards that have at least a 33% chance of winning at the showdown to break even before considering a pre-flop raise. So with two players seeing the flop I would feel more comfortable having cards that win 40%+ of the time because you essentially have a 33.3% chance of winning without considering the actual cards. Of course, this

hijack is going to be opening pretty wide here 28 percent and there's not many players left to act so you're going to see a very very aggressive strategy from the players behind cut off um vpipping 16 of hands here this is the stack size where cutoff cannot be through by bluffing a lot because the hijack can just slam tons of hands if he does that so this is where you see him have mostly value like 70 percent value 66 or 70 value 30 Bluffs um as you can see here nines is like the bottom of his value range here for three bed getting it in Ace Queen so a ton of value in the three betting range and then uh you know only some Bluffs here and a decent amount of flaps but in the pipping 22 percent here mostly value with a three bet again and just using a selection of these uh combos at the bottom of the calling range to three bit the small blind I think we'll play so the small blind is just going all in about half of the time that it three bets and three betting small about half the time so three betting about 12 percent here uh slamming the hands in red and then three bet inducing these hands three bat folding some of these hands and calling all of this area green area and then we can see the crazy big blind uh calling folding 27 hands V pipping 73 of hands three betting mostly value it's going to be 70 30 again and uh it does have just a piling range the dark red is piling the orange is through betting smaller and yeah such as heaps of heaps of v-pipping let's have them three bet here and the hijacked player is trapping with Aces Kings Jack's tents nines trapping with Ace Queen only going all in Ace King is Queen and queens and calling as wide as 0.9 King 7h 10. okay so that's enough on free flop now I have some great post lock shortcuts for you guys the biggest one um that I like is just very simply C betting 100 frequency as the three better when you're in position you can see that every single I'm sorry you can see that 100 frequency for a 20 size when you are the three bed aggressor in position and when you're out of position you can see bet 100 frequency 35 sizing um as a three better and I would recommend that you guys do that as a baseline And if you want to get more creative from there uh once you start playing Iron Stakes then you can do that but that is the most incredible Baseline it's the same shows the same EV as uh GTO and then it's also incredibly hard to counter when someone is facing a very high frequency small C bet size a they have to continue a lot and B they have to raise a lot they

and one of his four 6s also completes flushes, which will kill action to some extent, or worse, make Villain a better hand. There is an insufficient total of equity, fold equity and implied odds to make continuing in any way +EV . Villain's range could be fairly wide and certainly likely to be depolarised containing some hands like second pair, bad draws and weak top pair, but Hero will nevertheless require a hand capable of getting to showdown and winning more often vs. this spew machine of an opponent. A patient fold is in order. Just because Villain should fold a lot of this range to a raise does not mean that he's going to. Bluffing the Fish in these spots is a major leak worth eliminating from your game. Fight mindless aggression with mindful patience, not blind retaliation. Hero folds. Facing The Min Donk The fourth (blue) number on the HUD in the hand below is Donk Flop.

Hand Range 55: SB Defense vs BB (350 combos) [Fishy Player] • Defended 34.5% / • Folded 65.5% You can see in Hand Range 55 that the SB defending range contains 350 combos, so you don’t have an immediately profitable bluff with ATC, but your hand, K♦2♠, has a valuable blocker to Villain’s continuing range. The K♦ blocks continuing hands such as AK, KK, K6s+, and KTo+. By having the K♦ blocker in your hand, Villain’s defending range decreases from 350 to 324 combos, making your 3-bet bluff now show an immediate profit. There are two main types of exploitative 3-betting.

super-computers, based on cEV for 9-max tables with a 12.5% ante. This is a typical tournament environment, but it is up to you to adapt them to your respective games. In tournaments, players have to navigate many different stack sizes but, unfortunately, there is a limit to the content that can be included in a single book, so we will focus our study on some the most important stack depths where most of the tournament action happens (these being 15bb, 25bb, 40bb and 60bb). For deep-stacked no-ante situations (typically the first few levels of a tournament) there is less dead money in the pot, so ranges are generally tighter and the equilibrium strategies are very similar to those of cash games except there is no rake. This results in speculative hands increasing in value. Calling bets and playing post-flop becomes more attractive. Playing First In As mentioned previously, with stack depths shorter than 10bb, it is correct to play a push/fold game because the EV loss with short stacks is negligible compared to a more complex strategy. It is vitally important that you think ahead before making your pre-flop decision. Take note of your own stack depth as well as the players remaining to act and their stack depths. Assess the likelihood of them re-raising or calling. You should know before you raise if your hand is a raise-fold or a raise-call. It could be the case that your hand can call an all-in against the range from one position but not from another, or that you can call a 15bb all-in but not a 20bb all-in. You also need to know if your hand works better as an open shove or a min-raise so you don’t find yourself in a difficult spot if you min- raise, an opponent shoves and then you don’t know what to do. This might seem like way too many variables to consider, especially for inexperienced players, but it is important to be always mindful and aware of your situation and to avoid autopiloting. There are many online players who play great poker when playing only one table but make frequent blunders when multi-tabling due to silly mistakes that could have easily been avoided by paying closer attention. Bet-sizing After extensive testing with solvers, my general assessment is that RFI bet-size does not have a significant impact on your bottom line as long as you are using somewhat reasonable bet-sizes

well that's gonna be what's that gonna be it's gonna be flush rolls mostly right and this is why we have a lot of flush draws and then maybe some gut shots so let's see what we have we have Jack nine check raising some Jack nine off suit Queen nine off suit check raising some which makes sense these are gut shots you can check raise and then fold if you get jammed then we also have a bunch of flush draws check raising these tiny slivers of red are mostly flush draws check raising and you're getting in with some of them you're not you're folding out some of them and then usually you're going to want to have some trashy Bluffs so what are trashy Bluffs well trashy Bluffs here are going to be notice the 3-2 putting in the check raise which is neat to see bottom pair no kicker seems like it likes to check raise a lot it does stack depth and then we have some random Ace 5 ace four ace three and Ace two ace3 is a pair of forks but we see ace5 A4 Ace 2 check raising these are gonna have the Ace of Spades in them so they can check raise the Flop and then keep barreling when they feel inclined again though lots and lots of folds not a whole lot of calls um we do call with under pairs in the spot feels kind of rough really uh you have to be careful with under pairs by the way like pocket nines because even if you do spike a nine you could still lose it's not gonna happen that often but you only have two outs you're drawing a two outs and sometimes if you make a spade it's it's not good right so you have to be careful with the under pairs um we do see against the small bet the gut shots are continuing like Queen nine calls every time Jack nine six around I say calls every time but it sticks around every time same thing with Jack nine notice Ace track and Ace track uh check calls it does not need to raise because you really don't want to check raise these track and then fold it to a shove because that hand has lots of equity okay that's that again bad flop we check forward a lot against the small bit we're check raising top here good kicker and better and then a smattering of draws one more bad flop Queen Jack 10 this Nails the opponent's range you're gonna be folding a ton and in this spot against the 55 pop bet which is interesting that's the size they mostly use in this situation we fold 60 of the time that is a lot it's depressingly a lot so Queen Jack 10. notice a lot of the jacks fold the only Jacks that collar Jacks with back door draws basically every 10 folds it doesn't have additional Equity that is depressing notice we

Any two A slang poker term that refers to playing "any two" cards. For example, a very short stack goes all-in and it's on you, as last to act, in the Big Blind. The player at risk shoved so few big blinds that "any two" cards have sufficient equity to call it off.

with the same A-A-6-8, it is normally better to fold than open for two bets, because it’s much easier for other players to call one raise than two. Therefore you will likely have to play this hand out of position against multiple opponents. Ouch! There are times to raise or reraise with aces in order to build a bigger pot, rather than to narrow the field. When your hand includes a strong supporting cast, most significantly a deuce with any other wheel card, raising for value is a good play. This is particularly true if one or both of the aces are suited. Hands like A-A-3-4 or A-A-2-5 double-suited are great starting hands, worthy of capping the betting before the flop. Unfortunately, this type of hand is rare. In fact, you are more likely to be dealt four of a kind than the dream hand of A-A-2-3 double-suited. There are only twelve combinations of A-A-2-3 double suited available, versus thirteen ways to be dealt quads. More Reraising Situations The goals of a reraise are essentially the same as those of a raise—you either want to narrow the field or increase the size of the pot. However, putting in a third bet often tends to be an even more effective means of eliminating the other players. Hands that many players would happily call two bets with, such as A-3-6-9 or A-4-5-J, now go sailing into the muck. Even loose players may balk at the prospect of calling three bets with garbage. So, if you feel your hand matches up best against only one or two other hands, a reraise may be used to set up this scenario. Remember, it’s often possible to shut out opponents who must come in cold for multiple bets, but it’s almost impossible to shut out opponents who are already involved. Taking note of how the blinds play is important when weighing the possibility of making a reraise. In general, the better the blinds play, the harder you should try to raise them out. Fairly good players will routinely call 182 one additional bet from the big blind with a large number of hands, hoping for a big flop. By forcing them to call two more bets, you reduce the price they get from the pot. This should convince them to fold most of the time. Another benefit you’ll receive by making this play is that you sometimes will reraise with hands that don’t appear to merit it, so it makes you more unpredictable in the eyes of your opponents. On top of that, you’ve enhanced this image while making a sound strategic play. There will be times when you hold a premium hand and several players are already in the pot for a raise or two. In these cases, go ahead and reraise or cap the betting, since you are holding a hand that performs well against several opponents. Hands such as A-2-3-4, A-2-3-x suited, and A-2-4-K suited are good candidates for creating a large pot, as there is a high likelihood that the flop will be promising

right situations they can add significantly to your profits. First, it is important not to fear cinch hands in most situations. For example, suppose that you have and flop top two pair with a small card. You bet and get two callers, one before you and one after you. A nine - which could give someone a straight - comes on fourth street, and the first person bets into you. How should you play? Well, you certainly should not fold. Many typical players, if they actually made a straight, would try for a check-raise. Moreover, this person could easily be betting a hand like jacks and nines or a hand like which has given him an open end straight draw to go along with his pair. Consequently, your best play is usually to raise. This may cause the player behind you to fold a hand like KQ, which is to your advantage. Notice that a king would give him a better two pair and that a ten would give him a straight. Other Fourth Street Concepts 145 A play that expert players make against mediocre opposition is to bluff on fourth street from an early position into several opponents, all of whom have checked on the flop. This play works best when the turn card is not an overcard or a third suited card. With little money in the pot your opponents will not want to call with less than top pair, as they will fear you may have been "sandbagging" on the flop. Meanwhile, it is unlikely that an opponent will have top pair, since he would have bet it. The expert is getting 2-to- 1 or ?to- 1 odds on this play, and it works about half the time as long as the game is not too loose. In some games this play alone can account for a large portion of your ultimate winnings. Another idea to keep in mind is that some of your opponents are more likely to be weak if they bet the flop, as opposed to checkraising. This is because some players tend to save their better hands for check-raising. So, if you called a bet like this with a weak hand (on the flop), but now pick up something like a flush draw, this may be a good opportunity for a semi-bluff raise as long as you are against someone who you believe is capable of throwing a marginal hand away. By the way, if you make this raise on fourth street, are called, and do not improve on fifth street, you should usually bet again. Because of the size of the pot your opponent will only need to occasionally fold for this bluff to be correct. Desperation Bets In a previous section we saw that on fourth street proper strategy is to frequently bet hands with no outs and to check hands with outs. A similar play occasionally occurs on the flop, and it is known as a desperation bet. Sometimes you will be in a situation where there is some chance that you

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opponents will nearly always only call. Sometimes they will make the worst play of all by folding the best hand. Second, when the hand with which you are semi-bluffing is in fact the best hand at the moment, by betting you are not making The Semi-Bluff 95 You 96 Chapter Eleven the mistake of giving worse hands free cards. As we saw in the previous chapter, it is critical to bet the best hand with more cards to come in order to avoid giving people a free card. Not only will a worse hand usually fold, which is fine, especially if the opponent is getting proper odds to call, but a better hand might fold. If the better hand calls, which is more likely, you still have the chance of improving to the best hand. If, instead of betting, you check and a better hand bets, your hand probably justifies a call. So you have gained nothing by checking. You do not get yourself a free card. Hence, you are more likely to semi-bluff in first position than in last, where you have the option of giving yourself a free card. A third advantage of the semi-bluff is that, used correctly, it adds an enormous amount of deceptiveness to your game. For example, suppose in seven-card stud you started with: The Semi-Bluff 97 giving you showing. This is a good spot for a semi-bluff raise even if you are almost certain your opponent will call you. Why? Well, notice what happens when you catch certain cards on fifth street. If you catch a card such as the or for that matter any card that looks as if it's given you a straight or a flush, your opponent will very possibly fold, if not a better hand, certainly a hand that was justified in calling against a measly pair of 7s. Suppose you catch a jack or a queen, making a pair on board. Now your opponent almost has to fold because of the strength you showed by your earlier raise. However, if he in fact has two kings, he is making a mistake folding against two smaller pair. Finally, notice what happens if you catch the one card that will make you root for a call, namely a 7, which gives you three-of-a-kind. Because of your previous bet, that 7 will look completely harmless, as though it didn't help your hand one bit. Now when you bet, your opponent will keep coming just as you want him to. In sum, your semi-bluff raise on fourth street has made subsequent cards that help you only moderately look very dangerous, while it has made cards that give you a big hand look insignificant. This last point is an additional benefit of the semi-bluff in stud games but especially in hold 'em. When you do hit the card that makes your hand, your opponent will often misread it because of your bet on the previous round (except in the cases where you were straightforwardly betting on the come with a flush or a straight draw).

Junk A very weak hand with little playability.

