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Hand Range 191: SB vs LJ (25bb) • All-in 6.4% / • 3-bet 5.3% / • Call 12.6% / • Fold 75.7%

Appendix 2 - The Jargon Handbook (Glossary of Terms) 3-Bet: To 3-bet pre-flop is to re-raise a pre-flop raise. To 3-bet light pre-flop is to do so with a wider range of hands than would be for value. Absolute Hand Strength: Absolute Hand Strength is simply the rank of your hand (eg. 8 high straight, nut-flush, etc.) Backdoor Draw: A Backdoor Draw is one that will need both of the next two cards to complete. EG. three cards to a flush or straight. Balanced Sizing: To have Balanced Sizing in a situation is to pick a bet-size to use with your whole range in that situation so that you do not give away information as to the strength of your hand. It is a fairly mandatory strategy in most situations vs aware players, including c-betting. Balanced Strategy: A Balanced Strategy is one designed to be solid in which Hero's range is not weighted towards either strong or weak hands. A Balanced Strategy does not exploit Villain's weaknesses, but has no weaknesses of it's own. Barrel: A Barrel is a further bet made on a later consecutive street by the post-flop aggressor. To Barrel the turn is to bet the turn having bet the flop. Blocker: A Blocker is a card in either a player's hand or on the flop that reduces the number of combinations of some hands in another player's range. Bluff: To Bluff is to bet or raise with little to no equity with the intention of making other players fold better hands. Board Coverage: A range has good Board Coverage when it can connect with a wide variety of different flop textures. Board Coverage is important to aid the creation of balanced ranges, but matters less where Hero is overbluffing pre-flop to capitalise on great immediate fold equity. Blockers take precedence in that situation. Board Texture: Board Texture refers to the nature of the flop in terms of how it connects with potential hole cards. Dry flops offer fewer ways to connect, Wet flops more. C-Bet: A Continuation Bet (C-Bet) is a bet made by the pre-flop raiser on the flop. It is sometimes made with a strong hand with the aim of getting called by weaker hands (V alue C-Bet), but is often made without a strong hand as a continued display of strength with the aim of picking up the pot (Light C-Bet). Capped Range: A Capped Range is one which does not contain the strongest possible hands. Villain has a capped range when he's taken a line which makes it unlikely he has hands above a certain strength.

to medium, perhaps making a defensive bet, now you cancall. He’s probably betting the top of his range, but now your range matches up favorably; you can beat a lot of hands up there. You can also raise; your opponent will fold most of the range he defensive bets with. And then you don’t have to show your hand, which is always sweet. In Position, Passive Opponent, Weak Hand When your hand is weak and you suspect your opponent is medium to strong, fold. Can you make a case for bluff-raising here? I don’t think so. Remember, he’s passive and thinks his hand is good enough to lead out on the river. He’ll hate calling if you raise, but he’ll probably call just the same. What about when your hand is weak and you suspect his is in the weaker range? Say he makes what looks like a blocking bet. You raise. He’s never re-raising on a bluff here, and he’s folding a pretty strong range of hands. You can see that he gives you some opportunities to take pots away. Not a lot of them, since passive guys don’t get to the river that much, especially with weak hands. But the opportunities are there. Maybe you’re thinking, well, would a passive guy even bet there? Wouldn’t he just check and fold? Not necessarily. Occasionally, they get emboldened or desperate or they’re just emulating plays they’ve seen more aggressive players make. In fact, keep your eyes peeled for playerswho’ve been bluffed recently and had someone show them his hand. They’ll often decide to fight fire with fire. Only not completely with fire. They’ll make weird small river bets, a function of their conflict. They want to capture pots like the big boys do, but they don’t want to risk a lot of chips. Notice that there’s no discussion of hero calls against passive players. For one thing, they never bet with nothing just to put pressure on you. Second, they fold a much wider range of good hands to the river raise than aggressive players, making the raise much more valuable. And lastly, you don’t get the same kind of future value out of a hero call against a passive player that you do against an aggressive player. Against someone aggressive, a hero call clearly demonstrates you’re capable of making sick calls and can, apparently, make soul reads. That discourages your aggressive opponent from putting you to tough decisions in the future. But again, your passive opponent doesn’t need this kind of training, so don’t put yourself under that kind of stress. Just raise if you think you can get your passive guy to fold. Don’t waste your time making a sick read and flatcalling. In Position, Aggressive Opponent Checks to You Now let’s examine hands where you’re heads-up in position against an aggressive opponent who checks to you on the river. Maybe you had the lead on the turn or maybe he’s surrendering the lead to you now. But remember, he’s aggressive, so you can’t automatically read his check as, “I

you call the raise. I The turn card is a 94, giving you the nut straight. It is your turn but you check, feigning fear over the raise and the straight possibility on the board. The player who raised previously bets and is called by the remaining player and then yourself. The river card is a 34, giving you the nuts. You check again; there is a bet; the other player folds; then you raise. Your opponent, the original raiser, who holds J0 J4, feels obliged to call. Your deceptive play in this hand won a great deal of money. Had you checked your straight draw, and bet when the straight possibility appeared on the board, your opponent with the trip Jacks would have been more careful at the end. By doing the reverse, you trained your opponent to bet for you and were able to execute a successful checkraise on the end. Your opponents will also be wary in the future and not automatically take a check as a sign of weakness. It is usually a bad play to check with the nuts on the river, but this play worked because your opponent had a strong hand (as indicated by the raise) and you deceived him into believing it to be the best hand. It is not correct to always play drawing hands in a deceptive manner. Often you will check when drawing, and bet when you hit the draw. However, these are ways to vary your play, and keep opponents off balance. Making intentionally misleading plays does assume your opponents are skilled and think about their actions. Opponents who don't think cannot be deceived. Against opponents who call no matter what, don't make fancy deceptive plays-they won't notice. When your opponents call all the time the only way to win is to have the best cards at the end. 6. Strategies For successful play, it is necessary to have knowledge of the mathematical facts and tactical plays described in the previous sections. That knowledge alone will not make you successful. Your play must have an underlying strategy, a broad plan that provides a context for each action. This section discusses strategic considerations. Interwoven through this discussion are what I call "life analogies," which are a series of behavioral examples from life that illustrate poker concepts. Dan Kimberg in his book Serious Poker, makes the astute observation that while most sports professionals believe their sport is a metaphor for life, "poker players believe the converse-that life is a metaphor for poker."* It helps to first consider why there is no magic formula for winning at poker. Imagine a formula exists that does win at poker. A formula means a pre-determined set of actions for all situations encountered. In situation 1, do A, in situation 2, do B, and so on. Once the formula is known, it would immediately become useless because poker is a zero-sum game. One person's loss is another one's gain. If everybody plays the exact same way, over time the cards are evenly distributed so all the situations

Diagram 113 This line happens frequently, probably even more so in real games as most people fail to donk bet the flop nearly as much as the GTO solver recommends. In general, after the flop goes x/b/c and OOP checks one more time on the turn, IP’s range will be very polarized and OOP’s range will be mostly condensed. This effect gets magnified on some turn cards that give way more strong hands to IP than to OOP, resulting in IP preferring bigger bet-sizes, and in some cases even overbets (Diagram 113). On A♥Q♦3♠, OOP’s range will still be capped on most turn cards. For this reason, we see IP continue to bet 2/3-pot with the intention to jam the river at a high frequency. OOP vs Turn C-bet Table 133: Turn Decision Point Stats

infrequently, or never. Each chapter in the book is devoted to a particular poker concept. Examples include: slow playi'ng, position, bluffing, semi-bluffing, pot odds, raising, and check-raising. Each concept is discussed in detail with multiple examples from different poker variations used to illustrate his thinking. A recurring theme is that good players must learn to adjust their play to conditions. Not only must the kind of game be considered (loose or tight), but the structure of the game as well. By structure, he means the limits in the betting rounds and the size of the antes in relation to the final pot. Limit Texas Hold'em is only one form of poker. If you consider participation in other poker variations, read Sklansky's discussion on game evaluation to determine what adjustments need to be made. Zen and the Art of Poker, by Larry W. Phillips, Penguin Putnam Inc., htt~://www.~enrruin~utnam.com, (1999). This is a book on mastering yourself and developing the state of mind necessary for success. Like Schoonmaker's book, the emphasis is on developing objectivity by separating ego and emotions from play. However, instead of the point-of-view of Western psychology, Phillips examines the Eastern "psychology" of Zen. The book consists of a collection of 100 rules organized into five broad categories: (1) fundamentals, (2) establishing calmness and rhythm, (3) the "nuts and bolts" of play, (4) the "warrior" aspect of poker, and (5) understanding emotions and opponents. Most of the rules are related to mental preparedness, such as acquiring patience, reading opponents, accepting losses, and not going on a tilt. The advice applies to all forms of poker and specific tactical examples are not discussed. 126 THE INTELLIGENT GUIDE TO TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER Phillip's book on Zen and poker is a good complement to Schoonmaker's on psychology and poker. Both books have as a central theme that we defeat ourselves by being unaware of our own mental state. Each person's mental state brings limitations and flaws to poker play that you must be aware of, especially your own. However, the contrast in the approach these books take is fascinating. Western psychology analyzes, dissects, and charts behavior patterns with the goal of predicting future actions. All are necessary activities for understanding the reasons for and consequences of behaviors. Zen is about synthesis; it is about attaining a mental state where the complex behaviors needed to play winning poker come naturally. The Zen point of view is interesting because I believe that the enjoyment of activities such as poker, or chess, or golf, comes from the suspension of time that occurs when we become totally immersed and no longer analyze our actions. Learning to perform an activity well means doing more while thinking less. As children, we worked hard to read and exerted considerable effort to understand spelling and sentence structure. As adults, we read without thinking about the act of reading. We only think about the mental world that our reading brings us into. RESOURCES Online Resources The Internet has many quality poker-related Web sites and much of the content is free. Here are locations

Hand Range 158: BB vs UTG (15bb) • All-in 7.4% / • Call 70.6% / • Fold 22% Defending the BB Versus IP (25bb)

Hand Range 210: SB vs UTG 4-bet (60bb) • All-in 38.5% / • Call 13.9% / • Fold 47.6% Defending the Button Defending the BN (15bb)

namely, ones that miss the majority of Villains' ranges. Let's assess these factors in the context of Hand 11. 1. Pot Odds: Hero's pot odds are very favourable as he has to call just 0.5BBs into a pot that's already 2.5BBs. He's getting odds of 5:1. 2. Implied Odds: Hero's implied odds are okay given that his hand can flop two pair, straights, Trips and decent draws on occasion. There is one Fish in the pot who may fail to fold when he flops a good pair so Hero can expect to get paid sometimes too. 3. Post-flop Steal Potential: There will be times vs a fit-or-fold Fish and a Reg where both players miss the flop and Hero has the opportunity to take down the pot with a bet either unimproved or with minimal equity. In particular, spots where Hero flops minimal equity like a gutshot straight draw or two over cards on a dry board will yield him a +EV steal opportunity in three-way limped pots. We'll learn more about how different types of flops affect fold equity in the next chapter on c-betting. We can conclude that overall, Hero has an easy complete in this situation. Throughout the chapter so far, we've introduced a complete decision making process for spots where someone limps before Hero is to act. We can now summarise our procedure using the following flowchart.

other players do things like um rearranging their chip stack every hand I don't really like that method because I like my to know where my chips are some players um I don't know they like flick their wrist or whatever they do they do all sorts of stuff to like make themselves wake up whatever that means but you want to make sure that you are generally paying attention to the things that your opponents do especially the abnormal things that are not within their routine Behavior or things that are clearly out of good strong GTO play and then you need to take notes on those and adjust and if you do that you're gonna do very very well at exploiting the things your opponents do incorrectly to wrap up this video I figured to give you some general poker life advice understand that in poker there is a whole lot of things that you can mess up and the number one tip I give to everyone is to get rid of your life leaks with a bunch of exclamation points you can have all sorts of Life leaks you can have bad relationships you can have substance abuse you can have gambling abuse you can be a workaholic you can be you can do all sorts of stuff wrong right you probably know you probably know the things that you do wrong in life right now today and I would recommend you go well out of your way to fix those life leaks some life leaks that poker players specifically have a lot of is that they like to gamble on other stuff I would highly recommend that you stay away from other gambling games especially when you are playing poker I use the example earlier of a player playing one dollar two dollar No Limit but betting a thousand dollars on the sporting event on the TV over there first things first they're a thousand dollar sport bets gonna be roughly break even if they're good right so not making any money on that and all of their focus went from the poker table here to the sporting event over here so now they're not gonna be paying attention to Poker meaning they're going to lose a lot of edge there and they're gonna have giant swings especially compared to their bankroll that's supposedly good enough to play one to No Limit by betting a thousand dollars on a sporting event that is detrimental that player is not going to make it okay you need to be focused at the poker table and betting on other stuff while you're playing poker is a sure way to not pay attention obviously you don't want to play negative EV casino games where you're just going to lose a bunch of money that's obviously bad too some people treat poker like a gambling game maybe you're actually pretty good at let's say one to No Limit but if you lose you get mad and you go on tilt which we already

3.3 Fold Equity The more fold equity we have pre-flop and post-flop, the more inclined we should be to ISO provided that our other two factors aren't both horrible. Fold equity in these situations depends on the sub-factors listed below: 1. Amount of Limpers Facing just one limper, Hero should fancy his chances of being able to isolate this weaker player, ensuring that he will be the one to gain EV from any mistakes his opponent makes post-flop. Moreover, playing in a heads-up pot will increase the success rate of Hero's c-bets post-flop with just one player to fold out. If three players limp, Hero can expect to endure a multiway pot post-flop which will make it more difficult to win the pot on the flop if he ISOs and so should tighten his criteria for how much frequent strength + position he requires. The less limpers there are, the more fold equity Hero has. The more limpers there are, the less fold equity Hero has. 2. Loose Players Behind. The number of players liable to call or 3-bet a wide range behind us should we ISO also affects the likelihood that we get a multiway pot. If there are two loose Fish still to act in the blinds, Hero can expect to have relatively little fold equity post-flop due to the amount of three or even four handed flops that will ensue in this situation. Similarly, if there is a crazily aggressive 3-bettor lurking in the blinds, Hero will have to tighten his ISO range and favor hands with more frequent strength since he doesn't want to fold too often to the rampant 3-betting. If Hero opens a stronger range in the first place, it's naturally easier to defend more of that range to a 3-bet. 3. Types of Fish There are four broad types of Fish that Hero will encounter on his poker journey. There are, of course, sub-types of each of these and every individual player has some subtle differences from the next, but with the limited information available to us at the virtual felt, it's necessary to group these weaker opponents into four main categories. Our fold equity greatly depends upon which type of Fish has limped or is left to act behind us in these situations and this categorisation should come in handy

