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Examples of hands in Villain's range that are happy to call a flop raise but become far less happy on many turn cards are [87s JT J9s T9 JJ TT 99 KK AA AJ] and so on. When the board is this wet it's imperative to go for value sooner rather than later. Sizing wise, Hero should look to start building the pot so that he can get the 100BB effective stack in by the river if the board runs out kindly. If he makes it 15BB on the flop, that will be plenty for this purpose. The pot would be 36.5BB on the turn and a 25BB bet there will leave a pot of 86.5BB with remaining stacks of 57BB; a comfortable shoving amount. It's always worth calculating how to size in order to get the money in whenever playing for stacks becomes a real prospect. It's not that we always need the board to be wet in order to want to develop a raising range on the flop. There are times when we simply don't care about being unbalanced in the long run as we don't think weaker players are going to exploit us. In these situations, protecting our calling range is not a concern. Against Fish, especially those of the passive variety, it can be sensible to just play big value hands fast from the moment Villain bets at us, even on dry boards. Passive Fish are more inclined to give up unimproved after their c-bet gets called and so Hero makes fairly little from bluffs on later streets. Moreover, Fish tend not to readily fold after connecting with the flop so Hero is best placed to build a big pot as soon as possible. Take a look at the decision flow chart (Figure 24) for a reminder on when to bet or raise for value. Let's have a look at an example of when slowplaying would be wrong even on a drier board.

could and if the day was long enough, you’d take every cent I had. But my question to you is this: Would you bet 100% of the money you had in the world on just one roll? Of course not. Though you have much thebest of it in the long run, that 3 will still miss 80% of the time. You’re a 4-to-1 favorite to go broke on the very first roll and never get to exploit your edge at all. By betting too big, you squander your churn and lose your chance to bet with the best of it. Bye-bye edge, bye-bye Annie Duke Industries. I’ve heard people say that they’d take that bet for all their money, because their edge is so big. To them I say go back and read the section on risk of ruin and ask if that’s really something they want to do. If you lose your bankroll, you can’t earn. Fooled by Randomness Say you’re running particularly good one month, like normally you’re earning $8 an hour in your $1/$2 game, but this month you’ve been winningat the rate of $24 an hour. You think, Well, I’m just that good, and now you start to estimate that you’re so skillful, you should win at that unexpectedlyhigh rate (which, by the way, would be pretty impossible at $1/$2 no-limit unless the game played super-huge). Know what? No one’s win rate is that far above the norm. A really fantastic poker player might have a 5% edge on the game and that’s huge, because of the churn. If he sits in that $1/$2 game with $200, his expectation isn’t to win $10 for the night. His expectation is to earn 5% on the total churn, the total money he runsthrough the game, betting and winning pots and betting that same money again. If he churns $1,000 through the game, he should expect to earn$50 on the night. If he plays for six hours, that’s an hourly rate of around $8. He might win $250 one night. He might lose $125 another night. But hisexpected earn will always be $8 an hour, no matter what his daily results are. So we have to draw a distinction between running good and playing well. Sometimes they overlap—your good play nets good results—but oftenit’s just a case of a player being the beneficiary of a not-very-extraordinary string of outcomes. Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes this phenomenon in elegant detail in his book Fooled by Randomness and I commend it to your attention. It explains why a huge-field poker tournament alwaysfeatures at least one unknown and, let’s face it, not very skilled player going deep into the money with a massive chip lead. Say 6,000 players are in the main event of the World Series of Poker and half of them have the strategy of just going all-in on every coin flip theycan find. Thousands of players will wind up on the rail, wondering where this strategy went wrong, but quite a few guys will wind up on the right sideof a few

pretty much different it wouldn't really make a difference and the good thing about this is once you compare the strategies this way uh you see uh which will be a bigger mistake here uh to bet the wrong hand or to uh to check the wrong hand now since there are no hands that are you know losing a lot of EV by checking uh the biggest mistake will take one of these hands that are in green that benefit a lot from from checking and bed right so for example here beding 97 uh Spates will be a huge mistake and you will be losing about two chips right out of the 34 chips in the pot actually um what I did about was to just trick here I like to uh remove a bunch of zeros right from uh the stacks and and the pot to make the calculations easier so here this shows the pot for 34 chips but it was in fact 34,000 right uh just that that in mind so um going back to the Flop uh yeah so here we can see that betting uh a hand that wants to check would be bigger mistake and so you will be fine if you just check your entire range here you will not be losing uh any at all because there are not really any hands that um um will be losing a lot of EV by checking here that's a very important very important thing so uh ideally I'll probably playing this situation as I checking my entire range um the hero played the hero to B and this hand this combo can be played as a 50/50 so it's not a big deal then uh in position will not really be uh Rising much at all and only folding very small frequency here uh just some really bad um bad cards that's why um B um it it doesn't really accomplish that much most of the hands that um IP is folding are just very low Equity hands all right so uh the action goes B call and the turn is the 10 of Hearts now uh really interesting interestingly enough after um you chose to bet the Flop and got the call now um looking at the equities now let's we can look at actually the um uh the hotness uh hit map here and see how different cards Tor cards will improve uh hero Equity so hero is out of position so we look at the equity here and some really bad turns will be a king for example a jack um most of the low cards will be neutral bringing about keeping around 50/50 equity and then some of the um sevens eights nines 10 and will be um particularly better for for the hero um given the way the ranges are are compromised so uh with the 10 of Hearts um Hero's equity orquid actually improves and what happens is that let's look at the position strategy so uh here

color to look at and my second favorite color you know I feel like I can't pick a shade you got the color purple purple I love purple and white and then blue would be next so if anyone studies chakras I'm very upper chakras or Ian TEDWomen the top red being the second from the top and blue being the third from the top appreciate your time and info going to join polka coaching and learn more awesome awesome I think I don't know for sure I have to ask Jonathan but I'm pretty sure if you guys want Jonathan to know that you learned about poker coaching from me the link to use his poker coaching com /all in and it might be poker coaching com forward slash grip store poker coaching con forward slash Evan so I'll find out about that but I'll talk to Jonathan about it and yeah we'll have a whole like bonus thing for anyone who comes to poker coaching through me it's all in the work so it's pretty exciting okay thank you everyone who tuned in thank you so much for watching this webinar I really hope you enjoy the information and find it useful and profitable if you guys want to let me know how your game and your results have changed as a result of applying the strategies and theories discussed in this webinar feel free to reach out to me on twitter i'm at grips poker GRI p SED p oke are on Twitter and also I am gripped on YouTube GRI P sed so feel free to send me a message on twitter or post a comment on one of my youtube videos or chat in our community section as that's where I hang out and hearing about improvements and successes from my students is one of the things that makes me the most happy in life it makes me feel like I'm a value in this world it makes me feel like I have purpose it makes me feel like things are meaningful so don't be shy please share your feedback your comments with me even if you're normally a lurker know that it makes a huge difference it's what motivates me to keep on producing and keep on living healthy and keep on doing all those good things every day cool thanks for the webinar I think put Chaput teach I'm not gonna say that right yeah thanks for the webinar I think poker coach who is missing your comparisons cash games to tournaments yeah I mean I appreciate that thank you I know alex has experience playing both I know Jonathan has experienced playing both I probably have more experience with cash games and I've probably also trained with more elite cash game players although it's close cuz on Athens like super networked and super connected but I have had the privilege of living with and studying with and sweating and training with some of the very very best cash game players in the world and

he also goes through button versus cutoff strategy a lot of players make blunders all over the place playing cut off versus button when you raise the cutoff in the button calls because they usually continuation bet too often they don't check raise enough Etc et cetera he also discusses defense frequencies and why they are important I'll give you the spoiler if you fold too much you can't win it poker if you consistently give your Equity away to your opponents they're gonna win and you're gonna lose and also how to adjust your strategy and how to analyze your strategy using GTO solvers when you have some idea of how your opponents play if you know that's your opponent let's say does not dream about often enough or if you know that they let's say don't continuation bet the Flop often enough or maybe the continuation bet the Flop every time you can use the GTO solver to give you the strategy against the mistakes that your opponents are making and in a lot of small six games you very often know mistakes your opponents are making for example a lot of you in the chat seem to think that your opponents do not Bluff the river nearly often enough fine put it in a solver let the solver know that my opponents do not Bluff the river often enough and you're going to see that you should drastically overfold on that street wherever that is if your opponent's drastically over Bluff you're not gonna fall very often at all kind of like that Ace King hand I probably leveled myself into thinking the opponent may be over bluffing maybe not I don't know maybe it was good maybe it was a good call maybe it was terrible that's the tough thing about poker but um anyway Brock is the GTO wizard he has been crushing poker recently and I'm very happy to have these videos and a whole lot more being added to pokercoaching.com very very soon you can actually get your first month of Poker coaching premium that gives you access to everything we have on the site which is a ton of content many thousands of hours but also organized in a way that is very easy for you to get in and start learning poker immediately especially through my tournament and cash game master classes you can get in there for just 49 bucks for your first month if you have any desire to improve your poker skills you need to find a structured way to learn because that's going to get you way better poker than just playing and trying to figure it out so many players think that if they get a lot of experience they will just naturally become winners but I hate to break it to you if you play poorly over and over and over again it's not going to help you instead learn from players who are crushing the games and I make a point to hire lots and lots

Hand Range 180: BB vs LJ 4-bet (60bb) • All-in 36.6% / • Call 13.1% / • Fold 50.4%

locked up so much money everyone here is guaranteed 300 000 yes they're playing for another 800 on top to get to that Millie 1.1 Milli um but uh you know a lot a lot of pressure is taken off when you've locked up 300K plus 30 buy-ins so I welcome Inferno defending another suited hand flopping bottom pair we'll probably see them continue this time with the check call if the board had been I Know Jack 7-2 we may have seen him work in that semi-bluff check raise on a dry board again but on the ace high board which really favors monsman's range and mosman has the range Advantage I think while conferno decided he shouldn't make that play and then just folds to the turn bet and uh oh bondsman find an unlucky spot with the tens once again since you're asked with Kings welcome Inferno going to be opening with fours monsman with the three bet here question is will you go none All In he has quite a few more chips than he did before she goes for the not all in centauros is going to be four betting here with Kings it's a spot where you may be a little tempted to get fancy and just flat call issues with that are you're making your hand look very strong to begin with so your opponents know they're up against a strong hand and what may play cautiously post flop try to see more cards for free the other thing is if he just calls here he invites welcome Inferno into the pot closing the action now he's up against two players instead of one and um there's he's got a 50 ship up if he takes it down right now and most of the hands that he wants to get it all in with against bondsman are still going to be calling here Ace kings queens jacks be interesting to see if monsman can get away from tens here I feel like it's kind of tough but uh when cintras is cold forbidding all in from the big blind versus Under the Gun open and under the gun plus one three bet he does need to have a very strong hand and um I just I don't know if you know pocket nines is in this range or pocket eights is in this range and therefore if it's only Jax plus an Ace King maybe monsman does get away from it and indeed he does so welcome Inferno saving monsman there because if it had been a single raised pot for monsman and then a three bet from centross all in I don't know how monsman gets away from it it's only because it went raise three bet and then cold four bet that monsman was able to lay it down and it's always a really good question to ask um when you're facing a reshuff three bet four bet whatever um what's the what's the worst hand that my opponent would do this with

are unrelated to one another, as in a board with no draws, e.g. A♦-9♥-3♠. Also called “dry” or “uncoordinated.” See “texture.” Up-and-Down Straight Draw—See “open-ended straight draw.” Upside—The money that’s implied to come your way if you hit your hand. Also known as “positive implied odds.” Value Bet—A bet made on the river with a weaker hand in a situation where the player believes his hand, despite being weaker, is 1) good, and 2) will get paid off by hands worse than his. Variance—Statistical fluctuation around a mean. The up and down of your chip stack or bankroll. In high-variance situations, the fluctuations arebig. In low-variance situations, the fluctuations are small. Can refer to a game as well. A high-variance game rates to have big fluctuations in your chip stack. Verbal Declaration—Any voicing of intentions at the table. Verbal declarations are always binding and override physical actions. For example, if you declare, “I call,” then place a raise in the pot, the raise chips will be pushed back to you; your verbal call is binding. Vigorish, Vig—The juice or rake taken on a bet. The percentage the house takes on a bet. In poker, usually refers to the fee that the house takes on a tournament entry or the rake in a cash game. Walk—When all the players at the table fold around to the big blind, letting the big blind player win the hand. The big blind “gets a walk” when all players fold. Weak Lead—A bet made by a player in a heads-up pot wherein the player bets out into an opponent who raised before the flop. Usually done witha weaker hand, thus the name. Wet—When cards on the board are related to one another. Also called “coordinated” or “textured.” Wheel—The lowest possible straight. A straight from the ace to the 5: A-2-3-4-5. Also, 7-5-4-3-2 in deuce to seven lowball games. Window Card—See “door card.” Wins—See “outs.” X—Refers to an unimportant card in a player’s hand, a side card. For example, A2, A3, A4, A5 etc. can be referred as AX. About the Authors Annie Duke earned a double major in English and psychology at Columbia University and an MA in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. She was also a National Science Foundation Fellow from 1988 to 1991. Since 1994, she has dominated poker, quickly establishing herself as one of the world’s best players. In her very first tournament at the World Series of Poker, she placed 13 th . In 2004, she won her first WSOP bracelet (in the $2,000-buy-in Omaha Hi/Lo Split). That same year, she knocked out nine poker legends to winthe no-limit Texas hold ’em invitation-only WSOP Tournament of Champions. In 2010, Annie won the prestigious NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship, beating 64 of the world’s top players on her way to a $500,000 first prize. Annie parlayed her skills into an industry-leading career that encompasses tournament play, advising gaming companies, authoring instructional books and videos, and as a proponent of players’ rights. A longtime industry advocate, Annie has testified in front of the

What should Hero do with this hand vs. this range? Raise! His equity is good enough to call in position here assuming that there are some implied odds the times Villain makes a worse four flush with KsKx and similar, but if Hero can get folds right away from the above range which beats him on most river cards, then this is clearly a superior route to take. Hero doesn't want to call the turn, brick the river then have only one bet to fire at the Reg's now bluff catching overpairs. He needs to apply more pressure than this to maximise the fold equity he so desperately needs with this deficit in pot equity. Sometimes player type + texture + line just makes a certain kind of range overwhelmingly likely, but take this read with a pinch of salt - sometimes it will be wrong and we'll be facing the kind of player who bets only flushes and better here even for this size. Also do not apply such reads where information is more limited. Hero's play in this particular hand is good, but it's not a license to raise every turn spot where a flush completes. In this next hand we'll look at a turn bluff raise spot that's more grounded in solid balanced play than in exploitative reads.

