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

Hand Range 347: UTG RFI 20bb • Open 2x 15.9% / • Fold 84.1%

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

a clue to interpreting their bets. If you've been giving action, lots of players will take any pair and come after you.) The last possibility is that Player F holds some hand other than any of these. It's not likely, but it's by no means impossible. When stacks begin to get short in relation to the blinds, players will start making plays, and you have to factor this in. In your poker career, you'll end up many times agonizing over whether to call a tough-looking bet, only to find that your opponent had absolutely nothing! This case may not be very likely here, but you should give it some probability, perhaps about 10 percent. Overall, it looks to me like you're a solid favorite here. You're a big dog against the two overpairs, and a big favorite against any underpair. There are many more possible underpairs than overpairs, so it's as much as 2.5- or 3-to-l that he's actually holding an underpair. You're a small favorite against ace-king, and a big favorite against any random bluff. Having reasoned that out, you should next look at the money odds, which turn out to be excellent. Right now there's $18,000 in the pot, and your opponent has $27,000 left. If you put him all-in and he calls, you'd be risking $27,000 of your own money to try and win $45,000 (the $18,000 currently in the pot plus the $27,000 he will have to put in to call). Those are great odds in a situation where you think you're a solid favorite. You won't be in good shape if you lose, but these kinds of decisions are the kind that win tournaments. So go all-in. Resolution: You put him all-in, and he calls and shows K♠K♣. The flop comes 8♠7♠3♠. Fourth and fifth street are the J♠ and the 4♣. His king-high flush beats your queen-high flush. Note that you were destined to lose a lot of your money on this hand. Had you not put him all-in before the flop but just called, the flush draw would have forced you to put him all-in after the flop. Hand 3-5 Situation: Major tournament, middle of the first day. Players A and C are pros who are both very aggressive and play many pots. Each is capable of bluffing deep into the hand. You are playing in your first major tournament, having just won an internet qualifier. Your hand: K♠K♦ 53 Action to you: Player A raises, putting in $3,000. Player B folds. Player C calls. Player D folds. The pot is now $7,350. Question: Do you call or raise? Answer: You have to raise with your kings. Some players, especially newcomers, get carried away and decide to start trapping with kings. You might try this for variety against a single opponent, but it's too dangerous against multiple opponents. The danger, of course, is that someone is calling with an ace and a small card, and if you let them stay in the pot cheaply, an ace on the flop will beat you. So raise here

for adjusting both your tightness and bluffing frequency, elegantly and accurately, to any game you’re in. The present equity of a bluff is the probability that if you execute this bluff right now, it’ll work and you’ll win the pot. It’s the equity in the bluff itself. Future equity represents the probability that showing a bluff right now (failed or otherwise) will earn you extra calls downstream. Interestingly, the presence of future equity means that your present equity doesn’t have to be greater than breakeven. In fact, your bluffs can actually be less thanbreakeven if you can make it up in future equity, by letting your opponents know you don’t bet only when you have a hand. And really, you have to. After all, if you were a super-duper tight player who played only aces and was known to play only aces, you’d never get any action at all. You’d have to turn over something less than a premium hand at some point, or else, as we’ve already seen, not only will you not get action, you’ll also give your opponents an incredibly reliable line on your play. By showing bluffs, you not only loosen up your opponents, you also make it more difficult for themto make good decisions against you; you expand the possible range of hands you could be playing. Bluffing, then, is not just a luxury of poker, it’s a necessity. And remember, with any hand but aces, you’re automatically including at least a smidgeon of bluff to begin with, so don’t freak out. What freaks people out? Getting called when they bluff. They think they’ve been caught red-handed in some kind of sin. But you haven’t beencaught. You’ve just run a bluff that got called, which is fine, because the bluffs that get called are what builds future equity. Remember, your bluffs don’t need to be money makers at this moment. Your bluffs can be completely breakeven (or even a bit less) and you’re fine, because you’ll make future money on them. First, there’s the value of getting called in the future when you have a real hand. Second, there’s continuing and overall value in keeping your opponents guessing about your real strength. And don’t forget that you might win the pot right now. So if you’re one of those people who’s too nervous to bluff, remember this: IF YOU DON’T GET CAUGHT WITH YOUR HAND IN THE COOKIE JAR SOMETIMES, YOU’RE JUST NOTPLAYING RIGHT When Bluffing Doesn’t Work People say all the time, “In the games I play in, bluffing doesn’t work. Everyone calls anyhow.” Well, if you’re in that kind of game, then it’s simple: Don’t bluff. There’s no value in it. And lest you think that’s a rule or something, here’s how you can come to that conclusion yourself. First, Iwant you to think of your bluffs as sort of an advertising budget. Considering present equity, your advertising might or might not pay off right away. If not, that’s called a negative spend and that’s okay. You’re spending money now, thinking you’ll get something for

You call. The pot is now $100,000. Flop: 9♦7♣4♥ 141 Action: The small blind checks. Should you check, bet $20,000, bet $50,000, bet $60,000, or bet $100,000? Answer: The bad news is that the flop missed you. The good news is that, since players mostly play high cards, there's a good chance that it missed your opponent as well. His check was a clue that the flop may have missed him. To find out for sure, you need to make a probing bet. But how big should that bet be? You want to bet enough so that your opponent will give up the pot if he doesn't have anything, but no more than that. If you bet more than you need to chase him away, and he actually has a hand, you've just wasted money. A bet of half the pot or slightly less is the right size for this purpose. When you bet half the pot to win the whole pot, you're getting 2-to-1 odds on your money. That's excellent, considering that you'll probably take the pot about 50 percent of the time in this situation. Half the pot is a very good size for most probe bets. If both players were playing high cards, the flop wouldn't have hit either one. Therefore, if this flop hit your opponent, he's very likely to have the best hand. What's more, if he's a good player he knows this. So when you bet, one of the following two situations will arise: 1. Your opponent didn't get a piece of the flop, and now you're betting at him. He's not going to chase you here. Instead, he'll just lay down and get on to the next hand. 2. Your opponent did get a piece of the flop. Now he's going to call or raise your bet, and that call or raise will indicate that you're done with the hand, barring some remarkable cards on the turn or the river. Isn't poker wonderfully logical? The difference between a probe bet and a continuation bet is the identity of the pre-flop raises. If you took the lead before the flop and then bet when the flop misses you, the bet is a continuation bet. (It's a continuation of your previous action.) If your opponent took the lead pre-flop and now checks, your bet is called a probe. (You're probing to see if he thinks the hand is worth playing.) Both bets are ways of gaining information and defining your hand. Continuation bets need to be slightly larger than probe bets because you are representing more strength with a continuation bet. Action: You actually bet $60,000, and the small blind calls. Fourth Street: 3♣ Action: The small blind checks. What do you do? Answer: Your $60,000 bet after the flop was a bit too large. You gave yourself only 3-to-2 odds on your money, rather than 2-to-l. Your opponent called, indicating that he caught some piece of the flop. But he didn't bet this time, so he's probably holding a seven or a four in his hand.

BETTING YOURSELF OFF A HAND 105 • The stacks are large • Your opponent is a “caller” • The draw is to the nuts Notice that the final three conditions are all “implied odds” boosters. The more money there is left to bet, and the more likely your opponent is to call a bet after you make your draw, the higher your implied odds. Your draw being to the nuts is also an implied odds booster. It works for you those times your opponent happens to be on a similar draw to yours. When your draw is to the nuts (and theirs isn’t), you will always win the “big hand versus big hand” confrontations, which gives you a major implied odds boost. When you are drawing to less than the nuts, you will sometimes lose your stack rather than win it, and that slashes the value of your draw from both ends (big wins turn into big losses). For instance you have J♡T♣with position on a single opponent. The pot is $100, and you have $1,000 left (your opponent has you covered). It’s the turn, and your opponent has checked to you. Assuming your bluffis equally likely to succeed in either case, you should often be more willing to semi-bluffif the board is Q♡9♡4♠9♣than if it is Q♡9♢4♠6♣. In both cases you have an open-ended straight draw, but in the former hand, there is a flush draw and pair on board. Since the straight draw has less value on the former board, checking (playing for the draw) has less value, and bluffing becomes more attractive as an option. Indeed, the main danger of semi-bluffing, that you will be I check-raised off your draw, may not be a danger at all in the former case. For instance, if you are playing against someone who would check-raise only with a full house or better (granted, an uncommon breed), you actually gain from the check-raise! It tells you that you are drawing dead, and it prevents you from losing any money on the river if you make your hand.

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

RAISING BEFORE THE FLOP 72 The math behind the preflop semi-bluffis rather simple. You risk the amount of your raise. You hope to win the money that is presently in the pot. Your hand also has some value when your opponents call (rather than reraise) and allow you a chance to catch a great flop. Thus, a preflop semi-bluffis profitable when the following EV expression is true: (chance everyone will fold)(pot size + raise size) + (chance one or more will call with no raises) (value of hand on the flop) > (raise) where “va1ue of hand on the flop” is the amount of money the hand is worth (also known as EV) if you see a flop with it (a value obviously dependant on the present pot size). So which hands should you semi-bluffraise with? In general, you should semi-bluffwith the best hands that you would not ordinarily have played. This maximizes the “value of hand on the flop” term in the EV expression above. For instance, say an aggressive player with a large stack is clearly often raising light. You would like to take a pot away from him with a semi-bluff reraise. You think that in response to your reraise he will fold his weak hands, move all-in with his strongest hands, and call with the rest. Now let’s say that you think calling his raise with queen-jack suited would be profitable, but calling with queen-eight suited would be unprofitable, and calling with seven-deuce offsuit would be clearly unprofitable. In such a situation, queen-eight suited is the sort of hand you should semi- bluffreraise with. It has no (or rather negative) value to call with, but it is among the strongest of those hands with no calling value. You should prefer semi-bluffing with queen-eight suited over seven-deuce offsuit, because those times your semi-bluffgets called, your hand has more value. Moreover, you should prefer semi-bluffing with queen-eight suited over queen- jack suited because queen-jack suited is a profitable calling hand. To justify semi-bluffing with queen-jack suited, you must show not only that the bluffwill be profitable, but also that it will be more profitable than merely calling, a tougher standard. This last idea, that you should often choose to bluffwith a somewhat weaker hand over a stronger one, leads to a rather curious inversion in the blinds (par- ticularly the big blind). Typically, as we have just deduced, you should bluff with the best hands you would not ordinarily have played. But say you are in the big blind and five players call. Ordinarily you would check with all but your best hands. That is, you would play every hand. In this situation, consider making your big semibluffs with your very worst of hands: 9♡3♣, J♢2♠, and the like. Keep in mind, though, that we are talking about big raises that will rarely be called: usually everyone will fold, and when they don’t they will reraise you (perhaps limp-reraising with a big hand). Choose your very worst hands because seeing a flop with those hands has less value than seeing

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

hand that you were concerned with, you might be better off calling and trapping your opponent. But poker is a game of many hands, and you need to prevent your adversary from raising with almost anything in this spot. He needs to know that he's in jeopardy of a reraise. Thus you frequently reraise for the sake of future hands, not the hand that you are holding. If you never were to play another hand in your whole life, you shouldn't raise as much. But against an aggressive player who is going to constantly take advantage of his position to hopefully steal, yet maybe flop something, you must reraise him more than might seem logical. For example, suppose you are playing $20-$40 and your opponent knows that when you play you frequently charge him an extra bet. Now he can't say to himself "I'm going to put in $40 to 190 Part Five: Playing Short-Handed try to win $30." Now he will say, "I'm risking $60 to win that $30," because he often reraises. Of course, he's going to win some of those pots, but still if he knows he's up against a reraiser he's going to be less likely to get too tricky. So in a short-handed game when you are defending out of the big blind you should probably reraise about one out of four times that you play. (In the small blind you would play less hands but reraise a much higher percentage of the time to get out the big blind. See "Part One: The First Two Cards" - "The First Two Cards: Live Blind" on page 40.) Assuming you reraised, be prepared to do a lot of betting on the flop. You should bet most every time except for your weakest hands, and perhaps your best hands. Good advice might be to check the weakest 20 percent and the best 20 percent of your hands. And, with your best 20 percent, you should usually check-raise on the flop. Here's an example. If you reraise with and the flop is you go ahead and bet. Only check those hands that have almost no chance to win. Bet anything that has a chance. When trying to decide which hands to just call with and which hands to reraise with in the big blind before the flop, you shouldn't Calling or Reraising Before the Flop 191 think in terms of precise categories. You should reraise with the very best hands almost every time, and virtually never with the very marginal playing hands. As for the in between hands, you should sometimes reraise and sometimes just call. The JVTV mentioned above would fall in this "sometimes" category. However, if you hold an AK or a big pair, then you should charge your opponent an extra bet almost every time. What If It Is Three-Handed ? We want to pause for a moment and point out that the situation is somewhat different if the pot is three-handed. Suppose in a three way game the player on the button raises. It's true that

final table is where the big money prizes are contested. Chip stacks The final thing that influences Bubble Factor and perhaps the most important area to study is the distribution of chip stacks at your table. We have looked at average Bubble Factors so far, but Bubble Factor varies greatly depending on your chip position and the stacks of your opponents. Broadly speaking: Chip leaders have low Bubble Factors . This makes intuitive sense, they are at the least risk of elimination so they can call all-ins much more liberally. Short stacks also tend to have lower Bubble Factors . They don’t have much tournament equity to begin with, so they risk less when clashing against another stack. Medium stacks have the highest Bubble Factors , for them it would be a disaster to bust out ahead of a bunch of short stacks, so they have to play very tight. Let’s look at an example in GTO Wizard . This is a final table spot with 25BBs average: Our chipleader in the BB has 41BBs and UTG also has a big stack with 37BBs. The mid stacks have between 17 and 33BBs, and two short stacks both have under 14BBs. These are the Bubble Factors for every player match-up at the table: The chip leader in the BB has the lowest Bubble Factor numbers, as low as 1.11 which is quite close to ChipEV. UTG1, the shortest stack, also has quite low Bubble Factor, as low as 1.28. The LJ with 29BBs is a mid stack and has a very high Bubble Factor, as high as 1.93 – elimination for this player would be a disaster when they could likely ladder four places with ease. But that is not the whole story. Our chipleader has a Bubble Factor of 1.85 when facing UTG, the medium stack LJ has a Bubble Factor as low as 1.14 against the shortest stack, and so on. Bubble Factor is a relative metric. Your stack size informs your general Bubble Factor, but the relative difference between your stack and your opponent’s stack plays as much of a factor. 2nd Chipleader Let’s take UTG who is 2nd in chips with 37BBs. If the BB with 41BBs folds preflop the next hand, this player becomes the de facto chip leader. They can bully the other players safely in the knowledge they cannot themselves be eliminated. But this player risks elimination whenever they are in a pot with the chip leader. Tangling with the chip leader is very risky for the 2nd chip leader, as such their Bubble Factor is 2.06. They would need 67% equity to call an all-in against them, whereas against the short stack they only need 53% equity. Chip Leader The overall chip leader also has a high Bubble Factor against 2nd in chips. They can’t be eliminated, but losing to the 2nd chip leader would be almost as much of an ICM disaster for them. But the chip leader has a much lower risk premium against the other mid and shortstacks. Short stack At the

He has limited fold equity. Remember that against Regs we're using the cut-off point of less than 50% Fold to 3Bet After Open. One very common example of this is facing opens from Fish. He does not usually want to flat due to being in the SB, having a very small effective stack, or there being known squeezers to act behind him. These two reasons for linear 3-betting are basically the inverse of those in favour of polar 3-betting. Let's take an example of each reason in action and build a couple of linear ranges while we're at it. This is a spot where it makes sense to have a flatting range but not a 3-bet bluffing range. While hands like 44 and 67s realise a good amount of implied odds here in position against a player likely to spew off a lot of money post-flop should Hero get there, weaker hands like 85s and A6o lack the fold equity they'd need to 3-bet bluff as the top of Hero's folding range. A polar strategy is therefore undesirable and Hero is best placed to 3-bet all and only those hands strong enough to cope with a lack of pre-flop and post-flop fold equity. In other words, Hero only 3-bets for value. This range doesn't have to be super tight as there is a lot of value to be gained from isolating this player with hands rich in frequent strength (refer to Chapter 3 for a reminder of this) and being the sole beneficiary of the mistakes he makes post-flop. Hero's strategy then is a linear one and looks like this.