If 25 percent seems high, remember the maniac will be playing close to 100 percent of his hands. Playing Good Hands When It Is Three Bets Before the Flop Suppose you have: You open for two bets, and someone else makes it three bets. How should you play this hand? Realize that in this situation, you are almost always up against either a big pair, which you may or may not be able to beat, or two high cards, usually AK. This means that if an ace or a king appears on the flop, you generally should check and fold. However, if the flop looks favorable, be prepared to simply check and call all the way. (Occasionally, depending on the board and your opponent, it may be better to bet when all the cards are out.) There are two reasons for checking and calling. First, if you check-raise and have the worst hand, you will just lose more money. However, if you have the best hand, your opponent may fold on the turn, and you won't win as much money as you could have won. 134 Part Three: Miscellaneous Topics The second reason for checking and calling is that you encourage your opponent to bluff all the way. Suppose he has: He may bet this hand not only on the flop, but on the turn and river as well, hoping that you will fold. Give him a chance to throw his money away. Remember, risking free cards is not as dangerous in this spot since you may be beaten anyway. There is an important exception to only calling before the flop, as opposed to reraising. It is when you believe that your opponent may believe that you might be stealing. This usually occurs when you are first in from a late position, or just by circumstance you have been raising a lot. In this case, if he is somewhat knowledgeable or just very aggressive, he will be quick to make it three bets. Thus you may want to take it to four bets. However, if you only call, you may have him in a very weak position and he may bet on the flop and the turn with very few outs. For example, if you raise first in with the QVQ4 either one or two positions offthe button, an aggressive opponent might make it three bets with a hand like: Making it four bets is now a viable option. So is playing the hand more aggressively on later streets as well. Now suppose the flop looks favorable, but you have been three betted while holding ... Hands When It Is Three Bets Before the Flop 135 instead of two queens. You still should probably play as before, though your chances have gone down since you may be against tens or jacks. An exception would be when you are against two or three opponents and the reraiser is last to act. Now you may want to come out betting. This might force the players who are between you and the original reraiser to

Diagram 81 Given that IP has a substantial checking back range, many strong hands are checked back, particularly when they block the Villain’s continuing range. For example top set QQ on Q82r gets checked back 68% of the time.

big blind deep in a tournament if I had to guess let's put out a flop Ace 76 on Ace 76 using some logic given the big blind did not rease before the Flop we know that they don't have Aces Ace King Ace Queen hands like that right so they're going to be missing a lot of the absolute best hands plus they're going to be calling pre flop with a whole lot at junk like notice 103 suited here is just absolute trash right so the initial pre- flop razor range against the big blind callers range has 65% Equity that is gigantic it's really really big this is actually one of the flops where the initial Razer has the biggest advantage and this is a spot where the initial razor are going to be betting basically every time because they have a big range Advantage 65% is huge alternatively what if the Flop comes 765 well now the pre- Flop callers range even if they have junk you know notice the junk down here like 103 suited has a flush draw sometimes back door flush draw a gutshot straight draw right so a lot of the junk is going to connect with this board and a lot of the initial razor misses like Queen Jack are not particularly great on 765 so now notice even though the initial Razer does still have a tiny bit of an advantage 52.87 anything above 50% is considered an advantage it's not much of an advantage at all so this is a board that's going to get checked a whole lot more than Ace 76 by the initial razor because they lack the advantage when you have an advantage in poker you typically want to put money in in the pot so here are some rough categories with more than 50 58% Equity you have a strong advantage and when you have a strong Advantage you're going to be betting most of the time or every time and that means you're going to be betting your premium hands your draws your marginal hands and your junk you're just betting at all with between 54% and 58% that's a moderate Advantage you're going to be betting pretty frequently and usually that's going to be with your premium hands your draws and then some extra Bluffs usually low Equity Bluffs like back door straight draw back door flush draw stuff like that and then when you have a small advantage or no Advantage which is something like 54% or less you're going to be betting less often with your weak advantage and that's usually going to be just with premium hands and draws and as the ranges get closer and closer to 50/50 or if somehow you're an underdog you're going to be checking a ton and actually this happens when someone raises and the big blind calls in most scenarios unless you're very short stack the big blind should check almost every flop because they're basically always disadvantaged right I mean I just showed

hand. However, if the board shows 4-5-9-T (and two of the cards are the same suit), it is quite possible that a hand like A-9 is good at this point. Your opponent might have a T or a 9 with a worse kicker, or be semibluffing with a straight or flush draw. You should be more inclined to call your opponent down with second pair when several logical draws are present on the board. What Is the Pot Size? Don’t make the mistake of folding too quickly when the pot is large. A bad call costs you one or two bets, but a bad fold costs you all the bets in the pot, so it is far better to err on the side of calling if you are unsure about your hand. That said, the pot may have reached its present size because your opponent has been pushing a good hand, so you needn’t always pay off with a marginal second pair type of hand simply because the pot has grown large. Mistakes in Judgment Don’t be discouraged if you make some mistakes in judgment in these types of situations. It takes a great deal of experience to make consistently correct decisions, and even the best hold’em players make occasional mistakes. If you remember to consider your opponent, the board, and the size of the pot, you will have a good framework for making the right choice, though. On those times when you are still torn between calling and folding, however, remember that calling with a loser is a small mistake, but folding a winner is a big one. Tip # 38 of 52 No more cards are coming, so all that matters is whether you have the best hand. After the dealer puts the river card on the board, your hand is complete. At this point, you might have a big hand (such as a full house or flush), a decent hand (such as top pair or an overpair to the board), or a missed hand (such as a busted straight draw). If you feel you have the winner, you should usually bet when the action gets to you. If you are unsure whether your hand is best, you have the option of either checking and hoping for the best in a showdown or checking with the intention of calling someone else’s bet. Bluffs Rarely Succeed in Low-Limit Games When you miss your hand, you might be tempted to take a stab at the pot by bluffing. A word of caution, however: Bluffing rarely succeeds in low-limit hold’em. With several bets in the pot, it costs you only one bet to attempt a bluff. This gives you a good price. (The pot might be laying you odds of 10-to-1 or better, meaning your bluff needs to succeed only a small percentage of the time to be a profitable play.) Nevertheless, in loose low-limit games, even 10-to-1 or better odds might not be enough to justify attempting a bluff, as someone will call you nearly every time. A Good Bluffing Situation One

raise with in multiway pots include A-A-2-x, A-2-3-x, and A-2-4-x, especially if your ace is suited. Being suited adds significant value to your high prospects, and nut flush cards play very well in multiway situations. It’s okay to raise with just about any A-2 suited holding if several players are already in the pot. Your opponents will often make and overvalue smaller flushes. Even hands like A-3 suited are acceptable raising hands in very loose games, as you want to charge your opponents the maximum amount for playing inferior, low percentage hands. 175 Playing High-Only Hands Properly playing hands with four big cards—by definition, nines or higher— is not an easy task in Omaha eight-or-better. However, playing them selectively and skillfully will add to your profits. By definition, a quality high-only hand contains four big cards, 9 or higher. Nines tend to taint the hand, as they will not stretch to form part of an acehigh straight. When a 9 is used as part of a straight, two problems exist: (1) If a 9 helps make the nut straight, then either a low or a full house will be possible based on the board cards. (2) If a 9 forms a straight with no possible low, then either a higher straight or a full house will be possible. Hands such as K-K-J-8, Q-Q-6-7, and K-Q-J-3 are not playable in Omaha eight-or-better, as they contain too many uncoordinated cards. Think in terms of the number of decent combinations created by a hand, and it’s easy to see why these hands belong in the muck. There are, however, a number of good high-only hands. Here are some hands that are playable under many conditions: K-Q-J-10 A-K-Q-10 Q-J-10-9 K-K-J-10 K-Q-Q-J A-K-J-J Q-Q-J-J In order to determine if it is correct to enter a pot with a hand comprised only of high cards, there are several variables to consider. On the positive side, high hands play best when you can play in an un-raised multiway pot, because you want to get a good price on your hand from the pot. In the case of straight-high hands, you will most likely miss the flop and be forced to fold. Therefore, if you can get in without much initial investment against several players, you are getting far better odds on your money than if you play against only one or two players for a raise. In some Omaha eight-orbetter games, multiway unraised pots are the norm. If this is the case, calling with quality straight-high hands is acceptable from even the earliest positions. However, in many games, it is difficult to foresee whether the pot will be 176 raised or how many players will see the flop. If this is the situation, you need to use position to determine if a high-only hand is playable. In early position, you can’t count on an unraised multiway pot, so you should fold. In later positions, more information is available to you. If several opponents come in, then go ahead and play. If the pot will play out shorthanded, calling a

If you have Top Pair with a strong kicker you need to look at the texture of the flop very carefully. In low stakes game most players will play any two cards. In a larger stakes game your TPTK is a stronger hand because there are fewer poor starting hands seeing the Flop. A Flop of Ace, three, five may have an opponent drawing to a bicycle straight or already have 2-Pair. You must consider what your kicker actually is. For example, a nine kicker is not very strong. There are four more ranks that can beat you if you hold A 9 and you pair your Ace. If another card above your card falls on the Turn or River this may give someone 2-Pair. If you hold the top pair with your kicker, then a card that falls on the Turn or River will eliminate your top pair. If you have a draw, you have to decide if it is worth chasing. You should consider if the hand has an excellent chance of being the nuts or close to the nuts if it completes. Let us look at when it may be advisable to chase a hand. You have Ad 5d on the button with five players seeing the flop. The flop comes 2d 3d 8c. What should you be seeing with this flop? You have a nut Flush Draw and a Gut-Shot straight draw. Any diamond (nine left in the deck) and any four (there are four left in the deck and one of them makes a Straight Flush) will make your hand a strong showdown winner. Thirteen outs (do not count the 4 of Diamonds a second time) is almost even money against you hitting the card needed to make a competitive hand. You have a 27.7% chance that one of your cards will fall on the Turn and 28.5% chance it will hit on the River or a 48.1% dog on both streets. You are a 1.1/1 underdog for it not to happen on both streets. That is almost even money and the expected value of the hand if you do hit will exceed the 1.9% you are sacrificing. In other words, if you do complete your hand you have an excellent chance of extracting more bets on the River. For example, if you miss your draw you will fold at the showdown but if you do complete your hand you will probably get a call from your opponents. So in limit poker if the Turn had 10.5 bets in the pot and the River completed your hand you can get at least one more bet. If there were two opponents then you would win a pot of 13 bets. If you missed then you would fold losing only three bets. If you win four times and lose four times then you will be gaining eight bets. Many times with that drawing hand you will be playing against someone who thinks betting over cards to the flop is a smart play, someone that may have a wired pair,

with nothing they really don't like to raise with pairs because if they get three bit back it's a crap what do I do now right so it tends to be two pair more so nine times out of ten it's all in your head William if people are raising as a bluff but now if you do have someone who has like let's say a check raise of like 20% or more our arrays seemed out of like 20% or more well now something you can do is kind of track what boards they like guys tend to have their type of board like a quote some guys really like dry boards some people really like coordinated boards no caddy will actually keep track of every time they do it for you so you can just watch on a replay is so that's really neat and then if you figure out their board just you know the other thing if you can watch the replay as you can see if anybody ever 3bet them and they fold and that that's their board nine times at the time and then you should three that and mommy says I bought my use Tommy Bahama vacation shoots for we're gonna do good w so pay God love you that's awesome Lonnie what adjustments do I have to make if any of the later stages of the tournament oh my god Ricardo that could fill a book I think we talked about that earlier just a lot more hounding people it all comes back to this session and WP what level would you not employ these strategies as much 2015 hundreds still a lot of this stuff works or like anything beyond mm I don't know how many they are there are you playing the WP this summer at least the main I never missed made I don't know much else of God uh-oh will I play events at other yeah more about the money don't really care about winning a bracelet I don't know if you're supposed to see it be neat but see what would your strategy be with ace ace or King King under the guy when you preflop three betting of $30.00 behind you you can usually stagger your bat sizes to get three streets from a lesser pair is a lesser pair that bigger of a pot will not raise you and if they raise you usually they're telling you they got it it's hard to find guys l raising multi way boards as a bluff Multi reponses and bluff are called with the intention to raise on the turn as a block well guys I think I gotta wrap this up Jeff said he just watch my bow thank you sir oh god there's a lot of you guys today I'm so sorry I can't finish it off there is like there's another yeah anyways guys I do have to run my my girlfriend has dinner on the table I don't want to be disrespectful I really appreciate you

So in all of the value betting discussion to come we are never going to be considering value betting in a procedural check spot. There are sometimes reasons to violate the norm of the procedural check and lead out on a street into the aggressor of the last street, especially in multiway situations, but these will be dealt with later on in the manual. Almost always in procedural check spots, Hero should bypass Figure 24 altogether and check. The reasons for this will become clearer as the manual progresses.