It is very likely that if BB had a decent Q, two pair, a set or a flush that he'd be betting this flop for value and protection, thus the range he sees the turn with after checking flop is likely to be very capped and more air-heavy than his range for seeing the flop was. Hero can now expect to take a low equity hand, that was too poor to c-bet out of position on a wet flop, and realise enough fold equity with a delayed c-bet on the turn. It's not that Hero should always bet this turn with any hand he was planning to check/fold the flop with. If he has some equity and no SDV , this helps the EV of the delayed bluff. And so where Hero wants to be balanced he should delayed c-bet first and foremost with hands that have these two attributes. Some Villains may be calling enough of their flop checking range on this turn card to be balanced, but most will be folding too much of their range here due to how capped they are. There won't be enough SDV left to balance the hopeless air that they decided not to bluff with on the flop. I therefore recommend an exploitative strategy for Hero of overbluffing his range on this turn vs. most populations at micro and small stakes due to the population tendency to not balance properly in this spot. Although, if Villain's Float Flop (see here) stat is very high, then Hero should expect him to be stabbing his air on the flop and hence have a more SDV weighted turn range that folds much less often. He should adjust to this exploitative strategy by underbluffing the turn. Reason 2: C-Betting Flop is +EV, but Delayed C-Betting is Even Better This neat little spot occurs against the type of rigidly straightforward player that has little to no bluffing range on the turn and plays very fit-or-fold vs. c-bets and delayed c-bets. Against this kind of Villain, Hero can consider a flop check in order to collect maximum information before going for fold equity on the turn. Sure, Villain will fold enough on the flop for Hero to meet his RFE on a c-bet there, even when Hero has terrible equity, but if Villain is literally broadcasting on the turn whether or not he has a hand that he likes, then Hero should wait for that second weakness confirming check before he bets. If Villain leads the turn, Hero simply assumes that his fold equity was miniscule on the flop anyway against this sub-range that now bets and so Hero simply folds and has saved c-bet that was getting called anyway. Hero may safely fold to turn leads from this Villain type without fear of exploitation. The delayed c-bet is even better where there are few ways that Villain's flop folding range can improve on the turn. The only drawback to this line vs. this player type is allowing him to realise equity he would have folded on the flop. Hero

it seemed wonderfully adventurous to all of us that he should now be here in the mysterious Orient cracking Japanese radio codes for Chiang Kai-shek. When I returned the cablegram to Ling, the Donkey looked at me angrily. 'What of it?' I said to Ling. 'I've always told you my presence was no more than a Chinese secret. Tell the General that everyone here knows who I am.' 'How?' asked the General. 'Well,' I said, 'to enumerate a few cases, since I have been here I have had five guards, two chauffeurs, two house-boys, one wash-amah and two cooks. Servants gossip.' 'The General says the servants would never dare to gossip.' 'Someone at the chateau stole my typewriter, some of my papers including my passport in the name of Yardley, and all of Ling's clothes. I suppose the thief won't talk for pay!' I said sarcastically. 'The General says the thief was one of the house servants who was caught and executed and your and Ling's effects were returned.' I was resolved not to be out-argued in this foolish dispute. 'Direct the General's attention to the Headquarters sign in Chinese on my car and the fact that my chauffeur is usually in uniform.' 'The General says that no one knows what the sign says.' 'It is the same sign all Chinese generals use in the streets,' I remarked acidly. The Donkey digested this and started on a new tack. 'The General thinks you associate too much with foreigners,' Ling translated. Having argued this subject often I refused to be drawn again and the Donkey talked on. 'He says this dispatch was written by a foreigner, and how could a foreigner know if you didn't tell him.' 'Correspondents come and go,' I said. 'A newspaper thinks I am in Chungking. Several persons in America know I am, for I write to them. So for verification a correspondent need only look for a bald-headed man with his second finger on the right hand missing.' I had struck the right note at last. The Donkey was clearly impressed and went into a long conversation with Ling. 'The General suggests,' Ling said gravely, 'that the Adviser wear an artificial finger to prevent identification.' 'What?' I said. 'No wig?' 'He hasn't thought of that yet.' 'Let's finish with this foolishness,' I said. 'Surely he realizes that since my identity has been officially verified it's too late for concealment.' The Donkey was mollified. A bald head and a missing finger rather than any carelessness or negligence on the part of the Chinese had led to my identification. The Donkey will sit up half the night, I thought, elaborating the point in an official document to his superiors. Perhaps he will make copies of this for various bureaux, and one for his own file. All officialdom becomes involved in red tape and suffocates under its own documents, but the Chinese, without the aid of dictaphones, duplicating machines, and other devices, are peculiarly lost in their own memoranda. They must be years and decades in arrears of events. One can

tight, capped, but still strong. His opening range shouldn't be wide to start with and we know that he folds a fairly large amount of the time to 3-bets hence Hero's polar approach including A5s as a bluffing hand. Figure 76 - A Tight OOP Flatting Range vs. a 3-Bet If Villain flats only these robust hands out of position here, which seems like a reasonable assertion, we can see that he absolutely nails flops like this one. The weakest hand he can have here is still a gutshot and two overcards (AK). The rest of his range is some kind of second pair or better and pair + draw or better and so Hero's immediate fold equity should be very low in Hand 127. It's not that Hero could never consider bluffing this flop, it's just that when he does he should probably be firing many turns and rivers as most of the fold equity he has vs. this range takes more than one street to realise. Such a situation caters for some selectivity of c-bet bluffs. It won't do to just take our whole

Tournament A structure of a poker game where play continues until one player has all of the chips. Another difference with cash game is that there is a payout structure that outlines how the prize pool will be distributed according to placements/finishing positions.

If you drive out other players and the opener draws three cards, draw three with him. If he draws two or one, draw two, and if he checks, bet regardless of your hand. If an occasional player stays after you have raised, draw two and bet unless someone stands pat. 'If you have three of a kind above tens, don't raise. You want the other players in. If the threes are below tens, raise. You don't want too many drawing against you.' Monty thought for a moment. 'Oh, yes, there is one more thing about taking three cards. Your chances of drawing another pair are greatly enhanced because the cards are usually not shuffled too well and the pairs tend to stick together from the previous deal. * Here and in the following sections of the book odds will be quoted such as '11 to 1'. This implies that the probability of occurrence will be one in twelve. Therefore, for an even bet, the odds will be 11 to 1. 'Also don't be in too much of a hurry to open if you are sitting close to the dealer's left. If you have a strong hand and someone ahead of you looks like he is going to open, pass, and raise when it gets back to you. And contrariwise, if you have only aces or kings, open if you see too many players anxious to toss in their hands.' 'Thanks, Monty,' I said. 'How about stud?' He laughed at that. 'If you get a deck of cards and deal out hands to yourself and master what I've told you, you'll have quite a chore.' That night both Monty and I played. He took care of the ante so that I was strictly on my own. Nothing much happened until after eleven when Monty was called out to the bar and I took over. Runt admitted a quiet-spoken man of average height who introduced himself as Lolly Home. He said he was from Indianapolis, visiting friends. He saw I was cutting the game and asked if he might take the seat Monty had vacated. He was about thirty or so, conservatively dressed. He kept his hat on as did all of us. He wore a huge diamond stickpin which glittered in the shimmering light. But the remarkable thing about him was his hands. They were without rings - the long and slender hands of a pianist. When it came his time to deal he riffled the cards expertly and dealt in a fast rhythmic manner. He was affable enough but there was one thing about him I didn't like. He held his cards like Gravey Combs (our local boy who was studying in Indianapolis to be a card sharp), and Gravey always told me to watch a player who wrapped his hand around the pack, the thumb, first and third fingers touching the deck. After he dealt the third time I asked Runt to cut the pots and went out to talk to Monty. 'There's a chap in there,' I said, 'who claims

nan

This hand made it to TV, and Jason was criticized later for his call. But in my opinion his call was perfectly justified. He's played with me a lot, and he knew that I was perfectly capable of making this move in this position. He figured my most likely holding was something like acequeen or king-queen, so his sevens were likely to be good at this point. And I knew he knew, which was why my bet before the pot was just a little larger than usual, to get more money into the pot. The flop comes J♠ 6♠ 4♥ Jason goes all-in. On the tape, this looks foolish, going all-in with just a pair of sevens. But he made the right move. Most of the time I'm going to be sitting there with two unpaired high cards, and I'm going to have to throw my hand away. His real fear is that one of my unpaired high cards is a jack, in which case he's in trouble. But that's a minority of the cases, and mostly his play will just pick up the pot, crippling me in the process. Some hands can't be understood without some knowledge of who the players are and what they have done against each other in the past. To the uninitiated, Jason and I look like a couple of amateurs here. I make a too-large raise with my kings, practically announcing I have a large pair, and Jason foolishly calls, then compounds his error by going all-in against a monster hand. But if you know both players well, the whole hand makes perfect sense. I call, and my kings hold up. All-in Before the Flop In the late stages of a tournament, all-in moves before the flop are not uncommon. Players with short stacks find that making a smaller bet would commit them to the pot anyway, so they put all their chips in, or someone else at the table does it for them In the early stages of a tournament, when players have plenty of chips relative to the blinds, allins before the flop are much more unusual. Of course, you'll occasionally see two very big hands butt heads, with one player getting all-in as a result. But most pre-flop all-ins result when weaker players get overenthusiastic. It's easy to see why all-in bets should be rare. If you have plenty of chips and your hand is very strong, say aces or kings, then you want to use the hand to make a lot of money. An all-in bet will mostly chase the other players out of the pot, and you'll only make the blinds and antes. Not an optimal result. On the other hand, suppose you have a hand that's pretty good, but you'd like the other players to go away, say tens or nines. You could bet all your chips, which will chase away the riff-raff, but if a really big hand is waiting behind you, you're in serious danger of losing everything. A bet of four or five times the big blind

percentage is significantly lower than IP. For this reason, checking starts to become the dominant strategy. On low frequency donk bet flops, the donk betting ranges are a little more polarized and, for this reason, a larger bet-size is preferred. Donk betting does not seem to be too affected by stack depth and so the frequencies are similar with 20bb, 30bb and 40bb effective stacks (Diagrams 35-36). Diagram 35

a much larger degree compared to if the button was holding a club so in other words holding a club unblocks a greater portion of the kadas folding range compared to the other suits and therefore among this class of hands mathematically speaking the button has a greater probability of getting a fold if he holds a club versus a heart spade or diamond so that was an example of using unblockers in the context of a bluff what about blockers well let's navigate to the cutoff's turn decision facing a three-quarter pot barrel here we see that essentially all combos that are third pair or better are defending and most straight draws are also calling additionally there is also a small proportion of ace highs without a draw that are defending as well so let's examine which ace highs are calling and which ace highs are folding and try to figure out how this mix is determined when we brush the ace high combos with lower unblocker scores we see that although most of these combos are folding one combo stands out in particular which is the ace jack of clubs that's actually calling with very high frequency so why is ace jack of clubs calling most of the time but the other ace jack suited combos are essentially pure folds even though all of these combos have the exact same showdown value and there are no flush draws available well when we focus just on the ace jack suited combos we see that there's a pretty clear distinction among these hands along the y axis which measures each hand's blocker score for each combo within the selected hand class in this case ace jack suited the blocker score calculates the aggregate percentage of ev that such combo blocks from hands and villains range with higher equity so in this case ace jack of clubs has a higher blocker score compared to ace jack of spades diamonds or hearts when we search the stronger portion of the buttons range which contain either an ace of clubs or jack of clubs we see that the aggregate weight is 1.2 whereas the aggregate weight for the other asex or jack x combos are slightly less and to understand why this is we need to retrace the buttons actions back to the flop which is an exercise that you'll often need to do when trying to understand the impact of card removal on the flop when we hone in on the buttons over pairs we see that over pairs containing a club are actually betting with a slightly higher frequency compared to other over pair combos and the reason for this is likely because holding a club unblocks some of the over cards plus backdoor flush draw combos in the cutoffs range that are likely to continue when facing a bet in other words the solver prefers slow playing the over pairs that contain a heart spade or diamond because holding these suits decreases the probability that the cutoff will be able to call

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

a pretty good idea that the variance involved in the 10 20 game isn't is probably not going to be worth it it's probably just going to be better to have your higher edge of the 510 game um instead of moving up and playing the 10 20 game so i have here to understand and set what your goals are i think that uh like just being realistic about it a lot of the people who are going to be studying this are going to have other sources of income and so if you have other sources of income your risk of ruin can be a little bit higher than somebody who is paying their bills from poker right so understand that if your goal is to maximize your hourly rate like absolutely maximize it you're going to be taking on more likely taking on more variance than somebody else who wants to play a little bit lower stake have a slightly lower hourly but has the ability to not deal with the same swings right so understand what your goals are realize that at this point in my life i'm happy dealing with swings i'm happy dealing with all the variants involved my goal is to maximize my win rate and so i'm going to be playing in you know a little bit higher risk of ruin games than somebody else who has a family and you know can't can't at this point in their life deal with the possibility of risk of ruin being seven percent or something right they need to keep it more like two percent so they should be playing a lower stake or building a larger bankroll before they move up so i think it's important to like constantly be thinking about what your goals are and there's a site called pokerdope.com it will it can show you like the variance involved risk of ruin depending on your win rate et cetera so it's another reason why keeping track of your stats and finances are important you can plug it into these variants calculators and it'll tell you uh you know all the all of the projections for what you're going to see if you let's say you have four bb win rate and you move up and you're like okay i'm estimating i'm gonna have a two 2.5 bb win rate it can show you uh kind of all the swings and data that will come along with that all right then the last thing never let your ego make decisions for you and what i mean by that is that when you move up stakes like when i first played 510 it was probably three or three or four years ago or something and i remember sitting there like kind of being on a high like the first time you played time rake you know it's the first time you're playing with a couple players you thought were pretty good and you want to battle with and all of a sudden you play

is no, you have to give your opponent credit for at least a pair of kings. You should still call one bet on the flop, though, and if you don’t improve on the turn, you should probably fold. Let’s say you decide to check-raise rather than lead out. Now the questions you’ll have to ask yourself are more difficult to answer. If one of your opponents bet after you showed weakness by checking, he could have a number of hands. He may decide to bet with anything from K-Q, 9-9, Q-10, A-J, or J-10. Figuring out which hand is being bet is a difficult task. Had you just bet out on the flop as I recommended, you’d have a lot more information to go on, which in turn would help you make correct decision. Let’s look at a slightly different situation. Again, you are in early position with the A-Q on a K-Q-2 flop. This time, the big blind bets into you. What now? Unless you have information that indicates immense strength from the big blind, you should go ahead and raise him! If you know that this player always has at least top pair when he bets, folding would be correct. However, most players don’t play that way. A typical opponent might have a Q-2, J-10, A-J, or the like, and is trying to pick up the pot on the flop. There is an excellent way to find out: raise. Your raise accomplishes two things: (1) Narrows down the field; (2) Helps define the bettor’s hand. If the lead bettor just calls your raise, there is a very good chance your pair of queens with an ace kicker is the best hand. If this is not the case, and your opponent has something like K-5, you still have five outs to improve with an ace or a queen. Playing Middle Pair from Late Position Whether or not you are in a heads-up pot or a multiway pot, you should usually bet middle pair when you opponents check to you on the flop. For example, say you have A-6, and the flop comes K-6-2 rainbow. Since everyone has checked to you, it looks like your pair of sixes is the best hand 131 here. Of course, if you get check-raised, you’ll be faced with a difficult dilemma. Since you are betting in last position, a player check-raising you doesn’t necessarily have to have you beat. He may be testing the waters, hoping that you are on a steal. If the small blind had 6-7, he may raise to isolate your likely bluff. As discussed in the section on playing middle pair from the blinds, a good player will often make this play against you when you’ve bet from steal position. Your goal then, is to figure out what type of player you are up against and play accordingly. If you are check-raised by a tight player who limped from first position, chances are he has the king. You should still call one more bet, hoping to hit an ace or a 6,

