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the pot ratio so we always want to be three betting linear from the small line versus late position opens and here we can have a wider linear range because the button could be opening like if I'm on the button here I'm probably opening close to 50% of hands like 45% of hands so as a small blind you could probably three bet the top 20% of hands and be fine so that means three betting hands like ace 10 off suit ace Jack offsuit all your suited Broadway's all your suited connectors like even hands like pocket sevens and better so you can three bet quite wide and quite aggressively here from the small blind versus this 300 button open did anyone else lose sound I had one person say they lost the sound can people hear me all right Kenneth I think that's you everyone else seems to have good audio so I believe that was the last example yeah so in summary linear ranges are great for deep stack poker early in tournaments polar ranges are great for shallow stock poker deep in tournaments you want to use linear ranges more in early position polar ranges more in late position we're going to be flat calling a lot more knowing how your opponent will act react will help you know what type of range to use so this is important against players that never four-bet unless they have like aces or kings you can three that a lot more linear because you are you just three bet linear because you they don't for bet often enough versus players that for a bit often you want to start using more polar ranges making sure you're not having to fold out a lot of equity linear ranges are gonna use a smaller sizing than polar ranges we talked about and then in early position linear ranges often help to get the pot heads up and so we can three about more in early position and it forces the late position players really like the other thing too is in early position like say we three about in that one example right here like we force the five opponents behind us to kind of play their hands head face up so it's a flat call we can kind of put them on you know kind of a weaker range that wants to see a flop hands like king queen suited pocket tens pocket nines and it becomes very easy to play against or when they for bet most players don't for but aggressively enough so we're pretty confident they have those top three to four percent of hands like ace king and pocket queens are better and it's also very easy for us to play against that range and so it becomes very easy to play much easier to play our range versus when we flat call we don't know when they squeeze like where they are in their ranges I think people will have to play more face-up in general

it's not like you're opening Queen of Hearts nine of Spades under the gun right so this is a situation where the opponent has to look kind of hard for Bluffs and when when you're looking kind of Hardcore Bluffs this is the type of hand that usually does go for the bluff those a lag player would you call this was a loose aggressive player I already said this was a loose aggressive player they could have a flush well any of course you could have a flush pot odds right pocket kings we open it up under the gun three players call me Queen eight three I think this is about where we want to bet with our best value hands that are vulnerable to being outdrawn and some draws draws here are going to be stuff like 10 9 Suited maybe hands like ace four of Clubs I know I want to be betting stuff like kings ace queen king queen probably something like that seems reasonable so I think we can bet usually when you go to bed in multi-way spots you typically want to go for a small size so we do go 5K some players are saying or some of you in the chat saying you want to bet big um look if you study GTO strategies and multi-way spots when you're betting out of position you pretty much always want to be betting small when you bet in general multiplayer pots you want to be betting small exploitatively I actually don't hate the idea of betting bigger because if you think your opponents are just literally never folding a pair and literally never folding a draw or a back door draw then sure right but good players realize hands like an eight or three are not great in the scenario and if I am raising under the gun and betting into all the opponents I I gotta have something good unless I'm just trying to get my money away so anyone who's good is gonna realize they should be drastically overfolding in the scenario and when you bet bigger and bigger they're gonna make bigger and bigger folds now but again if your opponent starts calling stations because they think H7 is the nuts here then maybe it does make sense to bet bigger cut off calls turns a jack of Clubs I'll enjoy the show by the way click the like button click the Subscribe button turn is Jack of clubs pretty bad card right the bad cards on the turn were an ace a queen a jack ten a nine or an eight those are all especially bad every other card is fine um I think we have a pretty easy check now we have relatively few 10 9 suited in our range the opponent certainly could have them in their range but also we don't have a whole lot of Queen jacks right this is a spot where I'm probably not opening Queen Jack under the gun although I may I don't