6-Max RFI: LJ, HJ, CO, BN: 2.5bb, SB: 3bb. 3-bet: IP: 8.5bb, OOP: 10bb (when squeezing you can add 2-3bb) 4-bet: 23bb 5-bet: All-in (100bb) BvB SB Limp: BB Raise vs SB Limp: 3.5bb SB 3-bet: 13bb BB 4-bet: 28bb SB 5-bet: All-in (100bb) SB Raise: SB: 3bb BB 3-bet: 9bb SB 4-bet: 24bb BB 5-bet: All-in (100bb) GTO Raise First In Strategies We will start the pre-flop analysis with the simplest possible scenario, blind vs blind battles. We will then expand the strategies by incorporating BN, CO, HJ, and finally LJ. It is important to note that these baseline strategies are computed using the recommended bet-sizes, so adjustments have to be made when facing different bet-sizes. Small Blind The small blind is one of the most interesting and difficult positions to play. You will be out of position the entire hand, which reduces your ability to realize equity and makes playing less enticing. However, you also have a discount in your price to enter the pot, which incentivizes you to play more hands. The best approach to SB play when the action gets folded to you is to split your range, developing a limping strategy and a raising strategy (Hand Range 32). By incorporating a

draw; big pots scare them when they don't have a strong hand. Implications: There is more fold equity vs. this player type than you might expect against the average Fish, but Hero still needs to be very conscious of board texture. Big overcard turns, flush cards etc. will boost fold equity significantly, but don't expect these players to lay down 88 or even A9 because you bet twice on 4422. D: Non-Timid Fish Detection: These are the Fish that don't fit the above description. There are many forms of these players and a recap fish types in Section 3.3 will serve as some useful revision at this point. Players who run 80/45, 55/7 and 49/36 will all fall under this bracket. Implications: These players strongly dislike the fold button. Their stats show a larger propensity to throw money into the pot in one form or another and so even on board texture worsening turns, fold equity may well be limited. There are other factors that determine when Hero can make exceptions to the don't bluff Fish on the turn and river rule. Recent history, dynamics, Hero's image and other meta-game factors will also affect how much FE is up for grabs. Just because a certain Villain is playing one way against the population does not entail that he is playing this way against Hero where there are meta-game factors present. For example, if Hero has just won a huge pot from a Fish by the Fish folding on the river, he should expect much less fold equity the next time round. Fish tend to react in very predictable, obvious ways. It is rare for them to think on a higher level when reacting to the meta-game and hence Hero can usually win the mental battle by anticipating the obvious response, and when unsure, expecting fold equity to decrease as the session goes on, especially if the Fish is losing. Factor 5: Fold To F CBet A player's Fold to F CBet stat can be a useful indicator of how often he floats and chases the flop lightly (see Chapter 8). With the exception of some of the very stationy players described above, Villains who call flop c-bets with a very wide range will find more folds on the turn, even where that card is not a big texture changer. Their ranges are just weaker to begin with when the turn card comes down and so Hero needs less of the other factors to be favourable in order to bluff lighter than he

QQ is a hand that, 100BB deep, we'd normally be thrilled to have in our 3-bet and get it in range vs. any standard or looser Reg in these positions - it's a no brainer and must be part of our 3-bet/shove strategy. At the stack size in question, however, there are two central reasons as to why 3-betting is not so desirable. As we saw previously, the opener's implied odds are better and he can very profitably defend much more of his opening range. This EV has to come from somewhere, and it's not being generously injected by the poker site, that's for sure! Hero is the one who grants Villain this extra EV by having to play a lot of good but non-nutted hands out of position post-flop in a large pot with a very large effective stack. What Villain gains in implied odds is equal to what Hero suffers in reverse implied odds. Villain's positional advantage and any skill advantage are magnified by the stack depth. This means that many decision points post-flop will be negative or at least lower EV for Hero that wouldn't ordinarily be at a smaller stack depth. Calling is going to be the highest EV line for Hero in this situation given how unfavourable stacks are for 3-betting. Hero will be able to control the pot size much better and prevent Villain from being able to threaten anywhere near 200BBs. To do this Hero will simply adopt a defensive pyramidal calling strategy as we saw back in Chapter 8 on the boards where his range is suffering a lot against Villain's. The smaller pot then makes Villain's magnified positional advantage from stack depth less severe as Villain will struggle to grow pots to any size that makes the 200BB stack relevant without adopting some kind of bizarre over-betting strategy.

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

The main thing that sets NLH apart from other poker games is the ability to bet any amount, from a single big blind to your entire stack, at any given point. When we discussed complex strategies in Chapter 4 we proved that playing a more complex strategy than push or fold gains Hero EV. The following questions are interesting: ♦ How important is it to have the ability to use several bet-sizes post-flop? ♦ How many bet-sizes do we need? ♦ Does true GTO play require the use of an infinite number of bet-sizes, or is there a cap to the EV gained by adding multiple bet-sizes and increasing the complexity of our strategy? ♦ Could it be the case that there is a GTO optimal bet-size that will always maximize our EV? NLH is a continuous game in the sense that the full game tree with infinite bet-sizes cannot be drawn. So, in order to computationally solve any given NLH situation with modern GTO Solvers, we must use a betting abstraction with a finite number of bet-sizes. If true optimal play requires the use of an infinite or very large number of bet-sizes, then computational solver applications would be quite limited, or even useless. Furthermore, as mentioned before, the cost of implementing extremely complex strategies can surpass the value they add and can, in practice, hurt your expectation because more complex strategies are more difficult to execute. Unlike computers, for us humans, even more than a few bet-sizes across multiple streets quickly gets out of hand. In this section we will use results from known toy games and modern solvers to answer these questions, improving our understanding of GTO bet-sizing and use the results to develop strategies that are both powerful and simple enough to be effectively implemented. The Pot-size Raise The pot-size bet or pot-size raise is a bet that lays exactly 2-to-1 or 33% pot odds to your opponent. Betting the size of the pot is widely used in Pot Limit Omaha (PLO) as the biggest possible bet or raise players can make. For this reason, PLO players are probably going to be more familiar with it than NLH players. The way to calculate a pot-size bet is straightforward. Imagine the pot is $100, and you want to bet 1/2-pot. All you have to do is multiply $100 × 1/2 = $50. But this gets a bit trickier if you

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

The only players remaining are SB and BN. That’s great! GTO play guarantees unbeatability in any poker hand from the point where there are only two players left, but what about situations where there are three or more active players? In multi-way situations, the EV loss by one player’s mistakes are not spread equally among the other players in the hand. In most situations, some players will be able to capitalize more on the mistakes than others, depending on many factors such as stack depth and position. Furthermore, some players might end up losing EV even if they play their equilibrium strategies. Consider the following: Example Game: $100 3-max online Jackpot Sit & Go Stacks: BN 12bb, SB 12bb, BB 12bb Players: 3 (no ante) Pre-flop: (1.5bb) BN push 12 BB, Hero is in the SB. The Nash Equilibrium strategy for the BN is to push 32.1% hands. If we introduce a fishy player to the game who only pushes 16%, we can use a push-fold calculator to get the players’ change in EV if the blinds continue playing Nash Equilibrium and if they adjust to the MES (Table 13). Table 13: MES Adjustments The fish is deviating to a weaker strategy and, of course, that makes them lose EV, but their mistake also makes Hero lose EV (-4.5bb/100) if Hero keeps playing GTO. Even if Hero adjusts to MES, Hero will still lose 3.2bb/100 more compared to when all players are playing Nash Equilibrium. The BB is the biggest winner in this situation as they are capturing all the extra EV. However, if we consider future games then, on average, Hero will be in the BB as often as in the SB. Therefore, Hero will also be able to profit from this fishy player’s leak.

11.3 Preemptive Adjustments Have a look at the following spot: This hand should never occur. It's not good enough for Hero to just find himself out of position CO vs. BU facing a 3-bet from a very aggressive 3-bettor with a weak indefensible range having opened 3BB. Position is a sledgehammer of an advantage so even if Hero thinks himself to have a significant skill edge against an Aggro Reg, he's still going to be on the back foot and forced to fold a lot of his opening range. The solution is to never be in this situation in the first place. We talked a bit about this back in Chapter 2, but let's remind ourselves of the pre-emptive measures we should take against active 3-betting and build on these ideas further. 1. Open Tighter This isn't always a necessary adjustment against light 3-bettors, but there are times when we can't do without it. In Hand 96 there was really no need to tighten our opening range dramatically because we had position and an effective exploitative strategy available to counter Villain's active 3-betting. We knew that he didn't continue enough of his 3-betting range vs. 4-bets and we had position to boot. These bonuses entitled us to comfortably defend far more of our range than our MDF demanded of us

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

Cleaning Out Sticky IP Callers A “sticky” player on your left, one who calls your preflop raises too often and doesn’t give up easily after the flop , can be a major headache. Part of what makes them so annoying is that your options are limited. Being out of position is a big disadvantage, sometimes so compelling that you just have to give up. Their stickiness is not necessarily a mistake. But there are players out there who fight too hard, who think every flop that doesn’t obviously favor the raiser’s range is theirs for the stealing. This article will examine how to exploit them, turning their stubbornness into a liability. Test Scenarios These scenarios start with 30bb CO vs BTN single-raised pot (SRP) Single-raised pot (SRP) A pot where one player open-raised and was called preflop. ranges. These positions are where you are most likely to play pots OOP as the preflop raiser (PFR), and this stack depth is one where excessive stubbornness will be easier to exploit. The deeper the stacks, the more correct it is for your IP opponent to get sticky after the flop, and so the fewer opportunities you will have to exploit them. We will look at two flops: 9 ♥ 6 ♥ 6 ♦ , CO has a significant continuation betting range at equilibrium, and T ♥ 3 ♥ 2 ♦ , where CO checks their entire range. I’ve chosen these flops because they are of the kind where a cold-caller is most likely to get stubborn. Ace- and King-high flops are generally perceived as favoring the raiser and being easier to play from out of position. Hence, you are less likely to encounter opponents who float and bluff-raise exploitatively on those boards. For each board, we will compare CO’s equilibrium flop c-betting strategy with one where BTN is nodelocked to fold half as often to all bet sizes (except all-in, against which a sticky opponent could not justify a light call with the plan of outplaying on later streets). We will also examine how CO’s turn strategy should change after betting the flop into a stubborn opponent. Flop bet size options for both players are 20%, 50%, or 80% of the pot or all-in. Later street options are set using the Custom Solving ‘Automatic’ feature . Ace-High C-Bet Flop Perceptions aside, CO actually enjoys slight equity and nuts advantages on a 9 ♥ 6 ♥ 6 ♦ flop. They have more 6-x in their range and more overpairs, which are also very strong on this board. Only the dynamism of the board favors BTN, whose position will enable more informed decisions when the board texture changes on later streets. But with both players having such wide ranges, few turn cards will dramatically change the dynamics. As a result, CO continuation bets roughly half their range for half the pot. At equilibrium, BTN folds about 28% of the time to this bet. Let’s see how CO’s strategy changes when we nodelock BTN to fold half as often to any of these bet sizes: CO bets

Pre-flop End of Action Spots End of Action Spots don't just occur on the river. Here's a relatively common pre-flop situation where we need to use a similar approach. This spot occurs from time to time in cash games though far less often than in tournament play. A Fish decides to jam his whole stack pre-flop like he were short stacked in the late stages of a tournament. The two-part process remains the same for Hero. 'How much equity do I need?' he asks and quickly realises that this all in raise size is very close to shoving 36BB into an empty pot. Of course the pot is not technically empty, but the 1.5BB of dead money makes little difference. Hero concludes that he needs ever so slightly less than 50% equity to call. The true mathematical figure is 36 / (36 + 37.5) = 49%. It's also worth noting that the rake, which I typically ignore in the examples in this book, will eat up some of Hero's profits when he wins and so he can slightly increase this required equity up to 50%. Now for part two of the thought process: Does Hero have 50% equity or more? This can be tough to estimate in game unless you're familiar with how much equity hands have against certain ranges. This is why an important part of your active study time should be to play around with a poker calculator and get a rough feel for pre-flop equities, specifically for these all-in situations. How wide should Villain be expected to shove here? Much will depend on recent history. If he's just lost a big pot and is launching death threats into the chat box, this Fish may be shoving any two cards.

tournament life, potentially having to fold. It is much better to use the leverage of your whole stack to put the tough decision on the other player. KT s is a profitable shove; this is what K9 s would cost us: K9 s loses 0.03% as a shove, which is a 0.1% difference between that and KT s. Assuming UTG1 shoves with the right range, this is the BB response. Remember, the BB is also short-stacked and losing would almost guarantee they bubble. AJ s is the bottom of our unpaired calling range and it makes us 0.38% of the table equity as a call. This is what AT s costs us: Now we are seeing quite a gulf between two close actions, the difference between a ‘good’ call and a ‘bad’ call is 0.41%. If we go two pips wrong, ie. if we call with A9s, this is what happens: The difference is 0.77% between AJ s and A9 s. There is a very important lesson here. In the previous example shoving incorrectly by one ‘pip’ costs us 0.1%, Calling incorrectly by one pip for the same amount of chips, as we did by calling with AT s, costs us 0.41%. The cost of a bad call is four times more than the cost of a bad shove. This proves an old maxim of poker which went: ‘you need a stronger hand to call a raise than you do to make a raise’. A bad shove is not as costly because it still can have the desired effect of making your opponents fold. You can win two ways, by taking the pot down preflop or winning when called. It is a much smaller mistake because the average pot size will be much smaller because of all those folds. A bad call is more costly than a bad bet because the pot is guaranteed to be larger and you need to have the best hand at showdown. This is why studying ICM is crucial, the same table errors compound the deeper in the tournament you go. Rationalizing an error as ‘only’ losing x bb is not the way to think of these things, the real money cost of a mistake is far greater than that. Going back to measuring things in terms of table equity rather than BBs. Let’s say you made a 3% mistake near the bubble of the $11 Sunday Storm, where the combined equities of the table were $200. That would be a $0.60 error and would not seem like much in terms of your $11 buy-in. Make the same mistake at the Sunday Storm final table where something closer to $50,000 in prizes are at the table, and that error has now cost you $150 in equity, which is an almost 14 buy-in error. A very small error, perhaps just one ‘pip’ outside of the correct range, has potentially cost a small fortune. Poker Study Triage Today, we have looked at what the difference is in EV between a hand that is at the bottom of a profitable