the opponent's Auto calls with stuff like random two pairs and uh sets that they're gonna have so definitely a weird strategy here but I did want to show it We're not gonna go through every hand you can pause the video I know this video is long but I did want to show that scenario because it's definitely a weird one all right one more the ace55 board this is a board that we'll check through a decent amount of the time when it does check through on a ten of clubs turn this is a spot where we're gonna be betting in frequently but when we do bet we're going to be blasting it because our hand is almost always good but a little bit vulnerable to being outdrawn because a lot of hands to check back on the Flop are going to be some weak a sacks that are not going to fold but then also some hands like king queen and king Jack that just turned a gut shot on the 10 of clubs turn or some flush draws that didn't want to bet and get raised so in this spot we're gonna be betting with a lot of trips that are almost always good and then also a bunch of flush draws and a few gut shots notice when we do bet on this turn we're betting big because we're super duper polarized right we have a lot of hands that are junk that can't do anything but when we do bat we're betting using a big size on the two of diamonds turn this is a cool spot too similar scenario except for now our Bluffs are going to be very different so instead of bluffing all the flush draws and some random High cards like Queen Jack that were got shot on the 10. now on the two we're gonna be bending with a lot of hands that have a four or three in them as a bluff for a gut shot and this puts the opponent in a pretty nasty spot if they have anything worse than an ace I mean imagine I want to make it clear pots six big blinds we are betting 8.8 we are over potting it we are applying a lot of pressure because we have a whole lot of trips and the opponent does not in a spot where you have a big range and or nut advantage that's usually the time it's gonna be betting with a lot of your strong hands plus some draws using a big bet size so look I know there's a lot of content in this video these were just the fundamentals I hate to break it to you poker is a tough game but look this video will set you off to the fast track to success to learn how to play the big blind well go back re-watch this video bookmark it share it with your friends if you enjoyed the video click the like And subscribe buttons below and

amount of money on the table at any one time. Under these conditions, recreational players can afford to learn and experience pot-limit and no-limit Hold'em. The "table stakes" rule-that no one can bet more than they have on the table-becomes the effective limit for these kinds of games. 3. Texas Hold'em Online Any game that does not require physical contact can be played over the Internet. Board games such as chess and popular card games, including many poker variations, now have online playing venues and informational Web sites. This chapter describes how to get started playing poker online and discusses how the online experience differs from a public cardroom. Online games have grown in popularity because the Internet has made it possible for real-time interactions to occur between groups of people scattered all over the world. The term "real-time" means that no significant delay occurs in the transmission of information to any location in the world. To understand the impact of the Internet on competitive activities, consider the example of chess players, who have for centuries recognized two distinct forms of competition. Players who meet in-person, sit at the same table, and take turns moving one set of chess pieces on one board, are said to engage in "over-theboard" competition. This is the most familiar version of chess, with the two players totally immkrsed until the game ends, usually in one sitting. A less familiar form of competitive chess, although it appears to have existed throughout the history of chess, is "correspondence" chess. Two players compete without ever meeting in person or entering the same room. Each player uses his or her own chess set. Moves are communicated via the mail with long transmission delays. Because each player must act in turn, a single game usually takes one year or longer to complete. Obviously the players are not totally immersed in the game during the year and many activities that are forbidden in over-the-board competition-studying chess books, analyzing by actually moving the pieces about-are a normal part of correspondence play. 25 26 THE INTELLIGENT GUIDE TO TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER The real-time transmission of information on the Internet has blurred the distinction between correspondence chess and over-the-board chess. Two players in two widely separated locations can meet online at a "virtual" chess club and conduct a game in one sitting, at the same pace as a normal over-the-board game. However, it is important to note that an online chess game is still a correspondence game. The two players do not meet in person, they do not share the same chess set, and most importantly, they can talk to other people and refer to chess books. While this distinction between correspondence chess and over-the-board chess may appear off subject in a poker book, these models for chess are relevant to Internet poker. If you are considering online poker, remember that poker games played over the Internet are correspondence games. You will compete against unseen people in remote locations, who are able to engage in unseen activities (talk to others, refer to books, etc.). Online

advisable because the risk of the check-raise (which would destroy Hero’s equity) increases drastically. So, with position, Hero can only bet about 48% of the time after the BB checks. When Hero is OOP with the BN’s range on this flop, the total betting frequency drops down to 9.23% and the most used bet-size is the 125% overbet. Again, Hero aims to play a two street game and go all-in on the turn with a reasonably high frequency. Weak hands make up 51% of Hero’s range. When in position these would be checked back most of the time to realize equity and would prefer to play a small pot, so as not to risk being x/r and blown off their equity. Unfortunately, when checking OOP, Hero is not guaranteed to see a turn card and will instead often face a bet and be forced to give up equity with many hands that would benefit from seeing a free turn card. For this reason, when OOP, Hero has to check many strong hands that can x/r the flop, forcing the Villain to bet less often, and thus allowing Hero’s weak hands to realize equity. If Hero does not protect the checking range, Villain will bet at a higher frequency, costing Hero a lot of EV. For this reason, Hero’s checking frequency is even higher when OOP with a range disadvantage. When OOP on 654r, Hero’s EQR decreases from 100% to 79%, costing 9.7% of the pot! Next, we will analyze the same situation from the Villain’s point of view, with the BB now being in position, and compare it to the GTO simulations. In the flipped simulations we will assume OOP checks 100% of the time to IP, so the ranges are the exact same as when the BB was OOP (Table 106). Table 106: Result of Flipping BN and BB Ranges from BB Perspective On A76r the Villain’s range is so weak compared to Hero’s range that, even when having position, it is best to check back 100% of the time as betting would result in being x/r at a very high frequency. The main difference is that, after checking back the flop, the Villain gets to realize a lot more equity than when OOP and gets forced to fold a lot of weak and trash hands that will improve to made hands or draws on the turn. This results in a huge EV increase from 25% when OOP to 37.8% when IP for a total gain of 12.8%! On 654r pretty much all hands that wanted to bet when OOP still want to bet when the Villain

him you want a nice little pond that that that ships you up quite nicely there so let's let's go ahead and try to work that into our games let's go ahead and work that into our game a little bit more so that's going to be our first little fun entry-level basic exploit that we're going to discuss today as far as how to exploit micro 6 players try to limb jam 20 to 30 x more from the small blind as you move up in stakes people are going to be a little more wary of that play so it's not nearly it's not going to work as much as he'd like but in these lower stakes tournaments it does work quite often let's uh continue if i can ever get my damn clicker to work uh villain 18 goes ahead and opens here and again it's a three dollar tournament you don't know a whole lot about anyone what would you like to do here would you like to fold call or raise and yeah the way this uh powerpoint presentation is going to work is if there's a fun little exploit you might not have seen before or maybe you just haven't been exposed to before or just a little one a nice one that you can use in micro six games i'll go ahead and highlight it like i just did there but if we're discussing fundamentals we'll just keep that to here so here what would you like to do speaking of fundamentals this is another one you see a lot of micro six players do which is okay i have king 10 off suit okay that flops pretty well i want to see the flop i'm getting a discounted price from the small blind all right i should go ahead and call here you need to know again when you collect data on this and you look at thousands of players damn near no one is making this profitable calling and under the gun raise from the small blind out of position in order to prove you were making this profitable you would have to outperform the fold here which would be negative 50 big blinds per 100 and i i see people negative 200 big lines from here negative 250 and we're talking sample sizes of years and years and years and years they just keep running that play that's what's so nefarious about nolan holdem is you can't remember the specific results because it happens over such a long period of time and it's not till somebody accumulates at all for you and shows you the numbers where you go oh my god so yeah most uh the vast majority of people do not outperform a fold here when a short stack raises from under the gun and i mean just to put this in more accessible terms i i'd like to let you know where i get my idea from so you know that i actually i do care enough to vet

6. Calling Opens Life is sweet when we're the pre-flop raiser. A firm grasp on how to open, ISO, c-bet and value bet effectively are the most basic tools in the box of the crushing Reg. Unfortunately though, we don't always get to laud our initiative and uncapped pre-flop raiser's range over our opponents. Sometimes we're on the other side of the coin, playing the role of the pre-flop caller. Calling opens is something that leads beginners into great turmoil and often serves as a drain to their overall EV in the game. This is in part due to a failure to adhere to the strict teachings of an ancient idea called 'the gap concept.' This idea is basic and has existed in poker literature for decades from the times when everyone was absolutely horrible at the game (apart from maybe Stu Ungar). ATo is part of our default opening range from the CO, but that certainly doesn't mean that we're able to call a pre-flop open when we're in the CO with this hand. Similarly there is a gap between the hands we can play as the opener from the HJ and the hands we can call vs. a HJ open. We might open ATo from the HJ but we'd rarely call it vs. a HJ open. There are a few reasons for this: We're facing a range that's already narrowed itself by opening only the top X% of hands and ATo is not doing so well against the average player's top X% from early position. We have no initiative in the hand and will be the ones facing a c-bet rather than making one. This is less favourable as it reduces fold equity and the spot requires more skill to play well. Since we 3-bet our strongest hands for value, our calling range will usually be capped and harder to defend to either pre-flop squeezes or post-flop aggression, especially as Villain's range is almost always uncapped. There are exceptions to the gap concept, but in general it's well worth absorbing if you're a new player. If you're a little more experienced, it's a concept you probably already subconsciously adhere to, but remembering why can reinforce good habits.

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

them but once they check the third time on the river they don't love their hand they probably would have let an ace at this juncture they probably would have better queen on the turn so we're looking at a jack or worse a lot of the time this is a lot of times you know six is seven so just piddly nothing bad pair and once a while it's a paw controlled pair that's confusing but remember our hands easy place right in front of us okay don't go oh my god i hit my hand 5k now there are situations that i tried to show you some of the situations where big bet was appropriate this one though pretty damn likely he doesn't have much anything so we do go for a small bat right here you got the queens and a little bit deeper in micro6 one this was trying to play some tournaments for you guys this is the one i cashed i believe yeah not for a whole heap of chips but anyway villain58 oh excuse me he limps in here 58 limps in my bad sorry misread it i looked at villain 55 and thought that was the big one so you got a limp would you like to do here oh clearly you're going to raise it up you got to get this guy involved as much as possible and you will see a lot of weird limping in micro six events even late because remember these are home game players these are players playing for fun now it's been checked to you here here would you like to check them out you have more showdown value than you ever realize you do not need to turn hands into bluffs if they are weaker than you they will often just check it down and let you see more cards they sure as hell are never folding anything they hit on that board most of what that board hit it's not good for you so he checks again do you on the turn you want to check her bet 10 seconds five that's it check it again the river is the seven of clubs villain 58 checks you here would you like to check or bet time is up go ahead and bat come on guys you know when your hand is good wouldn't he have let an ace on the turn a lot of the time or at least on the river wouldn't he have maybe even fired again fired just once with the king a flush for sure so we go ahead and we get that little value bet in there and he calls so that's one of the other things and it comes right back to let's just go discuss the fundamentals one more time some exploits some plays you can use versus micro stakes players and this will work a lot of the times in your local casino let's go over all of it that was a lot that last hand referred

Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots Exploit , MTT When the BTN open-limps off a short stack, the postflop play against the BB should resemble that… 08/02/2024 10 min. / 13 sec.

into these databases. What about the size of the raise? The number I like to raise with these hands is about three to four times the size of the big blind. Again, I need to vary this amount in a random pattern, so my actual bets might look like this: • 35 percent: Raise three times the big blind • 35 percent: Raise four times the big blind • 15 percent: Raise twice the big blind • 15 percent: Raise five times the big blind (Note that before the flop I like to describe raises as multiples of the big blind rather than as multiples of the pot. After the flop, I think in terms of fractions or multiples of the total pot. It's a somewhat arbitrary distinction, but if you hang out on the poker circuit for awhile, you'll realize this is how the players talk and think.) Should you ever go all-in with these premium pairs? It's a very rare play, because with hands this strong you very much want to encourage action from a single opponent and try to build a big pot. Going all-in normally just chases people away and leaves you merely claiming the blinds and antes. You might consider the play if you find yourself at a very active table where you have seen all-in bets called. (Even in that case it would be an unusual move.) In late position (sixth to act) or on the button you don't want to raise more than three times the big blind. Your bet is now more likely to be interpreted as a stealing attempt and less as a value bet, and you want to encourage action, since the hands that call you will be a little weaker than usual. In this situation you also want to limp a little more than usual, especially if you have noticed that the big blind will defend his blind aggressively by raising. Give him a chance to try to chase you away. JJ, TT, 99: In early position, you need to play a mixed strategy of raising and calling with these hands. I like a mix of 70 percent raises and 30 percent calls. When you do raise, you should raise a larger amount than with the premium pairs, since you prefer to win the pot right away. While they are probably the best hand at the table right now, they become difficult to play when they are called and overcards appear on the board. With these hands, I like to raise four to five times the big blind. In middle position, you want to raise aggressively with all three of these hands, especially in fourth or fifth position. (You should be a bit more conservative in third position.) Treat them as premium hands, and raise three to five times the big blind. Unlike the premium hands, however, you should almost never limp with these cards. Because these hands are so weak when high cards come on the flop, you can't allow players with face cards to limp into the pot behind

We will need a lot of fold equity to c-bet this flop with this hand. Spot 2 - Two Overs with a Gutshot This spot is much more favourable than the previous example. In fact, this is a great example of when 'c-bet!' should be Hero's first thought provided he isn't in a mass-multiway pot. The equity-based reasons for this are twofold: First, Hero has ten outs vs a hand like top pair. Secondly, he has four outs to the nuts. His equity is now somewhere around 38% when called. These two spots illustrate how absolute hand rankings can differ massively from equity when called. An underpair like in the first spot is actually a favourite against a hand that is Q-high but has ten outs to improve. However, the Q-high hand is far more alive when called and is therefore a much better c- bet candidate. Simply having two overcards for six outs is also enormously better than holding an underpair or even worse, two under cards without any flush or straight draws. Never underestimate how great a difference having five or six extra outs can have on your RFE on the flop, and therefore, the profitability of your light c-bet. 3. Player Type We already covered how the various types of Fish affect the expected fold equity of c-bets back in Section 3.3. General Fish type and fold to c-bet stat are two very useful guidelines. Another factor that will help Hero assess his fold equity is how the player's pre-flop range is likely to interact with the flop and this too depends on the type of opponent in question.

below the strongest bluff. The checking range consists of everything in the middle and, for all of those hands, the EV of checking will be higher than the EV of betting. The player facing a bet will split their range into two main categories, defending hands and folding hands. If the bet-size faced is all-in, the defending player needs to find the threshold hand that is indifferent to calling and folding and call all hands better than that threshold. If the bet- size is not all-in, the defending player will raise all their traps alongside an appropriate number of bluffs. Table 162: Hypothetical River Strategy Example The key to river play when players have linear distributions consists of correctly identifying these threshold hands. In the very simple example where the players’ ranges are symmetric, OOP can only bet or check, and their checking hands have zero equity. If OOP bets, IP can call or fold. The next equations explain the very simple example where all the checking hands have 0% equity and players can only bet, check and call, but not raise.

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Smooth call To call the opponent's bet in the situation where raising would be expected. Synonymous with the term "flat-call".