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yeah okay and i i got him limping so so typically this is another thing guys loose passive players low six players in casinos or micro stakes they tend to raise their best hands in limp they're good in mediocre hands and then they fold their crap so i tried to make the limping range what i thought was like good in mediocre hands and as you can see he's there's no ace king kings queens ace queen suited because those are the hands most of them raised so he fires on that turn so yeah it's gonna be sad yeah it's gonna be two pair yeah it's gonna be top pair and then we didn't really think he'd fire middle pair because he'd probably try to get that to a showdown and then okay cool we'll give him some uh draws and you know we'll give him you know the five four suited there okay so we're getting giving him a bunch of draws and like top hair better when we do that you just see our equity just just hit the floor at 22 now and a lot of people fixate on oh man he's got a lot of flush draws there too right the name of the game isn't put the guy on one category a hand you're ahead against right now and then continue and put lots of money in that that's not the name of the game the name of the game is obviously looking at the entirety of his range and asking how it's going to play now what you're going to notice is we're not doing so hot and like i said every diamond draw you can think of you can see it it's one combo you see that little one underneath the six four suited that little one underneath the six five suited that's one combo now let's go up to the ace queen off he might have limp now that's nine combos look at that ace jack even the one we're blocking that's five now look at the ace ten that's another seven and don't forget there's the ace jack suit it's the ace ten suit it's the ace nine the all the suited aces that's a lot of them man it's a lot of them so as you can see if we're going like oh yeah he could have draws like this is a time a person could have a lot of drugs like i'm trying to give him a lot of draws here there's no indication he 100 limps six four of diamonds or something like that but you'll even see then it's only about a quarter of the time he's got all that and that means the other 75 of the time we are just screwed and by the way he gets to hit he gets to see the river if we call we all catch that right the hand's not over so yeah we're not looking so hot okay continuing final note on that hand guys because this is

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Adjusting to Weak Tight Games Note: The players described in this section can be found in small stakes games in Las Vegas cardrooms. Obviously, they may also play in many other places, but they are quite common in Las Vegas. Ed wrote this section because he’s most familiar with these games. A deep stack weak-tight no limit game may be the second-most profitable style of poker game regularly available.36 But it’s only ultra-profitable if you make the right adjustments. If you just play your “normal” no limit game, you’ll largely miss out on the bonanza. Defining the Game What makes a no limit game weak-tight? Well, it’s populated principally by players who fold too frequently, particularly to big bets on the turn and river. Whenever the big bets come out, they always seem to fear you have the nuts, and their excellent hands don’t seem quite good enough. While the ability to make “big laydowns” is critical to deep stack no limit success, weak-tight players tend to make absurd laydowns just because a lot of money will be at risk. They’ll keep folding even when it’s entirely clear to them and everyone else that they aren’t always against the nuts. They tend to misevaluate pot odds-based decisions with a bias toward fold- ing. For instance, say they have J♡T♡on a K♡8♡7♠flop, giving them a twelve out monster draw against most hands. The pot is $200, and they bet $50 (weak-tight players tend to underbet significantly any time they are wor- ried about their hand). Someone raises them $200 more (for a total of $250). A weak-tight player might fold, not wanting to risk $200 on “just a draw.” The pot contains $500, though, and they’d have to call only $200, so they’d be getting 5-to-2 on a call. But they won’t take it. Weak-tight players generally don’t think about overlays and odds. (And when they do think about them, their thought process is generally excruciatingly 36Second only to loose-passive. 127

gonna end up being like 35 big blinds however as these stacks get shallower and shallower in relation to the best size you can typically make it a little bit less like in this scenario if we're playing a hundred big blinds deep you'll probably want to make it more like 28 big blinds if we're playing 300 big blinds deep though you probably want to be making it more like 35 big blinds so that's the student your opponent plays well right now what if they don't play well what if they play very tight and straightforward this is gonna be the case in a lot of small states live games okay you're gonna raise if they rear A's they have aces and kings and queens and Ace King well against that range what should you do well typically you're going to want to defend with hands that are getting the correct implied odds now the implied odds we discussed earlier with the small pairs essentially want to be making sure you can be getting paid 10 to 1 at least on your set draw so if you make it 3 B blinds and they make it 10 you have to put in 7 big blinds more right so if you can count on your opponent paying you off for your full 100 me blind stack and decent amount at the time because he doesn't know they have aces kings or queens you can call with your small pairs right but let's say they're a little bit more loose a little bit more aggressive you should be now a little bit more inclined to fold because they're not going to have a strong enough hand ax just mindlessly put their money in every single time so again some players who are a little more aggressive you need to be a little bit more inclined to fold which is kind of counterintuitive right with suited connectors and suited aces you typically want 20 to 1 implied odds which you'll almost never be getting unless you're very deep stacked so against very strong ranges the only hands you really should consider calling whether suited I'm sorry of small pairs and medium pairs of course and the absolute best big suited hands and then hands like aces kings queens and ace king aces and kings especially you're usually just best getting it off and getting it all in preflop Ace King and ace Queen against a tight player should very often call and then play as we're gonna describe in the post lop section now if your opponents maniacal understand the implied odds hands go down in value like the small pairs but stuff like king queen goes up in value because now if you make top pair you just know you're never folding against the maniac right so against a maniac you should be defending a larger portion of your range compared to if your opponent is tighter but like I said a different portion of the range right which is something that

strong players because like if this nine comes and I can never have a nine here he can Bluff everything right I mean you would just be all in here with so many hands I would assume against a lot of different players yeah and I think you know what you're talking about here is that when you look to a big bat the instinct is to think polar Justin's got pocket nines Justin's got eight nine suited Justin's got Ace Queen and then he's got some cool Bluffs 10-7 suited seven six King ten all that makes sense and those are the first boxes you should check when you learn a big bet the last layer is the most difficult to learn which is this middle grouping where you're like wait I thought Justin said when we bet big we should be polar yes most of your range and then there's a small sliver that is the Ace nine the 910 that kind of like fits the middle group I can remember um I used pocket eights for like a pot sized bat on a jack seven five against Brewer in uh one of these high rollers and it just works really nicely where you pop the Flop you check turn basically pure and now you've got this middle grouping of hand whereas when you pop flop and check turn if you don't have that type of hand you never have value unless you're doing something silly like checking Ace jack on a turn yeah yeah I think that's great man I think that's great yeah and using like the pocket pair above the second card and the board is perfect right because like you're getting those that protection from the whatever it might be the 910 that has no equity but against your specific Canon it's kind of nicer to fold out and you're you're getting a street and a half of value from his uh middle pair or bottom pair while at the same time you know providing a ton of um protection against other stuff yeah yeah for sure so you find The Jam you've had value in the spot but I like your jam size it seems perfect to me seems like you're gonna be in this spot when you have that Queen low or that 4X you know that I have Bluffs um and very often you just have nothing there uh am I you know you're just gonna have a king 10 or whatever and I don't think my block is going to get paid much at all anyway so let's go ahead and jam take your you know Queen X and put it in a really tough spot and then which I don't think you have often but I think you know you could definitely big bet check like a queen three suited 100 yeah even some Queen 10-0 right Queen 10 oh Queen 7-0 like I think I definitely gonna find uh some amount of checks on the turn yeah 10-4 suited um

BB’s life easier, allowing them to correctly fold weak hands and continue with a very strong range. If instead, UTG bets the minimum, this will lure the BB in with many weak hands that UTG dominates, keeping their range wider on future streets. Table 114: UTG c-betting Range Breakdown on Q♥J♥T♥ The strategy on this flop can be simplified to min-bet 100% with no EV loss. Many times, when people see all the small frequencies being used, they freak out, thinking that playing with that level of detail is impossible, and they are right. Only a solver would be capable of that kind of mixing but, as we saw in the post-flop bet-sizing section, we don’t need to use multiple bet- sizes, as a single bet-size will retain virtually all the strategy’s EV. Facing a 50% Pot x/r The BB x/r range on this flop includes many strong hands such as flushes, straights, sets and two pair, alongside flush draws and straights draws and not too much pure air.

Villain's fold to 4-bet stat is significant as it renders 4-bet bluffs by Hero very +EV in a vacuum. In a sizing model of 2BB > 8BB > 18BB, Hero will be risking 16BB to win 10.5BB. RFE = R / (R + PG) RFE = 16 / (16 + 10.5) RFE = 60.4% If Villain's range for 3-betting is wider here than in most other positions, he may even fold to more 4- bets in this spot than the 69% suggests and 4-betting therefore prints money in a vacuum. This of course doesn't justify a 4-bet with any two cards, but it does make Hero inclined to adopt an unbalanced ratio of bluffs to value that makes folding too much to 4-bets a significant mistake. At the same time, this ratio can't become so inflated that Villain quickly figures out that Hero is making an extreme adjustment and readjusts. A balanced 4-bet range would be something similar to the one we created in Figure 64. It will contain slightly more bluffs than value hands, but Hero's job is now to bluff a bit more often than this. A ratio of 2:1 bluffs to value should make a fine exploitative adjustment. Hero uses considerably more bluffs than value hands but not to such an extent that it quickly becomes obvious. One in three of Hero's 4-bets will still be with a nutted hand and although such a strategy makes light 5-betting very profitable for Villain, we don't expect him to be doing much of that - if he were, his fold to 4-bet stat would be much lower in the first place.

♥ 3 ♠ 8 ♣ 2 ♣ board . We can see from the equity distribution graph that UTG, represented by the green line, is more polar, with both more strong and more weak hands in their range: Consequently, GTO Wizard’s strategy for BB is extremely passive, consisting only of checks and 10% pot blocking bets . The blocking bet range is linear, incorporating bluffs, top pair, two pair, and sets alike. UTG, on the other hand, either checks or makes big, polar bets. They use two different bet sizes: a 275% pot shove with all straights and most sets and an 85% pot bet with most two pairs and the rest of their sets. The inclusion of the smaller bet size enables UTG to squeeze more value from their two pairs, which are not strong enough to shove for value . BB has enough sets and two pairs of their own that this smaller bet is necessary to incentivize them to call with one pair hands. UTG does not split their sets between these bet sizes based on their rank, as might be intuitive. Rather, they split them based on blockers . 88 is a pure shove and 33 mostly shoves, while AA and TT, which block more of BB’s calling range, do more of the “trapping” in the 85% pot range. UTG’s response to a block bet is similar, with a range that raises 55% pot and a range that shove for 222% pot. The distribution of hands between these ranges is similar as well. Notice that UTG folds to BB’s 10% pot bet at a far higher rate than Minimum Defense Frequency would suggest. This is because, after checking and calling the turn overbet, BB has very few weak hands to bluff with. They are supposed to get profitable bluffs in this situation. This is also why BB does not make large bets with their strongest hands: they don’t have the bluffs to balance them . Should You Bluff Catch? A well-constructed, polarized betting range should make you roughly indifferent to calling with your medium-strength hands. That means there often is no single, correct answer to this question absent some insight into your opponent’s tendencies. Against an optimal betting range, you’ll have roughly the same EV whether you call or fold (or in some cases, raise). That means there are a few bad reasons to bluff catch: Your opponent could be bluffing . Sure, but they also could be value betting. The mere risk of a bluff, or the fact that you can identify some bluffing candidates, does not make calling profitable. It’s a good card to bluff . A good card to bluff is, by definition, also a good card to value bet. Thus, you have the same problem as above: the risk of a bluff incentivizes you to call, the risk of a value bet incentivizes you to fold, and you face a genuinely tough decision with no good, obviously profitable option. Here are some better reasons to call: You beat some of your opponent’s value bets

to play cash games you will be playing very difficult turns in rivers so you want to do as much work before you get to the table as possible on that get comfortable being uncomfortable study the game before you get to the table play lower Stakes than you normally would play play hard collect information from your sessions assess what you've learned and apply yourself again the next day once you are comfortable with situations that make other players uncomfortable you will have more Tools in your toolbox this will allow you to exploit the tables more effectively you can make good money raising with weekends when players to your left are not three betting or flattening enough your most frequent situation when you engage in this loose play is heads up pots with the big blind this is a great situation because your opponent is playing a raised part out of position with a capped range it's hard to win when you're in that disadvantageous of a situation however when you engage in this strategy you will sometimes run into players who three better cold call you when they're in position this makes your life difficult when you started with a weak hand if you can drill this situation and neutralize your positional disadvantage you will have a good reason to open up your game at softer tables if you don't practice out of position deep stack scenarios then you will be forced to play the majority of your larger pots from the button and cut off this will work at lower Stakes but it will become an impediment moving up so we covered a lot there so in tournaments a lot of people just aren't going to play back at you as much as they should because there's more recreational players assuming you're game selecting with any degree with any degree of proficiency if you're game selecting at all people just there's a lot of things people should be doing in tournament poker they're just not doing in tournament poker or if you're playing lower sticks there's just a lot of people playing for fun so you can set up that really nice situation again and again where you're opening and getting the big blind to call you in tournaments and that is just an excellent situation to set up because your opponent is playing way too many hands out of position in a raised pot and more of your continuation bets are going to work because they're going to miss so often and when they do hit they MIT they do hit very Jagged pairs so you can get a lot of value from them if you flopped a pretty decent second pair or top here now that's a situation you can exploit as well in cash games but cash game players have more tools they have deeper Stacks in which to apply pressure on you also they have more time to observe you just because you end up playing longer sessions with the same people so you