1 TABLE OF CONTENTS • For eward • Pr eface • I ntroduction • M y Story • T he History of No Limit • O nline Poker • E xclusive Super/System 2 • Speci alize or learn • L imit Hold'em Poker • O maha Eight or Better • Seven C ard Stud High Low • Pot Limit Omaha High • T riple Draw Poker • T ournament Overview • N o Limit Hold'em • Wor ld Poker Tour • Poker Glossary PAGE 3 6 8 12 37 46 66 101 130 164 223 262 296 331 336 430 241 2 FOREWORD by Avery Cardoza Super/System 2 gathers together the greatest poker players and theoreticians today. This book is not meant to replace the original Super/System, but to be an extension of that great work, with more games, new authors, and most importantly, more professional secrets from the best in the business. Doyle’s expert collaborators have won millions upon millions of dollars in cash games—that’s each one of them. You’ll be learning expert strategies from a pool of talent that includes three world champions—Doyle Brunson, Bobby Baldwin, and Johnny Chan (Doyle and Johnny being two-time consecutive winners). Add to that an all-star team of contributors with so many World Series of Poker bracelets among them, you could fill a bucket with their gold. And, for good measure, throw in Mike Caro, a world-class player who is the leading poker researcher, theoretician and instructor. These are the superstars of the game. With the completion of Super/System 2, Doyle has created two powerful works that every serious poker player simply must own. This makes the twovolume set of Super/System a full library of the best playing advice, strategies and professional concepts ever put into print. Own both these books, and you’ll have the complete masterpiece of poker. It is impossible to overstate the importance of Doyle’s accomplishments and the tremendous impact he has had—and still has—on the game. He is the “Babe Ruth of Poker,” a living legend who has been at this game for fifty years and still plays in the highest limit poker games in the world. Along the way he won back-to-back world championships in 1976 and 1977 and a total of nine WSOP gold bracelets, tied for the most ever at the time of this writing. I’d bet he’s won more money playing poker than any man who has ever lived. Along with Crandell Addington and a few other early players, Doyle introduced Texas hold’em to Nevada, an event that has had profound implications on the world of poker. In fact, the widespread popularity that televised no-limit hold’em enjoys today would never had occurred if not for 3 these men. Crandell will tell you more about this event and its ramifications in his chapter on the evolution of hold’em. When the History Channel did a special on the history of poker, the producer, slightly embarrassed, told me that the program had turned into the Doyle Brunson hour—every player interviewed paid homage to the man that is poker, Doyle Brunson.

Just as we did in Chapter 6 when we looked at calling opens, we'll be assessing these 3-bet situations as range building exercises and not limiting ourselves to deciding what to do with just one set of hole cards in a vacuum. Before we build the polar range for this spot, let's confirm why a polar strategy is the right one here. Villain is opening a moderate 15% of hands from the HJ and so there will be some hands in this range weak enough to fold to 3-bets. It's worth noting that it wouldn't make sense to have a bluffing range against someone who only opened 5% of hands! What would such a player be folding? Hero's plan to be polar is based on satisfying the previous two conditions: Villain is not continuing so often to 3-bets that Hero can't profitably bluff. 53% is above our threshold Fold to 3-Bet After Open stat for using a polar model. The second necessary condition for polarity is also fulfilled here: Hero wants a flatting range. There are many hands that will flatable here for the reasons outlined in Section 6.1: namely because they either have sufficient implied odds, are in good shape vs. Villain's opening range or both. All in all, a polar approach is fine here. Now let's build the range.