Hand Range 238: CO vs LJ (40bb) • 3-bet 6.2% / • Call 12.3% / • Fold 81.5%

the board does not have two cards nine or higher then generally the person has mostly High cards if you get him to fold those High cards almost any bat up to the size of the pot will be profitable many basic players will fall for the tactic I just showed you their whole life they have seen half pot sized bats you put out a slightly larger bet a lot of guys will go huh that's weird and then they mock their high card which is all we want that's it we're not expecting them to fold pairs that's a big ask but maybe just a bear race right that doesn't haven't got shot hell I still have guys in wpts that fall for this tactic guys I would not teach it to you if I did not use it myself and this is something you can bring up all the time with satellite winners or like okay Rags that are used to dealing with half pot sized bets oh if you're uh if you're an older gentleman or lady they're just gonna think you have the nuts when you bet bigger actually if they fold you should apply you should beef that up right after they fold just go I hate pocket jacks or something like that that is an awesome image to have now if you had to pick another answer here which one would it be there's one other exploitative play here which requires a bit more finesse so let's say you've got 200 here into 6 30. and he calls the turn is the queen of hearts now what do you do you bet just a little over half paw anything over half pot would be good why would I do that well let's go back to the flop when we bet that small and he calls what do you think he is calling with what do we think he's calling with let's make this a group activity well now he's probably calling me with all of his Ace highs because come on guys We All Fall for this tiny bat we have a high card we feel weak folding I know all about this plan I'll tell you what if I have a seven year and someone bets 200 I feel really silly folding but the problem is what happens if the guy calls with ace high We All Fall for this tiny bet we have a high card we feel weak folding and that's when we get them or that's when they get us rather because that term comes and it's anything but an Ace and we fire anything slightly above half paw and it looks like we're trying to get value now so we're betting 550 here to win 1580 our bet needs to work as a pure Bluff 35 of the time so we're going to round up so what does that mean what's the next thing I'm going to say guys if our bet needs to work as a pure Bluff 35

are more prone to getting outdrawn, so we should size up to get value now rather than later . This also explains why overbets do not happen on boards like K72 : Despite having a huge nut advantage, rather than build our flop strategy around nutted hands, we prefer to build it around bluffs. Our opponent’s range has a lot of inelastic folds—hands so hopeless that they have to fold to any bet—so we prefer to take advantage of this by betting the flop smaller and risking less with our bluffs. We don’t have to worry about losing value when doing this; most turns and rivers are clean, so we can simply incorporate overbets on later streets to get the money in. The flop is built around bluffs; the turn and the river are built around our nuttish holdings . Middling Board Overbets A common misconception is that flop overbets only happen on high card boards. When viewed from a surface level, you’d be forgiven for believing this myth. The preflop caller does pair more often on a 973 r flop than the preflop raiser after all. And yet… If the preflop caller has more pairs in range than us, why would we still choose to overbet? The answer comes down to the quality of the pairs! Despite having fewer pairs in range overall, the BTN has a monopoly on all of the overpairs. Due to the complete lack of possible two pairs and straights on this board, any overpair is essentially the nuts. Nut Advantage + Draw Heavy Board = Urgency → Leading to Big Bets Since we’ve already explored the concept of urgency leading to overbets, let’s now explore the concept of hand elasticity and how it relates to flop strategy. What is Elasticity? Elasticity refers to how prone a hand is to altering its action facing various bet sizes. Looking at the charts above, we can determine which hands are elastic and which hands aren’t. 44 is an elastic hand. Facing the small 33% pot bet, it should always call. It can start mixing folds against 50% pot and should mostly fold against 75% pot. Against the overbet, the hand can no longer continue. K7 s and Q2 s are both examples of inelastic hands. Q2 s must always fold no matter the bet size, while K7 s should continue up to around 150% pot. Entire ranges can be thought of in terms of elasticity; the more elastic hands a range has, the more it can adapt to pricing, including larger bet sizes. Elasticity is related to the concepts of indifference and hand targeting. Thinking back to Double-Broadway boards, hands like 98 s are already close to 0 EV on the flop, so there isn’t a point in folding them out. So instead, we use a large bet to target hands like QJ , QT , JT , and K x force them into indifference. Overbetting IP against SB Flats Most players play the same way against the SB as the BB, this is a mistake! And one doesn’t

pressure the antes and blinds are putting on your chip stack: Phase 1 = Slight Pressure Phase 2 = Moderate Pressure Phase 3 = Significant Pressure Good tournament structures are designed to slowly increase antes and blinds, giving strong players plenty of time to maneuver in Phase 1. But be aware that one unfortunate hand at the beginning of a tournament may put you in Phase 3 while most players are still enjoying Phase 1. And you may run well enough to stay in Phase 1 all the way to the final table. You should always be aware not only of what phase you are in, but also of what phase every player at your table is in, relative to their own chips. That will help you be aware of when you need to adjust your play, as well as when the other players may be opening up their game (i.e. playing weaker hands) out of necessity. You will want to adjust the parameters for your own style of play, but here are some simple rules of thumb to go by: (1) Phase 1 (Slight Pressure): You have enough chips to play eleven to fifteen rounds, meaning you can pay antes and blinds for the dealer button to move eleven to fifteen times around the table. (2) Phase 2 (Moderate Pressure): You have enough chips to play eight to ten rounds. (3) Phase 3 (Significant Pressure): You only have enough chips to play seven rounds or fewer. All major tournaments publish structure sheets. Pick up a copy when you 425 register so that you can study how many chips you start with and how quickly the blinds and antes increase. Phase 1 T. J. Cloutier calls Phase 1 “survival day.” The idea is not to get yourself stuck in a hand that you don’t control or can’t get out of. On the other hand, you want to get as many other players stuck in your web as you possibly can. The critical thing to recognize about Phase 1 is that it often lasts a long time, even days. If you never played a hand on the first day of a World Poker Tour event, you would almost certainly still have chips at the end of the day— despite the fact that the field would have narrowed significantly. Think of Phase 1 as your opportunity to trap players and build chips. For a more detailed analysis of Phase 1 play, see Doyle’s “Tournament Overview.” Phase 2 At various points in the tournament, either because you have lost chips or because the structure has escalated, you will begin to feel the pressure of the antes and blinds on your chip stack. If you are a solid player, you will probably want to wait for strong opportunities to take a stand, play a hand aggressively, and hopefully double-up or win a significant pot. In Phase 2 it becomes more expensive to splash around with small pairs and trapping hands. Your goal should be to conserve chips while playing aggressively with a strong hand when you

How does ICM impact PKO strategy? If you have read The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments , you already know why we can play wider ranges in PKOs than in regular MTTs. In particular, this effect is most pronounced at the start of PKOs where Bubble Factor is below 1 (something you don’t see in regular MTTs). This is because the upside of winning bounties is more than the downside of losing chips, so much so that we can play looser multiway than in heads-up pots. But what about when the payouts are looming in PKOs? How does the impact of ICM near the bubble or at final tables affect our strategy? The ICM Dial If you have read the aforementioned articles, you are already aware of the concepts of Bounty Power and Bubble Factor. Bounty Power converts the monetary value of a bounty into chips. The higher the Bounty Power, the looser we can play. Bubble Factor measures ICM pressure in poker ; it’s defined as the ratio between how much tournament equity ($EV) you’d lose getting stacked, divided by how much $EV you’d gain stacking another player in the tournament. So the higher the Bubble Factor, the tighter we should play. Bounty Power and Bubble Factor are two competing forces in PKO tournaments. My co-writing partner Dara O’Kearney refers to this relationship as the ‘ICM Dial’ . If you can imagine a dial on a clock or a loudspeaker. At one end of the dial, at one extreme, you have Bubble Factor, at the other end of the dial you have Bounty Power. At any time in a PKO tournament, these two forces pull you in different directions. You begin with your baseline ChipEV ranges somewhere in the middle of the dial, if there is ICM pressure that pulls your ranges tighter, if there is a particularly juicy bounty to be won it pulls your ranges in the other direction, making them looser. It’s not quite as simple as that, but it is a helpful visualization. In PKO tournaments you should always ask yourself which of the two competing forces, ICM or the bounties, has more influence on your play. You’ll recall this table from our primer on PKOs, which shows the Bounty Power in a 200-runner tournament. As you can see, it is at its highest at the very start and gets lower as you reach the money, and beyond. This stands to reason, the later you get in the tournament the more influential the payouts and the final table become. As a reminder, bounty power in this chart converts the value of a $1 claimable bounty into its big blind equivalent. Graphing the value of a bounty by tournament stage: It’s clear that the adjustment to make in the late stages of PKOs is to play tighter , just as in the late stages of regular MTTs. The question is, how much tighter? The Bubble We need to compare identical spots in the late stages of normal MTTs with the equivalent spot in a PKO. Luckily, GTO Wizard

Pre-flop: Our 3BB open is very standard from UTG with a hand that's always going to be in our opening range. We get a call from the same Reg on the BU as in the previous hand. Flop: This flop is semi-wet, but Hero has decent equity with an overcard and gutshot. Moreover, Villain should be calling pre-flop with a decent number of pocket pairs, which have flopped poorly here. Hero is out of position, but his potential to fire multiple streets and get Villain to fold by the river is very good and the ability to turn a flush draw helps further with this. Being the UTG opener gives Hero a higher concentration of strong hands on this flop, which allows him to bluff a bit more liberally on the turn and river. Future street prospects are fine here if we do get called. This spot is definitely a c-bet. Look again at our sizing guide (Figure 22). This flop is wetter than the one in Hand 23, but far from soaking. Hero's range is strong here given the position he opened from and how well he connects with the K and J on this flop. Hands such as [AA KK JJ 66 AK KQ KJs KTs] are a strong and sizeable part. As a result, Hero can c-bet larger here. Somewhere between the medium and large zones looks

like some really big bets when we check now when we check now on on the on this sure like what are they value bet like here's a nine checks but like here's the problem with checking a flush in this spot all right how many people do you think bet queen of diamonds 10 of spades here on the river it's like the solver checks here with a flush a lot but yeah every 10 they're supposed to value about 10 3 like they're they're they're supposed to value that with 10-3 they're supposed to value bet with every single 10 every single ace like people check back ace 3 here a lot the the charcoal gray means it's not that it's a hand they don't have if like here like gray means they don't have that hand this is like a weighted average of how often they have that hand so like it's a disaster like people just don't value that thin enough here to incentivize us because like here they bet now we like weigh into them you see here like now we're just shoving we just shoved for 95 big bonds now because they're capped they didn't improve on the deuce of hearts so now like our flushes just go ape [ __ ] it's kind of funny we just shove for 100 big blinds they call 17 of the time they fold a lot yes but they still have to call sometimes they still have to call sometimes with an ace why because most of their range is an ace there's not really a way around it no they bet king king jack jack on the turn so that's the problem with checking on this river is because people don't value that thin enough and that makes it really tough for us to um go for a check raise so let's look at one or two more things and then uh we'll just look at one more hand that's this very similar spot and then maybe we'll go through a couple hands quickly um so in terms of bluffing so if you look here we're actually checking like 74 of the time here on this river we actually check a lot and the reason is is like we don't really really want a value bet an acer 9. we're not value betting any of our 10x here and so we don't really get a bluff a ton because of that and if you see here where do we want to bluff the most here like here's queen jack wants to bluff a lot here's king hai's that actually want to bluff a lot with king heis because we block 9x with these king highs and queen highs and stuff there's some blocker stuff going on here um i have eight six here it's kind of weird like it it checks a lot i wouldn't have checked eight high here but um i'll just show you what happened in game i bet 4 600 what do you guys

the hands in the middle you know those two street hands which we have a showdown hands and in this situation is a time where we can now benefit from betting a polarized range um the reason being that you know we looked at the golden ratio we want our value bets and our bluffs to be aligned and our bluffs our hands that can't win at showdown are the ones that benefit the most from getting our opponent to fold whereas our hands that come in on showdown can benefit from check calling because they can win at showdown a good example of this is if we bet the river whether we're value betting or bluffing and get raised we can continue with our value hands and we can fold with our bluffs easy but if we bet a hand that has showdown value and we have to fold to a raise we may be folding a hand that could have won the potter fit it checked and so our checking hands are that are kind of the middle of our range we usually want to be checked on the river so we can show it down and the worst hands will want to be bet because they're the ones that benefit the most from bluffing the river the key in this situation is to look at the bet size that you're choosing and figure out how many bluffs you need to have to match that so you see how many value bets do i have what bet size am i choosing and how many bluffs do i need to balance that out and when you combine those two things you'll have that perfect ratio and yeah so value bets can be 50 of the calling range bluffs will not win at showdown and everything else is what falls between it can beat it can beat a portion of the range but it won't beat fifty percent of their calling range okay i'm going to rock through a little checklist for planning your hand versus a perfect opponent first ask what does my range look like second ask how many streets do i want to play with each hand so putting the hands into the buckets then third what bet size will i be using and based on that how many value bets you have and what bet size using you can figure out how many bluffs you need to balance your range then fifth once you know kind of what frequencies you're going for how many hands you need how many combos you need then you choose the best candidates to fill those ranges out and finally ask is my checking range protected you don't want to put all your good hands in your betting range because then your checking range is weak in your opponents if they're thinking players can take advantage of that which a perfect opponent is but fortunately we're not playing against perfect opponents we're playing against human opponents who are going to make mistakes myself

you know hijack is not necessarily loose hijack is a young European player who I think plays well I I don't know a ton about the player but he gets in there he battles he he plays pots all right flop comes five three two what should we do with Ace King on the five three two why not men re-raise because if I'm in re-raised with a hand like sevens and they get jammed on I lose more money again we're playing our range not our hand we're playing all hands we could have in this scenario now you could split the range if you wanted but I don't think there's a reason to split it um okay Ace King on five through two this is the board I'm gonna check a ton I from out of position against the hijacked you want to be checking a lot in the scenario if you studied the tournament masterclass at pokercoaching.com you know that you do a ton of checking here should we check going to bets 10K I think it's a spot where the opponent's supposed to have a lot of small bats and when they met half pot you have to ask can I get any information from this I think generally people bet this size in the scenario is probably closer to to being a lot of pairs that are just trying to get value slash protection although you know loose aggressive battling opponent not insane not like an insane player but you know pretty active player they could easily just be betting stuff like Queen Jack and whatnot um so I think this is a spot where we should probably I mean look we're not folding here um the questions either we want to call or we want to raise and I don't think we need to raise this one either because the opponent may just be betting lots of stuff planning to check it down so we're gonna call doesn't checking polarize you no I'm going to be checking the vast majority of my range here and people saying shove it all in definitely don't shove it all in you get called here I mean terrible shape turn to three check opponent bats 25k rough spot for sure I ran this through a GTO solver you know what it say you should do here at the Ace King specifically diamonds and hearts it said you should call half the time and fold half the time now if I think you bonus a little bit loose and aggressive I'm gonna be way more inclined to call if I think the opponent is um on the more cautious side I'm definitely gonna fold if I am playing a tournament if anything I should be way more inclined to fold because I don't want to put myself in a spot to play a pretty big pot going to the river with a marginal Bluff catcher ideally you want to avoid very roughly Breakeven scenarios so this is a spot where I

charts for that on pokercoaching.com it's one of the resources you get as a member and then when facing an open that's when you look at your opponent's range what percentage of hands is he playing can you exploit him post flop if so you want to play more hands is he pretty solid post flop so you want to just play the same amount of hands as him and based on that you choose what percent of hands you want to continue with also their post-flop tendencies really matter how do they react to aggression what's their fault to three bet their flop raise full to flop rays fold on later streets etc just the more you can profile your opponent the more you can justify widening your range and play more hands because you know where you can you know make your move on them and put the pressure on and find a profitable bet second is determining what hands you want to use to make up that percentage so if you know you want to play 10 of hands what is the best 10 percent of hands to play given the situation next do you have to consider another range if so you know for your 10 raise range you might not want to do the top 10 percent of hands maybe you want to do the top seven percent of hands call with five percent and then the next three percent you raise so if you have to consider another range you can't just put all the best hands into one range you want to spread them out over two to ensure that both your ranges can withstand pressure on later streets this is called protecting your range fourth is are there more cards to come if that's the case then having draws go up in value having equity goes up in value having outs goes up in value and how deep are you if you're really deep then those nut draws go up in value and if you're super deep um the draws that make you the nuts and make your opponent a strong second best hand go up in value that's when you get really nitty gritty with the hand selection um yeah and it's how deep are you and how likely is the money to go in the middle you know because just because you have 500 big blinds in front of you if the pot has five blinds um in it on the turn it's unlikely that all those 500 bigs are going in on the river you know it's 100x pot which brings us to pot to stack ratio which is the concept that helps us recognize what is the likelihood of a lot of money going into the pot so to figure out pot stack ratio what is it it's exactly what it sounds like you take how much is in the pot take how much is in the effective stack and you create a ratio it's another concept that matt affleck