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

pure bets , and pairs with good kickers and/or draws round out the value bets. BB’s bluffs are low-ranked hands with draws (including backdoor draws, which also function as blockers) to straights and flushes, hands like 94 o and J ♦ 5♦ . More highly ranked unpaired hands, such as A5 o and KJ o prefer to check even when they have backdoor draws, as do pairs – including top pair – with weak kickers . Even on the more static AJ6 , the best unpaired hands and pairs with poor kickers check almost exclusively, while the strongest hands purely bet. BB’s bluffs are not their very worst hands but rather those with some equity when called. 87 o performs better than 82 o, not only because it makes a straight more often but because it has two live overcards against the 6 x in SB’s calling range. Those weakest hands eventually bluff if SB keeps checking, but they are worse for bluffing the flop because they have virtually no chance of improving to win an inflated pot. When SB Bets the Flop BB’s response to a bet also does not vary much with stack depth, as the equity disparity is built into the SB’s betting range just as it was to their checking range. They raise rarely and fold at roughly MDF (a bit lower, since the SB’s bluffs retain some equity when called). The only exception is at extremely shallow stack depths, where SB’s bet should be polar and raising is not needed to grow the pot. Board texture considerations are built into the SB’s betting range just as stack size considerations are. Thus, there is not as much variance in the BB’s raising strategy as there is in the SB’s betting strategy based on the rank of the board cards. Here is the report for responding to a 33% pot bet with 25bb stacks . And with 60bb . With such wide ranges, responding to a small bet is tricky (which is why SB uses it). Here is BB’s response to 33% pot on AJ6 r with 60bb stacks. It’s easier to focus on what does fold: only the weakest hands with exceptionally poor one pair outs and no backdoor flush draw . They never fold a pair , not even 22 . They never fold two cards bigger than a 6 – it helps that even the weakest of these has some backdoor straight potential. They almost never fold a backdoor flush draw , though 72 s mixes some folds. Indeed, it’s easier to focus on what does fold: only the weakest hands with exceptionally poor one pair outs and no backdoor flush draw . Raising is a very small part of BB’s response, with no hands strictly preferring a raise. The hands with the highest frequency of raising are two pairs and sets , with a smattering of bluffs from some of the weaker backdoor draws . Bluff raises are not very profitable, so the only candidates are hands that are barely profitable calls. Not much changes

there's only six combinations of pairs which is his value and there's twice as many with his Bluffs which is awesome hands and it's like Ace nine Ace 10 K10 King Jack a shot Ace Queen it becomes extremely apparent how easy it is for this guy to just overdo it because when it folds to a human being in the spot and he looks down at Ace Jack then you know who's to say he doesn't squeeze every time because it looks strong right where where we want to win the pot like we're on the bubble of the main event and you know we make it 65k you know there's no way these guys aren't going to give me credit right well not necessarily true right because you know if we if in our shoes if we see how narrow his range is then we start thinking about his Bluffs okay what if you squeeze in King seven suit or what if he's squeezing A6 suited Ace two suited any of these hands you know his value range is just so small and his his bluff range can be so so wide that it becomes more and more problematic the more aggressive the player is all right so so that's the the math side of things and let's just talk about his his size and his timing so I know you guys weren't there but the manner in which he did it he took maybe 15 or 20 seconds and just casually slid out 65k and I just completely was not buying it like I just don't think if you have Aces you're gonna go 65k maybe Kings Kings makes more sense because you know of course any ASAP flop is bad for you and with Kings it's way different than Aces so that makes sense but even then like I just think he's gonna go something like 53k or 47k 50k or something like that so we're turning to the combinations uh now on the second picture this is the six combinations of his Aces well look at what we've done here we're now taking away four of his combinations of aces based on his sizing so I just don't buy it right so I'm taking away four combos of his Aces he's down to eight combos of value and I say you know what now I'm going to take a couple combinations of Kingsway as well because again I just don't think you have it so where does that leave us it leaves us with him having six combinations of value and 45 combinations of Bluffs so you can't you can't see it here this is just what I came up with you know it's a hypothetical scenario of course but this is just one scenario it could be 30 combinations of Bluffs and he'd still be way overdoing it it could be 50 or 60 or maybe 70 combinations if if you squeezing like all these off suit Aces and suited Aces and other hands that I

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

usually a very good spot to put in a block let's take a look at a few more examples straight four limper limbs somebody else calls we have pocket nines this is a spot where I'm probably gonna raise something like pocket sevens or better every time remember you normally normally make it five uh 10 big blind or ten dollars over a two dollar limp because there's one additional limper will make it something like 12. and you know we're gonna get called by a decent amount of players sometimes and that's fine because we make a set we're very happy we make a over pair even a middle pair we're happy I think a lot of people get in their minds that whenever they get called it's bad they think it's definitively bad to get called but it's not bad to get called realize we have an edge in this pot and the pot's getting big so now we're just getting a edge in a bigger and bigger pot and that is a good situation even though we're not going to win the pot every time it's okay to not win every pot like right here when the big blind bets into three other people we're not winning this pot anymore when we don't have a set straight four limper calls even though it's a small bat even though we were the pre-flop razor even though we have a whole lot of good hands on this board just fold ing it out of the way it's okay straightforward limper straightforward limper from early position this is a great spot to raise with a hand like Ace 10 suited because remember they're going to be raising with a lot of the better hands so we raise it up to 12 dollars only one player calls swap comes Queen five two and they check this is a spot where straightforward limpers are going to respond pretty straightforwardly to a flop bet so this is an excellent spot to make a small flop bet and if they call there are a lot of good turn cards for us notice any Spade will allow us to continue betting and Ace is obviously great a king is a pretty good bluff card and if we get a 10 we can also check it down or maybe even put in a value bat on the river so we're gonna make a small continuation bet and if the opponent doesn't have anything they're just going to fold and they just fold we move on with our lives right and this may not seem like that big of a success but I understand we just won how much do we win here 12 13 14 15 16 17 we just won 17 in this pot that is a nice success in the situation where some players just have to limp behind get the swap face a bet and then fold or Splash around a little bit and don't really know where they are this is going to be

on this board at this step um we need to put more money in the pot and it might feel uncomfortable to be raising hands like jack 8 jack 7 jack 6 but the bottom line is you you're playing a button player who's opening a ton of hands and they're betting their whole range so they're betting on sevens they're betting 10-8 right so jack 8 when we have it is is an extremely high equity hand we need to check raise and play aggressively so this this region here is really common we're going to be sending this spot button respect line so we have like natural bluffs here like queen 9 queen 8 king 9 and these are all very common just mixed frequencies you're going to play them as calls and check raises you'd have more coverage on uh both in your call of range now when they barrel on king or a queen um you can sometimes have straights uh also when you check grades they need to have spread so these ones are all pretty intuitive um to check grays right but the less intuitive hands that you're going to see on all these board types and this happens just in almost every single big blind versus in position single raised pot is going to be a single over card and then a low card that interacts with uh with the bottom card so in this spot we're going to see like the queen three factor flush draw the queen four king four king three this hand type is going to be chuck raised uh pretty frequently in these spots and they just have good properties you can imagine that if we only check raise a jack and you know intuitive draws the open interactive gut shots well when draw is complete on the turn it's hard to find bluffs right so we only check raise jack x sats two pairs and queen nine well on an eight turn what are you gonna bluff with right so these hand's purpose is to give you um board coverage or high ev turns um and that's why you're choosing a backdoor flush draw uh you need the backup cluster with it and one other thing that's nice about having a three and a four in your hand is you're not really blocking any of your opponent's offsuit holdings um they're gonna fold it's like when you trap grays here they're just gonna fold like the king seven king six you know a s8 a7 a6 so you're immediately kind of targeting their offsuit region of hands uh to fold right away and so having a three in your hand obviously they're not opening all two threes so that's kind of an important concept of having a low card in your hand with one over card um and then having the king gives you having king or queen gives you really good equity against their jack x and the 10x right if we if we were to check raise

Stack to Pot Ratio (SPR) SPR is the effective stack size divided by the size of the pot: Knowing how big your stack is relative to the pot is crucial. It allows you to plan ahead and tailor your bet sizes to put yourself in a favorable SPR situation according to the ranges in play. Table 8 shows typical SPR in MTTs with a 12.5% ante. Table 8: Typical SPR in MTTs with 12.5% Ante General SPR Guidelines

If the first bettor does have a pat hand, he will likely reraise, putting you in a horrible position—drawing two against a pat hand with two draws left. When You Improve When you do improve after the first draw, it’s time to get aggressive. Whether you improve to a one-card draw or a vulnerable pat hand, you’ll want to narrow the field as much as possible in multiway pots. Being aggressive in heads-up situations isn’t quite as important. Let’s look at an example. You raise in first position with 2-4-7. You are called by the button and reraised by the big blind. The big blind draws one, while both you and the button draw two. Now you catch a 5 and a king. The big blind bets and it’s up to you. Should you call or raise? The correct answer would be raise. While it’s true that you may be up against a pat hand, you’d still have two draws to make a seven or possibly an eight, depending on your opponent’s hand. Forcing the button out is the most important thing. If you just call, he would be getting good enough pot odds to draw two cards. That’s not what you want. You want to secure last position by chasing the button out, then take the hand heads up. If the big blind didn’t improve, you’ll have an even better chance against just one opponent. What if you are heads up the whole time? Same scenario, except this time there is no third player. In this case, a raise wouldn’t be horrible, but calling would be better. Since you don’t have to worry about knocking out a player, you can simply call here and draw to your hand cheaply. The one key drawback to raising is the risk of your opponent making his hand. It would then cost you three bets rather than one to outdraw him. As I mentioned earlier, you may be giving up a little value since you have the better draw, but that won’t make up for the times you pay extra against a made hand. Keep the 8 or Draw To the Wheel? 306 This is probably one of the most difficult decisions you’ll have to make in a triple draw hand. When drawing to a hand like 2-3-7, should you keep the 8 after the first draw and draw rough, or discard it and draw to the wheel? The reason it is such a difficult decision is because it depends on several variables, including the number of opponents, the number of cards your opponents need, your position, and the discards you made. Number of Opponents. The more players in the pot, the more you should lean toward discarding the 8 and going for the wheel. The problem with keeping the 8 with more opponents drawing is that it will get beat too often by an 8-6, an 8-5, or a seven. If you are up against just one opponent, you might decide to keep the 8, but you should consider other factors, like the number

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

your opponent will frequently have no pair, and he might even throw away some pairs. For 200 Part Five: Playing Short-Handed example, suppose your opponent raised on the button with a pair of fives and the flop is: It will be very difficult for him to call if you bet. So if you often bet out with your decent hands it allows you to also steal when he has nothing. Of course you don't always bet good hands, nor should you blufftoo much. But you should balance your bluffs with legitimate bets. One reason to bet slightly mediocre hands rather than checkraise is that a check-raise puts too much money in the pot and may get your opponent psychologically involved in the hand. He will often call your raise with little and you won't have a good read on his hand. You won't know whether he's slowplaying or just calling all the way with a better hand. The mere fact that he calls when you check-raise on the flop doesn't necessarily suggest that you might not be able to win it with a bet on fourth street. But it does make the play of your hand much more expensive. So one extra advantage of leading is that it increases your chance of winning right on the flop. By no means are we saying that you should never check-raise the flop. If your strategy was to never check-raise, your opponent would begin to realize that when you do check you don't have anything. Thus, balance is the key. Don't check to the raiser every time you have a legitimate hand, but don't bet out every time either. To recap, in short-handed games, if you call a raise out of the blind it is imp0 ant to come out betting far more than in a standard ring game. Thi dt is because it is less likely that your opponent has a good hand. Furthermore, you should almost ignore the fact that there was a raise. Sometimes bluff, sometimes bet a mediocre hand, Leading on the Flop 201 and sometimes bet a good hand right out. Don't think about the fact that your opponent was the raiser. If this is an aggressive player who will be raising with a lot of hands, checking to him gives him too big an edge. Calling on Fourth Street Let's get back to how often you must call to keep very aggressive players from having an automatic edge on you. The question now becomes, how often do you need to call on fourth street? And, should you still turn that top card into a "deuce" as you did on the flop? To answer these questions there are three things that you need to realize: 1. Since the betting limit doubles, your opponent's bet on fourth street is getting poorer odds. In our example he would now be betting $200 to win $600 as compared to $100 to win $400 on the flop. 2. There is only one card to come. Thus, if you make something, you will only have

so hard for.At the old table, everyone thought—and treated you like—you were on a rush. At the new table, you have to start from scratch. So if you can get over the fear of having all that dough on the table, it’s better to stay and keep winning. But know yourself. If you can’t get over it, leave. Stop Time Another thing that stops you from playing under conditions where you’re winning is time. You really shouldn’t play sessions longer than six to eight hours. I don’t have to tell you that poker is an intellectually fascinating game. Very engaging. Time passes quickly. But look at it this way. How would you feel if you were sitting in a car with someone who had been driving for eight hours and said he could go nine or ten more? Even worse, thinkabout whether you’d feel safe driving after your longest session of poker. When I ask people what their longest session ever was, I often hear answers like 18 hours, 24 hours, 36 hours.As sick as it is, my longest session ever was 72 hours. (Hey, I didn’t start off being a good self-manager. I had to learn this stuff, too!) And after that long a session, how do you think you’d feel if you had to drive? Yikes. That’s how you’d feel. Just yikes. Poker is a lot harder than driving. So if you wouldn’t feel safe driving a car, you shouldn’t feel safe risking your money at a poker table. Or imagine sitting in a math class and doing algebra problems for eights hours. That’s really tiring. And that’s what poker is like, only thanks to all the adrenaline, you don’t realize how tired you are. Also, consider that when you’re playing in a cash game, there are always fresh players coming into the game. If you’re super-tired, it’s a disaster to play against those wide-awake players who just sat down. Their decisions will be sharper thanyours. (In tournaments, you don’t worry about this, because no one is fresh. Everyone has to play for the same amount of time.) So to stop-win and stop-loss limits, now add a time limit. Leave when you reach the limit. It’s another way to minimize the number of hours you logwhen you’re not playing your best. Just absolutely. It isn’t just time that might get you to quit when you’re winning. Sometimes, you realize you just don’t want to be at the table. Or way before sixhours is up, you realize you’re really tired. Or you get in a fight with someone at the table and that puts you in a bad mood. Or you start to feel unwell. Those are all great reasons to quit. If you aren’t physically or mentally into it, you shouldn’t be playing, win or lose. Go home. Come back when youfeel more up to it. The other thing—and this one’s gospel—is never, never, ever stay in a poker game when human interaction is scheduled. If you’ve made anappointment to see someone away from the poker table, keep that appointment

tells, I need you to understand something. Very few tells are 100% accurate. You need to use them like you would any other bit of information. For instance, if you’re playing seven-card stud and you raise with a queen showing on the first betting round, a reraise from an opponent with a king showing very likely indicates a pair of kings. But it might not—the clue isn’t perfect. You need to adjust your tactics so that you give more consideration to a pair of kings than you would have, while keeping open the possibility that you’re facing a pair of buried aces, a smaller buried pair, three suited cards, or an outright bluff. The raise is an indicator that makes you reevaluate the likely hands your opponent has. A pair of kings becomes more likely, other hands less likely, but still possible. It’s the same with a tell. It’s just another factor, just an indicator. The stronger it is, the more it should influence your decision. But you should seldom let a tell be the only factor that goes into your decision. One other word of caution: Because players have a bias toward calling, many will use tells incorrectly. They’ll go out of their way to spot imaginary tells that prompt them to call and almost completely ignore actual tells that prompt 98 them to fold. If you do that, you’ll probably lose money with tells and would be better off not using them at all. My advice is that you get as good as you can at using tells and applying poker psychology. If you’re a serious winning player, you might easily double your income by mastering these skills. Two Final Bonus Tips TIP 42 I see this mistake quite often, and it drives me crazy. (I have to blame my condition on something, right?) Let’s say your hand is fairly weak for the situation, but the pot is so big that you’re going to call a bet no matter what. Faced with this circumstance, players instinctively try to prevent a bet, perhaps by reaching for their chips menacingly. Listen, if you know you’re going to call, you should encourage your opponent to bet, even if you’re hoping he doesn’t! That’s because the only times you’re likely to succeed in discouraging a bet are when your opponent holds weak hands or would have bluffed. Those are precisely the hands you would have beaten with your call. By not discouraging a bet, you’re inviting an opponent to bet all the hands that will beat you—which he would do anyway! Plus, you’re making him feel comfortable about betting all those extra hands you can beat when you call. Discouraging a bet you intend to call only stops opponents from betting hands you’ll beat, not from betting hands you won’t beat. So don’t do it. TIP 43 For most players, it’s very uncomfortable facing a poker bully—one that tries to dominate the game through super-aggressive plays, mixed with bewildering bluffs. But it’s easy to defeat poker bullies and send them home crying for their

INTRODUCTION 3 We’d like to thank Miriam Miller, Judith Lautner, and Mason Malmuth for their help editing this book. We thank Deva Hazarika, Sunny Mehta, and Matt Flynn for reviewing the manuscript and offering their insights. We thank Mark Werner from mw2design for designing our cover. Thanks also to Portraits Today by Catherine for the photo of Ed on the back cover. We also thank Creel Printing for design and artwork throughout the book. Ed would like to thank his family — his wife Elaine Vigneault, his father Raymond, and his mother Mimi — for their understanding and support during the sometimes difficult and sometimes joyous times through which we produced this book. Finally, we would like to thank Two Plus Two Publishing, LLC.