has come. And for the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of players now active on the online poker sites around the world, surely the time has come. In the future, you can expect to see time management problems develop for the tournament hosts as more and more of the Internet players gain entries into the major tournaments. Looking into the future, it’s not hard to imagine the creation of a professional poker league, with several teams selected by some sort of draft. In fact, just such a league is in an early investigative stage today. The creation of new opportunities to exploit the poker phenomenon is limited only by the imagination of men like Benny Binion. So now you know the history of no-limit Texas hold’em—the story of a small band of Texas gamblers who changed the game of poker forever and of how the modern poker tournaments are descendants of an illegal high stakes game in San Antonio that gypsied to Reno, then blossomed into the World Series of Poker, the progenitor of every poker tournament played and 44 televised today. 45 ONLINE POKER by Doyle Brunson Technology surrounds us. Things change. And the swiftness of change today is unparalleled in history. Nothing makes poker players more aware of this change than the advent of online poker. Computers changed everything—from productivity, to research, to games. Poker, too. You see, along came the Internet and suddenly you could find almost any answer in seconds, be anywhere in the world, instantly—not physically, of course, but we learned we didn’t need to be physically present to be there. And so we could play poker without being physically present. We could be at the table. Instantly. I remember the first time I played poker online was in 1999. I think it was a tiny $3 limit game, and I was used to playing $2,000 limit and higher games where you could win or lose upwards of $1 million without leaving your seat. I’d gotten curious, because Mike Caro had endorsed an online poker site, and I thought this was strange, considering he had previously written a column warning of the pitfalls of online play. If he’d changed his mind, then the least I could do was investigate for myself. Remarkably, it was as exciting as any poker I’d ever played. There I was, participating in poker on the screen with opponents seated inches away, but knowing they weren’t actually inches away. They were in England and Germany and Hong Kong. Everywhere. I was playing poker in a game that could never have been possible before. A TORNADO And so, unexpected and out of nowhere, online poker blew onto the scene. It was like a tornado sweeping down the Texas Panhandle. And I realized— grudgingly at first—that it was here to stay. You could now put poker into two main categories: online poker and real-world poker. Notice that I’m saying “real-world” poker, not “real” poker. That’s because online poker is real poker. It is certainly real for the hundreds of thousands of new players around

you on the turn when the board bricks, you can bet. If, instead of bricking, the board completes with a flush card on the turn, you can bet when he takes that second check, whether you have the high diamond or not. If you don’t have it, holdingsomething like A♥Q♣, obviously you’d bet to protect against that lone diamond in your opponent’s hand when the board is now A♠-8♦-2♦-6♦. With the A♦Q♣ you can also take the bet after the second check. If he check-raises, be very suspicious of his play, because you know he can’t have the nuts; he definitely doesn’t hold the A♦ in his hand. Think about his story. Does it make a lot of sense? If he’s checking to check-raise with a big made hand on the flop, why would he check againon the turn when the board becomes terrifying? Wouldn’t he bet out to protect against another free card after the failed check-raise attempt on theflop? And if he does play that strange a line, how could he call if you re-raised him on the turn? He couldn’t. His hand is too vulnerable to the board. You know for certain he doesn’t hold the nuts. The same logic applies if he has a low flush. It’s weird that he’d try to check to check-raise a holding like that on the flop, but once he hit the turn, he’d almost always bet out. If he check-raises, again, you know he doesn’t have the nuts, so you can probably get him off his hand with a re-raise. And, the re-raise certainly gets any other holdings to fold. All that said, you do have the option to check withA♦ the in your hand on a turn of A♠-8♦-2♦-6♦ since all that board texture is working for you. You certainly could check if you had a compelling reason to play a very small pot (maybe you’re sitting on the money bubble of a tourney). Just realizethat if you check there, you’re never folding the river. You’ll always, at minimum, call. And, clearly, you’d raise if a fourth diamond hits and your opponent is kind enough to bet into you. Only withA♦ the in your hand can you take that check, though; it is only with that card you’re not vulnerable to allowing that fourth diamond to come off free of charge. Top Pair, Heads-Up, Out of Position, With the Lead, Textured Board To make things just a little more difficult, let’s put you out of position.As we’ve seen, playing hands out of position is always harder; going first just sucks. So you raise before the flop. A player calls with position on you. You have A♦Q♣ or A♥Q♣ and the flop is A♠-8♦-2♦. Obviously, you lead. If you get raised here, you pretty much have to continue with the hand; you could be looking at anything: a complete bluff, semibluff flush draw, AJ, or worse, thinking they want to protect against the flush draw, or AK or better doing the same. Once you can give your opponent the whole range of