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

time. A5s calls 39% and A4s calls 30% (Hand Range 59). Hand Range 58: CO vs LJ Open • 3-bet 8.6% / • Fold 91.4%

these are more about protecting your losses the intuitive method the conscious approach about maximizing your gains so let's take a look at that setting a time to quit which will give us a bit of a deeper dive into the mental Game of Poker and first question is why would we set a time to quit a session you know why wouldn't we just plan to play Forever and quit when we get tired well the thing is when you're playing a poker session you're probably going to be at your best at the beginning of a session when you have the most energy you have the most mental energy you have the best state of focus you have the most motivation you have everything working in your favor and you want to get in your reps when you're in that state the same way when you go to the gym to work out you typically want to do a short workout for a set amount of time you know maybe 30 to 45 minutes or an hour if you really want to push it so you can get really quality reps in and train your muscles in a way that they're um that they're working at their best when we are training our brain when we're playing a poker session we want to make sure that we're getting those quality reps in so that we're focusing on doing the right things having the right habits focusing on the right things because the more we train a habit in this case making poker decisions the more likely we are to access that state as a default when we are playing poker sessions whereas if we put in a lot of poor quality reps we put in a lot of sessions when we're really tired when we're exhausted when we're chasing when we're gambling that's going to be the programming that gets imprinted into your mind and is going to be kind of your default for how you play and we don't want to be training the low quality Play We want to be training the high quality play so setting a Time ensures that you get the quality reps in when you're playing at your best it helps you build the habit and stamina and also allows you to see I can play poker for an hour and that's just fine I can play poker for 30 minutes or do a study session for 30 minutes and I'm going to get quality out of that that's going to pay dividends later not every session has to be a marathon session and um that's one reason when it comes to tournaments that practicing with sit and goes is very useful over exclusively playing large field mtts that are going to take a very long time this also ensures it's easier that you can actually show up and get your time in and get your reps in because becoming a fantastic poker player a world-class poker player is all about consistency and getting

Rail In live poker venues, the rail is considered the sideline where spectators may watch the poker tables from. The term is also used as a verb to describe the act of rooting on or cheering for a player in a poker tournament.

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

flush draw and the pot is big? It might be correct to check and hope that the bet comes on your left, then you can check-raise and build a big pot. 276 Part Eight: Questions and Answers 9. Is this play recommended in tough games? No. 10. Why? You are now more likely to be up against a bigger flush draw and the original bettor is more likely to reraise. Raising 1. Give five reasons to raise. A. To get more money in the pot. B. To drive players out. C. To bluff (or semi-bluff). D. To get a free card. E. To gain information. 2. If you think you have the bettor beat is it generally correct to raise even if you risk driving out players behind you? Yes. 3. A raise on the flop to drive players out will work only under what condition? This will work only against those players who have not yet had a chance to call the original bet. 4. Why is a raise often correct even if you are not sure that you have the best hand? If you do hold the best hand, or if your hand becomes the best hand, your raise may have stopped other opponents from drawing out on you. 5. Example? Suppose you raised before the flop with A+4+, the flop is T+4+24. If someone on your right bets, a raise is often correct, especially if you think that the raise will buy you a free card. 6. When can you occasionally raise as a pure bluff? When you are playing in very tough games. 278 Part Eight: Questions and Answers 7.Why? Because players are capable of folding in big pots without calling one last bet. 8. Are these plays recommended? No, not usually. 9. Why? They succeed rarely and are expensive when they fail. 10. When is the one time that a bluff-raise can be used in a weaker game? When you think that your opponent is bluffing, but also think that your hand is even worse. 1 1. Example? Your flush draw did not get there, but the hand was played in such a fashion that you are fairly sure your opponent was also on a flush draw. 12. Give an example of raising as a semi-bluff. You have A444, the flop is J+3484, and everyone checks. If the next card is the 54, you should usually raise if someone bets. 13. Another example? You can raise as a semi-bluff almost any time that you pick up a back-door flush draw after calling on the flop with top pair. (But again, make this play only against someone who is capable of folding.) Raising 279 14. How likely is it that someone will fold for a raise? The answer is based on the answers to the following three questions: A. How capable is this person of folding a big hand? B. How likely is he to be semi-bluffing? C. How are you perceived by this individual? 15.When is raising to get a free card best done? When you are

you can be pretty sure that you will be called again. Draw Only To the Nuts 274 This concept is incredibly important in Omaha: When you’re drawing to a straight or a flush, draw to the nuts or don’t draw. Although this isn’t true 100 percent of the time, it is at least a 98-percenter. Even if you’re drawing to the nut flush, you’re only going to make it approximately one out of three times anyway, so why draw to the non-nuts? It’s simply a bad play. Of course, there are times when you might draw to a non-nuts flush, but only when you have other possibilities working for you, for example, when you have other cards in your hand that might help you win the pot even if you don’t make the flush. Suppose you have the K? J? 10? 8?, and the flop comes 10? 7? 2?. You have the second-nut flush draw, a gutshot straight draw, plus the possibility of making trips or two pair. You aren’t 100 percent sure where you’re at in the hand, but the hand has enough value to warrant taking a card off. If you hit your draw, you don’t want someone else to hit it bigger. Suppose the flop comes 10-6-5 to your 7-4-x-x. If an 8 comes, you will make your straight, but someone with 9-9-8-7 will make a higher one. Nor should you draw in the hopes of making two pair if most of the cards that will make a second pair for you could make a straight for someone else. If there is a flush draw possibility on the board, putting too much money in the pot is dangerous when you are drawing to a straight, because the possible flush takes away 25 percent of your cards. Three bad things could happen: (1) you miss your straight; (2) you make the straight with a card that gives your opponent the flush; or (3) you make a straight on the turn with one card to come and your opponent makes the flush on the river. Of course, there are always minor exceptions, times when you might think about drawing to the non-nuts. For example, suppose a guy raises before the flop, and you know that he only raises with big pairs. You flop the bottom wrap straight draw. You have clear insight into the type of hand that your opponent has, so you have good reason to think that a small straight draw might be good. Since you’re pretty sure that he doesn’t have the top wrap, you might draw to the lower straight. But if you don’t have a clear read in heads-up action like this, you draw to the nut flush or the best straight—or you don’t play the hand. 275 Playing the Nut Straight from Late Position Here’s a hand that I played some time ago that illustrates an important concept. I was sitting on the button with 9-6-x-x, and the flop came 8-7-5. A player led into me and I just called, for two reasons: (1) His

your hand may be worth a raise anyway, the fact that you will gain information (based on how your opponent responds to your raise) might make raising the right play. The best time to raise for information is against an opponent whose reaction to your raise will well define his hand. That is, depending on his play you will know for certain whether your hand is best. Here's an example. You have and an ace flops. You want to raise someone who will only reraise if your hand is no good. However, if you fold when you are reraised you need to be correct virtually every time. Heads-Up on Fifth Street Many pots in hold 'em, even though they may start with a lot of players, often end up as two-player contests by the time all the cards are out. Consequently, on the end, you sometimes must apply concepts that are totally different from those that were operative in earlier betting rounds. This section provides some guidelines on how to proceed. First, let's discuss those situations where you are last to act. The first question that many players ask is when is it correct to bluff? The answer is that if your hand probably can't win by checking, and the odds you are getting from the pot compared to the chance your opponent will call are favorable, then a bluff will be profitable. This concept was addressed in an earlier section, so we won't go into detail again. But a lot depends on whether you have been the bettor or the caller. If you have been calling all the way, only a significant card that appears to help you but does not, such as a flush card on fifth street, may make a bluff correct. If, on the other hacd, you have been betting all the way, you might try a bluff on the end regardless of the last card. Also, as has been emphasized in the text, remember to consider whether your opponent is capable of folding a decent hand. One mistake that inexperienced players make is to bet when all the cards are out, simply because they think they have the best hand. The trouble with this play is that while you may have the best hand the majority of the time, your bet may still be a loser. That is, when you are called, your bet will lose the majority of the time - even though you expect to have the winning hand in a showdown. In fact, if your opponznt has already checked, you should think you have the best hand at least 55 percent of the time that you are called for your bet to be correct (5 1 percent is not good enough because of the possibility that you will be check-raised). 102 Part Two: Strategic Concepts Here are a couple of examples. First, suppose you have and are against one opponent. The flop comes queen high, with or without two suited cards. If two blanks hit and the action has not been too heavy, you

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

Figure 24 - V alue Bet Flowchart This flowchart might at first sight seem overly complex and even a little alien. Don't worry! It's just a formalisation of the kind of thought process strong players use day in day out when deciding whether to value bet. Moreover, your thought process will not always have the form of a clunky mechanical chart. Eventually, that chart will become engrained in your subconscious competence and will be going on behind the scenes. This frees up valuable processing power for noticing and utilising the finer details of the situation at hand. There is one very important exception as to when this chart should be applied. Sometimes Hero will be making what I'm going to call a procedural check.

Flop The first street of community cards dealt. The flop consists of three cards.

Hand Range 50: LJ vs BN 3-bet • 4-bet 21.9% / • Call 23.3% / • Fold 54.9%

the other thing is why do people not check raise their pair it pairs in multi-way pods do you think you end up going that far in tournaments routinely if you get into the habit of check raising your pairs multi-way when the pots get very big multi-way what tends to be the best hand it's not a pair typically so that's a great habit people get out of really quickly so if he's not really likely doing this with tens and i guess there's a case he could have squeezed with tens i'm not sure the rest of the equation is does he uh do this with a draw so there's a there's a couple of draws here a seven uh to a lesser extent nine ten that seems very unlikely with so many players to act behind in you having such a short stack just going screw it a good percentage of the time so the draw seems unlikely the best value hand you beat seems unlikely which leaves you with a total bluff so a total bluff here would be a six just running and gunning or a six seven i guess an eight seven we forgot to bring those into our range do we think that's likely tighter players are more likely to just peel with those hands than they are too fast play and here's always a really great hard and fast rule if you find yourself really really really grasping for reasons to play your hand then your true motivation is to play your hand it's not to play good poker your true motivation is entitlement driven and there's a lot of people that play poker that way because i mean this isn't a bad thing this is this doesn't make you a bad person but a lot of people show up to play poker they don't show up two-fold and then they wait there for 45 minutes i don't know why this happens with a lot of people but there's eight other people at the table in one of you on average those eight people will have a better hand than you you might even start with the best hand because when the first two out of seven cards show up but when three more cards come it's very likely somebody caught up and there will be people every day it's like telling them did you move to seattle well it's gonna rain quite a bit and they'll still go out and it'll be raining and they'll go oh my god look at this it's raining in seattle who can believe this there's eight of them one of you and there's going to be a lot of times you get 40 45 minutes and you haven't won a ham because there's eight of them and one of you you've had a couple of good hands but the flops are bad and they catch up and that's it and then they'll get to this hand and sometimes this will be guys like a 3 500 tournament

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 Independent Chip Model (ICM) is not from studying bubble… How does ICM impact PKO strategy? If you have read The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments you already know why we… Understanding Blockers in Poker Often when looking through a solver’s meticulously crafted grid of deception, one of the following… Flop Heuristics: IP Cold-Caller in MTTs A Cold-call refers to the act of calling a preflop raise when you don’t close… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in MTTs In the world of poker, the flop is a crucial stage of the

VPIP An online poker acronym which stands for ‘Voluntarily Put In Pot’, a statistic that measures the frequency with which a player voluntarily puts money into the pot preflop.

anyway we have bert stevens draftganger absolute crusher he streams regularly for the poker coaching premium members where you can get online and ask him in real time why are you making these plays in these high stakes tournaments he guarantees a final table every stream kind of as a joke but i think he's final table something every single time so far and he's an absolute crusher we also have james romero james romero is one of the top 10 live tournament players before covet happened since then again the ranking's been all over the place because there hasn't been nearly as much live poker but he makes incredibly great high level content we have frauds jacob he was a wpt player of the year you actually win that trophy if you are wpt player of the year i was too somehow that's lucky um we have jonathan jaffe world-class exploitative player who has studied gto as well and i like jonathan jaffe a lot he gets in there and battles harder than anyone i i thought for odds jacques battled hard but jonathan jaffe really doesn't we have matt affleck as you see lots of coaches i can go on and on about this all the coaches are great we have matt affleck who every week he does a webinar where he asks the students what do you want to learn and then he goes home does the homework next week comes prepared with a nice presentation where he discusses whatever the students want to learn like just recently he was discussing how to play in multi-way pots with a medium stack and a lot of people screw that up a lot of people never lead when they're first to act when they call in small blind but matt discuss that and show when you should and when you should not sometimes you should sometimes you should not and it's good to know that because that's going to go a long way to helping you improve your skills right and you the student gets to essentially tell them what to teach you and then he does who else do we have we have tommy angelo the mindset expert alex cheryl we talked about him earlier we have brad wilson world-class cash game players making a lot of high-level cash game content for us we have tristan wade who has been teaching poker players to succeed for a very long time michael acevedo he wrote the book modern poker theory i actually am part of d poker and it's my job to curate the content and the other publishers said we need to get a gto book so i said i know your guy michael acevedo we had him write the book it was amazing and well now he's a poker coaching coach he also does joint webinars with bert stevens on a regular basis where they go through bert's wins for uh millions of dollars we also have lexi gavin who plays lots of cash games and tournaments as well

value bets expecting to be easily ahead of a range of mostly one pair and draws when called. The river should strike you as a thin value spot where Hero's relative hand strength has decreased and he's contemplating whether or not to fire a value bet. We know already that to check/call a spot like this where both ranges have just improved doesn't make sense as Villain will be well placed in position to check behind most of his weaker hands and bet all of his better hands for value. Although this river card is far from ideal, ranges remain wide due to the blind vs blind, Reg vs Reg nature of the spot. Villain will have some JT and QJ that make worse top pair on this river and still has hands in his range like A9, K9, Q9, A8 and 86s that called flop and turn. A value bet here is likely to be marginal but probably an improvement on check/folding as long as the dynamic between the two Regs is sufficiently aggressive. Hero is trying to get called by an array of fairly weak hands that could easily find folds if he bets too big. What we need to avoid here is creating a situation where only better hands continue to our river bet. Also important here is that Hero has very few bluffs himself since the Jh helps most of his semi-bluffing range in one way or another. Villain's range is elastic so Hero needs to size smaller in order to prevent Villain from happily folding all of his worse hands. Hero bets 16BB. The EV of Value Sizing As we know, the EV of a play determines if it's good or not. Our goal is to find the most +EV line in each spot and that entails finding the most +EV sizing when we bet for value. Newer students often start off with a tendency fatal to EV that I call milking syndrome. Let's take an example of this poker illness in action.