Hand Range 27: A Typical Online 6-max Cash EP RFI Range Not everyone will play this exact RFI range, but most serious players will play some variation of it. A player who knows more or less what an EP RFI Range looks like will have a huge advantage over a player who has never studied the spot before. Instead of hesitating and wondering whether or not they are supposed to open hands such as JTo, the prepared player

on the flop assuming I didn’t flop anything that helped my hand. Now I’ll discuss the situations where I get some help. If I flop a set, I never slow-play it. There is one exception to this rule, which I’ll discuss below. But for the most part, I almost always come right out and bet, and I don’t make just a nominal bet. I make an extra-large bet because you’ll only win a big pot if an opponent flops something with you, puts you on a bluff, or tries to run you down. So, I really come out smokin’ right there. Earlier, I said that when you have a pair of aces and a single ace flops, there’ll always be the possibility that the next card off will make someone a straight. For instance, look at the following situation: FLOP A With a single ace on the flop and anything 5 or under, there’s always a draw to a 5-high straight. As in Flop A, if a deuce, trey or 5 falls on fourth street, it 371 could make someone a small straight. The same thing applies whenever there’s a single ace on the flop with any card 10 or above. FLOP B With Flop C, a king, queen, or 10 on fourth might give someone an ace-high straight. If there’s no draw to a straight that includes an ace, then there’ll be a draw to a medium straight because there’d have to be a two-card combination of the other four cards, namely a 6, 7, 8, or 9, as in the following example: FLOP C The straight possibility is more obvious with something like Flop C because there are seven different straights that can be made. If anyone has a J-10, J-8, 10-8, 10-6, 8-6, 8-5, or 6-5, they could make a straight with the next card off. You should always keep this interesting discovery in mind whenever you see what appears to be a raggedy flop with an ace in it. The threat that someone could make a straight will always be present. So when you flop a set of aces, you immediately go to betting, and you bet a large amount to prevent somebody from drawing at an inside straight cheaply. A good player will know it’s worth it to take a cheap draw at a belly straight, and if he makes it, he can break you. However, if you flop a set with two kings you could possibly give a free card if it comes ragged and there’s no straight or flush draw. For example, say a K-8-2 falls. Now, you can give a card with that flop because you’d have the nuts as long as any card other than an ace, 8, or deuce fell. An ace might give someone three aces, and an 8 or deuce could possibly make someone four-ofa-kind. Realistically you shouldn’t worry about quads, so you really want an 8 or deuce to hit the board on fourth street. In the rare instance when you flop quads, say four aces, you’re happy to

6.1 Reasons to Call an Open We'll begin our pre-flop calling strategy by thinking about some reasons for wanting to put ourselves in this less advantageous position of playing against an opening range without the initiative. 1. Our hand is in good shape vs Villain's likely opening range but not against his likely continuing range vs a 3-bet. We can call but not 3-bet for value. 2. We have sufficient implied odds. 3. We are likely to be in a pot with weaker players. 4. Pot odds make calling better than folding. In the first part of the chapter we'll be going through these reasons one by one in detail. Reason 1 - Being in Good Shape Let's first clarify the latter part of this condition. Why do we need to be ahead of Villain's opening range but not his continuing range vs. a potential 3-bet? The reason for this is that by 3-betting when we are not in good shape when called, we are in fact turning a fine calling hand into a bluff and this usually doesn't make much sense. We'll get to 3-betting later in the manual, but for now, suffice to say that it's sensible not to waste good calling hands on 3-bet bluffs when we can use hands we'd otherwise have to fold for this purpose. Given that our calling hand is in fine shape against Villain's opening range, we want to play it against this range and not the tighter range that will be crushing us should Villain call or re-raise our 3-bet. Now how do we work out if we're in good shape vs. Villain's opening range? Well, this largely depends on the following factors: What position did Villain open from? It will be much easier to be in good shape vs a CO stealing range than an UTG value opening range. What kind of player is Villain and how often does he open? Against wider openers, some hands will be callable that wouldn't be against a tighter player. The Key Question: Given these factors, can our hand frequently flop hands that will be ahead of a sizeable part of Villain's value range post-flop? By Villain's value range, let's assume we're talking about top pair, overpairs, and better - the stuff he'd commonly value bet post-flop. Why is it important not just to beat Villain's weak hands, but some of his stronger hands too?

Diagram 28 With a 20bb effective stack, the 2/3-pot size donk bet is preferred. It seems that at 20bb, the BB’s SPR is small enough that the BB is happy to stack off with a lot of good equity hands on the flop, so the bigger bet-size protects the BB’s equity by getting more folds and helps the BB realize equity by getting all the money in on the flop when their equity is high. The BB’s strongest hands seem to prefer the smaller bet-size because they aren’t as vulnerable, so they don’t mind getting called more frequently. When stacks are deeper, there aren’t many hands that are happy to get all-in on the flop so, instead, a smaller donk bet-size allows the BB to call a re-raise and see the turn without having to get all the money in on the flop. Strong and good hands are also an important part of the checking ranges. The more checking happens, the more important it becomes to have strong and good hands in the checking range so the range remains balanced and protected. Donk betting also happens on average more often vs UTG (67% of the time) than vs the BN (53% of the time). This is because the high donk betting boards are missed a lot more often by UTG ranges. Donk Betting Range Example

let's go ahead and get right to it when to float here's the question you never seem to know when you should float i presume junky draws are not equally good that is true any advice would be appreciated all right so what is floating to begin with this is when you call someone's bet on the flop usually with some sort of junky draw with the intention of improving to the best hand or picking up the pot with a bluff some portion of the time on the turn or river right and in order to very profitably float ideally you want your opponent to play straightforwardly on the turn because imagine someone raises you call on the button let's say they bet the flop you call with nothing on the turn they're always going to bet with their good hands and they're always going to check their marginal and bad hands if that's the case you can very often pick up the pot with a turn bet or a turn plus a river bet because when they check they have indicated they don't have a good hand right that is the ideal spot to be floating and this is why floating is so profitable against mostly small and medium stakes players who just play pretty straightforwardly right and even in the high stakes games a lot of people only or mostly bet the turn with a very polarized range in some scenarios which means when they check they have a marginal made hand or junk which is you know actually good poker but then what they do wrong is they overfold a little bit of that range on the turn and then they overfold a little bit of their turn calling range on the river and that's going to result in you winning the pot more than you should also floating from in position is way better than floating from out of position because just think about how it goes right we just discussed how it happens whenever you're in position right they check you have the opportunity to bet on the turn in the river but let's say you check call from out of position with a marginal hand and then you check the turn and they check behind well now if you bet the river if they have a marginal maid hand a bluff catcher of any sort they just have a really really easy call because the pot's not big you're not applying a whole lot of pressure and you know they have to face one bet whereas whenever you're in position they're gonna have to face two bets and it's way harder to call two bets than one bats also if you check call from out of position and you decide you're going to lead a lot well leading a lot on the turn is just usually not good poker to begin with so i mean that could be a fine strategy if you know your opponent will play really really weakly against leads but you

he is unlikely to have [QQ+ AK] and Hero's equity with KQs jumps up to 54%. Hero may want to fold hands like KQs, AJs and AQo to a 4-bet depending on what he knows about Villain's 4-bet tendencies. If Villain has a propensity to 4-bet bluff though then shoving this whole green range should be fine as these hands have good blockers and okay equity when called. Call: Hero is in a favourable situation for flatting since his price is so good and he's closing the action and so the hands in blue should be higher EV to call than they are to fold. In other words, they lose less than 1BB on average from the point of view of the whole hand if Hero calls them. 3-Bet Bluff: Hero's ratio of bluffs to value is now 124:70 or 1.77:1 which is a very reasonable exploitative adjustment. I've seen players argue for bluffing ranges that are 3 or 4 times the size of the value range in this spot and I think it's a categorical long-term mistake vs. most Regs. There are of course Villains that play 24 tables and are so unaware, nitty or automated that they just won't adjust even to extreme bluff to value ratios like 3:1 and 4:1. Most players in 2016 however, will be aware enough to quickly start flatting and 4-betting more, opening less and generally re-exploiting such a strategy. The hands in red are again chosen as the best of Hero's would be folding range in terms of playability, board coverage and blockers. Against anyone who folds more than this, Hero's bluff to value ratio in the polar model increases further. I've come across many a Villain who opens wide, folds to 80% of 3-bets and never seems to want to fight back. Against this player type Hero should adopt a much more unbalanced ratio. Just don't go 3-betting 75o as long term EV will usually come back to bite you. The theory of polar 3-betting is more complicated than what's now to follow. Let's enter the totally different and simpler realm of linear 3-bet strategies.

back through or maybe some weird Bluff to potentially get the opponent to jam over the top of me but if the opponent looks like they are checking to try to induce a bluff well then clearly just want to jam and get all the money in so either I bet very tiny here to try to reduce a bluff or all n just if I expecting a call a lot so you do get called and you win which is great it's a well played hand if your opponent bet the river by the way on a non nine or ten I would have folded so be aware of that it's perfectly fine to call a turn bet when they do if you're gonna fold to the river bet as long as your range is well-protected you won't always ask yourself in that spot if I call a turn bet with this hand what other hands do I need to call with to make sure I'm just not folding everything to a river bet because imagine if you only call it two pair there on the turn or drawers and you fold all it through a river back you're really exploitable so make sure you call her your queens as well and when you do have a queen there don't just think what should I do in my queen and think how would I play the rest of my range assuming you're trying to play against your to play balanced strategy against reasonable opponents of course if you think your opponents are not very good and you can be well out of line maybe just make sense to jam with the Queen there to get full value from two pair that'll call it off although clearly that won't happen very often all right 1000 facing a 3300 raised from 40k stack and then an old man jams thousand three hundred so here what is old man mean right some players who are old men will have only the nuts here like nines are better an ace queen and better maybe King Queen some old men will have all sorts of stuff so here's a spot where you can either call or jam or fold depending on the scenario also what do we think about the initial raiser I see their rate labeled as a lag here so I would not expect them to have too many nut hands so I'm probably gonna play this hand if I expected under the gun to be tight I would strongly consider just open just folding so what you want to ask in this scenario if I call am I giving the initial raiser great odds to call and is that a problem and here it is a problem because your phone is going to be in position closing the action having to put in five thousand to win thirty thousand or something like that twenty five thousand so they're really not making a mistake by calling so for that reason we want to re-raise

understand how your opponents play poker. You will be able to read their hands easier, you will be able to predict their actions and you will be able to act in anticipation of those actions before you act. A musician practices the language of music and their instrument until it comes second nature to them. A Jazz musician does not think what notes they are going to play they understand the structure of the composition (game structure/type) and the notes that create a certain emotion (players at a table). They are in a quasi state of awareness and intuition blended together, interchangeable for the needed moment. I hope your poker game gets to that point. Appendix I This is a description of a World Class Poker Player from the Loki project. The Loki project is trying to build artificial intelligence and considers these attributes in creating the learning structure of the computer program. Hand strength assesses the strength of a hand in relation to the other hands. The simplest hand strength computation is a function of the cards in the hand and the current community cards. A better hand strength computation takes into account the number of players still in the game, the position of the player at the table, and the history of betting for the current game. An even more accurate calculation considers the probabilities for each possible opponent hand, based on the likelihood of each hand being played to the current point in the game. Hand potential computes the probability that a hand will improve to win, or that a leading hand will lose, as additional community cards appear. For example, a hand that contains four cards in the same suit may have low hand strength, but has good potential to win with a flush as more community cards are dealt. Conversely, a hand with a high pair could decrease in strength and lose to a flush as many cards of a common suit appear on the board. At a minimum, hand potential is a function of the cards in the hand and the current community cards. However, a better calculation could use all of the additional factors described in the hand strength computation. Betting strategy determines whether to fold, call/check, or bet/raise in any given situation. A minimum strategy is based on hand strength. Refinements consider hand potential, pot odds (your winning chances compared to the expected return from the pot), bluffing, and opponent modeling and trying to play unpredictably. Bluffing allows you to make a profit from weak hands, and can be used to create a false impression about your play to improve the profitability of subsequent hands. Bluffing is essential for successful play. Game theory can be used to compute a theoretically optimal bluffing frequency in certain situations. A minimal bluffing system merely bluffs this percentage of hands indiscriminately. In practice, you should also consider other factors (such as hand potential) and be able to predict the probability that your opponent will fold in order to identify profitable bluffing opportunities. Unpredictability makes it difficult for opponents

firmly into the red. I recommend having a calling range from the SB only in the following situations and otherwise adopting a 3-bet or fold strategy to side step the disadvantages of flatting from this seat. Hero may have a flatting range form the SB only if: Hero is facing an UTG or HJ open and is therefore less likely to be squeezed when he flats (typical players don't attack earlier position opens so readily). Hero's implied odds are also better against a tighter opening range from early position.