Live poker Very literally refers to poker that is played with a physical deck of cards, as opposed to online with a virtual deck of cards. Can also be referred to as simply "live".

the action on the river when you are in position on the river you can check back and realize 100 of your equity every single time right but when you bet you may think i need to be going for value sometimes you're going to get check raise bluffed and then that makes you fold out your hand that has decent equity and as you get deeper and deeper and deeper stacked the cost of reopening the action is higher and higher because the out of position player can then check raise gigantic assuming they play well remember how we discussed whenever the player is out of position they should be checking with some nuts some portion of the time in scenarios where the player in position should be betting a decent amount of the time right and that results in their checking range being well protected to the point that if you value bet too thin they can just start check raising you very aggressively and there's not a whole lot you can do about it so for this reason you're going to find that you want to have hands that have a larger amount of equity to value bet the river when you're deeper stacked and if you find that your particular opponent value bets too thinly you can absolutely crush them by playing aggressively against them let's take a look at two examples of this concept folds around to us we raise the button of course big blind calls king 102 they check we bet 20 bucks fine and good whatever you can go bigger you go smaller i don't think it's that big of a deal in general you're usually fine to use bigger bet sizes but you know again you're probably mixing it up to some extent opponent calls turns to three definitely a spot to go for a bet and a big bet nice big chunky bet if this turn brought more draws like say it brought a backdoor flush draw you'd probably want to bet even bigger over betting the turn in spots where you have a lot of effective nuts and the opponent does not remember when they check call your flop bet especially a big flop bet they lose all the garbage in their range but you still have all the garbage in your range or a lot of it right so their range is pretty strong here our range is more nut heavy but a little bit weaker so when we bet here we're gonna be betting polar eyes for the most part and king queen's definitely good enough to make a big bet here maybe king jack and better something like that opponent calls where's the nine of spades opponent checks this is a spot where we basically always have the best hand the problem though is that if we check i'm sorry if we bet the opponent can check raise us pretty aggressively because they're gonna have some backdoor flushes and they're also gonna have some straights and you really

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 Range 108: SB vs BB 60bb (3.5x Open vs 2.75x 3-bet) • All-in 2% / • Raise 2.6x 8.4% / • Call 44.5% / • Fold 45.1% Button PFI Strategy The BN has a very special characteristic that gives them incredible power: no other player can subsequently enter the pot and force them to play out of position. For this reason, the solver likes

Hand Range 255: HJ vs UTG 4-bet (40bb) • Call 49.2% / • Fold 50.8% Defending the HJ (60bb)

When using the percentage form, the hand odds have to be greater than the pot odds for the call to be profitable, in this case 35% > 33%. A good way to think about this is, “I know I will win 35% of the time and I only need to win 33% of the time. Since 35% is larger than 33%, I have a profitable call.” Here you are getting the right odds, so calling with the flush draw is profitable. An easy way mentally to approximate the odds percentage using outs is as follows: In our example this works as follows. The following table (Table 2) gives the odds for varying numbers of outs.