Diagram 38: BB vs IP Equity Buckets Clearly IP has the overall range advantage. As expected, UTG’s ~15% range is much stronger than the BN’s ~44% range (Diagram 38). This aligns well with UTG’s higher c-bet frequency.

card. 5. To gain information. If you think you have the bettor beat, it is generally correct to raise, even if you risk driving out players behind you. In fact, in many cases, it is very important to drive out players on the flop. This is because in today's modem structure, the size of the pot is often so large in relation to the bet on the flop that it sometimes becomes correct to draw to long-shot hands if there is no raise (on the flop). Consequently, your raise in these spots often will save the whole pot for you. By the way, if you are raising on the flop to drive people out, it usually will work only against those players who have not yet had a chance to call the original bet. It is a rare player who will fold his hand on the flop for one more bet after he already has put money into the pot. (Sometimes, however, the original bettor will help you drive out players by reraising.) Even if you are not sure that you have the best hand, a raise is often correct. Keep in-mind that if you do hold the best hand, or if your hand becomes the best hand, your raise may have stopped other opponents from drawing out on you. 96 Part Two: Strategic Concepts Here's an example of raising with a probable second-best hand. Suppose you raised before the flop with and the flop is Notice that you have a pair and an overcard, plus back-door straight and back-door flush potential. If someone on your right bets, a raise is often correct, especially if you think that the raise will buy you a free card. In very tough games, raising as a pure bluff can be occasionally done because players are capable of folding in big pots without calling one last bet. An example ofthis type of play is when one player bets and another calls on the river. If the right cards are out - especially if a scare card that is unlikely to help either of your opponents hits on the river - you can raise. This raise often works against the right players since there is a caller, who obviously is not bluffing. Thus it looks as though you must have something to make this play. These plays usually are not recommended simply because they succeed rarely and are expensive when they fail. However, if the conditions are perfect and you know your opponents well, you occasionally may find an opportunity to pull this play off successfully. Raising 97 The one time that you can bluff-raise in a weaker game is when you think your opponent is bluffing, but also think your hand is even worse. An example is when your flush draw did not get there, but the hand was played in such a fashion that you are fairly sure your opponent was also on a flush draw. Here's an example of this play. Suppose you start with and the flop is An opponent bets, and you

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

Stakes The size of the blinds/entry in a cash game or size of the entry fee in a tournament.

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

example:

the information at van and the rights to last action many benefits number three there are two types of position relative and absolute number four please start thinking of the button as the money chip and you will win more money simple as that number five the action and money flows through and to the player in position B the player with the best position and the money is going to flow right to you number six building on number five if you want to loosen up your game exaggerate your position your adjustments to the in position spots don't loosen up from all positions loosen up a little bit from early position if you even want to but loosen up a ton from late position open way more hands on the cutoff and button three bet people when they're opening when you have position and really focus on those late seats where you are almost guaranteed absolute position and there is a very low chance of you running into a strong hand behind you number seven to play in position more often look left get those towels and adjust your raise sizes preflop if you want to know more about this I'm happy to talk about this live towels and relational dynamics metagame is one of my favorite things in poker I absolutely love it 8 the free card play and the free showdown play are only available in position and finally number 9 stack depth is the great amplifier of the power of position the deeper the stacks the more valuable position is the shallower the stacks the less valuable it is but it always has value it always has merits and it's always better to have position than to not have position if you're going to play without position you better have a good reason to like a good hand good odds or a really good read on your opponent and that's it so this has been Evan for making my first webinar on position for poker coaching com and now let me talk a little bit about what poker coaching com is for those of you who are watching this on YouTube perhaps or are watching it through you know you found out about it through my Instagram feed or my stories or my Twitter post or my Facebook post or my email and you're like I know grips but I don't know poker coaching what is poker coaching com poker coaching com is the newest training site on the scene founded by Jonathan little and co-taught with Alex Fitzgerald Matt Affleck and myself Evan Jarvis what I really love about poker coaching com is the fact that they have these interactive poker hand quizzes it's the first training site I've seen that actually has an engaging format it's not just passively you're getting information you're getting downloads of theories and concepts but you actually get to apply them you get to test yourself and you get feedback immediately jonathan has made over 400 interactive poker hand quizzes

THE SKLANSKY-CHUBUKOV RANKINGS 146 Table 3: Sklansky-Chubukov Numbers for Selected Hands Hand S-C# KK $954 AKo $332 88 $159 A9s $104 A8o $71 A3o $48 22 $48 K8s $40 JTs $36 K8o $30 Q5s $20 Q6o $16 T8o $12 87s $11 J5o $10 96o $7 74s $5 For instance, pocket deuces is a prototypical robust hand. More than half the time, the big blind will have a hand that can call it profitably: 709 out of 1,225 hands (57.9 percent). But when it is called, deuces will win 46.8 percent of the time, almost half the time. Ace-trey offsuit is a vulnerable hand. Only 220 out of 1,005 hands can call it profitably (18.0 percent), but when called it wins only 35.1 percent of the time. Both pocket deuces and ace-trey offsuit have an S-C number of $48. The robust hand, deuces, is in some ways the better move-in hand, though. That’s because your opponents will tend to make more calling mistakes when you have deuces than when you have ace-trey. Say you move in for $40. Most players will call that raise relatively tightly. Even if they know that you might move in with a “weak” hand, they still probably won ’t call without a pocket pair or an ace. For instance, most players will almost certainly fold T♡7♡to a $39 raise. That fold is correct if you have ace-trey, but it’s a mistake if you have deuces: ten-seven suited is actually a favorite over pocket deuces. So your opponents’ tendency to fold too many hands to big all-in raises will hurt them more when you hold a robust hand than when you hold a vulnerable one. Sklansky-Chubukov numbers always underesti- mate the real move-in power of a hand. But they underestimate the power of robust hands more than vulnerable ones. Suited connectors are also robust hands, and so they too have more move-

is likely to call your value bet so let's discuss this one just a little bit so let's say you have somebody opening a little bit too much you three bet them as a bluff and they call you pre-flop they should on occasion do that with Aces or Kings just so that's in their uh flooding range when they flat three bats just so it just to make that range A Little Bit Stronger they don't have to do it all the time but they got to throw that in on occasion but in a practice a lot of people won't do that so you can just rule out the really big over pairs when you three bet them and they just call you pre-flop versus many players now on the Flop if they just check call you on some kind of coordinated board that also lets you know it's pretty likely they don't have the bigger hands because a lot of people would check raise with their two pairs in their sets to simultaneously get money from their hand and protect their hand if they were flush runs or straight rods out there and if all else fails and they check if they just check call you on the Flop you're gonna get two free cards because a lot of the times they'll check the turn to you and you can just check and you can take your Turner River and that is a lot of equity man just to add extra cards like that which is another reason we want to be three betting in position continuing double barrel frequent floaters versus basic opponents your continuation bets on the Flop will usually get them to fold their High cards however there are certain situations where your opponents will not want to fold their High cards one great example of this comes up when the board is very hit or miss let's say you open a five six suited from the small blind or bought it the big blend calls the board comes king2 rainbow your big blind opponent checks to you and you continuation back they call this is a board where you should heavily consider double barreling whether your opponent is out of position or not doesn't matter if they like if they have a high card or back door draw they're unlikely to go anywhere they know on that board you either have a king or nothing they're gambling on nothing they also want to call because that's a more fun way to play and to be fair you raise from a later position with a wider range so it's more likely you miss that board if you're going to continuation about this board you should consider double barreling as well especially if the turn card comes a blank your opponent is likely to have nothing and will fold they're far more likely to take the turn Barrel seriously as opposed to the automatic flop that's so unpacking this one just a bit let's say you raise

in “to rail a game” or “come rail me at this table.” Railbird—A spectator, who’s “railing” a game. Sometimes used as a derogatory term for someone who’s out of action, broke, and can only watch the games, because he has no money to play. Rainbow—A flop when all three cards are of different suits. Raise—To put in more chips than the player who bets before you. In no-limit hold ’em, the smallest raise allowed is to increase the bet by the sameamount that the player before you either bet or raised himself. If a player bets $10 after the flop, the minimum raise allowed is $10, or a total bet of $20. Rake—A percentage of the pot the house or casino takes from each pot. Usually 3%-5% of the pot. Also refers to the fee the house takes on a poker-tournament entry. Rank—The index on the card. A, K, J, Q, T, 9, 8 etc. are the ranks of the cards. Read—An assessment of an opponent’s strength. If you’re trying to figure out what an opponent’s cards are, you take a read on him. Re-buy—To buy more chips. Usually refers to a tournament in which, during the first few blind levels, players can buy more chips if they dip belowtheir starting chip amount. Sometimes, players can only re-buy if they’ve lost their whole stack. Re-buy Period—The time in a tournament during which re-buys are allowed. Re-buy Tournament—A tournament in which re-buys are allowed for the first few blind levels. Redraw—To get a second chance to draw at a hand. Can refer to 1) a hand in which after you hit your draw, you can still draw to better hands. For example, in Omaha, if you hit a straight on the turn with a hand that can redraw to a bigger straight or to a flush or full house. 2) A hand in which a player sucks out on you on the turn, but you you can still redraw to a better hand. For example, if you have a hand like A♥Q♥ and the board comes A♠-Q♦-4♥ and you’re against 5♠5♦. If a 5♥ hits on the turn, you still have redraws to the flush and full house. Represent—To play a hand in the way a stronger hand would play to try to convince your opponent that you’re holding a certain hand. For example, on a board with three flush cards, to play your hand as if you have the flush is to “represent” the flush. Re-raise—To raise a player who has already raised in front of you. Also called a “three bet.” Ring Game—A cash game that’s full-handed, that has the maximum players in it. Usually 8, 9, or 10 players. River—The fifth and final community card dealt. Also called “fifth street” in flop games. Rock—A player who plays only premium hands. A solid player. Runner Runner—When you hit two running cards to win a hand. Winning with a hand that was losing unless perfect cards hit on the turn and theriver. For example, if you have 9♥T♥, the board is K♠-5♥-3♦,

Knockout (PKO) tournaments are much more complex than traditional MTTs. The fact that players… How To Calculate Raises In Poker One of the most frequently asked questions in poker is how to calculate the size… Principles of River Play The river offers the least complicated strategy of any betting street. With no further cards… Exploitative Dynamics GTO solutions are designed to be unexploitable, performing reasonably well no matter how your opponents… How ICM Impacts Postflop Strategy Most players understand how the Independent Chip Model (ICM) in poker impacts their strategy preflop,… 10 Tips for Multiway Pots in Poker While lots of work has been placed into research and explanation of heads-up pot strategy,… What is the Bubble Factor in poker tournaments? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) shows us the real money implications of tournament chip decisions.… The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments In poker, a PKO (Progressive Knockout) tournament is a type of tournament where a portion… How To Analyze Turn Textures In Poker Master the art of turn analysis in poker. Understand how the turn card changes the… Principles of Turn Strategy Learn the principles of turn strategy in poker and discover what makes the turn unique.… Poker Strategies: Tournaments vs. Cash Games Tournament poker is not as different from cash game poker as people sometimes assume. Most… How Solvers Work A Game Theory Optimal solver is an algorithm that calculates the best possible poker strategy.… The Most Powerful Play in Poker The central strategic implication of stack depth is the question of how much equity a… When does ICM become significant in MTTs? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) was invented in 1987 by M. Malmuth and is one… How to Study GTO Solutions Tools like GTO Wizard and other solvers should not be used to memorize specific strategies.… Principles of GTO Game theory, or GTO (for Game Theoretically Optimal), is best understood not as a rigid… Interpreting Equity Distributions GTO Wizard’s range vs range equity distribution graphs are an excellent tool for visualizing which… What is Leverage in poker? Leverage refers to the risk of future betting. When you call a bet on the… Reasons for value betting in poker You’re probably accustomed to thinking of bets as either value or bluff. In this taxonomy,… The Science of Poker Performance Poker is a game of small edges and big swings. Every hand is an investment… What is Valor in poker? Can a poker hand be courageous? How does your ability to value bet future streets… Pot Geometry “Pot Geometry” refers to betting an equal fraction of the pot on each street, such… A Beginner’s Guide to Poker Combinatorics Combinatorics is a fancy term for evaluating the number of possible “combinations” (combos) of any… Stack-to-pot ratio Stack-to-pot ratio, or SPR, is a way of measuring how deep the effective stack is… Equity Realization In poker jargon, equity expresses how much of the pot a hand will 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 Aladdin. In 1973, Wyman brought the game of no-limit Texas hold’em across Las Vegas Boulevard to the Aladdin, which was operated by Sam Diamond. Hosted by Johnny Moss, this high-stakes no-limit Texas hold’em game attracted not only the Texas and Nevada gamblers, but also more and more drop-ins. It was so well attended that games often ran for days at a time, and fortunes changed hands. Major Riddle was a frequent player at the Aladdin table, and his poor play led to his losing majority control of the Dunes to parties represented by Sid Wyman. Moss eventually moved his game to the oldest casino on the strip, the Flamingo, which again found itself the subject of debate and criticism. More than thirty years earlier, in 1946, the Flamingo proved the critics of the 1940s wrong about the possibility of successful expansion of casinos from downtown to a dusty, remote location that eventually became known as the Strip. In 1976, at the same hotel, Johnny Moss would prove the critics of the 1970s wrong by successfully operating a poker room in a Strip casino. At the time, other notable poker players were beginning to see the advantage of hosting high stakes games, including Chip Reese at the Dunes and Eric Drache and Doyle Brunson, who partnered up to operate the game at the Silver Bird, the casino that Major Riddle had acquired after losing control of the Dunes. The excitement generated by new poker rooms on the Strip and the World Series of Poker fueled Texas hold’em’s meteoric rise in nationwide popularity. These prosperous days lasted until about the middle eighties. By that time, satellites had become so popular that they were running twenty-four hours a day and were occupying more and more of the limited floor space in the 43 Horseshoe. While at first, this was seen as a positive change for the tournament, it had the ironic effect of crowding out the live games—the very reason we had started the WSOP in the first place! Today, the game of no-limit Texas hold’em that we introduced to Nevada so many years ago has been transformed, thanks to its entertainment value, to television audiences. Ever increasing participation in major freeze-out tournaments (more than 2,500 players in the 2004 World Series of Poker) have forced tournament hosts to impose rapidly increasing ante and blind structures in order to keep the tournament times manageable. And this has produced an aberration of the pure form of the game. With certain notable exceptions, the game of no-limit Texas hold’em is a game designed to be played after the flop. That’s when the real play is supposed to begin. However, many hands seen at televised events today are played before the flop, when the players have received only their holecards. This style of play, sometimes referred to as “catch an ace and take a race,” re-introduces a substantial amount of luck into a game that had always favored the best player over the best card catcher. But it appears that nothing can stop an idea whose time

now we may have a good chance of doubling up at 50 big blinds versus if we three that King Queen they fold King Jack we just lost a really good situation for us again it's not important to remember these exact ranges these are more examples of types of hands that you want to be three betting you want to focus on categories of hands that so off suit Broadway's at 50 big blinds wheel suited ace in Middle East the wheel suited ace is at 150 big line like H 5 and H for suited are very good two three betting and then when you get down to 50 we're no longer we want to be three buddy more like a snide suited ace eight suited Taipans rather than being two-wheel suited heavy so someone asked with ace five stood on the other end I am blocking one five and someone else could be have five six suited so yes you could be folding out a hand like five six suited but the really good thing about ace five suited is now hands like ace 10 off suit ace 9 offsuit ace jack-off suit you get a lot of better aces to fold even possibly a hand like pocket sixes might thrilled to your three bet so someone asked with a snide student if we get a pair on ace in a three bet pop versus early position are we ok stacking off with it no again these Rangers I was talking about from the first example these are more like middle position versus early position and these examples while we might not be stacking off we can at least get one or two sheets of value the hand becomes much easier to play when we have top pair so fifty big blinds here with the ace nine suited yeah we're gonna if we get a lot of resistance will be more cautious but the hands can play much easier at 50 big ones and at 150 big blinds so keep in mind types of hand so that we're gonna be three betting at fifty types of hands that we're gonna be three bedded in a hundred and fifty and then the main thing being the suited connectors to do real aces at 150 and then a lot of these offices Broadway's also at 150 I didn't mark him in this example but again we're talking about types hands good types of hands to three but it would be a hand like King nine suited Jack nine suited ten nine suited is always a really good hand to three both and those have the properties of if we three better hand like King nine suited we're getting hands like King 10 off King jack off to fold a snide off the fold and we still have a pretty good playability and we can make good top pairs with King nine queen nine Jack the student nines and suta dates this section of the grid become also decent three bets a