king ten like that's our value range we don't have jack screens kings aces um i call if you wanna check grace some of the time that's fine i don't think you should be check grazing all the time but check raise is fine too i'd probably make it like i don't know 4 500 something like that ace of clubs um check check interesting spot here so let's analyze the turn so the button checks back uh button's a little bit on the tighter side so how are we starting to arrange the button here uh when they check back here on the ace of clubs so a lot of people are saying the button is capped um so like to a good degree i would say they're fully capped like but they're they're getting there like they probably don't have a flush right they probably don't have a flush probably don't have a set like that's pretty like safe to assume they're probably gonna have a pair of tons a lot pair of nines a lot maybe like jax queens kings without a club a lot um although those hands maybe could still bet um you know pocket sixes sevens eights pair nines um probably not a flush and probably not like ace jack ace queen or ace king maybe they have like ace eight a seven a six ace four eight three ace dudes i think some of the weaker aces are reasonable to check back if they don't have a club i think that makes some sense um how does the ace interact with us when we because we check our entire range how does the ace interact with us on the turn so like we're going to check call with like 10x 9x 5x um we're going to check all some ace highs for sure now the ace of clubs on the board like we have like having like ace jack we didn't three bet we have ace 8 with the eight of clubs a7 with the seven of clubs asexual hearts we'll have some asex for sure not a ton but we have some aces um decent amount of flushes too that don't check race so we're gonna have some flushes as well um so once like i cut off you know once this player checks back obviously we're gonna have some flushes so it's always important in these spots like this is my favorite spot in poker these button big blind spots where it goes back call check check so it's always important i think to set up the river in your head before like the river card even comes out and as you get really good at this you'll be able to do this in like you know two seconds it just takes a lot of practice nine of hearts okay so how does the nine change things so this is like probably one of the more difficult spots in poker to play because there's a lot of things going on a lot of

hand (when your opponent calls). It is the combination of these circumstances that makes the semi-bluff profitable. Therefore, it is important to realize that you usually don't semi-bluff if you are sure you are going to be called. Why? Because then the bluff aspect of your bet has vanished, you are betting only for value, and it is clearly incorrect to put more money in the pot on a hand you know to be the underdog. The only exception to this principle may occur in seven-card stud and razz, as we saw earlier, when your semi-bluff confuses your opponent on later rounds as he watches your board develop into what looks like the best hand. It is also a good idea to semi-bluff less often when you are last to act, especially if many players have checked ahead of you. Not only do you have the opportunity to give yourself a free card in last position, but it's possible that somebody ahead of you was sandbagging with a big hand and will check-raise when you bet. In contrast, when you are in first position, you would be more inclined to bet with a semi-bluffing hand. Since you can't assure yourself of a free card in first position, you might as well become the aggressor and bet when the situation warrants it. Summary We'll summarize this somewhat lengthy chapter point by point. The Semi-Bluff 103 1 A semi-bluff is a bet, raise, or check-raise with a wide variety of hands which you believe are not the best at the moment. However, they may win not only right there when your opponent folds but also in a showdown when they improve to the best hand. They may also win when your opponent folds on a later round after you catch a scare card that makes your hand look like the best hand. 1.A semi-bluff may be used in any game, but it may be used only with more cards to come. 2.Sometimes a hand with which you think you are semi-bluffing isin fact the best hand. By betting, you prevent a worse hand from getting a free card. 3.If you have a hand that warrants a call when your opponent bets, it is usually correct to bet yourself, particularly in first position. You thereby gain the chance of winning the pot immediately, and you show more strength than you actually have, which can be to your advantage later. 4.Semi-bluffs allow you to be the bettor instead of the caller, which nearly always puts you in a more advantageous position. 5.Semi-bluffs are a good way to randomize your bluffs, for you have the added equity of a possible win even when you are called. 6.A semi-bluff can frequently be a profitable play in situations where a pure bluff is not. Your extra out of outdrawing your opponent can swing your mathematical expectation from the minus to the plus side. 7.You usually do not semi-bluff when you are sure your opponent will call. However, if there is a possibility that 104 Chapter Eleven opponent will fold,

Hand Range 334: UTG 60bb (2.3x vs BN 3-bet) • All-in 4.8% / • 4-bet 16.0% / • Call 43.6% / • Fold 35.5%

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This range is the same one we met back in Chapter 2. Remember that it's sensible for Hero to tighten up his opening range where there are multiple light 3-bettors ahead and widen it where the table is overly tight or fishy. This range contains a total of 338 combos. We'll return to this number when we've worked out the MDF for this spot. Finding MDF MDF can be found by looking at the risk to reward ratio from Villain's point of view and then

Hand Range 85: BB vs SB 4-bet • 5-bet All-in 12.6% / • Call 46.2% / • Fold 41.2% The SB 4-betting range is very polarized. Since the BB has position, the SB is incentivized to call many hands while 5-betting infrequently. They should slowplay hands such as AA (100%), KK (65%), QQ (34%), AKs (87%) and JJ (28%) and call all hands that have some playability. They should fold the bottom portion of their polar range (Hand Range 85). The BB wants to raise a semipolar range, with hands that can call in position vs a limp/raise and hands that are easy raise/folds. The BB will only 4-bet about 7% of hands, mixing up strong hands such as TT+, AK and some Ax and Kx blocker-type hands (Hand Range 86-87).

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11.2 Complete Defence Ranges Balanced Defending We've learned that the basic principles of 4-bet bluffing are to use the top of our folding range and the best mix of blockers and playability should we be flatted. It's now time to construct some complete defence ranges for dealing with 3-bets. I'm going to start by outlining what a balanced defending to 3- bet range looks like and use some maths to generate what we'll be calling our Minimum Defence Frequency (MDF). Why do we stop at making overbluffing 0EV for Villain? Why do we not punish it severely by folding even less? When meeting MDF, Hero is adopting a balanced strategy that is unexploitable. If he were to defend more hands than MDF suggested, then it's true that overbluffing would become worse for Villain, but in the process, underbluffing would become very good and Villain would be able to increase his EV by removing bluffs from what started off as a balanced strategy. This is not in the spirit of balance and is something we must avoid until we have an exploitative reason to think that this is a more desirable as a long-term strategy. We'll now use the following rule for building our opening and defending ranges.

you enjoyed this video click the like And subscribe buttons down below please please do that for me this was a long video took me all day um if you like this video share it with your friends I would appreciate it if you want to learn more head over to pokercoaching.com I have a 40 hour long Advanced well I have a 40 hour long tournament Master Class there that teaches you everything you need to know to crush your opponents and also a very very in-depth Advanced tournament course that discusses even more final table and bubble payout scenarios also we have a large section on heads up and a lot of scenarios on various exploits you can make when you know the things your opponents do wrong so check that out over at pokercoaching.com good luck in your games have fun I make these videos because I hope and want for you to succeed so get in there learn improve your skills and crush the games thanks for watching

it all the time. Apart from being morally reprehensible to collude, it’s also wrong-headed to think that there’s much of an advantage to knocking out a player. Certainly, if 275 players are left in a tournament and 36 get paid, it doesn’t matter if you personally contribute to the demise of player number 275. There’s still so much tournament to go and the math of the rising blinds will ensure that players get knocked out on schedule. The only time it makes sense to knock out a player is in bubble situations. Even then, only in certain ones. If you’re in a satellite where, say, the top 18 get a seat into a main event and 19 or 20 players are left, it’s definitely to your personal advantage to knock out that player. There’s no incremental value to you in adding that pot to your stack, since 18 th pays the exact same as 1 s t . Locking up the seat, not the pot, is what matters toyou. Now if you check it down, you’re working in your own best interest, not the group’s, so that’s not collusion. As another example, if you’re short-stacked, in danger of not cashing, and on the bubble, you want to knock out a player to lock up the cash andtry to win from there. Your chips aren’t worth that much right then and you don’t have a lot of equity in your stack for the win, so you might as well lock up the cash first, then hope to get lucky and double up a few times. In that case, it makes sense to check it down to increase the chances of an all-inplayer getting knocked out. Again, you’re working in your own interest, not the group’s. If you’re big-stacked on the bubble, though, it’s actually counterproductive to knock out an all-in player. You’d rather keep the bubble going. Players play way too tight on the bubble and as the big stack you can really leverage that to drastically increase your stack, thus drasticallyincreasing your chances of finishing in the top three, where all the money is. So if you collude and check it down in that situation, you’re working onlyin the group’s interest and not yours. That’s not only not right, it’s also not smart. It turns out that any time your hand has a chance of being best, it’s better for you personally to bet into a dry side pot and try to get heads-upagainst the all-in player. Let’s say you have a hand like A♥Q♣ and the board comes 2♣-5♦-T♥. Ace-high often wins here against a player who moved all-in before the flop, whose shoving range is quite wide and includes many KQ and KJ-type hands, plus worse aces. With a dry side pot, it makes sense for you to bet to increase your chances of winning the main pot. Obviously, AQ will do better against one player than against two or three, so getting heads-up plainly makes sense. If you bet in this spot, on this board like 2♣-5♦-T♥, AK will

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size that's just because we're betting here with our best made hands and our draws so we are gonna want to bet something like 800 in this scenario maybe even 1,200 I think it's perfectly fine to pot it early in a tournament you're usually going to find that people are not going to view pot sized bets as a big bet there's gonna think oh it's 1200 out of my 20,000 no big deal so I like a bet of about a thousand in the scenario Mike goes 500 and I definitely think this is way too small if we weren't to be betting with a lot of our range or all of our range perhaps the size could be fine but the problem is is that like say we have aces here do I really want to bet 500 and let our opponents call with all sorts of gun shots and open into straight draws and flush draws and backdoor flush draws it's like not really right I'd much rather than call more with those hands because then they're just putting money in poorly or fold so the same logic kind of goes with this hand I don't necessarily want to play a pot where our prone that's gonna be sticking around all sorts of marginal stuff so yeah my Mike best 500 only one player calls turns three of clubs same stories on the flop right we still have the best hand a lot of the time I think you're usually gonna find that when you bet small on the flop like 500 to 1200 people typically raise when they think they have the best hand so if that's the case when we get to the turn we probably still have the best handle on right the three is pretty much irrelevant besides backdoor flush draws improve their equity so for that reason I think we want to keep betting and we want to keep betting big like 2000 because if it meant 2000 now we're giving the draws a pretty bad price to continue and we also just get called by some worse made hands because whatever there are lots of girls available you're gonna find some people become calling stations with hands like Queen nine Jack nine ace nine Jack ten stuff like that and you know as they should right if I'm sitting on my phone eschews and I have Jack tenure I'm just not folding for any bet and what essentially happens is as your betting using a bigger size you are polarizing arrange to the best mate hands and drawers this is at the bottom of the best mate hand range but it's still good enough to valley but I think in the spot obviously we lose to a few hands my leg pocket jacks ace ten ten nine right but whenever you've got small the flop and just get call the thing that discounts those to some extent so I like a two thousand bet my goes a thousand again so this seems

now raises with this range so the big lines we're using with this range what should we do Well turns out kind of a similar scenario when the big blind limps and the small blind raises here when small blind lifts and big blind raises we're shoving the small pairs shoving a lot of Ace X view King X suited and asex suited and then doing a lot of calling with hands that flop well enough the hands in Gray we don't have because we would have raised those pre-flop right so uh that's it that's what happens when someone raises before the Flop you'll see these patterns present themselves over and over and this is why you see a lot of the best players in the world playing very very good pre-flop poker because it's not actually all that difficult to roughly memorize these strategies or at least memorize the common situations you're going to find yourself in all right let's discuss now facing a non-all in Free Bet again follow the charts understand that you can still have a calling range this is when you raise and then to let's say two big blinds then someone makes it five big lines you can still call you have to put in three to try to win something like 12. you only need to realize 25 Equity therefore you can have a calling range you however cannot have a four bet range less than all in here because if you make it two and they make it five and then you make it 11 and they shove now you have to put in 14 to try to win 50. and that's again that situation where you need 30-ish percent equity to justify calling and you will we're not going to discuss this exact scenario here but if there's a raise and a three bet before you so let's say LoJack raises and button three bets and you're in the small blind you need to be very very tight and it's just like you only shove a lot of your best hands for 25 big blinds in the scenario maybe like Aces kings queens Jacks tens nines Ace King Ace Queen something like that when it when you face a raise in a day three bet you have to be super duper nitty if you're against tight ranges you have to be even more nitty and that's that we're not going to be discussing that exact scenario though all right 25 big lines pre-flop ranges versus arrays under the gun versus the hijack so this is when we raise under the gun and then the hijack three-bet sauce with this range so they're three betting with this range in red which you see here is Ace of kings queens Jacks Ace King and then a few of these suited connected type hands and a few of the A6 off suits so what do we do against that well we get to call decently wide shockingly wide now these hands are showing that they

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

This situation is a different story altogether and demonstrates the importance of position. While we still have favorable fold equity here against the original limper, and the same frequent strength, there is now a Reg who has position on us lurking in the BB. This will make it harder to get heads-up with the Fish as this player can look to call our ISO or even 3-bet us fairly often here with his positional advantage. Furthermore, when Hero does manage to get the Fish to himself post-flop, he'll have to deal with being first to act on every street and forgo the advantages described earlier that he had in Hand 10. Consequently, our triangle is more empty than full here due to no factor being all that great. Hero calls 0.5BBs. So wait, it's okay for Hero to limp in the SB here? Absolutely! Limping should easily be higher EV than folding. Let's see why.

objectives from time to time.

in Game Theory will be significantly higher than someone that's trying to play with a Max exploit style and he will typically be much more difficult to play against because balance inherently disguises your strategies furthermore just because you understand Game Theory it doesn't mean that you can't exploit but if you only know how to exploit then you won't have anything to fall back upon when you don't know how your opponent plays which will often be the case so that is a video for today thanks for watching and until next time [Music] see you [Applause] [Music] [Music]

that equates to 3-betting an enormously wide bluff range. Presumably, if he's 3-betting 84o, he's also 3-betting 85o and 97o and T4o and 43s and so on. If he's 3-bet bluffing 84o, but not these better hands, then something has gone horribly wrong. For example, if Hero 3-bets 75% of all the possible hands he can be dealt as a bluff, then even sluggish Villains will notice this pattern and adjust by not folding too much anymore. As a result, Hero actually finds himself being suddenly played back at, and worse still, does not know exactly when this has started happening to him, to what extent and how soon he should readjust. A non-poker-playing friend curiously asked me about this recently and wondered: "Okay, but can't I just bluff with a trash hand then quickly stop bluffing again and own my opponent?" You can, but again you hurt your long term EV . If you only have X 3-bet bluffs that constitute an optimal strategy for every value 3-bet that you make, then you have a choice. You can either make those X bluffs with more playable hands with better blockers, or you can do them with trash. Which will be higher EV? It doesn't matter a great deal whether you use those finite 3-bet bluffs this orbit or the next one. It does matter what hands you choose to make those bluffs with. This is why we use the top of our folding range in the polar model and refrain from getting too out of line against most players. As we know from Chapter 8, against players who overfold we should look to overbluff as the correct exploitative adjustment. However, if we overbluff too much, then we create an even more obvious hole in our own game than Villain originally had in his. If we 3-bet 95% of hands, then Villain has a new monumentally effective plan at his disposal: namely that of underfolding against our 3-bets by flatting more, 4-bet bluffing more, or better, both. We can infer from this that the process of adjustment and readjustment in poker is exponential. In a world where both players over adjust, they open up bigger and bigger holes to leak money from in the long run. See Figure 51 below.