this is C wide in my range to take advantage of how tight they are playing um you don't want to tighten their ranges just because they're opening only tight only strong hands um that would be silly in it at a tight table there um you're just gonna win so much money by even just taking down the blinds over and over um so and another way to you you can open a lot of hands and get calls and if they show any kind of aggression post lock you can easily fold and move on so you're just gonna print money by opening a lot of hands in a at a very tight table okay so let's move on to the next question what are the best reasons for folding a ham like ace deuce suited under the gun is it a we will be out of position too often B reverse implied odds implications if they flattest with a bigger Ace C this hand is is too weak to play out of position all of the above or E none of the above so the answer that I chose is D all of the above so you don't want a hand like is do suited to be a standard open under the gun especially in cash games for all of these reasons you'll be out of position reverse implied odds implications Etc so in a if you're playing a tournament and um you're at a tight table and the blinds and Annie's are are high you can there's argument for opening hands like any pseudo days under the gun but as your typical under the gun range with 100 big blinds and more I would just fold this because it's just a little bit too weak so let's go ahead and jump to the next question so when you have a low spr you are a more committed to the pot be less committed to the bot or C none of the above so go ahead and take a moment and the answer I gave is a you are more committed to the pot so again the lower the spr the better odds you're getting and the more committed you are to going with the hand okay so let's move on to the next question what is the best way to manipulate spr is it a by raising bigger pre-flop B by three betting and check raising more C flatting more hands D is it a and b is it B and C or is it a and C so go ahead and take a moment so the answer that I chose is D A and B so by raising bigger pre-flop and by three betting and check raising more so basically when you're when you're putting more money in the pot and building bigger pots it lowers the spr so flatting more hands doesn't really make much sense so why are raised first and ranges different in tournaments than in cash games is it because a tournaments are

Then: Now that we know X, we can use it to find Hero’s betting frequency with QQ:

a parlor game where i put a ball underneath one dixie cup out of five and then you came into the room and i said randomly pick which one do you think has the ball underneath it and you picked you happened to get lucky and you picked the one with the ball underneath out of the five dixie cups and i went oh my god oh my god this is so sick this is ridiculous oh my god how you're so lucky this is such a joke i would sound like a crazy person and that's but you got to remember you got to put you got to put the pressure on them because there's a pretty good chance you still have a ton of equity even when you're called and if you win this pot just before the bubble bursts like you get people always ask how do i get a big stack on the bubble how do i get a big stack going into the money it's like you got to be you got to be putting the pressure on that and putting all the pressure of like do you want to cash all right good luck choose shoot risk your tournament risk your possible min cash all right you got to put the pressure on them and then if they do buck up if they do wake up with a hand remember you're never that big of a dog and if you win that pot boy it's going to be real fun from that point on all right that's it for pre-flop let's go on the flop all right let's get into some of these flop situations so here villain six has opened on the button i'm not in love with calling here but i know a lot of you folks do so just typically with short sex guys you want big cards if you're going to play short stack pots heads up you want big cards because you make a big pair you and you get it in when the stacks are short it's going to be pretty hard to do that incorrectly now with three high it's going going to be exceedingly difficult to hit a big pair me thanks so the board comes 10-5-5 and you get a nice little flush draw what would you like to do here check them out if you do want to call here let's at least do it right time's up we check and this player fires k it is on you full call arrays time is up we're going to go ahead and raise here now this is a more basic exploitative exploitable play that we should do a little bit more versus micro six players so the thing you need to know about micro six players is when it gets folded around to them on the button they they want to play so bad because poker they're still recreational players and poker still very fun for them that they just open way too much from the button

Hand Range 312: LJ 40bb vs HJ 3.25x 3-bet • All-in 19.3% / • Call 24.7% / • Fold 56%

then you get to pick up a little extra money when you bet the turn alright guys that is exactly how much time I had hey guys thank you for tuning in today I know your time is valuable so it means a lot to me that you would share time with me today I promise you I use all these plays myself and I guarantee they will get you some chips on the felt if you use them so do be sure to use them actually now that we're at the end do you mind if I tell you about a deal we have going on type 1 in the chat if you're fine with that lots of ones spamming the ones well I'm glad you guys asked alright a number of one so let's do it I have a special offer for you guys in regards to poker coaching where myself Jonathan littell and Matt Affleck work poker coaching calm what is poker coaching com poker coaching calm has over 400 interactive poker hand quizzes over 30 coaching challenge webinars for new hand quizzes every week and you get to attend a live coaching challenge webinar with two-time WPT champion John 'litham little every month so guys uh just speaking to you frankly I cannot tell you how cool the hand quizzes are I I get to make hand quizzes for poker coaching calm and its really fun as a coach because coaching people is the best way to do it is in a question and answer format because well there's a lot of research in this which is if you think about the best teacher you had when you were in grade school usually what that teacher did is get you got you involved that teacher would ask you questions all the time and would get you thinking and would get you engaged and the really cool thing about poker coaching com with those four hundred quizzes is that it's just Street by street in all these different situations and it's what would you do and you get a score and if you do great awesome you get to hear why the coach did it and hopefully you can add on to why you did that it may be restructure why you did that play a little bit different and get some clarity and if you didn't do well on it you get to know exactly what you want to work on and you get to listen to the coach explain it to you that is the best way to teach and the fact that they have four hundred interactive poker hand quizzes is pretty staggering just being one of the guys on the back end knowing how much work goes into just creating one of them that is in how useful just one of them can be just one can help you see a concept that will make you win the same type of situations pot again and again and again for the rest of your life however

Hand Range 140: BB vs SB Push (15bb) • Call 28.9% / • Fold 71.1%

The Sklansky-Chubukov Rankings You are in the small blind in a $1–$2 blind game. Everyone folds to you. You have A♡K♢, but you accidentally flip your cards over for your opponent to see. (Assume your hand is not ruled dead at that point.) Unfortunately, your opponent is a computer that can instantly and flawlessly determine its best play now that it knows your hand. After posting your small blind, you have $X in your stack. You decide that you will either move all-in or you’ll fold. For what values of $X is it better to move all-in, and for what values is it better to fold? Clearly, for small values of $X, you should just move in and hope your computer opponent doesn’t have a pocket pair. Most of the time it won’t, and you’ll win $3. When it does, you’ll be a dog, but that will happen only a small percentage of the time. Specifically, your opponent is slightly worse than 16-to-1 against to have a pair. So with a stack of 16 × $3 = $48, moving in would show an immediate profit. Since you win immediately 16 out of 17 times, you could lose 100 percent of the time when you’re called and still make a slight profit. And you won’t lose anywhere close to 100 percent of the time (after all, you’re a “coin flip” against queens through deuces). But for very large values of $X, you won’t win $3 often enough to make up for those times the computer happens to get lucky and catch a pair (particularly aces or kings). For instance, if you had $10,000, moving all-in would be very stupid. Every once in a while, your opponent will have pocket aces or kings and have a giant edge. You won’t win enough blinds to compensate. So the question is, what’s the break-even value of $X? If your stack is below that value, you should move in. And if it’s above it, you should fold. After you are dealt A♡K♢, there are 50 cards remaining in the deck. That allows your opponent 1,225 possible hand combinations: 1, 225 = (50)(49) 2 Since the computer knows what you have, it will never call you as an un- 143

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possibility you are beat, do not waste the chips just to find out. In the late stages of the tournament, you will be able to last through more rotations of the blinds and be able to scoop up the more desperate players. Look for the flow of the game. Is your table so tight that no one will call a pot unless they hold aces? Is there someone stealing blinds because everyone is playing too tight? You have to consider all of these events. As always, try to learn more about your opponents. At this point, you should decide whether you want to win or just make it into the money places. This will determine how loose your starting hand requirements should be. In every tournament there are opportunities due to your position (button or in the cutoff position), your chip advantage and your ability to not put all of your chips at risk. Look for these opportunities with less than optimal hands. For example, I was in a tournament during the middle stages with around T$9,000 chips. The blinds were T$100/$200 so it was still early in the structure. There were four or five players with around the same amount of chips as me at the table. I am on the button. The UTG player bets two times the big blind (T$400) the next player re-raises the big blind (T$600) and one-person calls putting T$1600 in the pot. I have 4 5 suited. Normal reasoning would say fold due to two raises and a cold call but look at these numbers. I am risking less than ten percent of my chip stack for three times my bet and I have position on all of them. No one dominates another player’s stack so if the flop is bad for me I am not risking my whole tournament bankroll. There is the real possibility that the UTG raiser will go all-in instead of just calling the re-raise and I will lose the T$600 but it is still in the early middle stage. Well I called, a loose call but these are the times for opportunity to strike and strike it did. A flop of three 5's, quads for me hit the table. The UTG player goes all-in, the next player calls his all-in and the next player calls that all-in. What is going on here? They each had Pocket Pairs of J's, A's and 7's. They all had Full Boats but I had Quads. I collected over T$30,000 in chips right there. This was the extreme event, but these things happen in every tournament. If you can flop a monster, with a speculative hand in good position no one can put you on that hand and you will win a large amount of chips. You called because of position, pot odds and by following the five/ten rule, do not risk more than five to ten percent of your chip stack on a draw. If you are going to push someone around use the same rule. Essentially, you must think survival, do not risk

size down and lower his RFE. Hero probably doesn't want to min 3-bet, but any reasonable size will ruin implied odds at this stack depth. Moreover, let's consider Villain's RFE on a potential 4-bet. If Hero goes to 8BB, the RFE of 4-bet bluffing the remaining 37BB will be immense since a 4-bet is a shove at this depth and Villain gets to realise equity when called as well as fold equity when not called. Hero needs a size that punishes Villain appropriately for his open sizing mistake and cuts the RFE of 4-bet shoving light. At the same time, Hero must not offer decent implied odds to the 40BB stack by going tiny. Hero raises to 6.75BB. If you don't like typing in awkward decimals, then get some hotkeys set up. If you want to find that sweet spot in Figure 61, sometimes this kind of precision will be necessary.

AKo is a very standard 4-bet call BU vs. BB against the average active Reg. The reason for this is two fold. 1. Fold Equity Hero picks up a lot of dead money when Villain folds to the 4-bet. Villain folds to the 4-bet more than usual when Hero holds both an A and a K as these blockers eliminate a lot of AA, KK and AK combos which obviously don't fold to the 4-bet. Let's assume that Villain 3-bet shoves a range of [JJ+, AK, AQs] which is a reasonable, but tightish range to shove over a BU 4-bet Reg vs. Reg. If Hero's cards were 4c4d then this shoving range would contain 44 combos (24 pairs + 16 AK + 4 AQs). As it is, when Hero has AKo, he blocks three AA combos, three KK combos and seven AK combos. Villain's 3-bet shoving range has just 44 - 13 = 31 combos now instead of 44. Hero's blockers ensure that Villain only shoves 31/(X+31) % of time instead of 44/(X+44) % of the time, where X is Villain's amount of 3-bet bluff combos. The first number will always be lower because regardless of how many bluffs Villain uses, his value hands are blocked to a greater extent. This added fold equity helps Hero's EV tremendously. 2. Equity

Hand Range 348: BN vs UTG 20bb • All-in 4.6% / • 3-bet 0.3% / • Call 12.2% / • Fold 82.9% Overall, the strategies could be simplified to two bet-sizes, a big bet-size and a small bet-size, depending on the flop. With 40bb, you can use 3/4-pot and min-bet or 1/3-pot, and with 20bb 2/3-pot and min-bet or 1/3-pot. I did not test 1/4-pot bet-size, but I think it would probably work well and could potentially replace the min-bet and 1/3-pot. With deeper stacks, overbets should be introduced to the play.

the River so you will win at least four bets. If you miss four times and hit four times your totals will look like this. Miss – lose 12 bets, Hit – win 16 bets. This is another reason some players suggest putting in a raise in this situation, with 15 outs on the flop and Turn. A drawing hand that can improve but not to the nuts is still a good bet in the end. You are taking a chance that your opponent does not have the nuts and you cannot always wait for the nuts or fear that your opponent has the perfect hand to beat you. Just because someone is in the hand does not mean they have the nuts or are even drawing to the nut regardless of how the betting is going. I have won hands that had a three Flush showing while I had a set and tried to improve to a Full House. In the end, my opponent had Top Pair/Top Kicker (TPTK) rather than the Flush and I raked in a nice pot. If you have a drawing hand that will improve to a strong made hand then it is worth going for it while you get the correct pot odds. An example is when you hold Q T and the board shows K 7 8 9 rainbow. You have a good hand and it can improve if a Jack or 6 hit the River. You have a Straight, but not the nut Straight if a 6 falls on the River, and a nut Straight if a Jack shows up. I would not fold this hand if I was facing one or two bets in a limit Hold’em game or if it was a quarter or even a third of a pot bet (the implied odds of hitting make this a probable call) in no limit. Strong drawing hands are Flushes, open-ended Straight draws, and sets trying to improve to a Full House. Mediocre drawing hands would be having Top Pair with your kicker being a Jack. Say you hold J 9 and the flop comes 5 6 9 with a Turn card of 7. You have Top Pair and a Gut-Shot Straight draw. You have eight outs to improve but not all eight outs are the same. If a Jack comes on the River, your 2-Pair of J 9 can be beat by someone holding 8 T to complete the Straight. If an 8 comes on the River, you complete a Straight but you are only using one of your hole cards. Someone who has J T has the nut Straight. One side note, when you use both of your hole cards to make your final hand it is much stronger than when you only use one of your cards as the above example shows. Someone that uses both of their cards to make a Flush will beat someone needing a four Flush board to use their one Ace. This is even truer when you have a Straight. If your opponent has connectors,

actually let's go back to the turn because I don't think we covered the spot say we bet small on the Flop we get called Turn is uh whatever four clubs we check I'm sorry uh big blind tracks and now low track checks behind this is when it goes check check on the turn flop bat check check on the turn now let's put up a random blank on the river this is something that comes up a lot where the out of position player the big blind in this case is going to bet large when they do bad they are shoving 2x pots a lot of the time 16 big lines into 8.3 now why would they want to do this well against the checking range that is very condensed it's referred to it's a lot of like not asex right something like a Jack and worse against a lot of Jack and worse you can put a lot of pressure on that and if your opponent's range is Jack and worse because they're playing GTO notice our Aces become good strong super duper value hands right we can rip it in with Ace 8 just straight for Value king queen as a bluff King Jack for Value right King 10 is a bluff Queen 8 suited 10 8 suited as Bluffs cool spot right when we do track we have a lot of medium strength hands but we do have some nuts to protect it It's always important to protect your checking range by including some hands you know you're just not folding so if we check now the opponent should that Barry polarized looks like they're potting it which is cool to see we didn't put it in with our race X which again is a little bit loose most people don't do this and I would not recommend this in a tournament uh you don't just shove in the spot too thin because you will be against uh the ace sometimes and you want to conserve your last 8B blinds or whatever it is but you do see we're calling it off still kind of wide most people do not call it off nearly often enough and when considering the GTO strategy because to be fair most people don't Bluff nearly often enough let's say we did get this check on the River on the river the Two River what should they be bluffing with you have to ask will my opponents actually be bluffing with all the logical blocks well my opponent shove pocket queens and shove pocket kings I don't know well they shoved the queen 10 off suit I don't know probably what about Jack eight weird jack 8 job right what about the 10-8 I don't know when I say shove I'm sorry I said the wrong word will they bet will they bet uh pot with these hands if they're not going to be bluffing quite as often you can now over fold right so if your opponents don't Bluff as