Calling Preflop All-in Raises While no limit hold ’em can be a complex game requiring sensitivity to a dozen or more factors in each decision, it can also be a frighteningly simple game. When the stacks are small compared to the big blind, the game often devolves into a “preflop all-in and call” game, where one player moves all-in, and one other player calls. These situations are most common in tournaments where the stacks are often small compared to the size of the blinds. They can also occur in cash games, particularly for those players who intentionally seek them out by limiting their buy-ins.37 No matter how you play, or what you like to buy in for, though, you will occasionally play a “preflop all-in and call” pot. Since the strategy for playing such pots is remarkably simple (at least compared to the rest of the ideas in this book), all aspiring no limit experts should know it cold. Yet few players do. Many players have a rough, intuitive understanding of what hands are worth playing and what hands aren’t, but this understanding usually is rough indeed. Furthermore, some of the calls can be quite counterin- tuitive, particularly when the pot offers attractive 2-to-1 pot odds, and many players flub these. “Preflop all-in and call” situations are simple enough that the correct plays can be memorized. For anyone who plays no limit tournaments seriously, correct strategy for these situations is low hanging fruit; learn it now and you’ll fix some leaks easily. This section presents strategies for calling all-in raises. The archetypal sce- nario pits you in the big blind against a single all-in raiser. Other scenarios occur also. You limp, someone raises all-in, and it’s folded to you. Or you raise, someone reraises all-in, and it’s folded to you. If you call, you turn your cards over, and the race is on. Should you call the raise or fold? Obviously, it depends on the quality of your hand, the size of the raise, and the range of hands your opponent will raise with. 37For those who still haven’t read it, we recommend that you read the discussion of small versus large stack no limit play in Getting Started in Hold ’em by Ed Miller. 137

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

Table 50: Lojack GTO Action Frequencies by Stack Depth In Table 50 we see that, with 15bb, the LJ likes to have a small open shoving range made of hands that really benefit from getting all-in pre-flop and realizing their 100% of their equity, such as 77-55, AQo, AJo, A9s, A8s and JTs+ (Hand Range 124). With 25bb, there is a high increase in VPIP compared to 15bb. At this stack depth hands that can flop good top pairs, straight draws and flush draws, such as J8s, T8s and 98s, start opening, but 44 and 33 are folded due to being too deep to open jam them (Hand Range 125).

Bluffing on the Turn and River WARNING: The following discussion assumes that you are in a game where your opponents are capable of laying down fairly big hands when they think they should. If you aren ’t in such a game, please ignore the advice in this chapter. In many ways, deep stack no limit strategy revolves around a single threat: a big, multi-street blufffor all the chips. On most hands the threat never materializes, for if it did, soon the bluffers wouldn’t have much money left with which to bluff. But the specter of the daring play hangs over any player with a strong, but not nut, hand. The possibility of being blown away on the turn or river sometimes keeps players with top pair from building big pots on the flop. A holder of top pair who tries to press his perceived advantage with a $100 flop bet may eventually be faced with an extremely hard to call $1,000 possible-but-not-probable bluff on the river. Hence, deep stack no limit proficiency necessarily means proficiency with the big turn and river bluff. This section covers some important concepts for that situation. An Example of the Play You are playing a $10–$20 game with $2,500 stacks. A strong player in middle position opens for $80. You call on the button with 9♠7♠and the blinds fold, so the pot is $190. The flop comes J♣8♡5♡giving you a double-gutshot straight draw. Your opponent bets $150, and you call ($490 in pot). The turn is the A♣. Your opponent checks. At this point, it’s reasonably likely that he plans to fold if you bet a “standard” amount. So you bet $500. Your opponent thinks for a while, and then, to your surprise, calls. ($1,490 in the pot.) The river is the J♡, pairing the top card and completing the frontdoor flush. You move all-in for $1,770, offering your opponent slightly worse than 2-to-1 to call. Hopefully your opponent will think for a while and then fold. 46