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the Strength of Your Hand We'll wrap up play in first position by summarizing it according to the strength of your hand. If your hand is a cinch or a near cinch, you have two options. One is to bet, and one is to check-raise. You would decide which to do according to the check-raise formula presented earlier. However, if you are sure you have the best hand but suspect your opponent will raise if you bet, you should bet out in an attempt to win three bets when your opponent raises and you reraise. If your hand figures to be a favorite when called but is not good enough to check-raise, you have two options — to bet or to check and then call. Basically you bet if your opponent will call with more hands than he'll bet with and you check and call if he'll bet with more hands than he'll call with. If your hand is an underdog when called, you have three options. One is to bet, a second is to check and call, and the third is to check and fold. (A bluff check-raise is a remote possibility against very tough players who are capable of very tough folds.) You should check and call if your opponent will bet more hands than he will call with, including some hands you can beat. You should also check and call when your opponent will check many hands that will beat you but might come out bluffing with some hands you can beat. And you should come out betting if you have Heads-Up On The End 219 a calling hand but your opponent will call with more hands than he will bet. Finally, if you have virtually no chance of winning if you check and your opponent bets and you are an underdog if you bet and he calls, then the proper play is to check and fold if he bets. Summary The concepts in this long chapter are important and slippery enough to warrant a final framing in an outline summary. The essence of each play is a judgment of its expectation. I. Last Position Play A. If you are second to act when all the cards are out and your opponent bets: 1.Call if your hand is not worth a raise but has a better chance of winning than the pot odds you are getting. Your chances of winning are the sum of the chancesthat your opponent is bluffing, plus the chances that your hand can beat his legitimate hand. 2.Raise if your opponent will still be the underdog after calling your raise. Raise also as a bluff if you think it will work often enough to have positive expectation. Also consider raising with what appears to be a calling hand if your opponent is capable of throwing away a better hand than yours for one more bet. B. If you are second to act when all the cards are out and your opponent checks: 1.Bluff if you think it will work often enough, remembering that a bluff

12 then it becomes even better to be using uh high frequency small sizing on the flop all right so the last hand we're going to go over um we're doing big blind versus big blind three bet versus a button call same exact thing we're just testing our Theory with high frequency small size C bet um big blinds range looks like this pretty aggressive 16 three but a and eight it's going to be about eight percent value eight percent Bluffs here uh and then in position flatting range looks like this a lot of strength all right Queen ten two this is the GTO Station sorry uh lots of half checking lots of big betting uh 14 into 18 7 into 18 4 into 18. Evo p is 9.7 and then I just locked it 100 C bet one third pot PV of out of position is 9.5 9.7 minus 9.5 option uh nothing just by just playing this simple strategy so just keep in mind just remember that when you're in position you go much smaller you go about 20 pot on every single board and then out of position you size up to 35 percent pot and you will be printing okay thank you guys for joining um goodbye

Diagram 2: Average EV by Stack Depth Table 19: Average EV for Different Strategies We see that by playing a more complex strategy than push/fold, Hero captures a larger portion of the pot, an extra 4.62% pot (7bb/100) when out of position and 14.6% pot (22bb/100) when in position. With very shallow stacks, the EV loss of applying a push/fold only strategy is very small, but as stacks get deeper, and particularly when having position, the value of other strategic options increases. Playing a more complex strategy than push/fold yields Hero a higher payoff. Diagram 3: Average Fold Frequency by Stack Depth

not so many as to disrupt the overall pattern. Hero’s checking range should have less equity and be more capped than their betting range. And your opponent should be able to predict that. What can they do with that information? They should be more inclined to bet into your weakened range on the turn than they were to bet into your uncapped Uncapped A range that includes the strongest hands. See: Capped . range on the flop. If they don’t bet, they should call and even raise your bets with weaker hands than they would have called or raised on the flop. In addition to capping and weakening your own range, a check keeps your opponent’s range wider and weaker than their range for calling a bet would be and incentivizes them to put chips in on later streets with a weaker range than they otherwise would. Bet Conversely, when you bet, you make the pot larger against the strongest parts of your opponent’s range while causing the weakest parts to fold. You also give your opponent the opportunity to raise you, which is the typically well understood component of equity preservation. One reason to check is to avoid the risk of getting raised off your equity. The typically well understood reason to check is to avoid the risk of getting raised off your equity. Another but less understood reason is to avoid growing the pot when your hand performs well against the weaker part of the opponent’s range but poorly against the stronger part. A less understood reason to check is when your hand performs well against the weaker part of the opponent’s range but poorly against the stronger part. Flop Examples For these examples, we will consider a single-raised 100bb cash game pot between BTN and BB . Despite a 54% equity advantage, BTN’s equilibrium strategy checks the flop more than half the time: BTN’s flop strategy vs BB on K94 tt (100bb effective SRP) One surprising hand which strictly prefers checking is A ♠ J ♠ . This hand has many properties that make betting appealing: Equity when called . A ♠ J ♠ retains 30–35% equity when called, depending on the size of the bet. Fold equity . Some better hands will fold to larger bets, but even a small bet can push BB off many hands with 15–25% equity. Barreling potential . If BB calls a flop bet, A ♠ J ♠ can easily turn a draw and keep barreling. Nut potential . The outside chance of rivering the nut straight or flush provides a nice consolation prize if BB does not fold to earlier street bets. Despite all this, A ♠ J ♠ never bets. Why? Because most of these arguments apply at least as well to the checking node as to the betting nodes. Equity . A ♠ J ♠ has 49% equity in the checking node, meaning it loses roughly ⅓ of its equity by betting. This is the strongest argument for checking, and we will return to it later. Fold equity . There

Hand Range 197: SB vs CO (40bb) • All-in 1% / • 3-bet 12.1% / • Call 12.7% / • Fold 74.2%

margin, but I am not trying to categorize what a good night is, I am just trying to give all you players out there some perspective, something to keep you in your best game and always come out ahead. So understanding the expectation of a game can keep your mood even. Playing within the level of the blinds is a more important standard to evaluate then calculating your hourly rate. If you calculate your bets and your bankroll holdings in comparison to what blind level you are playing at, you will see a dramatic change in your game. You will not expect to see that huge swing in cash sitting in front of you, but it will happen, and most likely, it will be a positive integer instead of a negative one. When I realized, after a long night of poker that I had increased my initial $25 - 60 times the blind level I was playing at, a different perspective occurred. I never hit a Full House the whole night and had only two Flushes, two big money making hands, but I could still say my night was profitable. Therefore, whether you play $.25 cent big blinds or $10, the number of big blind bets you walk away with is a good way to judge your game. I will give you an example of a loose player in a hand I played. I had Q 6 in the big blind and the flop came 2 6 9. I bet with my Pair of 6’s and everyone folded but me and another player. The Turn card was a 6 giving me trips, so I raise and this other guy goes all-in, 10 times the pot. Well, he could have been bluffing but more likely, he hit a Full House. Nevertheless, the bet was not proportional to the pot or the blinds. I folded and he won the pot. However, within ten hands this other player busted out with that same type of loose play mentality when he did bet into someone else’s nut boat. I could have easily had a better hand and he was playing very loose, but risking my bankroll was not worth it. The hourly rate for the penny tables on a good night should be $2 to $4 dollars an hour if you play this way. Not much, but, you have not gambled that much. Over a month of playing say all 30 days with a $10-20 win average would give you $300 to $600 a month. Trust me, it works; play patient and be a tight aggressive poker player. You will win in the end if you keep your perspective. If you are playing at a no limit table, this gives you the chance of doubling up in one hand. It may take three hours to find that one hand; it may take all week but it can increase your hourly rate in one fell swoop. I suggest reading Zen and the Art of Poker to help you stay centered in your game and Lou Krieger’s “More

to memorize frequencies for a specific subset of flops. Three factors drive the SB’s flop betting frequency in limped pots: The extent of their equity advantage . SB starts with the stronger pre-flop range in a limped pot. The more the flop helps them relative to the BB, the more often they will bet. The extent of their nuts advantage . SB has more incentive to limp big cards, including big pocket pairs, than BB has to check them. SB will bet more often on flops on which a single, big pair performs well. The extent of their positional disadvantage . Being out of position is always bad, but it is worse on more dynamic boards. The easier it will be for BB to turn strong hands, the harder it will be for SB to deny them equity with a flop bet and so the less frequently SB will bet. Here are some flop reports for 60bb stacks. Notice that SB bets more often when big cards flop (except for the 222 flop, where their overpairs give them a significant nuts advantage). These flops tend to magnify their equity and nuts advantages, and they are also more static, with top pair being harder to draw out on. SB also prefers betting disconnected flops , which are more static and better for the kinds of strong one pair hands SB is more likely to make. The same patterns are on display at 25bb . AJ6r is a good example of a disconnected high card board that is especially good for the SB. With 60bb stacks , they have nearly 57% equity and many more of the Best Hands and Good Hands. As a result, they bet about 77% of their range, using the small bet almost exclusively. Which Hands Should SB Bet? With such a big range advantage, it’s hard to go wrong betting. On the AJ6 r flop, literally every hand is a candidate for betting, though some are better than others. SB’s checks come not from their worst hands but from their modest holdings, those with 25-50% equity . With such wide ranges, K-high and even Q-high are not worthless hands . On the contrary, they are mostly strong enough to check and call a small flop bet, especially when they have a backdoor flush draw to go along with their backdoor straight draw. With both players starting with such wide ranges, the rank of your unpaired hands matters quite a bit. Properly valuing unpaired hands like these is the trickiest part of playing limped, blind vs blind confrontations. Many players are too quick to assume they must either bluff or fold when they have no pair, but with both players starting with such wide ranges, the rank of your unpaired hands matters quite a bit. Things get even tricker on lower and more coordinated flops , where SB must be more selective with their betting. Here’s their strategy with 60bb on 762TT . Far more hands fall into the 25-50% equity bucket on this flop; that’s what makes it more

must know your opponents. Before you can technically analyze what your opponents might have, you must have played with them for a considerable length of time, seen how they play their hands against you, and most importantly, watched them play hands in which you are not involved. Even when you are not in a hand, you should not relax your concentration. You want to discover how your opponents tend to play the various hands they might have. Will a particular opponent raise with strong hands in early position, or will he slowplay? Will he raise on a draw? How does he play his big hands from one round of betting to the next? How often does he bluff? The more you know about an opponent's general playing habits, the less difficulty you will have reading what he might be holding in a specific situation. Ironically, it is not as hard to read good players as it is to read a bunch of incompetents. When a good player makes a play, there is a sensible reason for it, and your job is to find the reason and Put that player on a hand. But there is no pattern to the play of a 221 222 Chapter Twenty-two weak player, and so you must do a great deal of tentative guesswork to put him on a hand. Nevertheless, by playing solidly against weak, unpredictable players, you have to win eventually. Sooner or later a sound, logical poker player must beat someone playing by the seat of his pants. The latter may get lucky for a while, catching the inside straights he draws to, winning with two small pair when you raised with aces on third street, but percentages are bound to catch up with him. Many good players get upset when a sucker draws out on them. While it's never pleasant to lose a pot you were favored to win, you should nevertheless welcome these beats. Congratulate such players on hanging in there to make their hands. Encourage them so they play even more sloppily. It shouldn't be long before you have their money. The more you play against average-to-good players, the easier it becomes to read your opponents' hands because they tend to check, bet, and raise for logical reasons and with a certain consistency to their play. However, as your opponents get tougher and tougher, your ability to read hands starts to fall off because tough players disguise their hands and they are sometimes intentionally inconsistent. They make tricky, ambiguous plays like semi-bluffing, like raising with the second-best hand, like slowplaying right to the end and then check-raising you. They may even play a hand as it would normally be played, which can sometimes be the most deceptive play of all. In a word, they do all the sorts of things we have been discussing in this book. They are trying as hard to deceive you about what they have as you are trying to discover what they have. And of course, you are presumably playing your hands equally hard against them,

While it’s lovely to flush-over-flush your opponent, that is not where suited Ace-X find most of their extra value, especially not with shallow stacks. Flopping as little as a backdoor flush draw is often enough for these hands to call that small continuation bet, enabling them to realize more of their equity than their offsuit counterparts. Here’s the BB’s strategy facing a 33% pot continuation bet on J ♠ 7 ♦ 2 ♣ . The backdoor flush draws all continue profitably, earning nearly half a big blind in EV. The lone A6s without a backdoor, along with all the A6o, have no better option than to fold despite having nearly 40% equity! Dominating Pairs The BTN’s opening range is somewhat polar at 20bb, and it becomes more so as stacks get shallower. This is because the BTN also employs an open shoving range containing medium-ish hands like small pairs, suited broadways, and some of their own offsuit A x. BB’s shoves gain the most when they cause dominating hands to fold . They gain the least when they cause dominated hands to fold. Thus, hands like A2 o and A3 o make great shoving hands because they can fold out some better A x and because BTN doesn’t open many dominated 2 s or 3 s anyway so there isn’t much concern about missing value from those. Shoves gain the most when they cause dominating hands to fold. There are a lot of suited 7 s and 8 s and even some offsuit 8 x in BTN’s opening range that will fold to a BB shove, however, along with the smaller A x that folds. Thus, shoving A7 o and A8 o is less appealing for BB. With such shallow stacks, you don’t need top pair to win a big pot . Facing a small continuation bet on that J72 r flop, BB check-raises a fair bit of second pair, with an emphasis on A7 o. Of course, they run into better hands sometimes, but they also get value from all the weaker 7 s in BTN’s range. Pairing the Ace Under different circumstances, A8o could be considered a “ trouble hand ” or “ reverse implied odds hand ”. If you were calling a raise from an early position raiser and had a lot of money behind, you would anticipate under realizing your equity . When you paired the Ace, you’d be hard-pressed to get value from worse and would sometimes lose a good-sized pot to a better kicker. Showing up with a hand your opponent does not expect can pay big rewards. Playing 20bb deep against a BTN raiser, this is not a concern. In fact, BB’s A x all has fantastic equity realization of roughly 200%. This is precisely because shoving A x is so appealing before the flop. Showing up with a hand your opponent does not expect can pay big rewards. On the rare occasion that you do make top pair on an Ace-high flop, your opponent will have a lot of incentive both to bluff and

apart ratio that you know say we three about to a thousand here there's gonna be 2k in the pot we have 9k back so now it's a four and a half to one stack the pot ratio this hands gonna be much easier for us to play versus if we have pocket tens and we flat call go for five ways to the pot it's just really hard for us to win the pot unless we flop a set so yes and what Bob just said linear because we have a lot of people left to act we just wanna we knock people out and play this pot heads up and having a linear range now it's give me a tighter linear range because we're facing a early position open so we might even go tighter we're probably gonna go tighter than their linear range I presented earlier let's say this person is opening you know somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of hands maybe we just three about the top seven percent of hands like maybe half of them maybe even a little less than that three about the top five percent of hands but flat coloring here is not as attractive as an option with as many people behind us next example we have 40 big blinds the we are in the big blind with 40 big blinds the cutoff has open to two-and-a-half big blinds do we want to be linear or polar in this position you see for Polar's five folders alright good everyone gets this right this is the easiest one probably this is polar and I don't think we don't want to make a case here for a linear range so this is gonna be pretty much your definition of a polar range here we're gonna be flat calling a lot there's a you know what big blind Annie here so we're getting a good price we're gonna want to call a lot and we're gonna be putting our opponent into kind of a shove or fold mode if we three bet because these short stacks so we're gonna be very polar and you know hand play ability doesn't matter that much because we're so shallow so hands like a seven off suit or even like King ton off two hands just block their jamming range or the type of hands that we want to three bet and last example we're in the small blind the button has open to 300 chips the big blind is here for a hundred let's assume the big blind is a regular that you know plays a lot of tournaments so do you want to be polar or linear here in this position see a couple of Polar's a fuel in ears so here you definitely want to be linear with your three-bedroom range you don't want a three-bet polar we want to knock this big blind out of the pot and we want to play a heads up pot against a wide button range with a shallow stack