is this guy?” Super-aggressive and super-passive players will behave differently here. Once you’ve taken these factors into account, you should be able to crystallize the situation somewhat like this: “I’m in position witha medium-strength hand, facing a medium-strength hand that might or might not have me beat and a super-aggressive player.” Now, at last, you can proceed. (By the way, can you see how important it is to do this logical orderly analysis? The first few times you try it, it’ll feel labored and awkward, and will seem to take forever. But it’s like Wii tennis: You get better fast.) Let’s look at some sample situations. In Position, Aggressive Bettor, Strong Hand You’re in position against an aggressive opponent who bets into you on the river. Your pretty sure yours is the better hand. The board is Q-J-7-3- 2 and you have 77. What should you do? First, you judge your position. Yep, you’ve got that. Next, you judge your opponent’s hand strength. Even though he’s aggressive, he’s not just betting his aggressiveness. In this case, the story of the hand tells you that he is, in fact, strong. You’re strong too. But he’s aggressive, likely to push a hand that’s less than the nuts; that’s what aggressive players do. But your hand is better. Now what? In this case, you don’t just raise, but raise big. After all, you’re both strong. And this is an aggressive guy. You don’t need to tease value out of him. You want him to pay you off big. And he will. His style of play demands it. Being aggressive, he knows his opponents will call bullshit on his bets much more often than against other players. Aggressive players have to call raises more often than non-aggressive players, lest savvy players mercilessly play back at them and take away pot after pot on the river. Note what a small raise would do from a storytelling point of view: suggest to your aggressive opponent that you’re trying to extract value—that, infact, you’re afraid to miss out on some, as so many players are. The small raise would actually be easier for him to get away from. But if you raisebig, your story is much different. Now you look like someone who wants a fold. And because your opponent is also strong, you’ll likely get a call. A small raise might also invite the aggressive player to play back at you and unless you have the stone-cold nuts, you don’t want that. A big raise blocks that play. Next case: Your hand is strong and you suspect this same aggressive opponent is either weak or medium-strength when he leads into you. Again you analyze. You have position, so you have the option of closing out the action, but you also have strength, so you don’t fear re-opening it. The story of the hand suggests that you have the better holding and your (aggressive) opponent is out in front of his. In this case, you don’t want tobet too big. Even if he reads you as scared, his hand

Once you've decided the pot odds are good and a bluff is reasonably likely, your work is done. It's clear that much of the time, your hand is right now the best at the table, plus you have aces, queens, and two running diamonds to give yourself a possible lock. Just shove your chips in and see what happens. Action: You call. He turns up K♦2♣, a stone bluff hand. The turn and river are the 8♦ and the 9♦ respectively, and your flush wins. These flops that come with a low pair and another medium card create some tantalizing traps. You look at the flop and says "Hey, that probably didn't hit his hand. I'm making a move here." 119 But if your opponent is awake, he'll realize that by the same logic, it probably didn't hit your hand either. Hand 5-21 Situation: Early in a single-table online tournament. Player G and the big blind are aggressive players, involved in many pots. Your hand: T♣8♠ Action to you: Players A, B, and C all fold. Question: Should you fold or attempt to steal the pot by raising? Answer: There are several obvious reasons for not trying to steal a pot here. The most important is that five players behind you have yet to act, and two of those are known to be aggressive players who are unlikely to fold. A second key reason is that, while you have only $740 and are in last place among the nine players, your chips total 25 times the blinds, so you're not yet in a desperate situation. T♣8♠ unsuited is certainly a mediocre hand, and you have time to wait for something better. On the button with everyone having folded to you, this would be a semi-daring steal. Here, it's just a foolish play. Action: You decide to steal the pot and raise to $50. Players E and F fold. Player G calls. The blinds fold. The pot is now $130. Flop: 5♦4♠3♠ Question: You act first. What do you do? Answer: Your bet was too small to succeed in online play. You should have bet a minimum of $ 100, perhaps as much as $150, to have a chance at a successful steal. The flop was a mixture of good and bad news. Only one player called, and the flop was all low cards, so you have two overcards to the board. However, there are two spades on board, so a player with the ace of spades may elect to keep playing. Here you should take another shot at winning, and make a bet of about half the pot. The 2-to-l odds are favorable, and the bet has some chance of succeeding. (If you bet half the pot, you only have to win one-third of your bets to break even; winning one bet out of three wins the amount of the pot, while losing twice costs you half the pot each time.) Action: You bet $60. Player G calls. The pot is now $250 chips. Fourth Street: K♠ Question: What do you do

better than just betting the turn and checking the river not that he would ever do that but against the Spade hands that his opponent could be holding those flushes it's important that he bets the turn and the river to try to extract as much value from those hands as possible I like this half pop bed here Samuel's probably going to be calling with almost any Spade and then canapon can size appropriately on the river to try to get paid if you're in his shoes you got to ask yourself am I only trying to get paid by the King of Spades am I looking to get paid by the Jack and the tennis Spades the eight and a seven Spades or all Spades and based on what portion of your opponent's range you want to get called by you bet accordingly the narrower you're trying to get called by the bigger you bet you'll get more folds but when you do get called you'll also get paid more so that's kind of the art here of bet sizing on the river kanapong thinking about it trying to decide what that perfect size is going to be and he says three quarter pot is the amount Samuel has a bluff catcher here he's got to expect canapong probably wouldn't bet this big with the 10 of the Jack of Spades so it's the king or the ace or maybe even only the ace and therefore does it make sense for Samuel to look him up here we can see the cards we know the answer is no but in game it's a very different situation if he calls and wins he'll basically be in second place and there'll be three short stacks if he calls and loses he'll be in third place if he folds he'll be in third place but it'll be a lot closer important things to consider when facing a big bet be it all in pre-flop or a big river bet ask yourself what would my chip position be if I just fold well my chip position be if I call and win well my chip position be if I call and lose and based on all three of those possible outcomes it'll really help you to determine whether or not you want to take the chance you want to take the variance on making that call because um ICM is a thing and your chip stack relative to the other ones is very important in determining that calculation Samuel really giving this one a full thing does decide to make the call and he's going to get the bad news from Kana pong who shows him the nut flush and takes that pot down to chip up to almost 100 million all right in three-handed play Eric Matson back in the chip lead with 130 mil canapong in second with 120 in feng Xiao third place 48 million for 24 big blinds got a couple of playable hands here Queen nine on the button

it's pretty hard to fold a pair here and it's pretty hard to forward like your suited Broadway so I think a three best size to a smaller size and can be really good against some players um but in general 4X is fine here okay sorry six four four oh by the way I did I I was thinking about this hand that I played against Barry also in this series I know he used a smaller three bet size at some other point where I think it was a very similar spot I think maybe like 27k or something so interesting he's using two different sizes in this scenario okay cool somehow someway anyway go ahead yeah it makes some sense I mean it is what it is I mean yeah I'm telling you I saw it so yeah I know it no it's cool I mean it could people can be really tricky in the spot some berries definitely like a guy who can uh who can be tricky and can um you know make mix it up with bigger size with certain bands thinking that it's really good and it's always Dynamic with Barry we used to play a lot together just like at random wpts especially in cash games and I literally never fold him and yeah especially back in the day back in the day he used to but I feel like he's chilled out a lot yeah yeah I think he just tries to play really well in most cases that's probably it too okay so anyway six four four this is we have the nuts yep he goes for this really tiny best size I think that this is like um I think tiny bets out of position in three of pots in general work really well if you're continuing with the correct range because if we look at what this looks like in the solver it's he's supposed to use like a more of a about 25 pot size and when he goes like 10K into 76 you actually have to call the entire deck right because you're in position here so you're folding one combo which is Queen ten of Hearts right so I get why he went so small because it's it's pretty hard to look at like you know Jack ten of Hearts here and just always continue your hand um do you think that he is doing this exploitatively against me and or against the player pool or do you think he just thinks this is the right GTO play it's hard to say I'm not sure it's always really difficult so I mean it's not that big of like a like the EV difference between using about 25 pot and about you know 10 and 76 here like isn't that much of a difference um but if we think about his range like he does still want some protection when he has the Jacks and the Queens you know if he uses this like about 25 size all

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predominantly value orientated range when they bet three times like this. One final point is that Hero must remember that he, like Villain, has a range of hands that he gets to the river with and that range contains a good few stronger hands like AQ and sets. Folding this one hand doesn't make Villain's play great overall if he is bluffing. Hero is not making a mistake if Villain rolls over a bluff after Hero folds in this one instance - Villain can only exploit Hero if Hero folds too often, not if he folds a hand that is at the bottom of his range. We'll see a lot more about this approach of playing our whole range rather than just our hand as the manual goes on. Chapter 13 will deal with spots from this perspective. In summary, we used a two-part thought process to come to our decision in Hand 48. We first found our required equity (RE) and only then asked three questions to see if we could solve the spot quickly. When that failed, we assessed our population reads as none of the more specific reads could help us and decided that we'd probably lose here more than 72% of the time on average if we called the bet. Hero Folds. Out of game Hero can be more specific than this and input an estimated range of hands for Villain into an equity calculating poker program. This will give him his exact equity if Villain's range was exactly the model Hero used in the calculation. Of course Hero can't soul read Villain's range out of game any more than he can in game, but such a tool can help draw conclusions such as: "If Villain bluffs all of his AK and AJ, and then the rest of his range is value, then I should call." In fact vs a range of [AJ, AK] as bluffs and then [AQ KK AA A4s 22 33 55 99 QQ] for value Hero can use such a program to calculate that his equity is 43% and that he can call comfortably. Due to our population reads, however, we decided that Villain probably wasn't bluffing anywhere near this much on average and decided to fold for that reason. Here is a flowchart to serve as a summary of how we solved this end of action spot.

re-raise almost always have a really really good hand so unless you're getting the correct implied odds to call with pairs or suited connectors or suited Aces you probably need to get out of the way you cannot be calling limp re-raises with hands like ACE check offsuit or queen nine suited it's not gonna work out well for you at all also as a general tip you're going to find that most players are only capable of being tricky from early position because when they went from early position there's a lot of players get to act who could re-raise them but if they lent from the button or the cut off there's only a few people that yet to act who could raise and those players aren't really incentivized to raise all that often so most players are only going to be tricky from early position so against these tricky limpers and we're going to presume these are the players who will have a decent amount of very strong hands in their range you're going to want to limp behind them and see a flop with all hands that flop well these are going to be hands like suited Aces suited connectors small and medium pairs maybe even big pairs if they're super tricky and you're going to want to raise or even perhaps fold with hands that do not flop so well these are going to be hands like King jack off suits four hands like Ace nine off suit these are hands that if you raise and then they re-raise you you can very easily hold right because you know you're very dominated but if they boldier race or if they call them then have a very weak range Ace nine and King Jack is doing well enough especially in a heads up pot especially in position okay you have to realize that against these players as long as their range is not overly strong raising for value with the intention of folding if you get three bet is fine if their range contains a lot of marginal hands for example say they lent from early position and you have Ace Queen in Middle position this is a spot where you should almost certainly re-raise with Ace Queen offsuit and if they re-raise you you can just fold it's okay you get out of the way because you presume which you know you got to make sure your presumptions are right but you presume their re-raising range is going to be Aces and kings and queens and Ace King and Ace Queen does very poorly against that but you also presume their calling range is going to be hands like Ace Jack ace10 Ace ex suited king queen queen Jack right and Ace Queen smashes those so you're raising with hands like Ace queen with the idea that if they re-raise you you can just hold and if they call you're going to be absolutely crushing them so that's a perfectly viable option let's take a look at

Poker Terms Various terms are used throughout this book in order to discuss poker strategy concisely. While many of these terms may be familiar to you, some may be new. If you are ever unsure about the meaning of a sentence due to not understanding the terminology, please refer back to this section. Active Players: The players involved in the hand, often referred to as the Hero and the Villain(s). Hero: The player from whose perspective the hand is played. Villains: Any of Hero’s opponents involved in the hand. Pre-flop: Any action that occurs before the flop is dealt. Post-flop: Any action that occurs after the flop has been dealt. In Position (IP): The player who acts last due to their relation to the dealer/button. Out of Position (OOP): The player (or players) who do not act last due to their relation to the dealer/button. Relative Position: A player has positional advantage over another player when he gets to act after him throughout the hand. For example, in the common situation of BB vs BN, BN gets to act last on each street for the rest of the hand, so BN is IP and conversely BB is OOP. First In: Refers to the situation when the action gets to a player and no other player has previously voluntary entered the pot. For example, if Hero is on the BN and everyone folds around to him, he has the option to be the first in by either calling or raising. Stack Size and Stack Depth: Stack depth is always displayed in terms of big blinds. For example, if a player has 1,000,000 chips and the big blind is 100,000, he only has 10 big blinds (bb). Effective Stack: The smallest stack size among the active players. In a heads-up pot the effective stack size determines the maximum amount either player can lose. Bet-size: Bet-sizes are displayed either in big blinds (for example, Villain bets 2bb, 5bb, 25bb) or as a fraction of the pot (for example 1/3-pot, 1/2-pot, 2/3-pot). The Nuts: A poker hand is considered “the nuts” if it is the strongest possible hand at a specific moment. For example, AA is the nuts pre-flop. J♣T♣ is the nuts on 9♥8♥7♦ but is no longer the nuts if the turn brings another heart, 9, 8, or 7 because stronger hands than a straight are then possible. Effective Nuts: A poker hand that is not the actual nuts but is strong enough that it should be played as if it were the nuts. For example, 7♣7♥ is the effective nuts on 8♥7♦2♦.

future streets. With a 33% bet and a 55% raise, there wouldn’t be much room to play anyway, which is why UTG responded more aggressively. But a 20% bet and a 33% raise leaves more room to call and play poker on the turn, which is often in UTG’s interest. Conclusion Paired flops are tricky to play at all stack sizes because they require valuing hands differently than other flops. The difficulty of connecting with the flop incentivizes both players to contest the pot with any pair, no matter how weak, and many unpaired hands. Merged raising ranges are the norm, with both players seeking to semi-bluff, protect vulnerable hands, and grudgingly call down light when necessary to keep their opponent from bluffing too profitably. With deep stacks, the amount of trips in the preflop raiser’s range often limits how much three-betting they can do. Within that limit, their three-betting strategy is driven by how effectively they can deny equity . illustration Paired flops are tricky to play at all stack sizes because they require valuing hands differently than other flops. The difficulty of connecting with the flop incentivizes both players to contest the pot with any pair, no matter how weak, and many unpaired hands. Merged raising ranges are the norm, with both players seeking to semi-bluff, protect vulnerable hands, and grudgingly call down light when necessary to keep their opponent from bluffing too profitably. With deep stacks, the amount of trips in the preflop raiser’s range often limits how much three-betting they can do. Within that limit, their three-betting strategy is driven by how effectively they can deny equity . With medium stacks, strategies become even more aggressive, with the bettor often three-betting any pair and even their best unpaired hands for thin value and protection , resigned to calling a shove if they must. Straight draws in BB’s check-raising range makes three-betting extra appealing. With shallow stacks, the preflop raiser is incentivized to use smaller bet sizes and raise less often to preserve the value of their position on future streets. Even seemingly modest and vulnerable one pair hands can function as traps. When this is not feasible, then they play much more aggressively on the flop, with an eye toward protecting and denying equity . GTO Wizard the #1 App for Poker players Study any spot imaginable Practice by playing vs. GTO Analyze your hands with 1-click START CRUSHING NOW JOIN DISCORD Author Andrew Brokos Andrew Brokos has been a professional poker player, coach, and author for over 15 years. He co-hosts the Thinking Poker Podcast and is the author of the Play Optimal Poker books, among others. Latest article Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin

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

medium pair when several opponents are in the pot. Tight Games In a tight game semi-bluffs increase in value, and even pure bluffs can be profitable since tight players are more likely to fold. Paradoxically, though, legitimate hands don't have nearly the value in a tight game that they would have in an average or loose game. The reason should be obvious. When you bet a legitimate hand for value in a tight game, you will be called only by players who have strong hands themselves because tight players' starting The mathematical principle here is the same as the principle that governs bluffing against more than one opponent. See Chapter Eighteen. 152 Chapter Sixteen requirements are higher. In a loose game an opponent with two small pair at the end will probably call your bet with aces up. But when you bet that same hand in a tight game — especially if both of your aces are showing — and you get called, you cannot feel too comfortable. The caller probably has you beat. Many aggressive players fail to devaluate their legitimate hands when they sit down in a tight game. They steal money with bluffs and semi-bluffs, but when they get a decent hand, they wind up losing. Then they mumble to themselves, "If I just never got a hand, I'd be doing great because it's with my good hands that I lose." What they fail to realize is that in a tight game the value of a hand goes down because players who stay in the pot will have good hands themselves — better hands on average than players in a regular game would have. In a tight game, then, you loosen up on bluffs and semi-bluffs, but you tighten up on your legitimate hands. Nor would you play as many drawing hands in a tight game, since you'd be getting pot odds sufficient to make it worthwhile less often, and when you did hit, you wouldn't get paid off as much as you would in an average or in a loose game. Summary Scrap the general notion that you play tight in a loose game and loose in a tight game and use the following guidelines instead. In a loose game you must tighten up on your bluffs and semi-bluffs, but loosen up on your legitimate hands. You bluff less, but you bet for value more. You also call with more hands and play more drawing hands. In a tight game you loosen up on your bluffs and semi-bluffs, but you must tighten up your legitimate hand requirements. You bluff more, but you bet for value less. You also call less and give up more quickly with drawing hands. These guidelines can also be applied to individual players, as well as to games. When a very tight player with raises in a small-ante seven stud game and everyone ahead of you folds, you would probably throw away a pair of jacks. You've tightened up your requirements because the chances are good your opponent already has you beat with a

recommend using the program PokerRanger (available at www.pokerranger.net) for these exercises as it is very user friendly and allows the division of ranges into subranges by colour coding just as we've been doing in this book. The program comes with a free trial for thirty days, but is a very sensible purchase for anyone willing to invest a bit of money in essential poker tools in taking the game more seriously. Now I'll assume you've had a bash at that range. Here is the answer: Figure 54 - 3-Betting BB vs. BU Against Overfolding Reg 3-Bet Value: The plan is to 3-bet a moderate range of value hands. If Villain is opening 60% of hands and continuing 33% of this 60%, then we can expect him to continue to Hero's 3-bet with around 20% of all possible starting hands. Against this range Hero is doing very well and even with the worst hands in his range like KQs he has 51% equity. In fact, when Villain merely flats the 3-bet,

see on the river well pretty much the same ones we didn't want to see on the flop huh the rivers are nine of diamonds what a bummer so now ask yourself what would you do in this scenario the pots 265 and you have 114 left what a lot of people do in this spot is they go all in but i think that's actually a big mistake because now thinking about the hands the opponents likely have if they have a hand like ace jack or king jack or queen jack and we check to them they're just gonna check because they realize if they bet and get called it's probably gonna be by a flush or two pair or three of a kind or straight right so if it goes check check check on the river we actually win this pop very very often but if we check and someone bets now we almost certainly lose because our opponents have a whole lot of flushes available or king queen for a straight so we're just gonna check fold here i know it may seem a little bit um tight especially if you're not used to making seemingly big folds but it's important to realize that hands change in value as you're more likely to be against um you know better made hands usually two pairs good but not when you're against two players and there's a straight and a flush available and your opponents could very easily have those hands this is a spot where we just have a pretty easy fold and uh turns out this guy did have one of the drawers right king of diamonds he called the flop bet called the turn bet got there on the river and we didn't pay him and the fact that we did not pay him is going to result in us winning a lot more money in the long run because a lot of people lose 114 on this river and that's just completely unnecessary we need instead should lose zero now let's talk about um when there was not a bet on the flop now the ranges will lack some made hands and some draws so okay now let's discuss when there was not a flop better in a multi-way pot so now the ranges will lack premium made hands and draws because most people would bet with their premium made hands and their draws perhaps the only exception of this is the players and the blinds because they may check to the pre-flop razor but usually most people are gonna be lacking their best made hands in their draws so on the turn when we get there you do want to go ahead and bet with whatever the best made hands in your range are as well as whatever draws you have that became draws on the turn also if everyone checks you in position on the turn and it's clear they don't like their hands this is a spot where you can actually start bluffing

First port of call as always in an end of action spot is to find RE which comes in at 35 / (35 + 82.5) =

a cash game if your opponents play well which this video is going to pursue we're presume they're not making blunders left and right and if they are making blunders left and right you can hopefully figure out what they're doing wrong and crush them when your opponents play poorly it's not that tough to win but if they do play well and they're playing good strong ranges from early position you should actually three bet very rarely because their early position raising ranges should be quite strong that said as they get in later and later positions you should be three betting more often with your best hands as well as a mixture of suited hands just to be clear a three bet is a re-raise so if they make it three big lines you're gonna make it roughly the size of the pot plus a little bit more the way you figure out how much a pot size raise is is three times the last bet plus any additional money in the pot so let's say they make it three big wines three times three is nine plus any additional money in the pot which would be your big blind plus the small blind right so you're going to make it about 10 and a half big blinds plus a little bit more because you're out of position so maybe make it something like 14 big lines roughly four times their initial raise if they made it bigger like let's say they make it five big blinds and you wanted to re-raise make it something like 18 or 19 or 20 big wines that's typically what you want to be doing roughly a pot size raise plus a little bit more from out of position to disincentivize them from calling because if they fold it's okay it's tough to play out of position with pretty much anything so let's take a look at good strong Game Theory optimal strategies we're gonna go a little bit slowly through these ranges because I want to be sure you fully understand exactly what we're looking at and we'll go through the pre-flop tournament ranges a little bit faster this presumes they're playing 100 big lines deep and this is against an under the gun rays eight-handed this is against a hijack raise and this is against a button raise the way the positions go or you're the big blind then to your rights the small blind then to the right is the button then there I would be the cut off then to there it would be the hijack okay so this is sort of like middle position right so let's first start with this chart on the left this is when under the gun raises this is when the first player to act raises at an eight-handed table the hands in red are re-raised to roughly the size of the pot plus a little bit more like we just discussed the hands in green are called and the hands in blue are

about next week with the traits that you want to embody live by uh the traits you want to look for in other people you build your network and specific tactics or techniques you can use to um bring together that uh dream team thank you very much for tuning in thank you for sharing this your evening with me and uh have yourself a great night and uh until next time you know what to do take what you learned go out there and get stacking and this has been evan jarvis for pokercoaching.com uh thanks for tuning in and i will see you at the next one

and so would prefer to get maximum fold equity. UTG makes larger bets with their strongest hands : AK , AQ , and 66 ( JJ continues betting small as a trap, because it unblocks BTN’s raising range). Seeing the flop with a wider range leads BTN to continue with a wider range even to a large bet, enabling UTG’s strongest hands to get more value. UTG makes more blocking/protection bets with their medium-strength hands, such as 99 , TT , and weak A x. These small bets deny equity to some K x and Q x and get called by pocket pairs, 6 x, and gutshot draws. UTG also includes some traps in this small bet range, notably JJ and AA but also some weak A x, to profit from BTN’s incentive to raise them. Playing Against the Speculator on a Dynamic Flop 9 ♥ 8 ♦ 6 ♦ is not the flop you’re hoping to see when an in position player cold calls your open. UTG’s equilibrium strategy involves a lot of checking, often with the intention of folding. When they do bet, it is mostly with strong but vulnerable overpairs and various draws and backdoor draws. Against The Speculator, UTG’s equity is a bit higher: 51.4%, versus 50.5% against the equilibrium caller’s range. Yet GTO Wizard advises a higher checking frequency–82.5% instead of 68.3%–against this player: GTO Wizard also expects UTG to win about 10% less, on average, than against a tighter BTN caller. What’s going on? UTG has more equity, but that equity is wrapped up in good-but-not-great hands which will struggle to realize it. This is just a very good flop for The Speculator. Their speculation has paid off in the form of many flopped monsters and high equity draws. Even though many weak hands dilute this range just as on AJ6 r, they now enjoy the benefit of a nuts advantage , which is amplified by their positional advantage . UTG has more equity, but that equity is wrapped up in good-but-not-great hands which will struggle to realize it on this dynamic board, so it does not behoove them to grow the pot. When they do bet, it’s with the same types of hands as at equilibrium, the strong-but-vulnerable pairs and the nutty draws. Playing Against The Whale This strategy remains roughly the same even against an absurdly wide calling range . Here is The Whale, who calls preflop with any suited hand, any two cards 9 and above, and any Ace: UTG still mostly checks, drawing upon the same types of hands when they do bet: The major difference from the equilibrium is not a higher betting frequency but a larger size . Something similar happens on the AJ6 r flop . UTG makes greater use of the 83% pot bet size, but also of the 20% pot size: What drops out is the 33% size. The Whale’s range is full of worthless hands that have little incentive to continue even to a tiny bet. UTG has two distinct strategies here: they bet big with

Betting from IP is much simpler than betting from OOP. After OOP has checked, their range will generally be weak and mostly made of bluff-catchers. If your range is polarized, bet as big as you can and add enough bluffs to make OOP indifferent to calling and folding. If your range is condensed, check back your middle strength hands, bet the top of your range and use the weakest hands as bluffs. If your range is not very nutted, you can still value-bet, but choose a small bet-size, particularly if OOP can be trapping. If your range is too weak or OOP can have too many traps, checking back and taking a free showdown is usually good. Don’t forget to always add a small frequency of your nutted hands to your small bet-size so you are protected against x/r, although this is unnecessary if OOP has no traps. IP Play vs River Bets The best exploit vs players who don’t bet the river often enough is to value-bet less thinly and to fold the river more often when they bet. If you know OOP won’t be betting the river too often, you can get away with c-betting the flop a lot more. This is because your EV when you called is higher, as you get a lot of free showdowns and get to realize the equity of many marginal hands that you wouldn’t normally be able to. Conversely, the best exploit vs players who frequently bet the river after turn checks is to not c-bet the flop too often, so you don’t end up with as much air that has to check back the turn and then fold to a river lead. From IP, it is important that you check back the turn with some hands that are capable of raising river bets, otherwise OOP can get away with a lot of betting if IP’s range contains too much air/bluff catchers. River Calling Strategies Blockers ♦ On the river, all bluff-catchers are equal except in how they block value hands and don’t block bluffs. ♦ When you block the opponent’s value range, call more often. ♦ When you block the opponent’s bluffing range, fold more often. ♦ When you block the opponent’s value and bluffing range, look for other decision points.

concealing the strength of your big hands.

With 60bb, small suited connectors such as 87s-65s and weak suited high-low card hands such as K7s, K6s, Q8s and J8s begin to struggle. The range shifts focus towards stronger hands that will be dominated less often, adding small pairs such as 44 and 33 that can flop premium hands and are easy to play post-flop (Hand Range 131). Hand Range 128: UTG+2 15bb • All-in 2.2% / • Raise 2x 15.3% / • Fold 82.6%

In and that makes you very very right for being exploited now you may say oh I can call aces in slow play well yeah but that doesn't fix the problem because that's only one hand so in this scenario you're only shoving the absolute best hands this is something a lot of people do wrong they either shove way too wide they call too often whatever but this spot High under hijacked versus Under the Gun race is something people mess up very very often like I said from the button you do get the call slightly wider or if you get to call with a calling range because now there's only two players you have to act and to do your absolute best to be sure you can't get maximally exploited by the small blind or a big blind shove you do slow play the pocket aces and if you do call a hand like Ace 10 Suited and the small blind shoves and the initial razor folds well now you call off with the ace10 suited we do still make a lot of shoves though against under the gun we don't get to shove all that wide only the absolute best hands if we're against the hijack Rays though we do get to shove substantially wider and we don't really call all that much either and that's because when the opponent raises from the hijack they're gonna have a tougher time defending if we shove all in on them whereas if we're against under the gun they're gonna have a very strong range which can easily defend but also their rage is going to be kind of strong and we don't really want to be shoving all that often into a strong range as your opponent's range gets wider and wider and wider you in turn shove more and more often that's a very very common thing you will see over and over and over again from the small blind versus Under the Gun you do get to call a decent amount like I just said you're facing a strong range therefore you don't shove all that often our shoving range is very strong notice our calling range is actually not that strong which is kind of interesting to note and you may say isn't that bad well no and the reason it's not that detrimentally bad is because you're only against one big blind who can shove and also under the gun is going to call the big one shove a decent amount at the time especially if they know you in the small blind or call in with this range it's going to fold a lot of the time so they're going to be getting essentially better odds to call off therefore the big line can't shove as often as they may like small blind versus hijacked we're against a wider range now so we're going to be doing a whole lot more shoving to the point that we do almost no calling at all and in

nan

a time when I would actually flinch if I had a made hand and two or three people were trying to draw out on me. I would over or under bet the pot too much expecting everyone to draw out on me all of the time. My game was not optimal and it took me much longer to build my bank back up and start making a steady profit again. Eventually, I remembered how I played winning poker and everything was in balance again. Since I read about poker during my slump, I was an even better poker player than before the slump, with more versatility than before. I had more insight into the game than ever before. Bad beats are part of the game of poker, it is gambling and you never know what can happen. Continue to play on the correct side of probability and everything will even out in your favor. Do not let it bother you in the long run. One thought to say to yourself if you are a good poker player is that if all you lost was profit from previous games then essentially you lost someone else’s money. Those people who call your good hands without the proper odds are where you got the money from in the first place, and it will return the same way. Another thought to keep in mind is that if that person called you with long shot odds then he/she is probably a bad player. Just grin and realize that they will give you many opportunities to win your money back in the long run. Winners and Losers I have the software Poker Tracker. It keeps records on my play and all of my opponents play when I load the hand histories you can get from most poker websites. The reason I mention this is that three out of every five players are long-term money losers. So 20% of the players are long-term winners, 20% are marginal winners, 40% are marginal losers and 20% are major money losers. There are more losing online poker players than winning poker players. There is enough money out there for a player to earn a nice income. Money always flows from bad players to good players over the long run. There are some things that you can do to assure that you will eventually be in the winning 20% (if you are not now) eventually. 1. Always study poker theory and thought. Reading one or even three books is just not good enough. There are many different styles of poker. Finding your own style means incorporating different strategies to fit the changing situations. I would honestly say you should read a new poker book right after you have finished one or reread the book you just finished. Consider it studying for a college degree and your major is poker. Someone who gets a degree reads at least three dozen books in their field of interest. 2. Get a poker coach or a mentor that you can discuss certain situations. Someone with experience will