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… The Initial Bettor’s Advantage The mathematics of poker holds a little-known secret: the first bettor enjoys better bluffing odds… Mastering the

quarter pot with all of these combos results in zero ev loss which also makes sense as these hands have limited showdown value and therefore should benefit significantly by getting the opponent to fold so instead of trying to reconstruct our entire range combo by combo we see that through the use of bucketing we're able to greatly simplify our strategy by creating three wide classes that can be played in the same way without significant ev loss now some of you gto wizards that are watching at this point are likely thinking to yourself that actually this type of simplified strategy is exploitable and doesn't maximize ev since it's overly polarized and affords poor coverage on various runouts and you would be right but everyone needs to start somewhere and we don't want the perfect to be the enemy of the good additionally once a novice player is able to build a solid foundational understanding of equity distributions by using just a handful of buckets in this way he can then advance towards expanding the number of buckets he uses in an incremental manner so for example if we wanted to add a bit more refinement to our strategy and check some strong hands to protect the middle part of our range we can start by deciding to check some of our sets that are blocking the greatest proportion of our opponent's calling range in this case pocket tens and we see that although checking all of our sets would lead to a major ev loss if we decided to only check some of our tens the ev loss is relatively small we could also try to add a bit more complexity into our strategy by betting some of our top pairs right we could decide to bet with some or all of our top pairs with the strongest kickers which we see results in low eb regret and then decide to check all of our top pairs with weaker kickers that have a high ev regret for betting but a low ev regret for checking we can also mix some of our middling hands into our bedding range by choosing to bet some of these combos with a backdoor flush draw which only results in 0.1 percent of bb regret and then just check all of these combos without a backdoor flush draw which generally prefer not to bet additionally we can differentiate between pocket pairs and non-pocket pairs right when we click on our middling pairs we see that pocket eights and nines are mostly checking whereas 7x although weaker in rank is actually playing much more aggressively likely because non-pocket pairs have more outs to improve on turns and rivers by using a bit of a merged strategy in this way and adding some mid-strength hands into our betting range we gain a bit of ev through protection and also by having better coverage on various runouts and finally instead of simply betting all of our unmade hands we could refine our strategy a bit by mixing them

changes a little bit too where essentially your Bluffs get a little bit weaker they get pushed down the chart a bit more so let's take a look at how to play 80 big lines deep witches comparable enough to when you're playing 100 people and steep by the way if you were playing a cash game with no rake with an ante with roughly 100 blind Stacks against somewhat small Ray sizes you would use these strategies because then you're essentially playing that game so understand the fact that this is a tournament doesn't really matter so much what matters is the actual structure of the game that you are playing all right here we have big blind defense 80 big blinds deep against the under the gun Rays you now see get to play all suited hands they all call this may make some people very very uncomfortable but you get to call because you're getting better odds right better if you're getting a lot better odd you get to call much wider you do still see that your Bluffs mostly come from asex suited King X suited and suited connectors same thing right our value range is aces kings queens and Ace King those are the hands that are good enough to re-race and get in even 80 big lines deep and they were calling with a whole lot of other hands right we're just calling with all the hands that flop well enough notice hands as weak as five three off suit call where stuff like Jack four off suit does not call that's because 5'3 flops way better in general than Jack four five three makes some random straights and two pairs whereas Jack four typically makes top pair no kicker or bottom pair bad kicker it's not really where you want to be so notice against the under the gun Rays a lot of these offsuit hands are just too weak to continue even some of the weaker A6 has to fold as you're facing a hijack raise you get to defend a little bit wider with you three betting more value hands notice tens and better and Ace Queen for value now but then also more Bluffs mostly from the middle suited connected type hands and a few more asex suited right the calling range does continue to get a little bit wider in this scenario just including more junky offsuit hands but it's mostly connected or has a high card so we're going to be sticking around a little bit wider and then against the button Rays this is when you get to defend the widest notice you're only folding about 16.4 percent of hands not very much you're really only folding the absolute trash like Jack two nine four seven four six three four two three two Etc uh notice our three betting range does get way wider at this point we're now three betting with eights and better for Value a lot of suited and offsuit big cards for Value as well

I explain these terms in the text, but readers can avail themselves of the Glossary of Poker Terms at the back of the book to check the definitions of any terms about which they are uncertain. The Theory of Poker is an expansion and total revision of the book Sklansky on Poker Theory, written by David Sklansky and originally published by Gambler's Book Club of Las Vegas in 1978. That book was directed primarily to professional poker XI xii Preface players. This book is directed to poker players in general, who know the basics, who may even be good players, but who want to delve deeper into the inner workings of the game. It is not an easy book, but a careful reading of it should reap rich rewards. Note: This book was formerly titled Winning Poker. _______________Chapter One Beyond Beginning Poker The beauty of poker is that on the surface it is a game of utter simplicity, yet beneath the surface it is profound, rich, and full of subtlety. Because its basic rules are so simple, anyone can learn poker in a few minutes, and novice players may even think they're pretty good after a few hours. From the expert's point of view, the veneer of simplicity that deludes so many players into thinking they're good is the profitable side of the game's beauty. It doesn't take long for pool players or golfers to realize they're outclassed and to demand that a match be handicapped, but losers in poker return to the table over and over again, donating their money and blaming their losses on bad luck, not bad play. It's true that in any given session the best of players can get unlucky. Going into the final day of the 1981 world championship of poker, Bobby Baldwin of Tulsa, Oklahoma, had a substantial lead over the eight other surviving players. Within a couple of hours he had two hands beat when his opponents outdrew him on the final card on 21-to-l shots. Suddenly he was out of the tournament. Coincidentally, in both hands Baldwin's opponent needed one of the two remaining queens among the 44 unseen cards, and he got it. However, it is more likely for a good player like Baldwin to suffer these bad beats, as they are called, than for an average player or a weak player to suffer them. "I've heard good players complain to me about how they get drawn out on all the time," Baldwin said after the 1981 tournament. "But if they want to better their game and better their emotional state while playing, they should realize it's a mirage. If you are an excellent player, People are going to draw out on you a lot more than you're going to draw out on them because they're simply going to have the worst hand against you a lot more times than you have the worst 2 Chapter One hand against them. There's no way you're going to draw out on anybody if you don't get all your money in there on the worst

with two overcards on the flop? You should play this hand strongly, especially against a small number of opponents, and be inclined to bet it a second time regardless of the fourth street card. 6. Betting in late position on the flop, are you likely to get a free card? Yes, most of the time. If you bet on the flop and are called, most players will tend to check to you on fourth street. 7. In this situation, should you be concerned about a check-raise? Yes. 8. What is this a function of'? More so the opponents that you are up against, rather than of the cards that appeared on the flop. 9. Is it correct to play flush draws when a pair is on board? Since you may run into a full house, the main thing to consider is how much money is in the pot. In other words, the pot should be offering you somewhat better odds than if there were no pair showing. 10. What else is important to consider? Which pair and off-card are on the flop. 1 1. Example? If the flop is J4J4T4, someone already may have flopped a full house. On the other hand, if the flop is 919421, it is unlikely that you are looking at a full house. 12. Should you call with a straight draw if two flush cards have flopped? Many of the same ideas apply. Basically, since you may run into a flush, you need better than normal pot odds to call. Miscellaneous Topics 285 13. If the board pairs on fourth street, should drawing hands be thrown away? Rarely. However, you need somewhat better odds than normal to continue playing. In addition, consider which card has paired and what the other two cards are. 14. Suppose the board pairs on fourth street, someone bets, you are next, and there are several players behind you, what must you be aware of? You may be raised if you call. Thus you may be forced to put a lot of money in the pot on a 4-to-1 shot. 15. If there has been no raise before the flop, how should you play from the flop on? Tighter, since more possible hands may be out and you are getting smaller pot odds. 16. Example? Suppose the flop comes with a small pair. If there was an early-position raiser and a couple of callers, you could be fairly sure that no one has a third card of the appropriate rank. However, this would not necessarily be the case if there was no raise, especially if many players took the flop (or if the raise came after many players had already called). 17. What if a two flush flops? A. Play your good hands more aggressively since there is a better chance that you will be called. B. Virtually never slowplay. C. If your hand is mediocre but normally worth a bet, it is usually correct to check. You might run into fancy raises or be outdrawn even if you currently have the best

but others make guesses based on partial knowledge from the exposed cards. For draw games (Five-Card Draw is the most popular), there are no exposed cards. Only betting patterns and the number of cards drawn for improvement provide information to the other players. Texas Hold'em is in a completely different class of poker variants known asflop games. Flop games have elements of both stud and draw games. Like draw games, the cards dealt to the players are not exposed and are known only to them. Like stud games, hands are improved through exposed cards. The twist is that the exposed cards belong to everyone. The use of shared (or community) cards to complete a poker hand is the defining characteristic of flop games. Some of the other flop variants (Omaha, Omaha Eight or Better, and Pineapple) are described in Appendix I. Of the flop games, Texas Hold'em is the most intricate and challenging to play. The annual World Series of Poker uses Texas Hold'em to determine the champion. This book specifically addresses Texas Hold'em. While some of the in- 4 THE INTELLIGENT GUIDE TO TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER formation presented is relevant to the other flop games (and poker in general), the correct strategy and tactics for a game such as Omaha are different from Texas Hold'em, even though on the surface the games look remarkably similar. Opportunities to play Texas Hold'em are more widespread than most people realize. Aside from the obvious locations (Atlantic City and Las Vegas), there are public cardrooms throughout California and the Northwest, on Native American reservations throughout the United States, and on riverboats up and down the Mississippi River system in the country's heartland. Chapter 2 describes what to expect in a public cardroom and how to cbnduct yourself. To locate a public cardroom near you-or near a place you plan to visit-check the listings in Chapter 10 for public cardrooms in the United States and Canada. The listings are sorted geographically and contain locations and contact information for 220 cardrooms. The Internet has actually provided unlimited opportunity to play Texas Hold'em because of the growth of online poker games. Chapter 10 also profiles 15 online cardrooms where you can compete for real money. Chapter 3 discusses play in online cardrooms and the differences between playing poker "in person" and over the Internet against remote opponents. Be aware that the legal issues surrounding online gambling are murky. Discussion of online poker is for informational purposes only. In no way should anything in this book be construed as legal advice or an endorsement or guarantee of online services. It is the reader's responsibility to know the appropriate laws governing any activity undertaken and to consult with a lawyer when unsure. Online poker play is covered in this book because the Internet-and the opportunities and risks brought by the Internet-are here to stay. It will become increasing difficult for the government to regulate online activities. Therefore, it is more important than ever to be informed and responsible when online. 1. Rules The object of Hold'em is to accumulate money.

That’s it. That is the GTO study premise. It is not only about balance and equilibrium. It is about understanding the game at its core and actively using that knowledge to generate value. 01 POKER FUNDAMENTALS While this chapter involves a decent amount of math, I did my best to keep the number crunching and equations to a minimum. However, you must fully understand a few of the formulas because they will ensure you become proficient at many of the most important concepts in poker. Please do not be turned off by the math and understand that working through this chapter is well worth the effort. Basic Concepts This section covers the basic terms that are required to understand the advanced strategies explained throughout this book. Table Positions Early Position (EP) At a 9-handed table (Diagram 1) there are three early positions. If there are fewer players seated at the table, these are the first positions to be removed. ♦ UTG (Under the gun) – The first player to act pre-flop. ♦ UTG1 – The second player to act pre-flop.

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

have the opposite type of opponent and river card to Hand 39. Villain is of the aggro variety of Fish and the river is a blank leaving missed draws in Villain's range. This kind of player will bluff a lot when checked to, and moreover, has a fair bit of air in his range here as any 5x or 7x straight draw has now missed as well as all of the flush draws that haven't made pairs. In addition, Aggro Fish are often capable of betting out randomly even with SDV in the form of 6x, 4x or 3x, which Hero beats. All of this suggests that Hero should expect to do well bluff catching vs. Villain's betting range. A value bet from Hero would be very thin indeed. Hero should therefore elect to check/call vs all the worse hands he expects Villain to bet. Hero check/calls.