2-2-2-2-3, you could raise it up and stay pat right off the bat. If 325 you get any callers, you would be forced to bet the hand the whole way through and hope that your opponent doesn’t make a hand he is willing to call you with. Many times, when you stay pat right off the bat, alarm bells go off in your opponents’ heads. They may suspect a snow and call you on the river to find out. To avoid this, you can draw one to your 2-2-2-2-3, and stay pat after the first draw. This approach is generally more believable and looks less suspicious. If somewhere along the way, someone stays pat as well, it’s time to abort the mission. You should fold to a bet or, naturally, draw if it’s not bet to you. I played in a game that illustrates a great way to send your opponents on tilt. In a $1,500/$3,000 game with Gus Hansen, I tried snowing a hand with 2-2- 2-7-Q. Unfortunately, going into the last draw Gus stayed pat in front of me. It looked like the jig was up. Slightly embarrassed, I drew three cards. Gus bet right out, and I looked down at a 3-4-5. So obviously, I raised it! I caught not one, not two, but three perfect cards. Needless to say Gus didn’t find the hand all that funny. The point of the story is simple: When you get caught, abort the mission. Don’t continue through with the bluff if someone else has stood pat as well. There is another, more sophisticated snow play that often works: Say both you and your opponent are drawing one going into the last draw. Your opponent checks, and you make 3-3-4-5-7. Since your opponent checked, it’s likely that he is still drawing. If you bet and stay pat, your opponent will have to assume you hit your hand. If your opponent misses on the river, you would continue with the bluff and hope that your opponent mucks. If he makes a jack, queen, king, ace, or a pair, he’ll almost always fold. There is one last snow play I’d like to share with you. Going into the last draw your opponent is drawing one and you draw two in position to a 2-3-7. Your opponent, being ahead one card, bets—as he should. Then you catch 2- 2! If you call and draw, you would be an underdog to any hand, so what about raising and staying pat? If your opponent calls and draws one again, you can stay pat with your trip deuces and bet if your opponent misses. Now if your opponent stays pat anyway, then you’ll have to abort the mission and 326 try to get really lucky drawing two. ACE-TO-FIVE TRIPLE DRAW In essence, deuce-to-seven and ace-to-five triple draw are the same game with different hand ranking systems. The same rules apply, and the betting structure is the same. The major difference is this: In deuce-to-seven, the best possible hand is 2-3- 4-5-7; while in ace-to-five, the best hand is

Hand Range 253: HJ vs LJ 4-bet (40bb) • Call 51% / • Fold 49%

SIZING YOUR PREFLOP RAISES 78 opponent will have only $1,160 left in what is a $360 pot. If he follows up with a roughly pot-sized bet on the turn, you can raise all-in, and he’ll be hard- pressed not to call. After all, it will be only $800 more to him, and he’ll be getting $1,880-to-$800 or 2.35-to-1 to call. That would be a tough laydown (and often not a good one either). By doubling the size of the preflop raise, you got over $1,400 after the flop instead of a few hundred. Unfortunately, there’s an obvious downside to making big raises with “specu- lative” hands like pocket fours. The bigger your raise, the more getting reraised costs you. When you raised to $30, if the ace-king player had reraised to $100 or so, you could call. It would be $70 more to you, you’d have position, and there’d be $1,400 left in the stacks (or 20-to-1 stack odds). That’s definitely a profitable situation, especially since stacking your opponent on a king-nine-four flop in such a big pot will be almost automatic. On the other hand, when you raised to $60, if the ace-king player had reraised to $200, your situation would be grim. Now it would be $140 more to you, and there’d be only $1,300 left, so your stack odds would be less than 10-to-1. Even with position, you can’t salvage this hand. Sure, you’ll certainly get it all if the flop comes K♣9♡4♢, but if it comes Q♢J♢4♠, you won’t. And if it comes Q♢J♢6♠or K♣8♡5♢or even 9♠2♢2♡, you’ll be out $200. So you can profitably call a reraise after the $30 raise, but you’re forced to fold after the $60 raise. That’s the downside. But as long as you mix up your play well, you shouldn’t get people playing back at your big raises too often. Having said that, don’t raise more than you need to get the job done. If a $60 raise will build a big pot, don’t raise $100. That’s exposing yourself to unnecessary risk. When raising with a speculative “big pot” hand like a small pocket pair, raise enough to brew a big pot, but no more. Suppose now instead it is you with A♠K♡on the button. In this case a raise to $60 makes no sense. You rarely can win a big pot with this hand, but you might win a moderate amount if you run into ace-nine or king-ten. So why would you try to get those hands to fold? Make Bigger Value Raises Against Straightforward Players When you raise for value (because you think your hand is the strongest), make bigger raises against straightforward players. Straightforward players tip you to their big hands earlier and more reliably. As a result, you can get away from bad situations more quickly and cheaply. Suppose you are in the big blind against one limper. While a $60 raise out of position with ace-king might be bad against a tough player, it could be perfect against a straightforward player. Notice that this is different from

Expert Heads Up No Limit Hold’em, Volume 1: Optimal and Exploitative Strategies (D&B Publishing): “Equilibrium strategies are, by definition, maximally exploitative strategies when facing an opponent who is playing his own GTO strategy – in this case, every hand is played as profitably as possible. So, the only way a hand can be played in two different ways at the equilibrium is if both of those actions have exactly the same EV; that is, if the player is indifferent to his choice of actions. This is known as the Indifference Principle: if a player plays a mixed strategy with a hand at the equilibrium, then it must be that all of the actions he takes with a nonzero frequency have the same EV. This is a powerful statement, because it tells us something about the GTO strategy of the player’s opponent. If a player is indifferent between two options, it must be that his opponent is playing in such a way as to a make him so.” This principle is intimately connected with the idea of balance. Think back to our previous example where we know that BN’s GTO push range is 58.3% of hands. The reason they can’t go all-in with a larger percentage of hands is because BB is calling enough so that the BN can’t profit with the bottom of their pushing range (43s). If they could push and profit with the bottom of their range, the BN would just keep profitably adding hands to their pushing range. At the same time, if the BN was losing money pushing 43s, they would choose not to do so and another hand would become the new bottom of their range. So, the BB must call the exact amount that makes the worst hand in BN shoving range break even or, in other words, indifferent to pushing or folding. Since 43s is indifferent to pushing or folding, it is played with a mixed strategy: 74%- push, 26%-fold. If the BN pushes 43s more than 74%, BB could exploit by calling more hands, making 43s a -EV Push. At the same time, in equilibrium, the BB can only profitably call 37.4% of hands. The bottom of their calling range, Q6s, is breaking even and is also played with a mixed strategy: call-39%, fold-61%. If the BB calls Q6s more than 61% of the time, the BN could exploit by jamming a little bit tighter, making Q6s a -EV Call. The Clairvoyance Toy Game Consider the following simplified poker situation: Example

Free Card With a Marginal Hand When you are certain you have the best hand, deciding whether to bet with more cards to come is relatively easy. However, you are frequently in a situation where you suspect you have the best hand, but you know you will be called only if you are beaten. Still, you must consider betting so that you do not give your opponent a free shot to outdraw you in the event you do have the best hand. The factors to consider when deciding to bet are: 1.Your chances of having the best hand. 2.The chances the next card will give your opponent the best hand when he would have folded had you bet. 3.The size of the pot. 4.The chances you will outdraw a better hand that might call you. The larger the pot and the greater the chances your opponent will outdraw you on the next card, the more reason you have to bet. Point number 4 needs some explaining. Suppose you are afraid you do not have as good a hand as your opponent. Before betting, you should take into account what your chances are of outdrawing the hand you fear your opponent might have. The higher those chances, the more reason you have to bet. The lower they are, the more reason you have to check. To take an obvious example first, if you have two pair and a four-flush in seven-card stud and you are worried that your opponent has made a straight, you should most certainly bet rather than give him a free card in the event he does not yet have the straight. Your combined chances of making either a full house or a flush to beat a straight are very good. On the other hand, if you have two pair with no four-flush and fear your opponent has made a straight, you would be inclined to check since your chances of making a full house are slim. 88 Chapter Ten Here is a more subtle example of the same principle from hold 'em. The flop comes: In one instance you are holding and in the other you are holding The Free Card 89 The fewer ways you have of improving, the more convinced you have to be that you already have the best hand in order to bet. Thus, while you might check two 8s when the flop comes , you would most definitely bet two queens even though the latter hand also has only two ways of improving (the remaining two queens). With two queens you are pretty sure you already have the best hand, yet you are not strong enough to risk giving a free card. Summary When you're trying to decide whether or not to bet your hand and worry about making a mistake, you should keep in mind one very important principle — a mistake that costs you the pot is a catastrophe, especially if the pot has become relatively large, while a mistake that costs you one bet is not. When in doubt, make sure

Hand Range 31: Heads-up BB vs BN 2.5x Open GTO strategy (Rake Adjusted) • 3Bet 10bb 22.7% / • Call 45% / • Fold 32.3% Again, for the BB rake-adjusted solution we see an increase in raising frequency, a decrease in calling frequency and more folding than in the solution with no rake. Bunching Effect Folding ranges have an impact on the hand distribution of the players left to act. For example, at a 9-max table, after six folds, the BN’s raise first in range has to be tighter at a 3-max table

inclined to slowplay A♠2♠on a 5♣4♠3♣flop than 7♠6♠on the same flop. With A♠2♠, you’re happy to give a free card to

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For the first time in the chapter we have a genuine value hand capable of extracting a lot of money from worse hands. The importance of playing this spot correctly will be covered at great length in the next chapter, but for now you should have the instinct that against this passive opponent, Hero needs to start betting to build the pot as quickly as possible. Since this player is fit-or-fold we should expect him to call most sizes of bet when he's connected and fold to most sizes when he hasn't. Therefore, bigger is better for value and Hero chooses a large c-bet size here with his value hand. Hero bets 6.5BB.

value betting but they also know you're more you're unlikely to call large Rays with your mediocre pair due to this Dynamic you have to be careful with what you've thinly valued at in cash games you need to consider checking back and trapping more in cash games especially versus more creative and aggressive opponents alright 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

consider betting between $140 and $200. Keep in mind also that you can increase your bet depending on the number of players you're facing. Against a single opponent, choose a bet at the low end of your range. Against several opponents, pick an amount at the high end of the range. The more opponents, the greater the chance that someone will come in against you. Action: You actually bet $100. Player E calls. The big blind and Player A fold. The pot is now $370. You bet too little. If Player E is on a club flush draw, he got the proper pot odds to call. Fourth Street: K♦ Question: What should you bet now? Answer: With your trip kings, it looks like you'll win the hand easily unless he's on a flush draw and hits his flush on , the end. You need to bet enough so that he's not getting the right odds to draw to his flush, but you also want to extract some more money in case he's chasing you with some lesser holding and is inclined to play. You both have much more than the pot at this point - your chip count is $830, his is $860. Against most opponents you should bet about $250 here. To call, he would have to put in $250 for a pot of $620, about 2.5-to-l odds. He's more than 4-to-l to hit his flush, so it's a blunder for him to call if he knows what you have. Action: You actually bet $200, and he calls. The pot is now $770. You have $630 left, he has $660. Fifth Street: J♣ Question: Three clubs are now showing on board. What do you do? Answer: Now you've reached a genuinely tough decision. Let's work through it and see what should go into your thinking in these situations. The first question you should ask yourself is this: "If I check and he makes a substantial bet or goes all-in, will I throw away my trip kings?" If the answer to this question is no, then you should tend to bet now. By betting, you'll make some extra money when he calls with some hands that he wouldn't have bet if you had just checked. For example, if he was holding J♥9♥ to start, he wouldn't necessarily bet on the end, but he'd almost certainly call a bet by you. The same reasoning holds true if he's been playing hands like ace-jack or queen-jack, or even slowplaying aces or queens. If you would throw your trip kings away after a bet, then you should tend to check now. In no77 limit tournaments you don't throw these hands away. Your time is severely limited. The blinds keep crawling up behind you, and you have to keep accumulating chips to stay ahead of them. A set of kings against a possible flush is just too good a situation to throw away. The real choice is between going all-in right now and betting something like $200. The $200 bet will win some more money from