Hand Range 318: UTG 40bb vs BB 3.5x 3-bet • All-in 10% / • Call 49.5% / • Fold 40.5%

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

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

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

Before we get excited and want to call a 3x UTG open with 87s in a heads-up pot, we need to realise that this advantage in pots odds is totally offset by Hero being out of position to the raiser. Being in

you don't play a picture like you're going to be a little bit of alternate frequencies but I think that's a totally reasonable way to play the spawn for the best 33 and if you think somebody is betting 33 too often all of a sudden you can develop a lot of raises with like low hands that don't interact at all like a five seven of diamonds so you're essentially saying in this spot that if he thinks we're betting too often look at this chart see the hands that are reasonable raises and raise with them way more exactly yeah so notice though the garbage is Raising all right yeah the guard yeah five five four back doors right yeah I don't think many players find these Bluffs yeah I I totally agree with you but but I think that they're actually really good to use a game yeah I mean people overfold to aggression in general I think a Greek yeah for sure for sure and it's and they see that too much so yeah you have to see betting too much and you have over folded it's like you should be raising a ton in the spine can we putting off left and right next time I go blind yeah welcome well yeah I actually at a spot like this in in the recent okay where I got three bet it was small blind versus hijacked and that 25 pot on um uh king queen six and I had five four back door and I was like well this seems like a reasonable one and I raised and he just tanks forever very clearly just having ace high or something like that and just folds kind of like sweet so yeah these spots come up I think I think it's good to find it's like backdoor type stuff and because I mean even even when he raised like he has to call every King in the deck except for his like worst blocker Kings yeah and queen 10 calls Jack 10 calls yeah nobody calls Jack 10 when they bet the Flop and get Rays out of position yeah yeah it's like good luck right good luck defending the strategy and you know let's take a look at this real quick so they have to call back got shot with back door flush draw right you may be saying why does Queens fold but nine seven calls because nine seven has more outs for sure yeah okay absolutely cool and one one thing that's cool and surprise it's actually kind of a big race size you know 33 to 116. imagine if you just made it 75 yeah they got to call way more exactly they don't look up all the pairs probably like all coming back to our cut shots yeah yeah for sure so if you think somebody's she betting the spot a lot I would look to use a lot of small raises in position and I think small razor position are really sick in

5-10 game and you think you're supposed to be winning here but you just keep losing and you don't really know why hire a coach immediately to figure out why but also move back down also once you do start beating the game this happened to me to some extent a long time ago i kind of stopped studying right why because i'd rather sit there and grind out my money but you need to continuously study you really do a lot of um very good poker players i mean kind of kind of roughly my age had good success when they were young they were studying a lot devoting all their time to poker then as they get older they start making even more money because you know they have a bigger bankroll to continue playing bigger but they just want to grind it out and make the money and then they stop studying and then next thing you know they lose their edge right some other poker players assume that if they're good at poker that they must be good at all other aspects of life a great example of this recently has been cryptocurrencies right so many poker players so many poker players think that because they're good at poker they must be good at other things that most people have no clue about right cryptocurrencies are relatively new so almost no one's an expert and if you're spending all your time at the poker table you're definitely not an expert right because you're not devoting any time to it or devoting minimal amounts of time to it this is a very good example of like people who just think that if they are studying some are more than their peers that they must be good but especially in things like the investing world you are literally playing in some of the most sophisticated people in the world who have technologies you are completely unaware of and they're going to crush you so don't be egotistical and think that just because you are good at poker that you must be good at other things realize the amount of skill it takes to get good at poker the amount of dedication it gets good to poker and realize the amount of effort you've put into that it's probably a lot right every other thing in the world takes about that much effort to become very very good at and to be able to make a substantial amount of income from it and if you like realize that you're not doing that then i hate to break it do you're going to be a loser or just like kind of breaking even now the nice thing about some things like investing is that some things inevitably just kind of go up like stock market just kind of goes up over time because you're investing in companies that produce value right obviously there are gonna be big swings in that too but if you invest in companies especially big companies that have

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

us. What we haven't yet talked about is which hands to squeeze with in these spots so let's move onto that now.

very tightly every once in a while you'll find that you get raised on the river this will not happen too often but in most small stakes games unless you know your opponent is a strong player who is very capable of bluffing you should typically assume that they have a premium hand this is when on the river you bet they raise you or they check you bet and they raise you they have something pretty good and usually very good unless you know them to be a lunatic so in this scenario do not call with marginal made hands that is a big big big mistake that will result in you losing tons of money so let's take a look at a few examples of some hands that we play all the way to the river and discuss my thoughts throughout kyrie raids with ace four of hearts big blind calls flop comes ace eight two this is that scenario again where we should be betting very frequently but if we are going to check i can already tell you that the plan is to check behind the flop call any turn bat on any card and call any river bet on any card unless i know my opponent to be the weakest tightest player in the world so check check on the flop opponent bets a turn do i have a premium made hand a draw a marginal made hand or a junk right it's always what you want to be asking yourself in this scenario we actually have a premium made hand and a draw but whenever you have a made hand either premium made hand or marginal made hand and a draw usually the made hand component of your hand is going to override your decision you may think i have a draw so i should raise but uh no actually in this scenario we're most likely going to have a marginal maid hand by the river so we just want to be calling right this is a spot where we want to call the term because we have a marginal made hand and we're going to call the river this is a strong marginal made hand but it's still marginal so we're going to call the turn if the opponent bets the river we still call and we win the pot right notice in this scenario we actually could be beat some portion of the time if the opponent did have a hand like um well ace nine opponent may bet the turn in the river and we call and we lose and that's going to happen and that is okay realize you don't have to win the pot every single time you call on the river a lot of people make the big mistake of only calling the river when they know they have the best hand or when they're like really really confident about it and that results in them folding way too often and if you fold way too often in these spots

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

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

Low Can be used in a variety of contexts to describe a low card or low hand depending on the situation at the table.

CHECK-RAISING 100 We set the “call the check-raise” percentage to 40 rather than a higher number to reflect the fact that check-raising is a power move. Indeed, if you were almost certain that your opponent was strong enough to call a $200 check- raise, then you should be making a larger bet yourself (either a straight bet or check-raise). The reason your direct bet made more money than the check-raise in this example was that, by checking, you allowed your opponent to set the bet at a relatively small amount. In essence, by checking you allowed your opponent to make a sort of blocking bet against you. This brings us to the two major drawbacks of a check-raise in no limit: 1. Check-raising permits your opponent to set the bet size. 2. Check-raising is usually a powerful move. Betting out often gives away less information about the strength of your hand. When to Check-Raise So when do you check-raise? With more cards to come or against more than one opponent, this is a very tricky question that is so dependent on stack size, player proclivities, and specific situations that no book can hope to address it fully. But heads-up situations on the river are easier to analyze. There are ba- sically three situations, heads-up on the river, where you should give serious consideration to going for a check-raise: 1. You think your opponent will bet with more hands than he will call with. 2. You have a great hand and you think your opponent will both bet and call a check-raise, but not raise if you bet or call an original bet that is approximately the size of the sum of the bet and check-raise. 3. You want to bluff. These are explained in more detail below. Situation No.1. You think your opponent will bet with more hands than he will call with. The first of these reasons is by far the most important, which is ironic because your check-raise will rarely get called! The only time it will get called is if you have underestimated the strength of your opponent’s hand or (rarely) if your check-raise arouses enough suspicions or stubbornness on your opponent’s part that he will call with mediocre hands he wouldn’t have bet in the first place. But that doesn’t matter. You should still usually go for a check-raise in this situation simply because it makes you more money. You don’t make your money so much because of the “raise” part, but more because of the “check” part.

Yes absolutely! Hero has some pot equity in the form of 10 outs when Villain does continue with top pair type hands and still has four outs against strong overpairs and even sets. Hero also has zero showdown value with this hand and so I'm struggling to find many better candidate hands to be part of our intentionally wide bluffing range. Hero raises to 8BB. You might be wondering what's with the small sizing. Well, let's recap our aims here. We're exploitatively overbluffing this flop. Since most of our range is a bluff and simply wants fold equity, again we're catering to the bulk of it by improving our risk/reward ratio and reducing our old friend RFE (required fold equity). Using the RFE milestones, we know that this risk of 8BB to win a pot of 8BB only needs to work 50% of the time if we had no equity. Since we do have equity, however, we need even less folds than RFE suggests and can expect an abundance of folds from a wide range and weak player. This sizing is great for us and going bigger wouldn't make sense. Good, now onto the next hand.

is your prey. 2. When the BU is a Nit So far, we've mainly been hunting the players in the blinds and adapting our hunting style for each type. Having a Nit on the BU is probably one of my favorite dynamic adjustments concerning opening ranges. As we'll soon see, on the BU, Hero gets the opportunity to steal extremely wide. When Hero is in the CO, he usually has to show some restraint and doesn't come anywhere near the range he'd open from the BU precisely because the BU is an extra player behind and one who has position on him. However, if the BU is very tight and is 3-betting and flatting very rarely, then Hero has been granted a license to treat the CO like a pseudo BU. Hero then goes wild given he effectively has the BU 90% of the time. He shouldn't really be allowed this luxury, but thanks to the Nit to his left, he's getting to play 1.9 BUs per orbit instead of 1!

keep promoting themselves to higher and higher levels that the size of their bankrolls can’t justify. Almost all of them go broke, despite their skills. Please don’t do that. TIP 7 “What percentage of hands should I enter pots with?” It’s a common question. “It depends on your image and what you’re trying to accomplish.” That’s my answer. As strange as it may seem to you, one professional can play twice as many hands as another and both can earn the same amount of profit in the long run. How come? It’s because so many hands are marginal, meaning they will break about even, that you could play almost all of them or almost none of them and still earn the same. Most of your poker profit comes from relatively few quality hands. Still, you need to consider the good and the bad about playing a lot of marginal hands. When you do, you’re seen as an action player, and you’re likely to make more money when you hold your best hands, because opponents feel comfortable playing against you. That’s good. But, because opponents don’t perceive you as conservative, it will be harder for you to bluff profitably. That’s bad. Also, when you play most of your marginal hands, the size of your bankroll becomes more volatile, and that means you need more money to afford the same size games. 73 When I’ve established a friendly, carefree image, which is what I usually strive for, I generally play most marginal hands. In addition to fitting my image, this strategy gives me opportunities to extract profit from small edges later in hands when opponents make mistakes. These small-profit opportunities add up, and they wouldn’t be available to me if I didn’t play those hands. In general, Doyle and almost all world-class players agree and play a lot of marginal hands. But, you need to keep in mind that marginal hands are marginal for a reason —they about break even. And since there are so many hands in this category compared with so few high-quality hands, it’s easy to see how one professional player can contend for twice as many pots as another and both can eventually end up with about the same profit. TIP 8 Don’t be too proud of your success calling bets in limit poker games. Remember, the pot is always larger than the size of the bet, because there will always be some money in the pot when the bet is made. In limit games, the pot is usually many times the size of the bet. Let’s say you’re heads-up and your opponent bets $400 into a $2,400 pot on the last betting round. Clearly your call only needs to be successful once in a while, not every time. Specifically, there’s $2,800 out there to win (the $400 just bet, plus the $2,400 that was already there), and it will cost you $400 to find out if your hand is best. You’re getting 7 to 1 odds ($2,800 to $400). That means if you win once in eight times when

are playing weaker hands. And finally, when you play too tight against observant opponents, they will give you no action when you do get a big hand. 2. As the ante increases, you loosen up on later rounds, too, because the initial weaker requirements carry over into later rounds. However, in multi-way pots, hands like mediocre pairs decrease in value while drawing hands increase in value. 3. As the ante increases, you try to steal antes, especially against tight players, because the play has good positive expectation. 32 Chapter Four 4. As the ante increases, you raise with a good hand rather than try to slowplay it because a large ante makes it likely your opponents are getting their proper odds when you do not raise and let them in cheaply. Furthermore, when the ante is large, opponents may even call your raise when they are not getting proper odds, which, according to the Fundamental Theorem, is exactly what you want. They are even more likely to call your raise if they suspect you have been stealing antes with your raises on previous hands. Small Antes Not playing loose enough in high-ante games is a much less common problem among poker players than playing too loose in low-ante and average-ante games. When players in a game cry out, "Here comes a live one," what they mean is, "Here comes a player who plays too many pots, who always wants to get into the action, who doesn't consider the odds before calling, who calls to the end with next to nothing when two aces are staring him in the face." Put more succinctly, what they mean is, "Here comes a sucker." What happens when you play too loose for the ante? Well, even if you play very well from then on, you have the problem of playing a worse hand on average than your opponents who are playing correctly according to the ante. Consequently, you figure to lose to them as long as they play as well as you. Even if they don't play quite as well as you, you figure to lose to them because their starting requirements are higher than yours, and so the hands they play against you will, on average, be better than yours. There used to be a no-limit hold 'em game with a very small ante in Las Vegas, and there were a couple of excellent players in the game. But they insisted on raising almost every pot before the flop, not to steal the small antes, but just to get more money in the pot since they felt they could outplay everybody else from that point on. However, when a mediocre player who simply played tight came into the game, they found they couldn't beat him. What The Ante Structure 33 was happening, of course, was that the hands they played were on average much worse than the mediocre player's, and even a world champion with a pair of kings is an underdog against a nobody with a pair of aces. No matter how great a

right this is a spot though where once we get re-raised we're not getting the correct implied odds to call typically with a pair you want to be getting something like 10 to 1 implied odds at least meaning we want to be able to put in 26 to win an additional 260 or more from one opponent and in this spot we'd have to be even tighter because sometimes the button is going to re-raise and then Force us off our hand so this is a spot where you absolutely cannot call with a handy pair really this is a spot where look the tricky limper got what they wanted somebody raised and then they get to forces off our hands button goes all in they must have something very good tricky limper calls obviously Ace Queen for a horribly played hand against Aces obviously so what should the ace Queen suit would have done here well if you gave me Ace Queen suited on the button I'm okay with raising if the tricky limper is not overly strong but as their range contains more and more Aces kings queens and Ace King I think it's perfectly fine to limp in position here with the ace Queen suited but almost no one does it they think they have the best hand they want to raise and get value and to be fair they're on the button they don't mind building a pot but if you think you're gonna get re-raised actually a large chunk at the time because you're paying attention to new realize all lempers are not super duper weak well this is a pretty terrible spot to raise if you think about it because Ace Queen suited flops very well you're in position you don't want to screw that up and if you do get re-raised it's a disaster and this player happened to run into a disaster with their Ace Queen so don't do that let's now discuss how to play against one straightforward limper these players are usually going to have junkie ranges that do not contain the best hands some of these rages will be super junky some of them will just be okay and reasonable right like if they're limping Ace 5 suited and nine eight suited and pocket fours and king queen off suit that range isn't actually all that easily exploitable but if they're late range contains stuff like King 2 suited and queen 4 suited and six three suited and King eight offsuit while their range is all trash and you can raise them very very aggressively so for the most part you're going to want to raise them with a range that's similar to your initial pre-flop raising range assuming everyone folded to you okay the only exception here is that I would probably be a little bit tighter from the button and the cut off because from the button you can normally raise with something like 45 of hands if they fold around to you you're gonna have to be