On average, OOP will x/r the turn 14% of the time and will be mostly going all-in, as a smaller raise size would commit too many chips. In general, their weaker x/r hands are semi- bluffs that will have the equity to call an all-in bet and thus be committed (Diagrams 130-131). Table 146: OOP EQ Heatmap by turn card on 9♥8♥4♦ (x/b/c/x/b67) Table 147: OOP EV Heatmap by turn card on 9♥8♥4♦ (x/b/c/x/b67) Table 148: IP EQ Heatmap by turn card on 9♥8♥4♦ (x/b/c/x/b67) Table 149: IP EV Heatmap by turn card on 9♥8♥4♦ (x/b/c/x/b67)

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

go broke it's kind of hard to get back in action i think unless you have like really good connections or you've very clearly proven yourself to be a very very good winner so look don't be in a rush i took it really slow probably a little bit too slow um but i was i've literally never been at risk of going broke right sometimes you have to dip into your i guess reserve fund call it whatever you want wear like blocked up money but literally never gone broke but nowhere near going broke and that will result in me not moving up quite as quick as some people but also results in me literally never going broke and i think there's a lot of value to that especially if you know you're going to be in this for a long time and you know you kind of want to sleep easy at night just because other people gamble and sometimes when huge does not mean that that is the ideal strategy for long-term success so many people watch these poker players playing loose aggressive splashy battling poker and sometimes they win and they get shown off they get bragged about they get coverage but a lot of other people do the exact same thing and they lose and they get no coverage the media likes to show off the winners in the poker space and it doesn't really highlight the losers and it turns out a lot of the losers are people who are really pushing the boundaries um a lot of people well a lot of people every once in a while someone will run hot and let's say the hundred dollar buying tournaments and they go from having let's say ten thousand dollars to a hundred thousand dollars like overnight right then you know what they do instead of being adequately skilled for the next buying level they they just decide to move up to thousand dollar games because hey they got 100 buy-ins why not and sometimes they run hot there too it is possible for someone to run hot every year look at who the player of the year is that person ran hot i was player of the year one year and i ran ungodly hot i probably won i don't know two thirds of my coin flips and uh you win two-thirds of your flips and high-stakes tournaments you're gonna win a bunch of money i've also had other years that would have been horrible did i all of a sudden get really bad at poker no just didn't win my flips remember when justin bonimo was on his insane run where he won like the one drop and a bunch of other stuff and they interviewed him they said like what's changed over the last two years to let you crush the tournament so hard he's like nothing's changed it's just running hot it's true he realizes this right he's just he came from the sit-and-go space like me and he realizes

that there's a ton of variants in poker but he put in a lot of volume in games he can be sometimes it works out right once it's clear that you are winning which requires a bit of time a bit of a sample size right once it's clear you're winning then move up don't be scared of moving up some other people have the problem that's the opposite of degeneracy where they just want to lock up the free win and that's fine and good but you're never going to become a really great poker player by staying well within your comfort zone you do have to push the boundaries a little bit i'm not saying do it the negroni style where you're constantly trying to move up but at the same time there you should be trying to move up because whenever you move up you basically double your income or 1.5x your income whatever it is and that's quite powerful it turns out if you can double your income over and over you're going to start making a bunch of money right and to be fair like even today where i realize poker is much tougher than it was back in the day you can still make a hundred dollars per hour from poker pretty reasonably if you get very good you game select well you play in good times and you know you put in a lot of volume and 100 bucks an hour is a lot of money if you grind hard if your only goal is to win money you play 70 hours a month or sorry 70 hours a week six let's say let's play say 60 hours a week what is that 240 hours per month that's 24 000 per month it's a lot of money what is that 300 000 per year roughly call it 250 if you want to take some time off or play less 250k a year being you know very good at something like 510 no limit it's a lot of a lot of money a lot a lot of money like i don't know why you would want to just be comfortable comfortable playing one two making let's say 50k a year when it's not even much of a gamble at all to try to move up to potentially make 300k per year 250k per year because whenever you try to move up if it goes poorly just move back down yeah you lose a little bit of money but you get some experience at the higher six games then you move back down to your one two game continue making your 50k a year like that should be the fail case not the goal right now once you get to 510 as you start going higher and higher the games do get substantially tougher and that's when like game selection and networking becomes highly valuable or if you're playing tournaments that's where you like really have to be playing like traveling a lot which i realize a

the world who are playing for real money! In fact, what is there about online poker that makes it unreal? Not much, and that’s why I think most of 46 us have started differentiating poker by just these two terms: online poker and real-world poker. And real-world poker, the kind you sit down and play with physical cards at a real table against opponents you can reach across the table and shake hands with, can itself be divided into subcategories. For instance, we could talk about home poker and casino poker. Each offers a slightly different flavor. That’s the same with basketball, you know. There is basketball played outdoors on concrete slabs, high school basketball, college basketball, NBA basketball, and international basketball that you see in the Olympics. But it’s all basketball. And I’m here to tell you today, that online or real world, poker is poker. It’s all poker. There’s hardly any advice on these pages that won’t help you become a much better online player, simply because it will help you to become a much better poker player, period. DOYLE’S ROOM www.doylesroom.com Before I give you some specific tips and insights about playing poker online, I want to tell you something that may surprise you. The truth is, it surprises me, because not too many years ago, I couldn’t imagine myself being involved in online poker at all. Briefly, I got myself talked into endorsing a friend’s start-up website, but I extricated myself from that fiasco as soon as I realized that nowadays only the big boys can afford to play in this business. Chalk it up as another of my bad ventures when trying to help others out. Well, then I got smart. If you want to know how smart, check out www.doylesroom.com for actual play in practice games—and beyond! And for other things about learning poker, try its sister site, www.poker1.com. I’m happy to be the Doyle’s Room consultant and that they’re putting my name on the site—because they’re paying me a handsome endorsement fee, and because it’s a site I’m proud to be part of. Using doylesroom.com as an example, I’ll walk you through online poker. Remember, by the time you read this, doylesroom.com and other competing sites may be even more advanced. I envision being able to bet just by speaking and being able to scrutinize live, moving images of opponents, 47 bringing to the online world the most sorely missed element of traditional poker: tells. The one thing that will shock you most is the number of poker players currently online. Just before this book went to press, I was honored to be inducted into the Poker Walk of Fame at the Commerce Casino, near Los Angeles. Have you ever visited that casino? It’s the biggest physical cardroom in the world. There are hundreds of poker tables! Now, in my whole life as a poker player, I never envisioned that there would ever be fifty games going under one roof, let alone hundreds. And Commerce isn’t the only major poker room to host a huge

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 Independent Chip Model (ICM) is not from studying bubble… How does ICM impact PKO strategy? If you have read The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments you already know why we… Understanding Blockers in Poker Often when looking through a solver’s meticulously crafted grid of deception, one of the following… Flop Heuristics: IP Cold-Caller in MTTs A Cold-call refers to the act of calling a preflop raise when you don’t close… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in MTTs In the world of poker, the flop is a crucial stage of the game that… Flop Heuristics for Defending the Blinds in MTTs The field of Game Theoretically Optimal poker is extensive, and thus, to simplify our strategy,… Multiway strategy in Progressive Knockout Tournaments Progressive Knockout (PKO) tournaments are much more complex than traditional MTTs. The fact that players… How To Calculate Raises In Poker One of the most frequently asked questions in poker is how to calculate the size… Principles of River Play The river offers

much more often and stops using the half pot size entirely . The 80% pot bet takes priority, but the 20% pot bet also sees significant use. The Manhattan graphs provide better insight into what’s going on. At equilibrium, CO’s bets come from all over the spectrum, with the only discernible pattern being a slight preference for betting stronger hands. This is typical for out of position play, especially on a dynamic board. Information hiding is of utmost importance, so CO includes many different types of hands in both their betting and checking ranges. When CO can predict that BTN will call too often, they mostly lose the incentive to hide information. They consistently bet big with their strongest hands (“strongest” here includes even some hands with less than 50% equity), bet small with their next-best hands, and check their weakest hands. The reason to hide information is to prevent your opponent from playing correctly against you. If you believe they will not play correctly, you can mostly forgo information hiding in favor of taking advantage of the imbalance you anticipate. In this case, that mostly means big value bets. If you can predict that your opponent will call or raise too often, you can forgo information hiding in favor of taking advantage of their imbalance. There are no pure bluffs here—you don’t want to bluff an opponent who calls too much—but there are plenty of semi-bluffs from hands with 25-50% equity. Why does CO bet hands that are not favored into an opponent whom they know will rarely fold? Two reasons: Most of these hands have too much equity to check-fold , so they will put chips in against BTN’s best hands whether they bet or check. Betting enables them to also put chips in against some of BTN’s weaker hands, the ones that should fold but which a sticky player will continue with. Against that part of BTN’s range, these hands may well be favored. Calling too wide on the flop will lead to BTN having many weak hands on the turn. One way to exploit that is to bet strong hands on the flop, as we see CO doing here. Another way is to barrel aggressively on the turn to force folds from those weak hands. Many of CO’s lower-equity flop bets will be good candidates for barreling turns. Barreling the Turn Although we can’t run reports on Custom Solutions ( yet ), we can “spot check” a few turn cards to get a sense of how CO’s barreling strategy changes against a sticky BTN. As we consider these scenarios, let’s keep a few things in mind: The only imbalance we are assuming in BTN’s strategy is not folding often enough to flop bets. That means that, in these simulations, BTN is assumed to play optimally on the turn . They will still be at a disadvantage due to arriving at the turn with an overly weak range, but these simulations do not rely on any assumptions about what BTN will do wrong on the turn. A real-life opponent

The main advantage Hero wields here as the pre-flop 3-bettor is that of having an uncapped range

Author Tombos21 Tom is a long time poker theory enthusiast, GTO Wizard coach and YouTuber, and author of the Daily Dose of GTO. Latest article Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first decade of my career. But after my first… Relationships and Poker In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve… Do Multiple Sizes Matter? Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results… The Science of Learning Applied to GTO Wizard The way we were taught to study in schools was flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN preflop raiser in a 100bb cash… When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody… Protect Equity and Prosper When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend… Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative poker thinking. When you’re value betting against… Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots When the BTN open-limps off a short stack, the postflop play against the BB should… I’d Rather Be Drawing Which is the better hand on a K♥8♦5♦ flop: K♠T♣ or 7♥6♥? OK, I’ll admit… The Curious Case of Open-Limping Buttons Before the advent of solvers, open-limping was considered the province of passive, gambley recreational players… Cleaning Out Sticky IP Callers A “sticky” player on your left, one who calls your preflop raises too often and… Defending Against Tiny 3-Bets Tournament poker is about precision. Cash games, where stacks typically run into 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

they made a pair uh 10x even Queen X like a weak Queen they got like Queen nine of clubs or something I don't really think we're gonna see much but yeah I really just don't think we have leads on the swap with this particular hand in these positions and stuff I would have check raised and then I probably would do some small betting and some checking on the turn if I had check raised um because we will have flushes in our range but it's not the best card considering a bunch of straight skate there and stuff so that's why I'm not a huge fan of why we play the turn here I would have preferred a check okay under the gun opens we have four six suited on the button this is a little loose I think five six Suited is fine four six suited is kind of borderline and we flop nothing but a back door we get checked too I probably would start betting and I probably would have a big bet here um or a small bet I mean but I think on this texture board I could start applying pressure to over cards at Ace highs with a three bet considering I do have some backdoor equity but we go small bet and it gets full so that works too pocket aces again small raise button calls good flop for us we can mix between small bed and big bed here on this board out of position we go small bet we get raised now this hand in particular it's not a hand we want to put in another raise here with if we had Jax if we had Queens if we had Kings even then yeah maybe we just want to move all in and get it in against a combo draw or something like that but with Aces where we don't need protection from like a club turning or a seven turning or whatever other car we might be worried about we can just call this bet so that's kind of the difference in when we have over pairs here if our over pairs need more protection we can play it just for a shove when we have the the best of the best with back tours we want to trap so we click it back I mean it's okay but but I would prefer just to call here to keep some of the Bluffs in but I I think this is just saying we have a hand we're not folding whereas if we just call then there's pot left for this person and they can try to Bluff us off like what if we have Queen Jack of Spades or what if we have you know Jack nine here that wants to see another card so I prefer to keep my range open a little bit here what we raise a shove we get it all in and we are up against the 800 clubs here which I almost swear

Chip trick Any sort of physical maneuver or trick done with physical poker chips. Common at tables in casinos.

Expected Value (EV) The anticipated value one expects from any hand, position, or play. EV is calculated as a weighted average of all possible outcomes weighed by the probability of each of those outcomes.

opponent raised, the pot contained $700 from the blinds and antes, plus $2,400 from the first round of betting, plus the $3,000 from your post-flop bet, for a total of $6,100. You've put in $4,200 so far, so your stack is down to $15,800. Your opponent called your $3,000 bet and raised you the rest of your stack, so he just put in $18,800, making the pot now $24,900. It costs you $15,800 to call that pot, so the pot is offering you odds of about 25-to-l 6, or just a little better than 3-to-2. Those are pretty good odds. If you make a lot of bets with 3-to-2 odds in your favor, you only have to win 40 percent of them to break even. Win more than that, and you'll show a nice profit. But can you win more than that? Now we start the tough part, which is analyzing the actual hand. There are only two hands your opponent can hold that scare you: a pair of nines and a pair of fives. (Very few players would make the mistake of calling a bet from an early raiser before the flop with a pair of deuces.) If he has one of those hands, he's now got a set and you're a huge underdog - about 10 percent winning chances with two cards to come. If he made his raise with any other hand, you're a huge favorite. If he shoved his chips in with kings, queens, jacks, or tens, you're about a 92 percent favorite with two cards to , come. If he's on a complete bluff with a hand like king-queen, then you're about 97 percent to win. Now comes the really tough part. What is the likelihood of each of these possible hands? (Trips, smaller high pair, and bluff.) The common mistake that most players make is to try and figure out exactly what hand their opponents are holding, then make the play that suits that hand. If they decide he's holding trips, then they fold. If they decide he's bluffing, then they call. But can you ever "know" what he's holding? In my ' experience, the answer to that question is almost always "No." What you can do, with much greater reliability, is to make some educated guesses as to what hands he might be holding and the probability of each hand, then compare those guesses to the pot odds, and see if a clear decision emerges. In many cases, it will. Let's start our guessing with the easy part. What's the probability that he's bluffing? I'm going to give you a good rule, which I've found works very well in real life. Call it Harrington's Law: Harrington's Law of Bluffing: The probability that your opponent is bluffing when he shoves a big bet in the pot is always at least 10 percent. At least 10 percent! It may be higher, depending on the opponent, but it won't be lower. Why not? Because people bluffThey know they're supposed to bluff, they like the thrill of pulling off

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

Hand Range 335: UTG 60bb (2.3x vs HJ 3-bet) • All-in 2.1% / • 4-bet 19.0% / • Call 38.5% / • Fold 40.4%

THE CONCEPTS 166 bluffwith his bad hands. Even though you will sometimes win in a showdown if you check, often you should bet instead to stop your opponent from bluffing. Concept No. 5: When you first sit down, evaluate your game and decide whether your profit should come more from big pots or small pots. When you enter a game, your first priority should be to figure out where your money will come from. Who are the worst players, how big are their stacks, and what sort of mistakes do they make? If the worst players have big stacks and play too loosely, then your profit should come from big pots. Buy in enough to have them covered (or at least enough so you can win a good chunk of their money) and concentrate on setting up the “big one” — the hand where you flop a great hand, make a couple big bets, and get paid offby one of your targets. If the worst players play too weak-tight, try to win lots of small pots. You’ll take advantage of their tendency to fold too much by making frequent small bets and raises and by avoiding big pots. You may even want to limit your buy-in. (Though don’t buy in so little that the weak-tight players won’t be scared of losing to you.) After your first few hands, develop a plan, and tailor your plays to help you execute it. Concept No. 6: It can be right to call with decent hands that have little chance of improving even if you plan to fold if there is a bet on the next round. Many players will call a flop or turn bet for one of two reasons: they are drawing, or they have a made hand and plan to call to showdown. But in no limit, there’s another very important reason to call on the flop or turn: calling to see if your opponent will “fire another barrel.” As we’ve shown throughout the book, there are plenty of reasons to bet the flop, but check the turn if called (or to bet the turn, but check the river if called). You’ll do it, and so will your opponents. Because that check-bet-call/check-check pattern is so common, it can be- come correct to call a bet just to see if your opponent will bet again on the next round. If they do bet, you plan to fold. But if they check, you expect to win your share of the pots. For instance, say you have K♡3♠in the big blind. One player limps, the small blind calls, and you check. The flop comes K♢9♣9♠. The small blind checks, you check, and the other player bets. The small blind folds, and you call. Hopefully you aren’t calling because you plan to call any and all bets to get to the showdown. Automatically calling big turn and river bets in this scenario is a recipe to go broke quickly. And obviously you aren’t calling to draw to a better hand. You’re calling to see if your opponent

Diagram 30 On the mid donk bet flops, equities run very close. IP has a slight equity advantage, 52% compared to the BB’s 48%. However, the BB’s range is more polarized with the bulk of the range being strong, good and trash hands, while IP still has a lot of weak hands that benefit from playing passively and seeing free cards in order to realize equity (Diagram 30). Diagram 31 With 30-40bb, strong hands prefer using the bigger bet-size on paired boards and a smaller size on unpaired boards. Hands are bet linearly according to their equity with the highest equity hands being bet more often than low equity hands. The structure of the betting ranges is similar to what we saw previously in the High Donk Bet frequency flops, betting the same type of hands, but doing so with a lower frequency, checking everything more often so the checking range is more protected (Diagram 31).