you raise, how much? Answer: Ace-queen suited is a good hand, worth playing in any position. Here you're in middle position, behind a single caller. So a raise is appropriate. You should raise three to four times the big blind, which would be $90 to $120. Besides getting more money in the pot when you have a good hand, a raise here accomplishes three other key goals. 1. By discouraging players behind you from acting, it helps you get heads-up against Player B. 2. It helps you have good position after the flop. 3. It helps to define your hand. Any player that enters after you will be entering a pot that has been raised in front of him. He'll probably have a very strong hand. Action: You raise to $100. Players F and G and the two blinds fold. Player B calls for an additional $70. The pot is now $245. Flop: 8♠7♠6♣ Action: Player B checks. What do you do? Answer: You need to bet here. There's a good chance you have the best hand. But if you don't currently have the best hand, you could still easily be a favorite to win the pot. (You have a nut flush draw and two overcards to the board, so you have plenty of outs if your opponent stays with you.) Also, your bet may make your opponent fold, which is desirable. I'd recommend a bet of about $160. Action: You actually bet $200, and Player B calls. The pot is now $645. Fourth Street: J♦ Action: Player B checks. Do you check or raise again? Answer: Your bet was a little higher than I'd like to see. Players do this because they're eager to steal the pot, and they think that a bigger bet is more likely to close the deal. That's perhaps marginally true. But a player who's willing to fold to a $200 bet will almost always fold to a $160 bet. And the player who calls the $200 bet almost certainly has you beaten at this point. (Remember, right now your hand is just ace-high.) Although I think Player B is ahead at this point, he did check, so you should check too and see a free card. 138 Action: Actually you bet another $200. Player B calls. Bad decision. If you make plays like this, you need to stop and think about what you're doing. Here you're just throwing money away. You bet on the flop because there was a significant chance that Player B had nothing and would throw the hand away. Instead he called a bet of $200. Therefore, he has something, at least more than you do. The J♦ came, which didn't help you but which might have helped him. Can you possibly believe that he'll fold this $200 bet when he called the last one? All you're doing is building a pot in which you're sure you're second-best with one card to come. That's not smart poker. (The bet might be okay if you were first to act and were trying to see

your fours as well right so those cards will be really good for you and that's gonna result in you winning the pot a lot sometimes you win a lot on the turn sometimes you do not and that is a okay when you are check two on the turn you should probably exploitatively bet with everything usually using a large polarized size assuming your opponent is we'll call them standard right if your opponent is going to bet most of their good hands on the turn and check most of their marginal hands and garbage on the turn most people are going to fold too often so exploitatively bet with everything using a bigger size because if you bet small they're just going to call with all their bluff catchers and their range is gonna be a lot of bluff catchers and garbage right now obviously some people are never gonna fold a bluff catcher if your opponent is never gonna fold a bluff catcher then clearly you should not be bluffing all that often maybe you shouldn't be floating all that often to begin with but you're gonna find that the vast majority of players especially in the small and medium stakes games bet the flop too often check the turn too often fold to a turn bet too often and fold to a river bet too often so against those players you should be exploitatively betting very very frequently been betting big because if they have a lot of marginal hands and garbage you want to apply a lot of pressure um generally betting with lots of decent well betting when a lot of draws arrive that make most decent pairs on the flop much weaker is ideal so say the flop comes 983 two spades and the turn is a jack right that's the spot where you have ten seven you have queen 10 you have the flush draws right you just have a lot of those hands and your opponent depending on where they raise from may not right so if they don't have very many of those hands and you have a lot of them and you know they'll bet all their flushes on the turn and all their straights on the turn and all their sets on the turn and all their two pairs on the turn that makes their range top pair and worse and while they could have some whatever the top pair card was jack i think i said while they could have some jacks if you blast a turn and blast the river they're going to be pretty unhappy and they usually don't have even the top pair they usually have something weaker than that that they're going to fold out now if there are three spades on the board your opponent is very likely to check call your turnback because they're gonna have a lot of hands with the acer king of spades right but they're gonna fold all those out on the river whenever they miss and when they

Nodelock The act of fixing ("locking") a player's strategy at some decision point ("node"). This process is used to build exploitative strategies.

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was Queen seventy-five that's still pretty good right king seventy-five that's still pretty good really you just want the presence of one big card because one big card is pretty nice alright in position as the preflop raisers this is where we raise preflop the opponent calls so in this scenario we bet when you wanna bet using a 50% pot bet size or so with most strong made hands and draws on coordinated boards event using a 30% pot size with almost your entire range on uncoordinated boards if you all had time to go through the cash game master class the flop section we discuss this thoroughly whenever the board is coordinated you're usually not gonna have such a range or not advantage they want to be betting less for but using a big-sized when the board is uncoordinated you usually have the range advantage which allows you to bet everything kind of small so let's see how it lines up here you men raise cut off we're double underline I want it what's that from that's there for all right human race cut off and big blind calls what is your preflop raising range again looks a little bit funny right that's because we are men raising all these hands and we're jamming the other stuff King Jack offsuit eights Jack offsuit ace three offsuit ace two suited pairs Jack nine suited King nine suited right we're jamming those hands preflop for 15 big blinds from the cutoff now we're men raising these hands so here's what we're doing take a look notice range is pretty good in this scenario since we are doing the continuation betting is like we're check raising all-in or anything like that we can have more draws in our range but this this range actually works out just pretty nicely if you just break it down naturally because it's you know one to one ratio which we can even have a few more draws if you want it and then this two to one checking range you may opt to strengthen your checking range a little bit like I don't think it'd be insane to check aces and again these post flop solutions are not they've not been run through a solver but I can tell you it's gonna be pretty close to this and that's just because that's how these things normally get broken down and you have to ask so I want to try to memorize a chart I don't want to know how to make the chart myself and yes we're gonna be a tiny bit off game theory optimal doing it this way where we're just breaking our hand range now and very obviously because I bet if you drain this to a solver it probably tell you to check the aces some portion of the time and the King some portion of the time and you know that's that's slightly different what we have here but we are humans we need to make our lives as easy as we

speaking,

a positive expectation of 20 cents per bet. A bettor is taking the odds when he stands to win more than he bets, as in the example above. He is laying the odds when he stands to win less than he bets. A bettor may have either a positive or a negative expectation, whether he is taking the odds or laying them. If you lay $50 to win $10 when you are only a 4-to-1 favorite, you have a negative expectation of $2 per bet, since you'll win $10 four times but lose $50 once, on average, for a net loss of $ 10 after five bets. On the other hand, if you lay $30 to win $ 10 when you're a 4-to-1 favorite, you have a positive expectation of $2, since you'll win $10 four times again but lose only $30 once, for a net profit of $10. Expectation shows that the first bet is a bad one and the second bet is a good one. Mathematical expectation is at the heart of every gambling situation. When a bookmaker requires football bettors to lay $11 to win $10, he has a positive expectation of 50 cents per $10 bet. When a casino pays even money on the pass line at the craps table, it has a positive expectation of about $1.40 per $100 bet since the game is structured so that the pass line bettor will lose 50.7 percent of the time and win 49.3 percent of the time, on average. Indeed it is this seemingly minuscule positive expectation that provides casinos around the world with all their enormous profits. As Vegas World casino owner Bob Stupak has said, "Having one-thousandth of one percent the worst of it, if he plays long enough, that one-thousandth of one percent will bust the richest man in the world." In most gambling situations like casino craps and roulette, the odds on any given bet are constant. In others they change, and mathematical expectation can show you how to evaluate a particular situation. In blackjack, for instance, to determine the right play, mathematicians have calculated your expectation 1 2 C h a p t e r T w o E x p e c t a t i o n a n d H o u r ly R a t e 1 3 p l ay i n g a h an d o n e w ay an d y o ur e xp e c t at i o n p l ay i n g i t an o th e r w ay . W h i c h e v e r p l ay g i v e s y o u a h i g h e r p o s i t i v e e xp e c t a t i o n o r a l o w e r n e g at i v e e xp e c t at i o n i s th e ri g ht

With 25bb, the GTO strategy rejams 1.45% on average. Again, this frequency is so low that, in practice, it is better to ignore the all-in range and instead play a 3-bet/call/fold strategy. If a hand is played with a mixed strategy between call/rejam, play it as a pure call, and if the mixed strategy involves a 3-bet non-all-in/rejam, play it as a pure non-all-in 3-bet. The 4.43% on average 3-betting range is polarized, including the top of the range and a variety of bluffs such as ATs-A7s, AJo, ATo, KTs, K9s, and KQo. Notice this range is slightly stronger than it was from the later positions, CO and BN. The calling range averages 7.25% and includes hands such as mid pocket pairs 99-55, AQo, AJo, KQo, suited broadways and some suited Ax including AQs-A8s, A7s, A5s and A4s (Hand Ranges 248-251).

Figure 31 - Calling in the BB vs UTG-CO Opens The main difference between calling these opens from the BB and doing so in position is that set mining drops in value in the BB. I recommend just folding the small pairs to this sizing as the ability to extract value post-flop, as we know, suffers greatly when Hero is out of position. As we face a later position opening range, weaker hands become playable, but note that the Gap Concept is very much in effect here. Hero is opting to play a much tighter range vs. each position then he'd elect to open from that position himself. This is a healthy approach and ensures that calling hands have enough implied odds (EG. 66), frequent strength (EG. KQo) or both (EG. JTs) to outweigh the positional disadvantage. Opening ranges widen dramatically on the BU and sizing tends to differ more than in the other positions. Some Regs will choose to min-open as we discussed in Chapter 2. Others will make it 2.5x

round of betting as a 29-to-20 favorite than as a 23-to-20 favorite, and so the correct play here is to check and call. This is the point of the rule: Check and call when your opponent will bet with more hands than he will call. By checking against such an opponent, you increase your chances of winning one last bet. Suppose you are still a small favorite if you bet. Once again you have hand 80, and your new opponent will call with hands 57 and up. But this opponent is much more timid than the other, and Heads-Up On The End 211 you know he will bet only with hands 81 and upward. How should you play? It might at first seem correct to check and fold if your opponent bets, since any time he bets behind you he has you beat. However, when you check, you give up an even-money bet as a 23-to-20 favorite, which cannot be correct. That's more than the vigorish that keeps bookmakers in business. After making that bet 43 times, you will be ahead 3 units on average. Under no circumstances, then, can it be correct to check and fold if you are favored to win when your opponent calls you. As a 23-to-20 favorite, the correct play here is to bet. The only time it might be correct to check is when you're not sure whether you're the favorite and when you're also worried about a raise that you will have to call. Playing Fair-to-Good Hands in First Position as an Underdog In cases where you think you're the underdog if called, the decision to bet or check becomes even more ticklish. Let's say there's $60 in the pot in a $ 10-$20 game, and again you have hand 80. But this time you know your opponent will call only with hands 65 and up. Thus, you are a 20-to-15 underdog if your opponent calls. You also know that if you check, your opponent will bet with hands 70 and up. How should you play? As an underdog, you might think you should check. But what will you do if your opponent bets after you check? Since there's $60 in the pot plus your opponent's $20, you're getting $80-to- $20 or 4-to-1 odds from the pot, and we said your opponent will bet with hands 70-100. You have hand 80, and so you'll lose to 20 hands and beat 10 hands. Since you are getting 4-to-1 from the pot and are only a 2-to-l underdog, clearly you must call when your opponent bets. Look again at what happens when you bet. Your opponent will call with hands 65-100. By betting you've added five wins — when your opponent has hands 65-69 — to your possibilities. 212 Chapter Twenty-one Instead of going in as a 20-to-10 underdog, which you would be doing if you checked, you're going in as a 20-to-15 underdog since you'll still lose to 20 hands, but now you will beat 15 hands instead of 10. So the correct play is to

is now $50. Question: What do you do? Answer: You're in early position with a hand that is not that strong. One player is already in and seven players are yet to act behind you. You fold. Ace-ten is one of those seductive hands that traps many players into losing a lot of money over time. Remember this about kickers - they're on an accelerated depreciation schedule. Ace-king is a fine hand. Ace-queen is a little weaker, but still good. With ace-jack, you're already sliding rapidly down a slippery slope. With ace-ten, you've slid down the slope, fallen off the cliff, and lie in wreckage at the bottom with hands like ace-five and ace-six. When you evaluate a kicker, remember that it has to be able, on occasion, to win the hand for you on its own, when no ace appears on the board. So a king is just fine, but a ten looks pretty weak when kings, queens, or jacks appear. You should fold this hand without giving it much thought. But the player we're watching decides to play, so let's see what happens. Action: You call for $20. Players D, E, F, and G all fold. The button calls. The small blind folds and the big blind checks. There's now $90 in the pot, and you're third to act out of four players. This was an excellent result for you. There were no raises, and your position after the flop is relatively good. Flop: T♠9♥3♥ Action: The big blind bets $40, and Player B folds. The pot is $110, and it's $40 to you. Question: What's your play? Answer: That was a very good flop for your hand. You have top pair with top kicker. The big blind's bet doesn't necessarily mean anything. It looks like what we call a probe bet - a bet of about half the pot or less, designed to win the pot cheaply or gather some information. You should raise here both to define your hand and to chase out Player H. If your bet draws a big reraise, you're probably done with the hand. Action: You raise $80. The button folds, and the big blind calls. The pot is now $250. Fourth Street: 5♠ Action: The big blind checks. What do you do? 100 Answer: The big blind is certainly acting like he's on a draw, perhaps to a spade or heart flush. If that's the case, he's about a 4-to-l underdog to make his hand. (There are 9 spades outstanding, out of a total of 46 cards that the players hasn't seen yet. So he has 9 winning cards and 37 losing ones, making him a 37-to-9 underdog, or about 4-to-l. Remember this number for flush draws with one card to come.) If he's on a flush draw, you want to make sure he's not getting the right odds to draw to his hand. You need to bet enough so the odds aren't right, but there's no need to overbet the pot, just in case you had misread the situation, or he's trapping.