No Limit and the Fundamental Theorem of Poker In David’s book The Theory of Poker, he introduces a concept he calls the “Fundamental Theorem of Poker:” Every time you play a hand differently from the way you would have played it if you could see all your opponents’ cards, they gain; and every time you play your hand the same way you would have played it if you could see all their cards, they lose. Conversely, every time opponents play their hands differently from the way they would have if they could see all your cards, you gain; and every time they play their hands the same way they would have played if they could see all your cards, you lose.2 The basic idea is that, if you could see your opponent’s cards, you’d always choose the “ideal” play, the play that serves you best. You’d never pay offwith a second-best hand, and you’d never fail to bet when you should. Every time you make a play other than the “ideal” play, you have made a “mistake,” and you’ve cost yourself some money. Note that we use the term “mistake” in a specific and somewhat peculiar sense. We don’t mean that you played badly, or that a more skillful player would have played differently. We just mean that you played differently than you would have if you could have seen your opponent’s hand. For instance, say you have $500 left in a tournament with $100–$200 blinds. You’re on the button with pocket kings, and you move in. Your opponent in the big blind calls and shows pocket aces. Raising all-in there with kings is clearly correct. But your raise was a “mistake” in our terminology because you wouldn’t have moved in had the big blind shown you the aces first. Throughout the book, we will use the term “mistake” in this sense; a mistake is a play other than the play you would make if you knew your opponent’s cards, but it’s not necessarily a bad play. 2The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky, pages 17–18 13

bounties they can potentially win, and it would only take a bit more than a pot-sized bet to put them in play. SB Fold Even when SB folds , the BB continues this way: BB response vs CO open-raise and BU flat-call The BB continues almost as often, even though they cannot win a bounty. This is because the CO and BTN’s ranges are so wide that it becomes very profitable for them to continue, especially when they close the action. What happens when SB folds and BB shoves ? This is CO ’s strategy: CO response vs BB’s squeeze all-in (21bb) (vs CO and BU) The CO still continues fairly frequently, but much tighter now that there are only two—rather than three—bounties they can win. When CO shoves , the BTN responds like this: BU response vs CO all-in (37bb effective), BB all-in (21bb) Likewise, the BTN folds much more in this example. The prospect of risking their tournament life for only a single bounty as a reward has shifted them towards folding most of the time. When the CO calls instead of shoves, it is just a formality, the BTN shoves the exact same range, and then the CO calls. Conclusion The most important consideration in PKOs , particularly at the start, is how many players you cover . Always be aware in every hand how many players you can win a bounty from and how many could win one from you. Also, pay attention to where they are at the table. A player you cover seated next to you is worth a lot more than a player you cover four positions away. In this hand example , there was a perfect storm that led to the exclusively flatting range of the BTN. It was early in the MTT, so bounties were worth the most in terms of equity. The LJ with the chip lead had gotten out of the way, meaning the CO became the de facto chip leader. The CO with the next biggest stack was in a late position, so they could open a very wide range. Our Hero had the BTN, meaning they always have position postflop. They covered the blinds but not the CO. Just flatting increases the likelihood of the SB entering the pot and eventually putting their bounty into play. Three reasons to flat instead of raise. The SB was short stacked, so they had a natural squeezing stack when the BTN flats, and their bounty would be put immediately into play. Finally, the SB was the only bounty that the BB, who was also short, could win. Take out one or two of these variables out of the equation and the BTN probably does not flat their whole range. Multiway pots are very profitable in PKOs when you cover multiple players, even if you are covered yourself. The common response in online games is to see a lot of isolation raises from the covering players, trying to win a single bounty without any resistance. The big takeaway here is perhaps that passive

Hand Range 3: A Typical Mixed Raising/Limping Range The Villain would be much better-off playing a simpler strategy where they only enter the pot by raising with all hands they want to play, making them more difficult to read. This is a solid strategy that will work well from early position (Hand Range 4).

not you have your opponent beat, compare the hands in order of highest card to lowest card. Here is an example: Your hand: 8-5-3-2-A. Your opponent: 7-6-5-4-3. Your 8 is worse than his 7, so your opponent wins this hand. It’s also common for both players to share the board cards. For instance, with 8-5-4 on the board, one player is likely to edge out another by holding A-2 against A-3. 166 Hand Reading All of these different possibilities can be quite confusing for new players and even experienced ones. It is not uncommon for even a winning high-limit player to misread his own hand in Omaha eight-or-better. If you are new to the game and unsure of what you’re holding at the end of the hand, your best bet is to turn your hand over at the river and ask the dealer for assistance in reading it. With a bit of practice, though, reading your hand will become second nature. Hand Reading Examples The following are examples of some common situations that arise in Omaha eight-or-better—and some that are a little tricky. If you have trouble following some of them, try dealing out some sample hands and practice identifying each player’s best high and low hands. Once you have sharpened your hand reading skills, you will be ready to move on to strategy. Example One Your hand: A-3-K-K Opponent: 2-3-5-9 Board: 6-7-8-J-Q This is a split pot, as your 8-7-6-3-A low edges out your opponent’s 8-7-6-3- 2, and his high hand, a 9-high straight, beats your pair of kings. Example Two Your hand: A-6-K-K Opponent: A-4-8-8 Board: 2-3-4-5-J With a wheel (5-4-3-2-A) for both high and low, your opponent scoops. You cannot make the nut low, because you must play both the ace and 6 in your hand, leaving you with only a 6-4-3-2-A for low. These cards don’t stretch to make a straight, either, so you’re stuck with just a pair of kings for high. This may seem confusing, particularly if hold’em has been your primary game. If this were hold’em, you could play the ace to make a wheel, and the 6 to make a 6-high straight. But in Omaha eight-or-better, you must always play exactly two cards from your hand and exactly three from the board. 167 Example Three Your hand: A-3-5-6 Opponent: 3-4-J-J Board: A-2-3-4-5 You wind up with three quarters of this pot. The low side is split, as your opponent plays his 3-4 with the A-2-5 on the board, and you can play any combination of A-3, A-5, or 3-5 to make the nuts, the best hand. However, you can use your 6 and either your 3 or 5 to make a 6-high straight, which wins the high half of the pot. Example Four Your hand: A-A-4-7 Opponent: 2-5-5-7 Board: 2-4-6-7-8 Another split pot. Your opponent wins the high with an 8-high straight, beating your two-pair hand of sevens and fours. However, your 7-6-4-2-A low is good enough to beat his 7-6-5-4-2. The low hand is somewhat tricky to read, as both players have low

that five six suited from the button somebody calls you from the big blind the board comes king2 they check to you A lot of people are just gonna check call you there a lot of the time in the hopes that you'll check the turn and they can just fire a river and pick it up a lot similarly they'll do the same thing if you raise from the small blind they're in the big blind they're in position they want to see if you can check that turn and then they can just pick up the pop right there on those boards where it's super hit or miss and a lot of people do just want to call uh to see what you do on the turn go ahead and fire a second bet it's going to work a lot for you all right guys that's it for today I hope you enjoyed this one I'll see you for the next one of these take care good luck to you if you're playing today

not actually the chip leader, but once the biggest stack has folded, they can play as though they were. They don’t get to open the 74% of hands the big stack did when they could use the smaller, scalpel-style raise. Instead, they open 55% of hands, mostly as a shove. The problem with the small raise is that it encourages the blinds to shove , now that their stacks are short enough for that to offer a reasonable risk:reward ratio. Even as the covering stack, BTN mostly wants to avoid this outcome. Very few hands – only the biggest pocket pairs and suited Aces – are strong enough to raise small hoping to induce these shoves. Even AKo prefers to simply shove and maximize fold equity. Even as the covering stack, you mostly want to avoid big confrontations. The BTN shoves some relatively weak hands – 85 s, J3 s, etc. – despite the blinds being rather short. The SB, as the shortest remaining stack, faces less ICM pressure than other players, but even they should mostly fold. GTO Wizard has them calling just 21%, folding hands as strong as 44 , K9 s, and JT s despite having just 6.5bb after posting. This is ICM chicken in full effect. By moving all-in themselves, the BTN denies this otherwise lucrative option to the blinds, forcing them to either fold more often or take a huge risk that will be bad for both players. Exploitative ICM Adjustments ICM simulations rely heavily on your opponents’ responses, even more than standard solver solutions. ChipEV simulations are zero-sum, so any EV your opponent loses is a gain for you. ICM doesn’t work like that, though. Your opponents’ mistakes can also cost you money , blowing up both of you to the benefit of the rest of the table. ICM simulations rely heavily on your opponents’ responses. That can be frustrating when it happens. It helps to remember that, more commonly, you benefit from these mistakes when you are one of the players not involved in the pot and two of your opponents take unnecessary risks against one another. But if you suspect your opponents do not understand ICM as well as you, there are some adjustments you can make. As we’ve seen here, ICM can incentivize some big folds. Expect less ICM-aware opponents to be guided by the intuition they’ve trained in spots where survival was not as important. Many will not fold 44 or JT s in the SB to the BTN shove in the above example. Against them, you will not be able to shove as wide and will need to open tighter. Similarly, if you suspect the BB’s response to a BTN raise in the deep-stacked Deep stack A large number of big blinds relative to the average stack or stakes being played, usually referring to a player who is more than 100 big blinds deep. See SPR. scenario would more closely resemble that of the ChipEV model, then your BTN opening range should look more like the one in the ChipEV model

Using multiple bet-sizes is dangerous and it’s more dangerous in the early betting rounds. Splitting your range into different bet-sizes gives away information that your opponents could leverage against you when they have the option to raise or bet. This effect gets magnified when betting happens across multiple streets. The way ranges interact with the board and cards to come shift equities, as is the case of real poker. When the board runout can change the hand’s value and there are possible blocker effects by the board or Villain’s hands blocking value hands or bluffs, fewer bet-sizes should be used. For this reason we don’t have to worry about optimal play containing infinite bet-sizes because there is always going to be a tradeoff between the possible EV gained by using the perfect bet-size with a specific portion of your range and how much you lose by giving your opponents additional information about your holdings. Even if GTO solvers can manage to split and balance out multiple bet-sizes the EV gained by doing so is not, in most cases, substantial enough to warrant the increased difficulty for a human player to implement them. I tested many different bet-sizes on thousands of post-flop GTO simulations across all 1,755 flops and found that most flops will have one or two dominant bet-sizes. If the bet-sizes are close to each other, for example 25% pot or 33% pot, they will have virtually identical EVs, making the solver indifferent between them. If the solver splits a player’s range evenly between two similar bet-sizes, the game tree can be simplified by removing the lower frequency bet-size and keeping only the higher frequency bet-size with no EV loss because most of the time the EV difference is within the Nash distance. The same thing can be done if one bet-size is very dominant and the solver chooses several other bet-sizes infrequently. The low frequency bet- sizes can be removed from the game tree and the new strategy that only uses the higher frequency bet-size will preserve the EV. Finally, if the solver splits its range between two bet- sizes that are very far apart, both bet-sizes can be replaced by another bet-size that is in the middle. Simplifying a strategy by removing the smaller bet-sizes and leaving only large ones typically lowers the player’s overall betting frequency as many hands that are profitable bets with the smaller bet-size might no longer be profitable bets with the larger bet-size. Conversely, removing the large bet-sizes from the simulation leaves only small ones, which generally boosts the player’s betting frequency. Both theory and practice agree with the premise that splitting your range into multiple bet-sizes does not add substantial EV to your strategy against a GTO opponent who can react properly. However, changing your bet-size exploitatively with different parts of your range against a player you think will be prone to making mistakes can be extremely