Is Donk Betting for Donkeys? “Donk betting”, or betting from out of position into the player who was the aggressor What is Aggression in poker? Any bet or raise is considered an aggressive action. A player who frequently tends to bet or raise more than they check or call can be considered aggressive. on the previous street, is a derogatory term originating in poker’s younger days, when such bets were considered the hallmark of a bad player, or “donk” (short for donkey). That stereotype is not without basis in reality: betting into the previous street’s aggressor is rarely correct, so when it is done, it is often done incorrectly. The following chart, based on data from GTO Wizard’s Flop Reports, shows the BB’s Big Blind The minimum forced betting increment in a game of poker (bb). Can also refer to the position ‘big blind’ (BB), which is forced to put in the largest blind preflop, typically after the small blind. The big blind position acts last preflop and ats first postflop. average flop donk betting frequency at equilibrium at a variety of MTT Multi Table Tournament (MTT) A poker tournament with at least two tables of players. stack sizes and facing opponents in early, middle, and late positions. There appears to be slightly more donk betting as the opener’s position gets later, but even that is not true across the board. By far the most clear trend here is simply that the BB should almost never donk bet unless doing so with a clear exploitative purpose . Donk betting should not be your top study priority, and until you are studied on it, you are better off sticking to a simple rule of never donk betting. That doesn’t quite tell the full story, though. Here’s another chart, showing the BB’s donk betting frequency against a BTN opener, sorted by the high card on the flop. Against the HJ And against UTG With the data sorted in this way, we can see there are a few flops on which donk betting is in fact a significant part of the BB’s strategy. Low card flops rarely occur , which is why the global average is so low, but when a 6- or 5-high flop does come along, it is not necessarily donkey behavior for the BB to come out betting. That said, it is nevertheless true that donk betting is rarely correct and easy to misapply . It should not be your top study priority, and until you are studied on it, you are better off sticking to a simple rule of never donk betting. This rule will rarely lead you astray, whereas donk betting haphazardly can lead to big mistakes and exploitability. When is Donk Betting Correct? If you’re still reading, you’re either advanced and well-studied or stubborn (like a donkey…) . Virtually all the BB’s donk betting occurs on low card flops. The thing about 6- and 5-high flops is they are almost always connected. Low-connected boards are among the worst for the preflop raiser to continuation bet, which is where the

Equity distribution An Equity Distribution Graph plots each player's hand-vs-range equity. The horizontal axis plots each player’s range from their lowest-equity hand, on the far left, to their highest-equity hand, on the far right. The vertical axis plots the equity of each hand against the opposing range. These graphs are used to visualize the polarity, and range/nut advantages of each player.

Block bet A small bet made by the out of position player designed to prevent or "block" the opponent from betting a slightly larger amount themselves. Sometimes used to induce raises.

I tried to pick my spots a little more carefully. Since I had already established a tight reputation, it wasn't hard to play off that and maneuver just below everyone's radar screen. The Art of Defense If you know an opponent's basic style, how do you defend? Against a player with a conservative style, there's surprisingly little you can do. Conservative players are playing mostly good cards. If they bet, and you don't have much, you just get out of their way. When they move in, you need a real hand to play with them. Of course, this advice illustrates the power of the conservative style which, as long as the blinds are small relative to the chip stacks, is close to an optimal style in a game-theoretic sense. Even the most conservative player will be bluffing from time to time, and their bluffs will tend to be very successful because of the image they've established. Against a super-aggressive player, there are a number of things that you can and must do. The two main defensive strategies are the Hammer and the Rope-a-Dope. The Hammer When you see a super-aggressive player move into a pot, and you have some kind of reasonable hand, don't just call; come over the top with a big raise. This takes courage, but if you've assessed your opponent correctly, you'll win the pot immediately a substantial amount of the time. Remember that, paradoxically, super-aggressive players aren't looking for expensive confrontations. They just want to keep stealing blinds and pots, investing as few of their chips in the process as possible. Once in a while, of course, they'll actually have a real hand, and you'll be in big trouble. But you don't really have a choice; if you and the other players don't stand up, eventually the super-aggressive player will scoop all the chips at the table. (When you see one of the well-known aggressive players at a final table on television, notice how often they have either the biggest or the second-biggest stack at the table. That's because weaker players backed down throughout the tournament.) Example No. 1. You're in fourth position with K♣ Q♥ The player first to act folds. A super-aggressive player in second position opens for triple the big blind. The player in third position folds. What do you do? Answer: You come over the top with a big raise, say pot-sized or even larger. A conservative player would need a real hand to open in second position, and against such a player you could lay down your K♣Q♥. But against a player who's willing to open with any piece of trash, kingqueen is a fine hand, so play it aggressively. The Rope-a-Dope With genuine strength, you can just call a super-aggressive player, rather than making what would be normal raises against another player. By indicating an indifferent hand or perhaps a drawing hand, you encourage him to keep trying to push you out of the pot. When employing this strategy, you make only one raise, at the very end of the hand. 22

actually give that draw theopportunity to mathematically punish himself. Unlike your know-it-all friend, you understand that you don’t punish the flush draw by raising on the flop (giving him a decent gamble), but bymaking him pay to draw twice, forcing him to take 3-to-1 on a 4-to-1 shot twice during the hand. You don’t need to punish him further by raising. He’s already punished himself quite well, thank you. Let’s run the bets, so we’re crystal clear on this important point. With 1,000 in the pot post-flop, your opponent with the flush draw bets 750. If youcall, is he getting 4-to-1 odds? Of course not. So he’s already set a bad price for himself. But if you raise, you’re actually allowing him to have agood thing happen, because now he can push in and get something close to 2-to-1 from the pot. And he gets to see two cards, exactly what theflush draw wants. Counterintuitive as it sounds, then, by raising, you’re not actually protecting yourself against the flush draw at all. Instead, you’re increasing thelikelihood that the flush draw will get the benefit of a full board, which is when—and only when—that draw has power. Plus, don’t forget the draw is only one of the hands you could be up against and we’ve clearly established that raising into AK or AJ can’t be right, because you’re either losing more money, your customer, or the whole pot to a bluff. I just want to say in passing that there might be some of you out there who think it’s really heroic to snap off big bluffs here. I hope you’ll clear your mind of that. Unless you’re clairvoyant (you’re not), you can never be sure that your read is right. So, yeah, you might snap off a monster bluff, but you can do that by calling on the flop and catching the bluff on the turn anyway, or you might donk off your chips to AK. And here’s the thing: Even when you’re right, you’re wrong, because making that raise on the flop increases the pot size and your variance in asituation where your decision-making must necessarily be problematic. Remember: WHEN CHOICES ARE HARD KEEP THE POT SMALL I hope I’ve convinced you to call behind on the flop when your opponent leads into you. Now we can start looking at what happens on the turn, where the hand will play out just as it did when the flop was checked to you. First, pay attention to whether or not you have the ace in suit. If the texture completes on the turn to A♠-8♦-2♦-6♦ and you don’t have the ace insuit, you either fold or raise when your opponent bets the turn, depending on your take on his strength and willingness to fold the best hand. Themore vulnerable you believe he is, the more you should lean toward raising. The less creative the player, the more you should lean toward folding. If you do have the ace in suit and he bets into you on the turn, now you either call,

through the tournament, BB’s folding frequency changes from 19.6% to 35.5%. Most hands in BB’s range are close to breakeven, so small changes to risk premium have a big impact on their defense. Example 3: LJ facing BTN 3bet LJ opens, BTN 3bets, actionon LJ. Here we see LJ’s strategy change throughout the MTT. Note how LJ’s calling frequency decreases as the tournament progresses. Instead, LJ opts for shove/fold strategies, playing “ICM chicken” against the BTN. Clearly, ICM has significant impacts on your strategy pre and postflop. Looking at these strategic changes in the GTO Wizard leads me to believe our push/fold experiments do not capture the full extent of ICM’s advantage in mid-stage MTT spots. Alternatives to ICM It should be noted that ICM is an imperfect model. It’s possible to brute force more precise tournament evaluations, but only for very small game trees. 📰 This excellent paper by Helmuth Melcher (the founder of Holdem Resources Calculator ) compared traditional ICM to alternative models. Three tournament equity models were pitted against an exact NE strategy (denoted PI-CFR+) and also against each other. The original ICM method is denoted as “Harville”, or sometimes “Malmuth-Harville” after its inventor(s). Simulation Results The tables in the following sections show the simulation results for one player using the single hand equilibrium strategies based on a specified equity model, simulated against the other player using the PI-CFR+ strategies. Harville (ICM) and Robert’s formula both did extremely well, losing only 1% of their buy-in against a perfect strategy. It should be noted that Roberts loses less against the exact strategy, but Harville (ICM) beats Robert’s formula when the two are pitted against each other. The reason we prefer ICM is that it’s more efficient. The original ICM calculation can be scaled to instantly evaluate thousands of players! 💯 ICM has some general limitations, which we’ve outlined here . The main weaknesses of ICM are that it ignores things like the blinds increasing next round, positions rotating (unless you use FGS), skill edge, and position. Generally, ICM tends to underestimate chip leader advantage. But overall it’s an extremely strong formula, even 35 years after its conception. Conclusions The purpose of these experiments was to find out at what point ICM becomes a significant factor in MTTs ⚖ To test this, we simulated millions of MTTs with contestants that would switch from chip EV models to ICM models at different points throughout the tournament. We tested multiple tournament structures and field sizes We tested multiple stack depths We demonstrated ICM’s predictive powers even when no player was using ICM We showed how significantly solver strategies change even halfway through an MTT Our results consistently found that players who switched to ICM sooner outperformed players who switched to ICM later . Strategies that switched to ICM before the halfway mark saw a consistent increase in return, but the gain was relatively small and within the margin of error. We showed with high confidence that ICM has a statistically significant impact on results somewhere between 50% and 37% of the field remaining

bottom straight connectivity (Ace) Pairs the bottom/middle pairs (2, 3) Here’s a logical way to try and sort these categories before looking at solver output by equity for BTN: As we saw earlier, the face cards Facecard A card that has a face on it, such as a K , Q or J . (overcards to the board) will almost always be good for BTN and poor for BB. So it should be safe to put the Jack/Queen/King in first place equity-wise. Pairing the top card seems bad in this situation. BB won’t be check-raising much T-x, probably only AT and KT sometimes, so we can expect BB to have more T-x. Our barreling hands also missed completely. So we could put it in last place equity-wise. Pairing the lower cards will be bad for BTN because our backdoor barrels didn’t improve, but the good news is it didn’t improve BB that much either. BB shouldn’t have much 2 -x and 3 -x. So the 2 and 3 should be a bit better than the dreaded Ten. On the turned Ten, BB has a higher percentage of all pair-type hands except overpairs. Comparing the 7 , 8 , and 9 to the 4 , 5 , and 6 , it seems like the higher cards will have more value to BTN. On a turned 9 , BTN will have many hands with improved equity, such as QJ , KJ , 87 , J8 . Even picking up a pair of 9 ’s with hands like K9 / Q9 is okay for us. A turned 5 improves much fewer hands in our range, only 55 and T5 s, possibly 76 s that picks up a gutshot. BB on the other hand, is going to have 64 s, 53 s, and 52 s in their range. So the smaller cards won’t be as good for us. What about the turned Ace ? The Ace is unique in this situation because it gives us a lot of top pair combos but also boosts wheel straight connectivity. Both players can have 54 , A3 , AT , A2 . Only BTN will have the stronger Ace-x like AJ – AK and of course AA . It also improves broadway straight connectivity, aiding some of BTN’s hands like KJ / KQ , but BB should have those in some percentage as well. BTN will enjoy the lion’s share of top pair-good kicker hands on the turned Ace. However, BB will still have enough weaker Ace-x and turned two pair combos to not be totally overwhelmed by BTN on this turn. It’s difficult to estimate without looking at the data, but I would rank the Ace somewhat above the 4/5/6 category, but below the Jack/Queen/King category. Let’s look at the results: BTN Turn Equity (green is best, red is worst) Finally, a brief look at GTO betting strategies for BTN on the turns , along with a friendly reminder that these frequencies are guidelines and not rules to be strictly followed in-game: Some takeaways from this flop study:

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… 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

effective stacks for Hero to need just two more bets to get the rest of the money in. Q3: Should I slowplay? Absolutely not! Checking is very undesirable in this spot. For starters, it's unlikely that we induce this passive player to put any more money in on the turn than he would facing a flop bet. With passive players we should remember one very common truth: their calling range is usually wider than their betting range. This means that betting will result in Hero committing money to the pot in better shape compared to if he had checked behind and then called a bet on the turn. Most importantly here though, this board is super wet. Giving a free card will often result in one of three terrible things happening: Hero actually loses a street of value from a naked flush draw that might call flop and turn but not river when it misses. Villain makes the best hand on the turn with a hand he might have folded to a flop bet like 3c3h (protection). Hero loses the ability to value bet vs. weaker pairs when the turn is a club. Such a turn card would worsen the texture so much that villain would be folding most of his worse hands, but if Hero had bet the flop then he'd be able to simply head to showdown when ahead having already got his value when the texture was safer. This is a spot where Hero needs to value bet right from the flop because flop and turn are the most favourable streets for the two remaining bets to go in. The lack of a need to build the pot only deters us from value betting when we have a superior alternative. Here this is not the case. Hero bets 4BB and will shove safe turns for value. Yes to Q1, No to Q2, Yes to Q3 (Slowplaying Makes Sense) = Check Okay you get the picture by now. With good relative hand strength we bet and bet and then bet some more until we've won all our opponent's money - easy game, right? Well, not always. There are times when even though we can bet for value, we shouldn't. Let's see what happens when we don't need to do the pot building straight away and there's a better line available to betting. As per the flowchart, these spots will only occur when we have answered yes to question one, no to question two, and yes to question three. 'Slowplay' is a taboo word that beginning players are told to avoid like it's the devil, sometimes causing them to even miss good slowplaying opportunities. The dangers of slowplaying in the wrong situations do need to be emphasised, however doing it too much is one of the most disastrous mistakes a player can make, especially against the passive variety of opponent who loves to call but not to bet. Nevertheless, the novice player often starts off with a deep impulse to deceive his opponents as much as possible, constantly misleading them as

on the turn would be called a brick, as in, “I hit a brick” or “I bricked on the turn” or “The board bricked.” Broadway—A straight to the ace: T-J-Q-K-A. Bubble—The point in a tournament when a significant event will happen as soon as the next player gets knocked out. Usually refers to the point at which players will win money in the tournament after one more player is eliminated. Can also refer to the point at which players will reach the final table after one more player is eliminated. Bullets—Aces. Burn Card—A card taken out of play before each betting round. The top card of the deck is dealt face down and removed from play. Button—A round disk that usually has “Button” or “Dealer” written on it. The dealer button moves clockwise around the table, passing from player toplayer after each hand. In professional games, players don’t deal the cards themselves. The button signifies the player who would be dealing if there were no professional dealer. The player “on the button,” meaning the player who has the button in front of him, gets dealt last and gets to act last on each betting round. C-Bet—See “continuation bet.” Call—To match the bet of the player(s) before you. Call for a Clock—In a tournament, when another player is taking an inordinate amount of time to make a decision, you can call for a clock. Whenthe clock is put on the player, he then usually has one minute and 10 seconds to make a decision about his hand. Call Time—To request extra time to make a decision at a poker table. Used rarely, only in situations where a decision about a hand is particularly difficult. Calling Station—A player who calls all bets, often with very weak hands, and rarely folds if he thinks he has any way to win the pot. Cap or Cap It—To put in the last raise. Most poker games have a 4- to 5-bet limit on any given betting round. “To cap it” means to make the last available raise. Case Card—A single card remaining in the deck that will help a player’s hand. For example, if you have AQ vs. KK and two players have folded AX, when the flop comes A-T-2, you hit a case card, the only ace remaining in the deck. In this example, the card is referred to as the “case ace.” Cash—To make the money in a tournament. To last long enough in a tournament to win some of the prize pool. Cash Game—A poker game in which players are playing for chips that have a cash value. Those chips are purchased for cash, at face value, and can be cashed out for money at face value at any time during the game. Change Gears—To alter the way you play, usually for the purpose of confusing your opponents; e.g., you play very loose and fast, then change to a tight style, or vice versa. Chase—To try to draw to a hand that’s behind, usually when you should fold mathematically, as in, “He chased the