Such an approach creates balance and a solid complete strategy. Range: Hero's X Range is the selection of hands that he does X action with. Hence, his opening range from some position on the table is the group of starting hands that he chooses to open the pot with from that position. Range Advantage: A player has Range Advantage when his range contains more strong hands than his opponent's does. It is possible to have varying degrees of range advantage depending on how many good hands the player has in his range that his opponent does not have. A player with Range Advantage generally wants to be applying pressure and should be inclined to take the betting lead, whereas his opponent should prefer to keep the pot smaller and play more passively. Range Check: Hero Range Checks a street when he checks his whole range on that street for balance reasons, Regardless of the equity and SDV of his hand. Relative Hand Strength: Relative Hand Strength refers to how good that hand is relative to factors such as: board texture, Villain's actions, Villain type and stack depth. This is the hand strength that really matters to our decision. Results Orientation: Results Orientation is the tendency to judge a play or stretch of play based on the results of an insufficient sample of hands rather than the logical factors that make that play objectively good or bad. Reverse Implied Odds: Reverse Implied Odds are the opposite of implied odds and refer to the situation where Hero stands to frequently lose the pot and subsequent bets on the next street when he connects well. Reverse Player: A Reverse Player is one who tends to play aggressively with weak hands and passively with strong hands and therefore has an extremely air heavy betting/raising range especially with large sizing and a stronger than average checking/calling range or when he uses smaller sizing. Scare Card: A Scare Card is one that is perceived to improve a player's range making his opponent more inclined to fold. Semi-Bluff: To Semi-Bluff is to bet or raise with reasonable non-made-hand equity with the intention of making other players fold better hands. Set Mine: When we Set Mine we call a pre-flop raise with a pocket pair with the primary purpose of making enough money to justify this call the times we flop a set. Showdown Value (SDV): The Showdown V alue of a hand (SDV) is the measure of how likely that hand is to win at showdown unimproved. Slowplay: To Slowplay is to play a very strong hand in a passive way by either: 1. Checking instead of betting.

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Opener The player who made the first raise (or limp) preflop, after the blinds.

break-even point I think of calling and shoving so calling is worth about one point seven eight and shoving is worth about one point seven one and King tends to just start to get to the point where you don't get any like dominate two hands to fold like you can get King Jack offsuit to fold I think King Jack off is that calling King Jack offs like breakeven so it might be folding to your shop so that's like the one hand you can get to shove but yeah you can kind of play around with this a lot I don't want to spend too much time on it but always keep in mind what dominated hands are you getting two fold what dominating hands are calling you and how well is your hand perform so in this spot we did call and the flop comes ten six for rainbow and we're gonna go into pile silver now to try to get a general idea of how we should proceed post flop and I on this spot actually first let's do so yeah actually go right into here this is the setup so basically we've taken everything from what we just learned in HRC this is our range we're gonna be shoving with all these weak stronger a sexes every pocket pair we're shoving with and then I just gave us half way on all these like kind of hands that were in different on shoving or calling and then everything else I just gave us a call we should I give us a hundred percent of hands as we saw in HRC it's pretty you know we could probably fold out some of this trash sure stuff I probably should have taken some of that out like eighty-three off like this bottom part of the grid I probably shouldn't have that in there that's probably a mistake by me it won't change a ton in position is that same 38 percent range that we gave them starting pot is 55 effective sacks or 110 so two-to-one SPR and then we have various bet sizes that we gave them in positioning about like 20% or 45% on the flop 25 50 or 75 on the turn and 40 or 80 on the river we're gonna have some resizes and then out of position we can donk lead the flop for 25 or 50 percent we have some bet sizes a bunch of different options and this is what has been formulated first thing I always use on a piyo solver we talked about it in the last two webinars equity so we have about 41 percent equity on this flop and in position has the remaining so about 58 percent we can look at evey in positions count getting about 35 out of 55 we're getting back about 20 out of 55 and then the second strategy or the second thing that I always look at is the range Explorer and you saw this tool last time last couple times

Pre-flop: Hero has a pretty easy call with a hand that has some implied odds and a little frequent strength given these favourable pot odds. Hero is also closing the action. This is a hand that doesn't mind multiway situations too much due to its ability to flop draws to strong hands. Since the opener is a weaker aggressive player likely to spew off a lot of money should Hero flop very well, implied odds are better than usual here though Hero would certainly prefer that HJ was 100BB deep with him. In any case, calling should be comfortably better than folding. Flop: Let's assess the relevant factors from the above table to decide if we have enough incentive to call again here. 1. Equity is poor. Hero's gutshot and back door flush draw has 24% equity against a pair higher than 77, but much of this equity is ghost equity since Hero does not usually have the luxury of seeing both of the next cards for this one bet. In considering whether to call this bet, then, we are only permitted to count Hero's chances of improving to a straight on the next card. This will happen just 4/47 or 8.5% of the time. When Hero fails to improve, he will very often have to fold to a bet or make a

Figure 68 - Defence Range for Hand 104 This range equates to Hero defending 31.5% of his range, which is definitely a slight underdefend even with SB in the pot, reducing Hero's MDF. This is probably fine, however, given how +EV opening wide will be here in a vacuum. How might we fix it though if we were set on being perfectly balanced here? How could we get our defence frequency up to the 35-40% we'd need? This strategy flats every hand that should be +EV to flat and so widening this flatting range is not a satisfactory solution as it involves making -EV defends. 4-bet bluffing more combos isn't a satisfactory solution either as it creates another type of imbalance. Widening the 4-bet/call range and then the bluff range by a similar proportion is possible, but this could lead to making some clearly - EV 4-bet/calls. The solution then, if Hero puts balance before making good vacuum EV steals, is to open less hands

Range morphology Referring to the shape/structure of a player's range with consideration to the proportion of strong, medium and weak holdings. See: Polarized, Linear, Merged, Capped, Uncapped and Condensed ranges.

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

money games before opening a real money account. Online poker has a different "feel" to it than in-person poker. For example, it is not possible to TEXAS HOLD'EM ONLINE 31 verbally state your intentions online. If you accidentally move the mouse-pointer a little too far over and click the fold button when you meant to hit raise, your hand is gone. Surprisingly, online poker games often move faster than in a cardroom: 45-50 hands per hour are not uncommon. While slow, unstable Internet connections often put a drag on the game, there are many time-saving features of online games that make up for the delays. The software instantly handles routine tasks. It will shuffle cards, issue chips, give change, award pots, and determine the winning hand. All these actions take time for a real dealer to perform. As a result, online play requires greater attention on your part, since most of your waiting is for other players to act, which means you must be ready when they are. In a real cardroom, most of the down-time is waiting for the dealer, whose actions do not require your careful attention. To play for real money, you create an account with the poker room of your choice and deposit money either directly with a credit card, or through an intermediary service such as NETellerO (http:l/ www.neteller.com), FirepayO (http://www.fireway.com), or a prepaid ATM card (http://www.ureuaidatm.com). The advantage of an intermediary is that your credit card information is never given to the casino, and some credit card companies block the use of their cards at online casinos. Online casinos usually encourage the use of an intermediary service, since-they do not want to handle payment of the merchant's credit card processing fee or worry about charge-backs. Once your account is open, with money deposited, you can play in the real-money games. If you are wary about using your credit card online, you can get a prepaid credit card. Go to http://www.n~ycard.com and follow the instructions on how and where to purchase a prepaid credit card. The user pays cash to a Iocal store and receives a credit card good for the amount of cash paid and no more. Once charges equal to the amount of cash deposited are completed, the card is either discarded or reloaded by depositing more cash. No one can steal the number and ring up more charges than you have already prepaid. Nor can anyone ruin your credit rating since there is no line of credit. 32 THE INTELLIGENT GUIDE TO TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER There are two major problems unique to online real-money play that necessitate that each online poker room establish and enforce a policy. One is the unreliability of Internet connections. No one would play online if the possibility existed of losing a large pot with a nionster hand because of a sudden disconnect. To protect players against such an occurrence, online poker rooms typically have a rule that automatically places players all-in should their connection to the game suddenly vanish. If you are suddenly locked out of a game because

8. Facing Bets - Open Action Spots Technically speaking, all of the pre-flop situations we designed strategies for in Chapter 6 were open action spots. Our focus in this chapter, however, will be the post-flop variety of open action spot, which occurs most frequently on the flop and turn. This type of situation is a very common one indeed. Hero is faced with a decision to either call, raise or fold facing a bet from Villain and knows that if he calls, there will be the possibility of more money going into the pot at a later stage in the hand or of someone winning the pot due to players folding. As we're about to see, this possibility distorts Hero's decision, turning it into a much more complicated beast from the variety we examined in the last chapter. Analysing end of action spots is a two-part process and the first part of that process where we find our required equity is very straightforward. In this chapter we have no such luck. The factors that go into analysing one of these situations require a skilled assessment of some concepts we've already dealt with in the realms of pre-flop, now applied in a post-flop setting. We'll begin by demonstrating why assessing required equity with a made-hand in the same way as Chapter 7 fails miserably and how some aspiring grinders go wrong by not appreciating the differences between open action and end of action spots. We'll then look at how to properly assess and combine pot odds and implied odds as well as future fold equity in order to make playing non-made-hands easier. In the subsequent three sections we'll take a look at how to apply this knowledge and handle facing bets on the flop both in and out of position and then finally on the turn.

play hold’em, in some scenarios it can be correct to call a bet from your right. Good Draw It is often best just to call when the flop produces a good draw at a complete hand. A typical example is when you hold a hand like 9-7 suited, and the flop is 3-6-T with two of your suit. You have 12 outs, of which nine make a flush and three produce a straight. (One of your needed eights also makes a flush, so you don’t count it twice.) You are close to even money to complete this hand by the river. So, should you be ramming and jamming with this big draw? Typically, you should not. One key reason for this is that your raise may eliminate other players. With this kind of drawing hand, you would prefer to have as many opponents as possible, since one of them may develop a hand that is second-best to yours, and contribute a lot of chips to your stack. You won’t be able to raise out anyone holding a better flush draw anyway, as anyone with this hand would call your raise. The price you get from the pot will be better if you are up against several opponents, so don’t raise with your draw if you feel it is likely to narrow the field. Another factor to consider is that the original bettor has you beat at this point. Sure, you are likely to draw out on him, but you probably won’t wind up with the best hand if you don’t make your straight or flush. You do not want to raise and cut the field down to you and the best hand. Rather, leave the field in and give yourself a good price on your big draw. You’ll win more money when you hit your hand, and lose less when you miss. Medium-Strength Hand Playing a medium-strength hand is somewhat trickier. With a hand such as middle pair, or top pair-weak kicker, you are often not sure whether you hold the best hand when the player to your right bets. Although making a raise might succeed in protecting your hand, you don’t always want to commit a lot of chips at this point. Ideally, you would like more information about where your hand stands before getting too heavily involved. If you are unsure of whether to call or raise with your hand, here is a good general rule to follow: Tend to call when it will be difficult for your opponents to outdraw you, and be more apt to raise (or fold) when your hand is vulnerable. Two examples illustrate this point. In Example 1, it will be more difficult for an opponent to outdraw you, so there is less danger in just calling a bet on the flop. If your ace is the best hand, it is likely to hold up with this board, whether there are two, three, or four players in the pot. However, in Example 2, you are in a tough spot if the player to your right

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lot of like a say it off two pairs ace for two pairs not a lot of those but he just starts to get a check raised in his flushes and put a lot of money in the pot so we want to protect ourselves with some of these so these weaker aces are checking back like ace four through ace eight just because even ace king a little bit is gonna check back mostly when it doesn't have a club and it Sam because it just is really hard for it to face a check race so we have a lot of exactly Matt that's what that was that I don't know if I explained that well we can't have the nut flush which our most common flush is they're not flush but we can't have it because the ace of clubs is on the board so and we just don't have as many suited kings as we do suited aces so the reason we don't get to just bet everything is because we need to protect ourself a little bit from getting cheque raised okay in reality people don't check raised enough so you don't need to protect yourself I would always bet a sking ace queen ace Jack etc because people don't check raised enough and they're not gonna put a lot of pressure on you even though they have a flush advantage here so if you see like here we're betting like our queen i flushes jack no jack i flushes we're still betting our aces with like a club we're still betting some of these stronger aces etc but the key concept here is that we're using the smaller sizing because of our equity advantage and we're using the smaller sizing but we're gonna start checking back more because of that nut advantage that the big blind house so this is an example of having an equity advantage but not have an Internet advantage so there's two like those are two big properties not advantage and equity advantage and that's kind of gonna be the theme of it and some people are asking why is it betting these smaller pairs and it's using these to start to Bluff with so in position is imposition bluffing at all yes Doug in position starting to bluff it a lot and it's starting to use these small pairs with a club so like pocket fives with the club pocket sixes with the club these are gonna be a lot of it's like triple barrel Bluffs and percentage of the pot it's betting about 40% of the pot here so it's always using the bets and not the the bet 13 and yes we're always betting our sets pocket eights pocket fours it is checking some of the bigger sets aces and Kings just as there's not as many hands that can call its betting kings with the club but yeah what do you think the ratio of value to Bluffs are the reason that the ratio is just it's gonna

The first three streets are very standard. Pre-flop: Hero defends a hand that is in absolutely fine shape vs. a 65% SB RFI in position, closing the action. No problems here. Flop: Hero calls a c-bet with an extremely strong hand relative to Villain's c-bet range, which as we know from the high 70% stat, includes a lot of worse hands. Hero could exploitatively raise with the right dynamic where Villain is likely to lash out by 3-bet bluffing the flop or perhaps call the raise far too lightly. Without this read, getting 3-bet on the flop is awkward and raising unnecessarily narrows Villain's very wide range. Hero also gets to protect the weaker parts of his range by having hands as strong as this in his flop calling range. This prevents our aggressive opponent from bluffing like crazy and getting enough folds from us overall. We'll look at these kind of decisions more closely in the next chapter. Turn: The Kc is far from the best card but it is one that Villain is very likely to continue betting on with a large part of his range. Hero still has the best hand very often here and so folding is out of the question especially vs. someone who c-bets the turn 62% of the time. River: And here is the end of action spot. Hero is clearly not raising this river with a hand that is basically a bluff catcher. He's calling or folding and either way his action will be the last one in the hand. Time to initiate the two-part process. Part 1: Required Equity Hero needs ATC / (ATC + TP) equity to call the bet. Remember TP includes Villain's bet. 29 / (29 + 61) = 32% If we were in game using our milestones, we'd simply reason that Villain's bet is almost pot sized so Hero needs almost 33% equity to call. Part 2 - Actual Equity Do we have enough equity against Villain's range to call? Let's go through questions 1-3 before we examine our reads and see if we have an obvious decision available. Q1. Is it likely that Villain can be value betting worse hands? This is unlikely, but possible. Villain could potentially be value betting Q9 or J9 for thin value, but his large sizing makes this less likely. Even if he is betting these hands, they aren't a large part of his range by any means. No quick call available for this reason. Q2. Does Villain get to the river with any air in his range? Absolutely. Lots of draws have missed and we know this player to be capable of getting to the river