How Payout Structures Impact ICM Last time we discussed the ICM considerations in game selection, we looked at field size , which has major implications regarding profitability, variance, and just how tight or loose one should play. Today, we will look at ICM considerations where the payout structure is concerned. Whether a payout structure is standard, flat, or steep is relative, but for the purposes of this article, let’s make some assumptions. Typical MTT payout structures pay between 15% and 20% of the field, with the lion’s share of the prize pool being paid to the final table, with around 30-40% of the prize pool going to the final three players. This is what we would refer to as a standard payout structure . A flat payout structure rewards those who make the money more equally. Compared to a standard payout structure, less money will go to the eventual champion, with bigger prizes for the other finalists and also larger min-cashes. A flatter payout structure may also award more players with a prize. A steep payout structure does the opposite of that, with much more of the prize pool concentrated around the final money positions, especially the eventual winner. It may also pay fewer people overall. At the extreme ends of both sides of the spectrum, the flattest payout structure possible is a satellite, where all players get a prize of equal value, while the most top-heavy payout structure is the winner-takes-all tournament. The strategic differences between these two types of tournaments are so significant it is like they are totally different games. Bubble Factors As we did in the field size article , the easiest way to grasp the strategic differences between flat and top-heavy payout structures is with the following Toy Game . We have a table with six players on it all with 20bb. This is a multi-table tournament, and the average stack on the other tables is also 20bb. We are in a 180-runner tournament that pays 27 players, and we are on the bubble with 28 players remaining. We will simulate this tournament several times using different payout structures. We will then look at the Bubble Factors in each example to ascertain the strategic differences in each format. These are the three payout structures: The ‘Normal’ payout structure has the same ratios as a PokerStars 180-man SNG; a very common payout structure. The flat payout structure pays less for first place but more for every other payout, including the min-cashes. The Steep payout structure pays everyone a little bit less except for the final two players. We could have increased the number of min-cashes for the Flat and decreased them for the Steep, but in the interests of having the comparisons as close to each other as possible, we went with 27 players getting paid, with one pay jump before the final table. Below are the Bubble Factors for everyone in the standard payout structure: Everyone has the same Bubble Factor of 1.41, which, if you have read our article on Bubble Factor , you will know

What is Valor in poker? CASH , MTT , Theory Can a poker hand be courageous? How does your ability to value bet future streets impact your… 02/12/2022 7 min. / 46 sec.

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Game Theory Optimal (GTO) The least exploitable fixed strategy, resulting in the highest possible expected value against an opponent that can perfectly exploit you. A strategy is considered to be GTO if it conforms to the principles of Nash Equilibrium; a state where no player can unilaterally change their strategy to increase their expected value. GTO is more loosely used to describe optimal play, although the term is often used in contrast with exploitative strategies.

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

Where: b = bet size p = pot size hc = defending player threshold calling hand hb = betting player threshold betting hand EQhc = equity of the threshold calling hand In this example, the betting player will bet all hands that are better than hb and simply give up with the rest. The defending player will call all hands that are better than hc and fold the rest. Example Assume the players are going all-in for a pot sized bet with b = p = s s = stack size The threshold calling hand for the defending player will be: Given the ranges are symmetric, then

i was waiting and occasionally i'd play 10 20. and i remember being in a 2-5 game waiting for actually i think back then they even had one two so i think i was in a one-two game while we were waiting for the 5-10 game to get going and there was a 510 player who bought in with a purple 500 chip which you don't see at one two tables and he was just punting so hard and i'm like dude what's the deal and he's like oh this game's boring man i'm waiting for the big game to start like i don't even care about this but you know once you punt off two three four of those 500 chips you're stuck and then when he gets to 510 he's already chasing so even if it may not be as exciting to play the smaller game it's really good practice to just make great decisions to practice good habits and then you'll be in the right state of mind when you get to the bigger game now probably this player was just an action player who was going to play cards for the rush for the excitement and so you know he wasn't thinking about the game the same way i was but even if i'm going to play 510 if the first seat i get is the one two seat i'm gonna take it and you know get into my poker zone get comfortable i'm gonna take it seriously because what i'm prac what i'm there for is not i'm not thinking about how can i make the most money as quickly as possible thinking about what's going to lead to me making the best decisions because that's what's going to lead to making the most money and the way to make the best decisions at the bigger game is to start making the best decisions as soon as you sit down or even before you get to the casino because that means you're in the right mindset to make the best decisions now once you're on that table and you've taken the seat that you're given if you aren't on the best game which you will hopefully have identified before you even sat down request a table change and be specific on the table you want if you know what the best game is or the best two or three games in the room say i would like a table change two table five six and nine right and when one of those comes up you'll get on that table or if they're all kind of marginal except for table you say i would like a table change table 11. if c comes up i'll go on table 11. otherwise it'll stay here that's fine if you don't know what the best table is but you know that your table is no good you say table change to any and as soon as the seat opens up on another table they'll move you to another seat um yeah