Figure 55 - An Example Linear 3-Bet Range You'll also notice that there is no calling range here. This is not a mandatory requirement of using a linear 3-bet strategy. There are times when Hero wants a linear 3-bet range and then a flatting range and then times when he wants to simply 3-bet everything he's playing like in this linear strategy. A few years ago when the terms 'polar' and 'linear' first became commonplace in the poker community, there was a bizarre misconception in circulation. I once read a thread on a forum where players debated furiously about whether Hero should be polar or linear in every situation. This is obviously absurd. Just as there are great reasons to be polar in some situations (as we just saw: having fold equity and wanting a flatting range) there are great reasons to be linear in others. Hero should use a linear 3-bet strategy when:

destroyed because they will no longer be able to defend enough of this range (~48%) against the remaining players. They will have to fold way more than 52% of their range when facing 3-bets and will also have to call with many marginal hands that will give them a lot of trouble post-flop. The only thing that stops players from 3-betting you relentlessly is your ability to 4-bet, as well as the likelihood of other players coming over the top. You must defend enough of your range against 3-bets so that Villains are indifferent to 3-betting you with the bottom of their range (Diagrams 11 and 12). You will get 3-bet a lot more often when opening UTG than when opening from the BN (despite your strong range) due to the number of players yet to act, and your opponents will have stronger ranges. Defending a wide range is a lot more difficult than defending a tight range, so you can’t profitably open as many hands from UTG as you can from the BN. If your opponent’s 3-betting range is polarized, more hands in your range will have the right equity to call due to being dominated less often, leading to better post-flop playability. So, you get to call more of your range against polarized ranges compared to linear ranges. Diagram 11: Average Response to 3-bet (IP)

game there isn't a lot of money on the table but there's someone I can have a great conversation with and I go there to you know socialize and make a friend and maybe learn some things about business and stuff so I really go to just get comfortable take my time play pretty solid pretty conservative for the first few orbits and then when I kind of feel where the spots are when I feel where the money-making opportunity is then I'll greatly extremely adjust my strategy to go after those spots whether that means changing my ranges or straight up changing seats or engaging in certain types of conversation that may you know irritate certain players who are ready to tilt or whatever I'll implement those things into my game so I have everything in my tool belt but I just kind of don't show my cards right away and once I know where my energy and my conversation and my bets are going to give me the highest return that's when I start focusing on those spots have okay a Roush a Russian freak says can you please explain a bit more why position would be more important the deeper stocks aren't the deep stocks allowing you to play more hands okay the main thing that I can talk to speak to about that is generally speaking big pots are for big hands David's clance key and to get you know big bets in 100 big blind bets 200 300 big blind bets you're gonna be looking at more cooler situations so you're gonna be looking at you know like flush over flage boat over boat straight versus sad that might not even get the money in things like that and when you know that how do I put this okay so deeper stock some sometimes like I need a hand example on screen and sometimes I don't have one so it's a little hard to wrap it off the top of my ad but because you have more information about your opponents when you're in position you're more able to avoid the coolers whereas when you're out of position it's harder for you to dodge a cooler and because the bigger pots the deeper stock situations involve more cooler situations being in position is usually going to allow you to get the extra bet whereas being out of position is not going to allow you to get the extra bet and the deeper the stacks are the bigger that last bet is so that's why being in position is more important as stocks get deeper because the last bet that you are going to get is going to be much bigger and all things being equal the person in position is going to get that bet more often than the player is out of position is going to get that bet and so the extra money gained by the player in position is amplified when stacks are deeper versus when they're shallower also when stocks are shallower money

Figure 77 - A Wide BU Flatting Range vs. SB 3-Bet This range is fairly standard for a loose Reg to defend with in position on the BU, if not even a little conservative. We can see from the distribution of his range on this flop how rarely Villain has any kind of one pair or better. The darker green group has nothing but two raw overcards and is not advised to continue without reads that we are c-betting then giving up too much. The lighter green

what I have, so you figure it out.” Now the AQ will generally do what an AQ (or AK, for that matter) does: checkraise. And there goes his 2,000 into the pot. Should you flat-call here and let him fire again on the turn? Probably not. Your flat-call on a dry board is completely strong. There are no draws youmight be calling on, nothing that someone could use to make up reasons why his hand is good. You’re not drawing to anything, so if you’re calling, you must have something. If your opponent is blind and ignorant, he might put you on top-pair worse-kicker, but if he’s blind and ignorant, you don’t need my help beating him anyway. Since the flat-call of the check-raise on a dry board announces extreme strength, you might as well re-raise here. This, by the way, is how youactually get AQ or AK on the hook for his whole stack. People fall in love with their good or great kickers and they won’t believe that you’d play your big hand that fast on the flop; most of them don’t play their big hands that fast. This takes us back to the wrong-headed idea of being too tricky for our own good. Really, the logic is simple: IF YOU WANT THEM ON THE HOOK, PUT THEM ON THE HOOK To review: Your bet on the flop does better against a bluffer than checking behind does. It does better against someone who plans to call. It does better against someone who thinks he has the best hand. And by the way, it does fine against a hand like A7, because A7 isn’t folding. It’s either calling or check-raising, so you’ll do at least as well by betting as you would by checking, and sometimes much better. The only hand your lead bet doesn’t do better against is the complete blank with no urge to bluff. Against that hand it also does no worse, so it’s a wash. But here’s the thing. From an overall storytelling and from a game-theory standpoint, it’s really important to bet these big hands. You should continuation bet pretty much all the time heads-up and these big hands cover your weaker holdings. Remember, when you set your average continuation bet at half the pot, you let the pot lay you 2-to-1 on that bet. Thus, your success rate on the c-bet has to be only 33% in order to breakeven. Clearly, by the mere fact that you’re heads-up with the lead and position, you’ll hit your 33%; your opponent will completely miss the board almost 70% of the time. So your continuation bet is a low-pressure high-profit action—except when your opponents start taking the pot away, whichthey will with shocking regularity, once they figure out you don’t bet your monsters. So bet your monsters! It gives cover to your lesser creatures. And don’t ever forget how massively the little creatures outnumber the monsters. Just ask the plankton and the whale. If I still haven’t convinced you that it’s profitable to bet your big hands, it’s

sit down at a nolimit hold ’em tournament, the picture changes a bit. As the tournament goes on, you'll be confronted with a long string of possible bets. The good news is that some will be favorable and some will be unfavorable, but you get to skip the unfavorable ones and concentrate on the favorable ones. The bad news is that it won't be obvious at first which is which. Figuring that out is up to you, but the information in this chapter will put you quite a bit ahead of most of the other players. Becoming a better player is really a matter of recognizing and making your favorable bets, while avoiding the unfavorable or break-even bets. Analyzing a Poker Bet: The Two Parts To figure out if a bet is a good one or not, you need to know the payoff when you win, and the odds against your winning. In poker, the payoff when you win is revealed by the pot odds. How much is in the pot, and how much does it cost you to play? The odds against your winning comes from an intelligent analysis of what's happened in the hand so far. Neither part is easy, but both are doable and can be learned. Of the two, calculating or estimating the pot odds is simpler, so we'll start with that. 56 Pot Odds If your opponent has put you all-in, or has made a bet which is the last significant bet of the hand, then the pot odds are easy to calculate. Just calculate or make your best estimate of what's in the pot, and compare it to the amount required to call. The result is your pot odds to call. Example No. 1. The pot currently contains $900. You have $600 left, and are in the hand with one other player. The other player moves his last $1,000 to the center, putting you allin. What are your pot odds? Answer: Since you only had $600 left, your opponent can only actually put $600 in the pot. The pot you're shooting at is therefore $1,500, and it costs you your last $600 to call. Your pot odds are therefore $l,500-to-600, or 2.5-to-l. Example No. 2. It's fourth street, and the pot contains $1,000 chips. You hold the Q♣ 8♣ and the board is A♣ K♣ 7♦ 6♥ Your opponent, whom you believe to have a high pair, bets $500. You both have more than $3,000 in your stacks. What are the pot odds? Answer: This hand looks similar to the last one, but contains a few more ideas. We can quickly see that after our opponent's bet, the pot will contain $1,500, and it will cost us $500 to call, so the pot odds are l,500-to-500, or 3-to-l. But unlike the last example, this may not be the end of the betting for the hand. There could be another bet on fifth street. How does this effect our calculation? Expressed Odds and Implied Odds The odds of 3-to-l we calculated in the last example are the

to form a prize fund. Each participant is issued playing chips that have no cash value. The players who accumulate all the chips during play, win the cash prizes. position-a player's turn to act in a hand relative to the other players. A player in an early position is one of the first to act; a player in a late position is one of the last. Since late position is an advantage, position rotates one seat after each hand to give players equal turns. post-a pre-flop bet required when joining a game in progress or when re-entering a game if a turn in the blind position is missed. pot-the total amount of money wagered on a hand. pot-limit Hold'em-a variation where in any betting round, the players can bet any amount up to what is currently in the pot. pot odds-the ratio of the amount of money in the pot to the amount of money that a player must contribute to compete for the pot. For example, if you must call a $10 bet to compete for a $50 pot, the pot odds are 5 to 1. proposition player-also referred to as a prop player, is a person paid by the house to play. The purpose is to have players available to start games or keep a game going. Proposition players play with their own money, so they must be good enough to at least break even at the table, or their pay will not cover their losses. 178 THE INTELLIGENT GUIDE TO TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER raise-both matching and increasing a bet made by another player. rake-a fraction of each pot taken by the casino as a charge for running a poker game. river card-the fifth and final community card in Hold'em. royal flush-the highest ranked hand in poker-Ace, King, Queen, Jack, ten, all in the same suit. scoop-to win the entire pot in a highllow split pot game. semi-bluffing-betting on a weak hand that has a good chance of improving. set-three cards of the same rank (also referred to as trips). Seven-Card Stud-a popular poker game where each player receives seven cards and uses five to form their hand. Each player receives three cards initially-two face down and one face-up. The next three cards are dealt face-up and the final card face down. In contrast to Hold'em, there are no shared cards in a Stud game. Players may only use the cards they receive. showdown-the act of showing cards to determine the winner of a hand. side pot-a separate pot created after one player goes "all in." Additional money wagered by the players who are not all in goes into the side pot. The person going all in cannot compete for the side pot (see all in). slow-play-representing a strong hand as weak by not betting in order to disguise the strength. The opposite of bluffing. GLOSSARY 179 small blind-the person to the immediate left of the person on the button. The small blind is required to place one half a pre-flop bet before receiving their pocket cards. To see the

of high Equity draws up here right because now we have a lot of gut shots that have very good Equity we also have a lot of flush draws that don't mind ripping it in we do still check some Queens though I want to make it clear whenever you check raise the Flop with everything you should be checking the turn with a lot of Ace highs and trips those are and and bottom pairs those can be hands like to check a decent amount of the time what about uh ten of Hearts we're gonna see a similar thing makes logical sense right what about a nine of Hearts not so much anymore because now uh we we do have some gut shots but not quite as many I suppose so notice on the turns that are really good for us or at least turns that give us lots of really high Equity draws we are shoving a lot like on the ten of hearts but on the nine of Hearts we are mostly betting small and all the other all the other cards are mostly going to bet small um let's say we have like a four of diamonds it's all gonna be small vets right or eight of Hearts all small bats what about a king I don't know King of Hearts mixes it up cool to see what about Ace of Hearts small bat because now the LoJack has a lot of asex right all right so let's suppose we bet the opponent raises small we call actually that's the only way this hand plays out isn't it that's fun to see we call and the turns whatever it is and then the low track goes so let's say the turn is one of the blanky ones the big blind checks now the low Jack's gonna be betting polarized right best made hands and draws which which is what you're always going to see when you get checked too after your opponent's range should already be kind of strong you're always gonna be betting polarized so we do that some shelves with Queens notice some shoves with Bluffs like King Jack most people don't find the Bluffs here McQueen uh Jack 10 jackdine and ten nine for gut shot that's cool to see lots of calls though say the river's uh five of clubs check polarized shove again or polarized bet all in and logical call with pairs basically pairs call other hands fold okay let's take a look at six three three so we now still check everything from the big blind LoJack bets but less often why are they betting less often on 633 compared to queen queen 2. well now they just have way fewer trips right and the big line now has more trips so they don't get to bet as often when it does check check say the turn is a nine lots of polarized bedding from the big blind say they do bat they're gonna get called logically notice here we

A: As we saw in that last hand, the more unbalanced Villain is, the greater the margin by which we'll exceed or fall short of our RE or RFE target. The greater this margin, the higher the EV of the exploitative strategy and the vacuum EV of adopting it. B: Simple enough. The bigger the pot, the more money we win by adopting the best line in a vacuum. Also big pots happen much less often than small ones so this feeds into the next reason too. C: The rarer the spot the less opportunity Villain will have to firstly, build up data on how we're playing that spot and secondly, exploit that data. This means that high EV vacuum plays incur much less of a long-term downside in rare spots. D: Here we can get away with sustained unbalanced play even in more common spots since Villain is not the type of player who is likely to adjust properly or even know what is going on in the first place. We now know how to be balanced, but we must ensure that we don't succumb to the very common pitfall of being too balanced in spots where there are better alternatives. The above guide can be used as an aid in determining when to remain in the box of balance and when to smash your way out in order to make a lot more precious EV . Balance is our vessel to success as we move through the stakes and exploitative spots become fewer and further between, but exploitative spots will always exist, lest online poker is officially dead.