THE ADVANTAGE TO BEING SHORT STACKED 134 annoying) short stack. That means both players are playing incorrectly against you, while you play almost perfectly against them. The second reason, that your opponents keep betting after you are all-in, also helps you significantly. Tournament players know this concept well: When a short-stacked player goes all-in, they often have a “gentleman’s agreement” to check the hand down, even if they would usually have bet without the all-in player. They do this to avoid giving the short-stack player a benefit at both of their expenses. In cash games, you won’t see this behavior very often; your opponents will continue to bet against one another after you are all-in. The incentive to check a hand down is stronger in a tournament than in a cash game (because the prize structure rewards survival, not chip accumulation). But in cash games players often bet and build side pots, forcing some players to fold. Every time a player folds without you having to bet any further, you have an advantage. You have reduced your chances of being outdrawn (or increased your chances of outdrawing, whatever the case may be) at no cost whatsoever. It’s literally like free money. But you can’t get this free money without being all-in with a short stack. Why Play Deep Then? Short stacks have structural advantages that deep stacks don’t have. If that’s the case, why would anyone play deep? Why not simply play short and let your natural advantage grind away at your opponents? Actually, many players would be better offif they did play short rather than deep. They would simplify their decision-making, make fewer errors, and harness the advantage of being short stacked. Many of these players don’t play short either because they believe the myths about the perils of being short-stacked or because they don’t find short stack poker very engaging. When you play short-stacked, mostly only preflop decisions matter. “Should I play my pocket eights against that raiser or not?” There’s no big river bluffing, there’s no setting players up for future falls, there are no big wins or losses. Playing short-stacked also requires you to play more tightly preflop than deep stack play does. The larger a percentage of your stack you bet preflop, the more your hand strength matters. If you play short, you have to wait for good hands. If you play deep, you can play loosely and still be a winner. Bad and mediocre players play deep stacked when they’d probably do better with a short stack because they find short stack poker boring. Good players play deep stacked because the bad players do. A good player can make far more money playing against deep stacked bad players than they can playing short stacked, despite the intrinsic advantage of being short stacked. Bad players lose a lot more money playing deep stacked than they would if they played a short stack. They lose that money primarily to deep stacked good players. Good players have to buy in big to get a shot at that extra profit.

the big blind is a good amount, so put in about $50. Action: You actually raise to $90, and Players E and F fold. Player G, the big stack, calls. The button and the blinds fold. Player A, the initial caller, puts in another $80 to call. The pot is now $285. You bet too much, but got two callers anyway. Not really that unusual a result for online poker, where much of the betting is pretty random compared to live play. Player A, for instance, limped in first position for $10, then called a big raise. If his hand was strong enough to call on the end, it was certainly strong enough to open the pot aggressively in the first place. Flop: J♣7♦2♥ Action: Player A checks. What's your move? Answer: A standard continuation bet of about half the pot is right here. You still have two overcards to the board plus two backdoor hands, and there's no guarantee that the jack paired anyone. Although your bet is more of a bluff than a semi-bluff (you only have ace high right now), betting half the pot gets you 2-to-l odds on your bluff, which is pretty good given that one player has already checked. Action: You in fact check, Player G bets $20, and Player A calls. Pot now $325. What's your play? Answer: The pot odds are now 16-to-l, and you have six outs twice, so it's a monster call. Once you forgo the initial continuation bet, there's no need to do more than call. You're basically getting a free card here, which, since you don't have anything yet, is a fine result for you. Action: You actually raise $50, and both players call. The pot is now $475. The hand takes another bizarre twist. Check-raising usually indicates a strong hand, but here, you've check-raised so little that the pot odds compel both opponents to call almost regardless of the hands. With a pretty random sequence of bets, you've managed to build a big pot while learning almost nothing about the quality of the opposing hands. In playing poker, your real goal is to do just the opposite of what's been done here. You want to bet enough to find out crucial information. Once you're pretty sure you know what they have, you're then entitled to make the big move. Fourth Street: 4♦ Action: Player A checks. What do you do? Answer: You should just check here. You still have nothing although you have picked up a draw to the nuts, and it will be hard to chase anybody out without putting all your checks in jeopardy. Let's hope to get a free card. Action: You check and Player G checks. Fifth Street: K♣ Action: Player A checks. What now? Answer: Lightning strikes, and with no straights or flushes on board, you rate to have the best hand. Since no one has been betting, an all-in or other big bet is probably just going to chase people away. It's time to try to extract a little extra money with a

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

have tight call versus loose calls so you can see on the left we have a tight call we have equity realization driven so open-end straight draws flush draws trying to realize some equity uh value driven you can see large percentage 32 percent uh value in a tight calls range and then bluff catch driven 26 and then float driven call much smaller so tight calls have less float driven uh you know float driven characteristics bluff catch driven calls um attacking our loose betting our loose initiative value driven calls and equity realization calls and then a loose call here obviously going to be floating way more often right so 40 percent float driven they're calling because they think they can bluff us on a future street the value quadrate goes down the bluff catching quadrant remains about the same and then the equity realization goes down as well so tight call versus loose call construction here in some pi charts these are just generalized pie charts to give you a visualization of the range composition of a tite called the range composition of a loose call tight raised loose rays again driven by initiative you can see here that it's the same as the tight bets and the loose bets they are both initiative um so tight raise more value driven to bluff driven loose rays more bluff driven than value driven pretty intuitive stuff and now i want to talk about some variables that determine your language right these variables are not in any specific order or hierarchy as they are constructed in this slide deck so the first variable is going to be pre-flop formation so how tight is the pre-flop formation right like typically the looser the pre-flop formation the more hand combinations villain has post flop villain archetypes so villains the different type of villains that you face will take different actions i think this is pretty clear right like a recreational player is going to play different than a reg and a passive recreational player is going to play different than a volatile recreational player bet sizes are a very important variable that determine the language you use to describe the action villain is taking board texture also a very important variable villain specific data points this is historical information that you have if you're profiling your opponents this will be hands you've witnessed villain play in a specific way the reason i use the word formation is this is basically an over you know it's it's the eagle-eyed view of the situation so under the gun open is going to be typically a tight formation right it when you don't have a lot of data points to base what villains range is going to be this is like a shortcut so some villains are going to you know they're going to have a looser formation than when they open under the gun than other villains this is just a generalization of when i open under the gun and utg plus one or middle

ADJUSTING TO LOOSE GAMES AND PLAYERS 126 Note that we don’t say “never bluff.” If you never bluff, you’ll be easy to read (even by loose players), and you’ll miss out on some profitable opportunities. Loose players call too often, but they don’t call with everything. You can keep making many of your “routine” bluffs; just make them somewhat less frequently and generally avoid big or daring bluffs. Final Thoughts Much of the cautious advice in this book is intended for play against tough players. If we recommend that you check a good hand or play passively against a calling opponent, usually we’re advocating a defensive play to prevent a tough player from getting the best of you. Loose players, both passive and aggressive ones, are entirely different ani- mals. They are your ideal opponents, the ones you make your money from, and you should attack them. Don’t play overly defensively against them. Isolate them with raises before the flop. Play lots of hands (in position) against them. Try to get them all-in before the flop if you think you have the better hand. If they will call you down with weak hands, value bet ferociously. Don’t sit around waiting to flop a set to try to get their money; bet weaker hands for value. But be careful. Some wolves put their “loose player” sheep’s clothing on when they play. Make sure your opponent isn’t playing loosely only for small bets. Wait until you see them make a big mistake or two before you adjust fully to take advantage of them. Finally, if you have a really loose and bad player at your table, they should usually become your top priority. Move to the seat on their left (unless they are habitual preflop raisers). Buy enough chips to have them covered. Play many pots against them. Isolate them. It’s often only a matter of time before loose players go broke. Maximize the chance that they go broke to you.

Situation 1 - As BU vs BB: We're in position and our backdoor flush draw, backdoor gutshot and overcard should make a c-bet just about okay. Situation 2 - As SB vs BB: We're going to get called a good deal lighter due to being out of position having to check/fold turn cards that we elect not to bluff. This spot is probably not +EV to c-bet against this particular Villain.

Equity buckets A method of bucketing the equity of each holding in a range vs the opponent's range. For example, bucketing equity into 0-25%, 26-50%, 51-75%, 76-100%, will tell you how much of your range falls into each of these buckets. This analysis method is used to observe the polarity, nut, and range advantages and understand how those range asymmetries influence GTO strategies in poker.

raises and semi-bluffs as a tactic to confuse the other players as to the real strength of their hand. When you do get a good hand you want to let them drive the betting until the Turn or River where you can play back at them. Another adjustment to make is not to be driven off your mediocre hands as often. Many times the LAG is playing second pair as strongly as TPTK. A tricky LAG will continually be adjusting their game so do not get comfortable playing any one style against them. Loose passive opponents (LPP) are the best opponents to have at your table. They never raise and always call your bets or give free cards. If they do bet then they probably have the nuts or the near nuts. They will not bet a draw but they will not fold one either. Therefore, the frustrating thing about LPP’s is that they will draw out on you more often because you cannot push them out of the pot regardless of the odds you are laying. Since they are loose, they will play any two cards and you may never see it coming. This is the type of player that calls a big pre-flop raise from someone holding pocket Aces with 7 2 suited. If it does hit to beat you, they think they made a great play as they rake the money into their bankroll. This player relies on luck and most likely you will have your money back and all of theirs if you play a solid game. However, the good news is you will be able to draw out on them more often and they will always call your bet on the River. The advantage you have against LPP’s is that you will bet and they will call versus them betting and you folding. So when you do make your hand you it should pay off 3 times the amount you put into the pot when your opponent drew out on you. You do this because you know how to bet a hand to get more money into the pot and get a call on the River. Take these two scenarios: The LPP has position on you. You raises pre-flop and the LPP called. The flop hit your hand but it gave the LPP a draw. You make him pay to draw out on you. He hits one out of three times *(this approximates heads up situations considering the percentage of Flush and Straight draws hitting). Now, the LPP has a draw and you have position on him. You hit your hand well, say a set and the LPP checks every street, but you bet, so he calls (he is a passive calling station). Alternatively, either your hand improved or you find out he could not have improved. You will win two out of three times (* see above) with this method. In big bet poker, this is even more costly for the LPP because you can vary the bet sizes to hide the real strength of your

not bust out before the bubble, make the money. You will play tight and wait for the smaller stacks to bust out. Get some money for the next tournament buy in and a fresh start to hit the final table or even win it all. Some Thoughts about Online Tournaments Many tournament poker books discuss strategies that are best used for brick and mortar tournaments. Brick and Mortar tournaments have a much slower structure than online tournaments. Most online tournaments are essentially three hours and the larger ones, with six hundred or more players, may be five hours or more. These structures would be considered satellite tournaments in a Brick and Mortar location. The common thoughts on satellite tournaments are to be more aggressive due to the structure. Some sites have the blinds increase anywhere from eight minutes to fifteen minutes. After the first four to eight levels an ante may start to eat away at your chips creating more stealing and more of a need to play looser but more opportunities because of the increased pot size and the odds you would be getting for speculative/drawing hands. The structures create the atmosphere. Be aware of the structures and the timing of every tournament. Some advice is to play in a small priced buy in tourney and play very tight, try to make it as far as possible just to get a feel for that particular online sites structure. Another thought is to just be an observer for the whole tournament and take notes as to when the more experienced players change gears or when the whole tournament changes gears. How many players are usually remaining during different blind/ante levels, what are the average chip stacks, leading chip stacks and what level does the bubble usually fall upon. I always tell new players to understand the pace of the tournament. What I mean by pace is when you need to shift gears, what amount of chips are needed at different stages of the tournament to have a chance at the final table. I have seen players obtain the chip lead in the late stages of a tournament. Then, their chip count is knocked down to less than the buy in chip amount. Then jump back up into the top five players again. In a no limit tournament, you are never out of achieving final table status. The cards and your skill level will do that for you. You must feel the flow of the game like the water flows over the ground. You will understand the table dynamics and player types and you will instinctively know what to do with your cards. It sounds so obscure but this is the point of poker that you cannot teach. You can only teach that you need to stay within yourself and not let the outcome of the cards bother you. The cards will happen, as long as you got your money into the pot when you had the best advantage, when you thought out why you were risking your money and formulated a plan,

best to play shorter sessions or just play on the days of the week when i have no other work and there's nothing wrong with being a weekend warrior if you have you know a career going at the same time as you're playing poker your poker is really supplementing your income rather than being your primary source okay so now that we've looked at the inputs and discussed how you can optimize each of them let's look at some basic math to work the outputs so you to have you making a hundred thousand dollars per year playing online cash games let's assume that you're playing 200 no limit and maybe you have to work to weigh your get up to this but you can get it that you can get there let's assume you have a win rate of five big blinds per hundred or ten dollars every hundred hands or ten cents per hand let's assume you can comfortably play eight tables for approximately one thousand hands per hour and let's assume that you play four hours a day five days a week for a total of 20 hours per week so expected value winnings per week 10 cents per hand times 1 000 hands per hour times 20 hours per week 20 000 times 10 cents 2 000 per week if you play 50 weeks of the year we now add 50 into the equation for our total hands for the year and that's taking two weeks off of playing leads to 100 000 per year and this doesn't include deposit reload bonuses rake back vip rewards free rolls and promotions or any other loyalty bonuses that you're going to get from the poker site and if you're putting in this kind of volume you know anywhere from 40 to 100 000 hands per month you're certainly going to be getting rewards from the poker sites that you're playing on cool so just a few common questions to address before we wrap things up uh first one is what if i'm not playing one two no limit your winnings may be lower but your win rate may also be higher so you know 10 big blind per 100 win rate at 100 nl is the same as a five big blind win rate at 200 nl conversely if you're playing bigger a two big blind win rate at 500 nl is the same as a five big blind win rate at 200 nl so the ability to play at higher limits is very powerful in terms of your ability to increase your dollars per hand but it's important to be a winning player in the games when you move up to them and that's where working on your game and watching the material on the poker coaching youtube channel and at pokercoaching.com is going to make a huge difference because you don't just want to play in the bigger games you want to have a positive expected value in the bigger games so that you're actually making more