MANIPULATING YOUR OPPONENTS 157 only very slight errors. Say you have J♡T♡and the flop comes A♠K♣4♢. The preflop raiser (a player very likely to have aces, kings, or ace-king in this situation) bets an amount that offers you about 8-to-1 implied odds. Your chance to make the gutshot on the next card is 4/45 (assuming your opponent doesn’t have a queen), or 10.25-to-1 against. Calling is an error (unless you expect you might get a free card on the turn). But it’s a small one. Your implied odds come up only slightly short of break- even. If you make this call again and again, on I average you’ll lose only a small percentage of your stack each time.45 But if you catch a queen and bust a flopped set, your opponent isn’t likely to see it that way. He may call you all sorts of names like “fish” and “chaser.” He’ll do the math in his head, and every time he’ll come to the conclusion that your call was wrong. Except he won’t see it as slightly wrong; he’ll see it as I horribly wrong. (Getting stacked tends to mess with some people’s sense of magnitude. Nondescript beats turn into whoppers.) More importantly, he’s likely to remember that you’re a “chaser” the next time he plays a hand with you. Call another flop bet, and he’ll wonder what kind of stupid and crazy draw you have this time. This attitude will make it a lot easier for you to win a big pot if you happen to flop a big hand. Your opponent is likely to take your calls less seriously than he normally might, and he’s also likely to bet more with weaker hands to “make you pay to draw.” Both adjustments will allow you to slowplay, just calling on the flop and turn, without arousing suspicions. Furthermore, you can sometimes use this flawed perception to run an extra river bluffor two. If an unlikely straight or backdoor flush comes in on the river, often it’s hopeless to try to represent it because your opponent will think, “There’s no way you called the flop with that draw.” But if your opponent thinks you are a crazy “chaser,” he’s more likely to give you credit for having some very unlikely hands. After all, if you’re stupid enough to call with a gutshot against an obvious flopped set, you must be stupid enough to do anything. The key to using this concept for profit is to identify situations where you can make an obvious, but relatively inexpensive, error that may induce your opponent to make not as obvious, but far more costly errors later on (either on that hand or on future ones). Thus, you’re trading small loses for hopefully big gains. Indeed, this tactic is powerful enough that some successful players have built their entire style around it. One such style is known variously as “loose- aggressive” or “hyper-aggressive.” These players raise frequently on the cheap streets, preflop and the flop, with marginal and weak hands. But when the betting gets big

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 have entered the poker… Should You Ever Cold Call a 3-Bet? When there’s been a raise and re-raise before the action is on you, you will… When ICM Breaks Down If you

before the flop and strength after the flop, and all he has is top pair with a weak kicker. Unless he's very weak, he should not lose a lot of his chips with this hand. The best way to proceed is just to make a modest bet on fourth street, one that you're pretty sure will be called. A good number is something like 30 percent to 40 percent of the pot. With the big pot odds you're giving, it should be hard for anyone with top pair to lay the hand down, regardless of the kicker. Then do the same thing on fifth street. Trying to trap with a check is too dangerous, because there's too great a chance that your opponent will check behind you to see another card. Example No. 2. Another situation occurs when you believe he has a pair under your queens. Let's say that once again you hold A♦Q♣ and the flop is Q♥7♣3♠. You read your opponent for a pair of tens. You bet before the flop, and you bet on the flop, and both times you get a call. What's the right play on fourth street? Answer: This is a more complicated situation than the first example. You have three plays. 1. Make a big bet, between three-quarters of the pot and the whole pot. This is the conservative play, and it's very reasonable. You knock out the free card, and give yourself the best shot at winning the pot right now, but the least chance at winning another bet on the end. I like this approach if the board is moderately dangerous. 2. Check. This is a good play if the board is either very dangerous or very weak (as in the example). If the board is dangerous you don't necessarily want to commit any more money to the pot. If the board is weak you can afford to trap. Checking shows weakness, and is best used when you think that a bet on fourth street will prompt a fold, but a check, showing weakness or uncertainty, will prompt a call on fifth street when your bet gets interpreted as a steal attempt. This strategy is also best used when you have position on your opponent. The sequence of his check and your check behind him, passing on your only chance to bet, signifies real weakness. If you act first and check, he may check and feel that he avoided a check-raise attempt! In this case he's much less likely to conclude you're weak. 3. Bet just half the pot. This usually isn't an optimal play, since if you have any kind of clear idea about your opponent's hand, you usually want to make a big bet or check. But as part of a balanced strategy, it's essential to make this play sometimes. Remember that preventing your opponents from reading your betting patterns is as important as making good bets. The Fourth Street Continuation Bet Many times you will find yourself in the same position on fourth street that you had on the

The potentially shocking conclusion for Hero is that he has no 3-bet range in this spot. The situation just favours the opener, not the 3-bettor. Hero calls 3BB. Some players might have two objections here: The first is about losing value by keeping the pot so small. Can we really play AA by just flatting? The second concerns Hero's lack of re-stealing; doesn't it make opening the pot with 100% of hands insanely profitable for villain? To the first objection I would respond by stressing that building huge pots 200BB deep does not actually favour overpairs; these hands cease to be sledgehammers that want to shovel in three large bets in a 3-bet pot vs. most opponents. Ranges for committing large amounts of money this deep are more polarised than this and so overpairs will frequently be bluff catchers. Hero will end up wanting to pot control a street post-flop anyway a large majority of the time even with a hand like QQ on 874r. This is much more achievable by keeping the pot smaller. Of course if Villain is stationy then Hero should develop a 3-bet range and embrace the variation that ensues. In response to the second objection, I would remind the reader that we are developing an optimal strategy vs. a balanced BU opening range that can continue to plenty of 3-bets profitably. If Villain makes the adjustment of opening very wide indeed, we can start to develop a polarised 3-bet range and punish him for having too many hands that can't call, even at this stack depth. Being out of position deep is a nightmare vs. anyone competent, but being in position deep as the 3- bettor yields a much higher EV return and Hero should not pass up the opportunity to have a 3-bet range in these spots. It is then Hero who wields the magnified positional advantage and so he has no problem building big pots in which he can swing this weapon. Pot control, value, fold equity etc. are all in Hero's favour and so in the following hand, he can afford to play a much less timid pre-flop game.

Hand Range 221: BN vs CO 4-bet (40bb) • Call 50.1% / • Fold 49.9%

cards or does he bet with anything? Does a player buy-in for a small amount of money and carefully guard it, or does she buy new chips from the dealer frequently? For the table as a whole, are showdowns frequent or rare? A big mistake beginning poker players make is playing only their cards and not considering how other people are playing theirs. Your opponents' actions are a source of information that must be used. Over the course of a hand, some of these factors become more important than others. Early in the hand, your position, the initial strength of your cards and the potential number of opposing players are the most important factors. Later in the hand, pot odds and the playing styles of the remaining players are more important. What follows is a detailed discussion of these five factors. 42 THE INTELLIGENT GUIDE TO TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER Your Cards To succeed at Hold'em, you must have the ability to judge the winning potential of the first two cards you are dealt (your pocket cards). There are exactly 1326 equally probable combinations for two cards dealt from a deck of 52. However, because the suits are all equally ranked, the number of unique starting hands is reduced to 169. Not all 169 starting hands occur with the same frequency because the number of combinations required to produce each unique starting hand differs. For example, of the 1326 combinations, six result in AA, four result in AK suited, and 12 result in AK unsuited. In terms of percent, this means the chance for AA is 0.45%, AK suited is 0.30%, and AK unsuited is 0.90%. To compute probabilities, it is useful to divide the 169 starting hands into five distinct groups. The groups and the number of hands in each group are pairs (1 3), straightjlush draws (46), straight draws (46), flush draws (32), and no draws (32). Each group is based on what type of hand can be built when initial cards are combined with favorable community cards. The chart below summarizes the five groups and their frequency. Frequencies of Starting Hands Starting Hand Frequency Description Pairs 5.9% Two cards of the same rank. Straight Flush Draws 13.9% Two suited cards that are also part of a straight. The (SFD) hand 100 8V is a straight flush draw (the flop could come up JV 9V QV). Straight Draws (SD) 41.6% Two cards that form part of a straight, but not a flush. With 101 8+ only a straight is possible after the flop. Flush Draws (FD) 9.7% Two suited cards that cannot form a straight.. No Draws (ND) 28.9% Two cards that cannot be used as part of a straight or flush. For example QV 3+. FACTS 43 Subcategories of starting hands can be identified within these five groups. For example, a hand that contains two of the top five cards such as Ace, K, Q, J, or 10 is an Ace-high straight draw. The subcategories of starting hands can be grouped into roughly four categories of strength. The strength of

do on the river here with 10x so we've got 75 percent and here's tedx mostly folds even with a club like jack 10 with the club he's 10 6 the weaker ones call why do these ones call why does 10 5 10 4 10 3 call sorry not 10 5. why do we call it 10 4 and 10 3 we pull 10 8 10 7 10 6. because we bluff with an 876 jack queen king so like you gotta think about like the um where the bluffs are coming from well they're probably gonna come from like a queen a jack a seven or an eight something like that so that's why these threes are really really good four is fives so that's why ace eight folds even here a lot look at this ace queen just folds ace queen of diamonds how many of you are folding ace queen of diamonds on the river here i'm not zero percent chance i folded that on the river but this just shows you in terms of like you need to stop thinking about the absolute value of your hand and think about the relative when we bet large here we're betting 75 of the pot ace queen is a bluff catcher our range is like 9x essentially and like the queen is pretty bad blocking some of the river bluffs so king five calls before why because we don't bluff that much with king high we bought some but it also blocks like nine five and some stuff so again not an exciting hand not a big pot but a really important kind of river spot okay this is from yesterday type passive player i haven't seen the sim for this one yet so i'll tell you what i'm thinking here in game and then uh you guys so i had studied this hand the night before this eight six hand i studied the night before so that's kind of like comes in here all right recall nothing exciting there king queen five check check adjust the clubs flush comes in um maybe against like an aggressive player i think maybe it makes a little sense to check turn because like a lot of their calling range on the turn is like a queen and we have a queen but i'm betting i bet 5 000 in a 6800 because of like if there wasn't a flush card i bet a lot bigger but because it's the flush card he calls river's the queen of hearts okay what are we thinking here on the river so very similar spot so how do we work through this what's our like what's our value range on the river here well we're gonna have some king x that bets the turn so let's go back to the turn we're gonna check here a decent amount like maybe we have like king jack with the jack of clubs king 10 with the ten of clubs like we'll have a little bit of king

kings and dipping her toe in the water here is a little bit dangerous on six five to rainbow because yeah she can have pocket sixes she can have pocket fives but beyond that a lot of her range misses and I'm the only one who can have three four I'm the only one who can have five six I'm the only one who can have five two suited six two suited potentially it's it's a pretty dangerous flop for her so in her hand in particular well it has a little bit of backdoor potential with the spades I just don't see her folding many better hands on the flop maybe ace 9ac really and she's just not gonna proceed very well but mostly I would be worried that she's going to get check raised off the best hand pretty frequently when I have hands like seven four suited seven nine suited maybe even eight nine suited it's pretty touchy I would check back and I would check back with a lot of my ranges in that in this spot so you're essentially checking back flop looking to call a lot of turns with a lot of the range and then call appropriately on the river depending on how much you bet absolutely with the range with her actual hand she's gonna actually she would take in my book pretty weak line where she's gonna check back and unfortunately a lot of the turns she's gonna have to fold to my lead you know the sack size is in this example roughly in terms of big blinds that's what I'm looking at it looks like a net Scott for those green sexes or 500 K each so I mean she's probably around 2.4 million over a hundred big blinds to start the hand so we're pretty deep yeah Joseph says can she have an over pair she can't have an over pair Joseph but is she best let's say pocket nines and gets check raised it's awful because what's gonna happen is Jonathan's gonna bet the turn and the river sometimes especially when he has the nuts and those hands are in a miserable scenario they probably need to end up bowling especially in a tournament like the main event unless of course she thinks that Jonathan Jaffe is a lunatic did she think John Happy's a lunatic probably I her boyfriend at the time I think they're married he's actually a heads up sit and go player I don't want to get his name wrong um it could be a different but he was a good heads-up setting go player and she actually had told me at the table that he had warned her about me so for what do you think it's all that bad for something she didn't tell you that do you think it's all that bad if she'd have pocket kings just not fold to someone who is perhaps a little bit overly aggressive so you do check-raise no I just calls you down yeah if

board, everyone has at least one pair. Any card you hold that matches at least one card on the board gives you one pair. HIGH CARD-If none of the combinations described can be formed, the high card wins at showdown. If players share the same high card, the second highest card plays, and so on. SPLIT POTS-Suits are not ranked in poker. If two or more players have the same five-card hand at showdown, the money is split between them. RULES Betting A hand of Texas Hold'em has four rounds of betting. In a limit game (the most common form of Hold'em), the first two betting rounds are set at an arbitrary limit (such as $2), and the last two betting rounds are at twice the limit of the early rounds. All bets and raises must be in increments of the limit. Hold'em games are referred to by their limits. In a $24 limit game, the betting increments in the first two rounds are $2 and in the last two rounds $4. The flowchart on Page 10 shows the four betting rounds and the possible decisions in each round. Seeding the Pot: Before any cards are dealt, two designated players must place blind bets to seed the pot. The player selected as the small blind must bet half the smaller limit. Then the player to the immediate left of the small blind, designated as the big blind, must bet the full amount of the smaller limit. In a typical $24 game, the small blind bet is $1 and the big blind bet is $2. After each hand, the blind positions shift by one seat. Round 1-After the Deal: The first round of betting occurs after all players are dealt their pocket cards. Betting begins with the player to the immediate left of the big blind, who must cull, meaning match the big blind bet in order to stay in the game. Betting proceeds to the left. To stay in the game, each player must call the current bet. All players, including the blinds, have the option of raising when it is their turn. Ruises, which are a match and increase of the previous bet, are in increments of the big blind bet (if $2 is the blind bet, then all raises are in increments of $2). Usually, raises are capped at three: I If three raises have been made, no further raising is allowed. When I play reaches the small blind, that player must make up the difference between the small and big blind bets, plus any raises, to stay in the game. The big blind player has the option to raise (if the cap has not been reached) after all the other players have acted. 12 THE INTELLIGENT GUIDE TO TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER Round 2-After the Flop: After betting on the pocket cards is complete, the dealer exposes the first three community cards (the flop) on the table. In a $2-4 game, bets and raises after the flop are again in $2 increments. Betting starts with the small blind and continues

Diagram 22: Skill Deficit (p=0.48) From the Gambler’s Ruin problem, we can conclude that if Hero has a skill edge, they should be more risk averse and avoid marginal gambles. Conversely, if they have a skill deficit, they should be more willing to gamble for big chunks of their stack. All of this makes sense intuitively. If you have a big skill edge against a bad player, you shouldn’t be too eager to get all-in with a flip pre-flop for a zillion big blinds when you can slowly grind them down by playing post-flop and capitalizing on the mistakes they will make. Gambling it out for a lot of chips in marginal spots and increasing the variance will only benefit the weaker player and that will give them the best possible shot at winning. Another example can be taken from casino games where the house holds the edge. The casino would much rather you play 100 $20 blackjack hands than a single $2,000 blackjack hand. By decreasing the variance, you are almost guaranteed to lose. Conclusion In tournaments there are many moving parts, including, but not limited to, different table sizes,

Deliberate practice refers to a special type of practice that is purposeful and systematic. While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance. If you want to know more about deliberate practice, I recommend Purposeful Practice for Poker by Dr. Tricia Cardner and Gareth James (dandbpoker.com). Key Strategy Lines In the same way as how the ranges in play are different on the flop depending on the pre-flop action, the ranges in play on the turn will be different depending on the previous actions. There are many different flop lines that lead to a turn, but not all of them are equally important. Some lines will happen more frequently than others and will have a bigger impact on your long-term expectation. These are called Key Strategy Lines and, just like when we studied the flop, we do not have to look at every single line leading to a turn in order to understand turn play. We will only focus on some of the key strategy lines to understand turn play. In this section, we will continue with the Flop Strategy Examples 1, 2, 3 and 4, focusing our study on turn play after the flop action goes x/x and the action goes x/b/c. Flop Line: IP Checks back (x/x) ♦ OOP First Action (x/x/?) ♦ IP vs Bet (x/x/b/?) ♦ IP vs Check (x/x/x/?) ♦ OOP Check vs Bet (x/x/x/b/?) Flop Line: IP C-bets & OOP Calls (x/b/c) ♦ OOP First Action (x/b/c/?) ♦ IP vs Donk bet (x/b/c/d/?) ♦ IP vs Check (x/b/c/x/?)

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