BET-SIZING 33 3.5-to-1 pot odds ($140-to-$40), so bet at least that much. (That $40 bet is the theoretical answer. In practice, you can expect him to call much more than $40 since he thinks he can often win a bet on the river if he hits.) When Your Opponent Could Have One of Several Draws In the last example, we knew exactly what our opponent’s draw was. In practice, you rarely will. You may know that he’s likely to be drawing, but you won’t know whether he has a straight draw, a flush draw, bottom pair, etc. Say you again have A♡A♠on the turn in a $100 pot with $400 behind. But now the board is J♢T♢6♣9♣. You are fairly sure your opponent has a draw, but you don’t know whether it’s a diamond draw or a straight draw. It could even be a backdoor club draw with a hand like A♣T♣. Whatever draw he has, he’s likely to have about eight or nine outs (though big combination straight, flush, and pair draws are also possible). So he’s still likely to be approximately 4-to-1 against to make his hand. Unfortunately, your opponent won’t make it easy on you and tell you which draw he has. If any of the “obvious” draws comes in, that is any diamond, king, queen, eight, or seven, he may bluffeven if the card didn’t complete his hand. Now you can’t just fold on the river if a diamond comes and your opponent bets. Depending on exactly how much he bets and how often he bluffs, you may still fold, or you may call. But either way, you lose money: if you call, sometimes you’ll be paying him off, and if you fold, sometimes you’ll be getting bluffed out. Since your opponent can now sometimes make money from you on the river, his implied odds are significantly better than the pot odds. A bet offering slightly worse than his pot odds doesn’t cut it anymore. You have to bet a larger amount to prevent him from calling profitably. If your opponent could hold one of several draws, bet a larger amount than you would if you knew which draw he had. Don’t Bet Too Much Once you observe the basic rule and bet more than your opponent can call profitably, you should now root for him to call. That’s because calling would be a mistake (if your opponent knew what you had), and you want your opponents to make mistakes even if they sometimes draw out and it costs you the pot. While moving all-in anytime you know you have the best hand might prevent your opponent from calling profitably, it’s still a dumb thing to do. Huge bets will blow your opponents out of the hand and force them to play correctly. According to the Fundamental Theorem of Poker, you should avoid plays that

decision-making problem that every hand of poker presents or do Iwant to opt out of this particular one? The crux of answering that question is in determining whether you feel like your upcoming decisions will be easy or hard. If you think they’ll behard, then fold! If you think they’ll be easy, then play! But here’s the thing. The main factor in determining the relative difficulty of playing any hand is the position at the table from which you must play. You already know this. You already know to weigh whether you want to play certain hands in certain positions. I mean, people talk about position in hold ’em all the time. When you look at charts of starting hands—which, of course, you won’t find here—you’ll see that they vary as a function of your table position. Mostly, this variation is oriented around the percentage of times a better hand is behind you. The charts instruct you not to openwith hand X in first position, due to the 16 or 18 unknown cards behind you that stand to be strong. Actually, that’s correct. The earlier you open apot, the greater the chance that someone behind you has a better hand than yours. But that’s not really the issue. The problem with opening early isn’t that others sometimes have better hands, but that they’ll always have better position. When you’re under thegun in a poker game, you’ll be playing first for the rest of the hand, betting into the big unknown not just now, when you have no idea what anyone else is thinking or doing, but again on the flop, turn, and river. Considering that your main goal is to reduce uncertainty, does it sound like actingfirst helps you achieve that goal? Not likely. Rather, it’s the most uncertain spot you can be in. Throughout the hand, you’ll be acting with the least amount of information of anyone at that table. That’s a huge decision-making disadvantage. How huge? Let’s find out. Imagine that you’re buying a house and it’s up to you to name the first price. The seller is willing to sell for $500,000, but you don’t know that. If youdon’t do your research well and you offer him a million, that’s a pretty big disaster. You paid double what you had to pay. Or consider it from the other end. He’s willing to sell for a half-million and you’d buy at that price, but you get tricky and offer only a hundred grand. You’re so far apart that he won’t even counter and you’ll lose out on your dream home. If only you could have heard his offer before you had to act, but that’s what happenswhen you have to name the first price. Unless you know exactly what you’re doing, unless you’ve done extensive research on the market beforeoffering your price, it’s a disaster in the making. Interestingly enough, children really get the idea that going first in any negotiation is bad. Have you ever seen two eight-year-old girls get into thefollowing argument? Audrey asks Stephanie if she likes

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

CONTENTS vi Calling Preflop All-in Raises 137 Some Qualifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Final Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 The Sklansky-Chubukov Rankings 143 Final Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 When to (and When Not to) Use the Sklansky-Chubukov Rank- ings 149 Adjusting for an Ante . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 The Best Hands for Moving In . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 An Exception to Moving In . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Moving In With “Too Many” Chips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Moving In May Not Be Best with Hands that Play Well . . . . . . . . 151 Some Preflop Heads-Up All-In Matchups 153 Final Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 Manipulating Your Opponents 155 Get Pigeonholed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Make Obvious Errors to Induce Costly Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156 Final Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 Tells 159 It’s OK to Pretend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Think . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Throw OffFake Tells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 Be Aware . . . . . . . . . . . .

This informational void is an incredibly common phenomenon in online poker, especially in Zoom formats. In this hand, Hero is in the BB and faces an open from an unknown who he assumes to be a Reg. That might sound like a contradiction. If we only have 5 hands on Villain, how can we assume he's a Reg and not a Fish? A few facts make it very likely that Villain is some form of Reg and that Hero will do best by playing vs. the average Reg in his player pool. Villain's stack is full (if not, it would have been stated). While many Fish will not automatically top up their stacks, a Reg will the vast majority of the time. Of course this could just be one of the full-stacked Fish, but it does increase the chances of Villain being a Reg somewhat.

he has a strong hand. Another will light a cigarette and pretend not to know when his turn comes to bet; then after glancing around the table, he bets. He has them. Another obvious case is the man who can't control his hands when going for a big pot. He probably made his hand as early as the fifth card and starts to shake before the end. Then there is the conversational player. "Well, now," he says, "you made two aces on your fourth card. Maybe you made three of them. Did you? Well, just for that I'm going to make you a little bet." Raise him. He's already lost his string. Another drums on the table with his fingers after a card hits him or after the draw in draw poker. Still another, who finds deception impossible, will beam at you when his hand is improved, and his face lights up like Broadway at night. Many players have trouble controlling their voices when they check, call or bet. A player who has a sensitive ear can detect this slight inflection of voice and read what it means. Still another, when his hand is improved, chokes up and can scarcely talk. 'If we set a specific limit,' I went on, 'we can determine the cost of the first three cards, two down and one up. Dollar limit is one of the most popular limits in which the dealer edges twenty-five cents. It follows that in seven-handed the player deals every seventh hand and for each round the cost to him will be twenty-five cents. In addition to edging every seventh hand, each player on the average will hold the high card (five- or seven-card stud) or the low card (sevencard low stud) which forces him to bet whether he wants to or not. One complete round of deals will therefore cost him fifty cents on the average if he bets twenty-five cents when he is forced to. He will receive seven hands of three cards each for fifty cents or an average of seven cents each. If it costs only seven cents to look at three cards it follows that the player may look at several hands before the cost becomes prohibitive. (Where the limit is larger or smaller these figures may be adjusted accordingly.) 'In this particular game, the player will get a hand which at least equals my minimum requirements to stay on, one time in seven. It will therefore cost the player forty-nine cents on the average to stay and take more cards. In most of the other poker games the staying requirements are such that you will stay in twice the number of pots, so the cost will be much less. 'To repeat,' I said, 'you will on the average play one hand in seven and win forty per cent of the hands played. The reason your winning average is so high is because you stay on strong hands only. 'Of course there will be a poor run of cards and a good run of cards but in

POST-FLOP PLAY The post-flop strategies and principles presented in this chapter are based on aggregated data from thousands of GTO simulations, analyzed with custom made software. The ranges and betting structure are representative of ante games with no rake reflecting a multi-table tournament with stack depths 20bb to 40bb but the overall results and heuristics developed from them are applicable to most NLH post-flop situations and can be extended to different stack depths and other game variants. All the charts and metrics used in this chapter are generated from GTO solutions that are representative of some of the most important post-flop situations, providing good approximations that can help us better understand post-flop play. However, they are not a definite answer and should not be taken as the final word when it comes to poker play in general. If you want to know more about this please visit www.gtopoker.io. Post-flop can be divided into three streets; flop, turn and river. While entire books could be written for each individual street even then we would not be close to discussing everything there is to be said about post-flop play. I have done my best to organize the data in what seems to me to be a logical way. The emphasis will be on finding patterns, spotting trends and developing heuristics that can be easily recognized and applied in games across all three streets. Theory of Betting Why do we bet in poker? If you ask around, most players do not really know how to answer this question. Some people bet because they feel like it. Others might bet because they really like their hand or because they sense weakness in their opponents and think they can get away with it. Perhaps there are many possible draws on the flop and so they want to bet for protection. While all these reasons may be somewhat valid, they are still far too subjective. Some professionals and people who watch training videos who are a bit more advanced will tell you something like “a bet has to be either for value (to get called by a worse hand) or a bluff (to make a better hand than ours fold).” This definition sure sounds a lot more accurate than the previous ones, but is still incomplete because there are many situations where betting is the correct play even if you will only get called by better hands and will never make a better hand than yours fold. It is important tried to stop thinking about poker by categorizing bets as only bluffs or value-

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

are typically the only straight draws worth pursuing for their own sake. Not all wraps are created equal. Key considerations are the likelihood of making the nut straight and whether your hand will allow you to scoop the pot. If you are in the big blind with 6-7-8-9 and the flop comes 2-4-5, your hand should usually be folded. Although many cards will complete the straight, you can only win half the pot. Also, if the board pairs or a flush card comes, it might kill your hand. To further illustrate the difference between good and bad times to pursue straight draws, let’s look at a couple of examples: Example One Your hand: 10-J-Q-K (red) Board: A-10-6 (two clubs) Although any jack, queen or king will make a straight, this hand is severely flawed. With the flush draw on the board, the danger exists that the card you need to complete your straight will also complete an opponent’s flush. This effectively eliminates three of the nine possible straight cards, leaving only six safe cards to make your hand. Even if one of these six cards comes on the turn, your hand could still be in jeopardy. The flush can always show up on the river, or the board could pair. Furthermore, even if the straight wins, it will be exceedingly difficult to scoop this pot. Any low card will likely cost you half the pot, and even a safe face card that doesn’t pair the board might hurt you. The presence of four unpaired high cards on the board makes it easier for an opponent to tie your hand. So, that means the only truly safe card is an offsuit 9. Example Two Your hand: 10-J-Q-K (red) Board: 3-9-10 (offsuit) 193 Here is a situation where you can apply the gas pedal. This time, thirteen cards will make the nut straight, essentially creating an even money proposition with two cards to come. If you complete the straight with a jack, queen, or king on the turn or river, then no low hand will be possible. The absence of a flush draw on the flop also adds significant value to your hand, as all of your outs are clean. Bear in mind also that any jack, queen, or king not only makes the nut straight, it also creates the possibility of making a full house on the river. This can come in handy against a player holding a hand like A-3-3-4, as some of his supposed outs will make him the second-best hand. Should you make a full house on the end, it is likely that you will win extra bets from this player, who is probably reading you for a straight. Slow-Playing Slow-playing a huge hand is rarely an optimal strategy in Omaha eight-orbetter for two reasons: (1) Players will tend to call you down anyway, hoping to make whatever hand they are drawing at. It is a good idea to let them pay to draw dead, or close to it, if they’re willing. (2) Few hands are immune to all the

TELLS 160 Throw OffFake Tells This ploy falls under the umbrella of manipulating your opponents. Most competent players will be familiar with the basic poker tells: “Weak means strong,” “Bluffers stay stiffand quiet,” “Nervous behavior often means a strong hand,” and more.47 If you choose your spots wisely, you can make some extra money in no limit by faking one of these well-known tells to induce a mistake. In limit poker, faking tells doesn’t have much value. That’s because, as we said before, no single play will make or break you. To make real money faking tells you’d have to fake them repeatedly. Eventually, your opponents would notice that you were a habitual faker, and they might even use that information against you. In no limit, however, one or two really big decisions will often dominate a session. If you fake a tell occasionally during big decisions only, your opponents may never pick up that you’re doing it, and you may sometimes be able to swing the situation to your favor. For instance, suppose you suspect that your opponent is familiar with the canonical tell “strong means weak.” (This means that if you behave in a con- fident or aggressive way, you are likely compensating for a weak holding.) You have the nuts and want your opponent to call a big bet. If you behave in a strong way (without overdoing it) you might improve your chances to get called. Be Aware Most players (probably including you) give offsome accurate tells. Some people start talking (or say certain things) in specific situations. Many players show a particular lack of interest in the hand sometimes when they plan to fold. You probably do something that could give your opponents information about your hand that they shouldn’t have. It’s impossible to be human and to stamp out every possible behavior or mannerism that could betray information about your hand. It’s not particularly fun to try either. So don’t. Instead, simply be aware of your behaviors and try to figure out what your tells might be. Then reverse them sometimes. If you start talking every time you want a call, then talk sometimes when you want a fold as well. If you take the chip offyour cards when you plan to fold, then do it occasionally when you plan to raise. As long as you reverse your tells sometimes, the information your opponents might get from them will be so tainted that it’s likely to be worthless. 47The most popular repository of basic poker tells is Caro ’s Book of Poker Tells by Mike Caro.

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

would fold every time I bet, and once again you would win 24 times (when I don't bet) and lose 18 times (when I do) for a net profit of $600 since you win or lose $100 in each of these hands. So with either of these variations of the proposition, you definitely have the best of it. However, if I only bluff some of the time, the situation is much different. Suppose I were to bluff only when I caught the king of spades. In other words, I would bet whenever I caught any of my 18 good cards and also when I caught the king of spades. If I bluffed this infrequently, your proper play would still be to fold when I bet because the odds against my bluffing are 18-to-l. But notice how this improves my position. Bluffing when I catch the king of spades still doesn't give me a profit, but it allows me to win 19 times instead of 18 and lose only 23 times instead of 24. That single bluff once out of 19 times has begun to close the gap between your status as a favorite and mine as an underdog. Notice too that you have no way of knowing when I am bluffing since I am randomizing my bluffs by using a card, an object as inanimate as the coin in the odds-evens game, to make my bluffing decision for me. If bluffing with one card makes me less of an underdog than never bluffing at all, suppose I choose two — say, the king of spades and the jack of spades. Once again your correct play is to fold when I bet. But now you win only 22 times when I don't bet, and I win 20 times when I do. Assuming you have no way of knowing when I'm bluffing and when I'm not, my using just two key cards to bluff, in addition to my 18 good cards, has reduced you from 24-to-18 favorite to a 22-to-20 favorite — that is, from a 4-to-3 favorite to an 1 l-to-10 favorite. This bluffing seems to have possibilities. Suppose instead of two cards, I picked five key cards — the king of spades and all four jacks. That means I would be betting 23 times — 18 times with the best hand and five times on a bluff. Now all of a sudden you are in a bad situation with your pat 9,8 because you have to Game Theory and Bluffing 183 guess whether I'm bluffing when I bet. I could even tell you precisely the strategy I am using, but you would still have to lose your money. What would happen? You know there are 18 cards that will make me my hand and five other cards I will bluff with. Thus, the odds are 18-to-5 or 3.6-to-1 against my bluffing. With the $200 in antes and my $100 bet, the pot is $300. So you are getting 3-to-1 odds from the pot. You cannot profitably call a 3.6-to-1 shot when you

you know we are going to fold the best hand every once in a while the bun could also just have like a random bluff like eight seven of clubs and decide to keep bluffing on the ace turn but despite all of that i think we probably just want to make a snug fold at this point unless you know your opponent is overly loose and overly aggressive so we do fold in this scenario and turns out the opponent did just decide to bluff the flop with the ace high but got there on the turn and we end up you know sidestepping a spot where we lose it's important to realize that on this queen jack 3 flop we're actually in okay shape when we check the flop with the jack 10 but when that ace comes that's just very very bad for my hand to the point that we're done with it all right so that's how we play on uncoordinated flops what about coordinated flops so now let's say that we raise pre-flop the opponent calls from out of position they check the flop we bet in this situation on a coordinated flop remember we are going to be doing more checking mainly with our marginal made hands and our junk so when we do bet the flop we probably have one of our best-made hands and or a draw right and the caller's range is going to again strengthen because they fold out the bottom portion of their range this is going to make ranges closer in terms of range advantage but the flop bettors often going to keep betting on the turn in these scenarios because they have either a really good made hand or a draw whereas the opponent has mostly marginal made hands so let's take a look at an example of this here we raise jack ten of spades big blind calls flop comes nine seven six two clubs so now when the opponent checks we want to ask which hands do we want to be betting on this coordinated board and this board should connect very very well with the big blind right big blind has a lot of medium cards so if the player in the hijack the initial razer is betting here it needs to be with the best made hands mostly over pairs three of a kind two pair and some draws and the obvious draws here are flush draws hands with an eight but really we don't have too many hands with an eight besides like ace eight and maybe king eight both both suited um we could bet with also some hands with a ten that have over cards that would be mainly king 10 queen 10 jack 10 and our hand's particularly nice because if we get a spade on the turn we can pretty confidently continue betting and if we get a club on the turn to be fair we can also keep bluffing as if we have the clubs so this is a

(the $1 policy) could win. If you sell only one policy, knowledge of mortality rates is useless. Knowing the difference between good and bad bets pays off only when statistics are accumulated, and it is only through the accumulation ofstatistics that you are assured of making money. The strategies for playing poker described in this book are designed to maximize your expectations for winning over the long run, as you accumulate statistics. However, even when bets are correctly made and hands correctly played, the outcome of any given hand or any given playing session is uncertain. Poker is a, deceptive game because good players don't always win and bad players don't always lose. There are statistical fluctuations in the outcomes. Your goal should be to make the right decisions for the right reasons. You should not get upset or elated over outcomes of single hands. Only as time passes and trends become clear, is it possible to evaluate the quality of your decision-making. 8. Psychological Considerations Choose Your Battles How often have you entered into a dispute that afterwards you judged as not worth it? It could be a price dispute at a store, an annoying action of a co-worker, or a trivial argument with a family member. In the end, winning or losing didn't matter. The most you could have hoped to gain would never compensate for the cost in time, effort, or ill-will generated. With experience, you learn to avoid confrontations that in the long run are not worth the cost. We all have our "principles," but savvy people choose their battles. They know when it is worth taking a stand and when it better to let things go. In poker, learning to choose the right battles is crucial to success and it is perhaps the hardest skill to learn. Your first impulse in any confrontation is to act. You come to the poker table to compete for the pot. Watching others vie for the money feels counter to that goal. How is folding hand after hand competing? Inaction also leads to complacency. You stop paying close attention and then miss out on the opportunities that do occur. Poker is a fast-moving game and decisions must be made quickly. For these two reasons-the desire to compete and the need to stay alert-it is difficult to suppress the urge to play in most of the hands. Even if intellectually you know to fold, your emotions constantly urge you to make exceptions. All books on poker correctly state that the number one mistake most beginners make is to play in too many hands. Be patient and wait for the right situation and cards is the standard advice. This advice is sound, but in my opinion, it is poorly expressed because 108 THE INTELLIGENT GUIDE TO TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER patience is the wrong idea. Patience is what you need waiting in line at the bank, waiting for the light to turn green, waiting for an unproductive meeting to end. In all these cases, you know when your goalbanking, driving, returning to useful work-will

14. Stack Depth V arying stack depth presents a whole new problem by distorting the thought processes we've built into our arsenal for playing 100BBs deep. It's not that everything changes, but there are some new implications to playing at non-standard stack depth that will cost us a lot of EV left unrecognised. We've all had to deal with the table where we're a terrifying 300BB deep with the solid aggressive player to our left (probably leave!) or when we have that 16BB Fish behind us irritatingly shoving over our every open. This is a short chapter in which we'll address how to handle these situations and everything in between. Being forever uncomfortable both shallow and deep is not acceptable for the serious poker player and an approach of just avoiding these stack sizes is totally unsatisfactory. There is simply too much EV that can be pillaged in favourable non-standard stack situations. So let's get adapting.

And the standard deviation S would be: Poker Applications Let’s say Hero has a sample of 100,000 poker hands played in online cash games. If you divide this sample into chunks of 100 hands each, you can calculate Hero’s win rate on each chunk by simply adding the big blinds won and subtracting the big blinds lost by all 100 hands. This process will produce a total of 1,000 different win rates Hero experienced throughout the 100,000 hand sample. The more Hero’s win rate varies in each chunk of 100 hands, the bigger the standard deviation will be. Returning to the variance formula:

When Villain is making mistake with his range that we think we can and should exploit, the need to consider whether we want a raising range for balance reasons goes right out the window. Many of the factors we just looked at become less applicable since they depend on balance being an important consideration. Let's investigate this further. 1. Range Advantage: We are not bound to respecting our opponent's range advantage on this flop because we believe that he will not make use of it and will fold too much to a raise. We are forgoing balance in the name of exploitative play and taking advantage of this expected error in Villain's strategy. 2. Urgency of Value: We are in no rush to get value, but this is not our reason for wanting to raise the flop; fold equity is what we desire. Again we are not balanced here so should give precedence to what the largest part of our range desires and this part is our bluffs. 3. Fish Behind: There are no Fish behind to make us want to call our whole range to keep them in the pot. 4. How Bad is a Capped Calling Range: Finally, being capped is really a non-issue here. Villain is not going to be exerting much pressure being a weak passive Reg so our weak made-hands like 7x, 6x, AJ etc. don't need protection from the top of our range. We can raise our sets and two pair to create some balance with all those bluffs and ensure that we are not so unbalanced that Villain will quickly find the obvious and effective counter adjustment of underfolding to our flop raises or underbluffing with his c-bets in the first place. If we thought that Villain was some brain-dead robot, incapable of making any adjustment even in the face of extreme aggression, we could adopt the radical strategy of raising every hand we didn't want to call the c-bet with. This is unadvisable against humans, who are generally a highly adaptive species. We'll need to choose our bluffs with some selectivity. 5. Representing Good Hands: Hero can represent a few more hands here than in Hand 63. He can have any set as well as 76s. This is still a very small chunk of his overall range on the flop, but again this doesn't matter so much as Hero is adopting an exploitative plan. We have the read that Villain is likely to overfold the flop and so whether or not we can represent lots of value hand isn't so important vs. this player. Overall: As we can see, the factors that normally constrain us to not having a raising range quickly lose their clout when Villain is unbalanced and we are playing in an exploitative manner in order to take advantage of this. Hero definitely wants a raising range due to his exploitative aims here, but against a more solid or unknown opponent, balance would take precedence and Hero should revert to calling his whole non- folding range just like in the hand

Sizing Your Preflop Raises Lots of no limit teachers give a rather peculiar piece of advice. They rec- ommend that you always make the same size raises, no matter what hand you hold. Whether you have K♡K♠or 8♠7♠raise the same amount every time. They may tell you to alter your raise size based on your position. Or to alter it based on the number of limpers. But never to alter it based on what’s in your hand. Their rationale is that you can betray information about the quality of your holding by raising different amounts. So, to keep your opponents guessing, always raise the same amount. This advice strikes us like cutting offyour leg to cure your athlete’s foot. Sure, you don’t want to give away extra information through your raise sizes. And sure, some players do manage to do just that. But, as we saw in the last chapter, you can raise preflop for a variety of reasons, and some of those reasons prefer differently-sized raises. If you artificially limit your options to avoid giving away information, you soften up your entire preflop strategy. Different hands in different situations call for differently-sized raises. Embrace it. Different hands in different situations call for differently-sized raises. If you are worried about giving away information, you need only to mix up your play occasionally. For instance, say you want to raise 6x the blind. Every so often, raise only 3x instead. And vice versa — raise 6x occasionally when you would normally raise 3x. Mathematically, you can calculate an optimal percentage of the time to swap your plays. But, in practice, that isn’t necessary. Just do it often enough so that your opponents know you might be mixing things up, and they have significant doubt about whether you hold a 3x hand or a 6x hand. (Or, rather, so that they should have significant doubt. Some players seem to think they are clairvoyant and are happy to “put you on a hand,” no matter how suspect their evidence might be. Your job is just to make sure their evidence is sufficiently suspect.) We’ll divide this section into two parts: one for deep stack play, and one for short stack play. In deep stack games, the reasons for raising are often quite different than they are in short stack play, and thus, raise sizing works 76

for a 15% payout structure. We can speculate that the “sweet spot” for switching to ICM occurs at roughly three times the bubble. It should be clear by now that ICM has a significant impact on strategy well before the bubble . Holdem Resources Calculator We would like to express our gratitude to Helmuth Melcher, the founder of Holdem Resources Calculator (HRC), for conducting these simulations and providing guidance during this experiment. In our opinion, HRC is the best ICM tool available and is currently the only solver that can instantly calculate ICM for large fields. If you are interested in conducting your own ICM experiments, you can take advantage of a free trial of HRC until January 22nd, 2023. GTO Wizard the #1 App for Poker players Study any spot imaginable Practice by playing vs. GTO Analyze your hands with 1-click START CRUSHING NOW JOIN DISCORD Author Tombos21 Tom is a long time poker theory enthusiast, GTO Wizard coach and YouTuber, and author of the Daily Dose of GTO. Latest article Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first decade of my career. But after my first… Relationships and Poker In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve… Do Multiple Sizes Matter? Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results… The Science of Learning Applied to GTO Wizard The way we were taught to study in schools was flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN preflop raiser in a 100bb cash… When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody… Protect Equity and Prosper When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend… Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative poker thinking. When you’re value betting against… Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots When the BTN open-limps off a short stack, the postflop play against the BB should… I’d Rather Be Drawing Which is the better hand on a K♥8♦5♦ flop: K♠T♣ or 7♥6♥? OK, I’ll admit… The Curious Case of Open-Limping Buttons Before the advent of solvers, open-limping was considered the province of passive, gambley recreational players… Cleaning Out Sticky IP Callers A “sticky” player on your left, one who calls your preflop raises too often and… Defending Against Tiny 3-Bets Tournament poker is about precision. Cash games, where stacks typically run into

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

bets of three times the big blind have won many pots without a contest. Your hand: A♦Q♦ Action to you: Players A, B, C, and D all fold. Question: What's your move? Answer: As a tournament plays out, you want to pay attention to the size of an initial raise that will cause players at your table to fold. It will vary from table to table. At some tables, a minimal raise of double the big blind might chase players out. At other tables, it might take three or four times the big blind before marginal hands will decide to throw their cards away. Practice focusing on the size of the first bet, and notice whether that bet claims the hand or not. After awhile, you'll begin to see patterns emerging. It's just another one of the several things you must train yourself to observe when you're out of a hand. You'll use this knowledge when a hand has been folded around to you, and you're about to act. First decide if you want to discourage action (because you're going to bet but your hand isn't that strong), or encourage action (because your hand is almost surely the best hand remaining). If you want to discourage action, bet the amount that seems to be claiming the pot. If you want to encourage action, bet somewhat less than that. Your A♦Q♦ is a good hand and may well be the best hand remaining at the table. But it's not a strong enough hand that you should be looking for a fight. You want to discourage action in this situation, and since a bet of three times the big blind has been chasing people away, that's what you should bet. Action: You in fact raise to $400, twice the big blind. The small blind folds and the big blind calls for another $200. The pot is now $900. Flop: 9♥4♥4♦ Action: The big blind goes all-in for the last $840. You have $670 left. What do you do? Answer: Pretty easy call. The pot now contains $900 plus $670, or $1,570 chips. (Don't, by the way, ever make the mistake of overcounting your opponent's bet. His all-in bet is only as large as your chip stack, not his chip stack. Seems like an elementary point, but I've seen players make this error in the heat of battle.) You need to put in $670 chips to call, so you're getting better than 2-to-l on your money. Those are good money odds, and even without further consideration you should be inclined to call. Looking at the flop, however, makes the call even easier. It's a flop that's very unlikely to hit a player who either raised or who called a raise. So it's a good flop to bluff with. If you had been first to act with that flop, you would have been happy to bet since it would probably have missed your opponent. But instead he's first to bet, so give him credit for being able to make the same move you would have made.