The Most Powerful Play in Poker The central strategic implication of stack depth is the question of how much equity a player must expect to have to wager their entire stack profitably. It is not the sheer size of the stack, as measured in currency or tournament chips or even big blinds, but rather the stack-to-pot ratio that determines this. The lower the SPR, the more often you and your opponent(s) will hold hands strong enough to get all-in. Everything else follows from this central observation. Moving all-in is a powerful play . It ensures you will realize all your equity while giving you the opportunity to deny equity to other players by causing them to fold hands with some chance of winning at showdown, which is valuable even when those hands are not favored to win. The lower the SPR, the more your strategy should revolve around setting up situations where you can profitably move all-in while avoiding situations where your opponents can deny equity to you by moving all-in themselves. The lower the SPR, the more your strategy should revolve around setting up situations where you can profitably move all-in while avoiding situations where your opponents can deny equity to you by moving all-in themselves. Tournaments and ICM In tournaments, moving all-in is more powerful still, because it also gives you an advantage in the game of ICM chicken. Imagine two cars speeding head-on toward each other. When two players get all-in against each other in a tournament, they both lose something, and it is therefore in both players’ interests to avoid such confrontations . Moving all-in is, to paraphrase Lee Nelson and Tyson Streib from their book Kill Everyone , the equivalent of throwing your steering wheel out the window . Because it is no longer possible for you to swerve, you compel your opponents to fold in order to avoid a big, high-variance showdown 🏳️ illustration Shoving Ranges For a simple but powerful illustration of this principle, take a look at this ChipEV simulation of a tournament spot with 50BB stacks . After CO opens for 2.3BB and BTN calls, BB moves all-in for 50BB, a raise of approximately six times the pot, with 5% of hands, including hands as weak as 88 and J9 ♠ : Prior to the advent of solvers, conventional wisdom held that such big shoves were never correct, the sort of thing fish did because they were uncomfortable playing post-flop. However, it turns out the fish were on to something 💡⁉ Notice which hands BB shoves. It is not their very strongest hands–the biggest pairs are happy to invite further action. The best hands for shoving are those that have a lot of raw equity against strong calling ranges but benefit tremendously from folds and/or are difficult to play after the flop. The best hands for shoving are those that have a lot of raw equity against strong calling ranges but benefit tremendously from folds and/or are difficult to play after the flop. Smaller Raises Here we see the aforementioned principle in action:

will go broke less often if you specialize in small fields and will generally have a much smoother playing experience. Large fields are more profitable, both in terms of expectation and also the sheer monetary value of the prize pools. They are much, much swingier, and you need a much larger bankroll to play in them. The larger the field, the more important it is to play for the big prizes at the final table. In smaller fields, prioritizing not bubbling and laddering is more important because the min-cashes make up a much greater portion of the prize pool. However, it is always a balancing act. You should try to win every tournament you play and also avoid bubbling, regardless of field size. Strategically you should play tighter and exert more ICM pressure in small-field MTTs, and play much looser in large-field MTTs. The ideal approach is to play both types of field sizes. Playing small field MTTs as a way to reduce variance and maintain a steady profit, while taking regular shots in large field MTTs. It’s still important to know the differences, however, from both a variance perspective and a strategic one. GTO Wizard the #1 App for Poker players Study any spot imaginable Practice by playing vs. GTO Analyze your hands with 1-click START CRUSHING NOW JOIN DISCORD Author Barry Carter Barry Carter has been a poker writer for 16 years. He is the co-author of six poker books, including The Mental Game of Poker , Endgame Poker Strategy: The ICM Book , and GTO Poker Simplified . Latest article Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first decade of my career. But after my first… Relationships and Poker In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve… Do Multiple Sizes Matter? Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results… The Science of Learning Applied to GTO Wizard The way we were taught to study in schools was flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN preflop raiser in a 100bb cash… When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody… Protect Equity and Prosper When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend… Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative poker thinking. When you’re value betting against… Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots

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

want to make a pot-size raise after someone else has already made a bet. To calculate a pot-sized raise, follow this formula: Match the previous bet. Calculate the total pot including your matching bet before you raise. Add that amount on top of your matching bet. Example The pot is $100 and Villain bets $50, how much should you raise if you want to make a pot-size raise? If you want to raise to a fraction of the pot, the formula would be as follows: Full pot = 100%, so the pot-size raise stays the same: If you want to raise a different amount such as 50% pot, then the calculation would be:

Overbet Any bet made postflop that is larger than the size of the pot.

your opponent checks, you certainly should not bet because, as in the case of the four open jacks, a bet has no positive expectation. Your opponent will fold if he didn't make the flush, and he will call or possibly raise if he did. So even though you are an 80 percent favorite to have the best hand, you become an underdog if you bet and get called. To repeat, then, the decision to bet a legitimate hand for value on the end should be based not on your chances of having the best hand but on your chances of winning the last bet when you are called. When you bet for value on the end after your opponent has checked, you must figure your hand has better than a 50-50 Heads-Up On The End 203 chance of winning when you are called. In fact, you have to figure it has at least about a 55 percent chance of winning to compensate for those times when your opponent is planning to check-raise. With three-of-a-kind against a flush draw, you are certainly the favorite, but you are not the favorite if your opponent calls. Yet to show a profit on your last round bets, clearly you must be the favorite even when your opponent calls. At the same time, you should not carry this principle to such an extreme that you bet only when you have a lock, because then you will not win a lot of final bets you should win. To bet on the end after your opponent has checked, it is only necessary that you are the favorite when your opponent calls. Thus, if you figure you are only a 60 percent favorite when called, you should certainly bet even though you know there's a 40 percent chance your opponent will beat you if he calls. Your bet still has positive expectation. After ten such bets you will have won six and lost four on average for a net profit of two bets. Even if one of those four losses is a check-raise which you call, you still win six bets while losing five for a one-bet profit. To give a concrete example of such relatively close decisions, let's say you are playing draw poker, and your opponent stands pat and then checks to you when you draw one. Since your opponent stood pat, you are quite sure you are facing a straight, a flush, or a full house. Yet your opponent checked to you. You know he will call with just about any of his hands. Therefore, you should bet an ace-high straight or even a queen-high straight, because your opponent probably would have come out betting himself with a tiny flush or better. Chances are, then, he has a straight smaller than yours. It's true you may lose in the showdown, but you are enough of a favorite with a queen-high straight to warrant a bet. 204 Chapter Twenty-one Last Position Play After Your Opponent Has Bet Let us now consider your options in last position when your

real reason now so this person sees a jack on that board uh kind of coordinated i want to get the show now okay i'll check tarn little okay the ace paired could i have an ace spade came in all right i'll check it back again is the jack going to fold to anything you put out there no no no of course not no no not when he's got 85 000 chips he's not folding to a 5 000 6 000 chipot so you go bigger here and you got to accept this you can't be afraid to not get value from your hands if that's the optimal bet that's the optimal bet and the more you work through hands like this the more quizzes you do the more you work at your game the more automatic that's going to be villain 48 goes in and raises it's on you and the big blind you got to practice you gotta practice like every day i still practice pretty much every day 15 years into this okay so it's like you were a hitter a major league baseball you probably always have to be doing batting practice always go ahead and call here with the king queen off the board comes five six eight it's on you would you like to check or bet time is up go ahead and check here no 148's been opening a little bit at this table it's been raising quite a bit pre-flop it's uh villain 48 goes ahead and see bets on this board what would you like to do full color raise five seconds okay guys go ahead and raise here to 10.5 and this player calls the turn is the three of diamonds would you like to check about 10 seconds five that's time go ahead and check here and this player checks back the river is the six of diamonds do you like to check or bet 15 seconds ten five that's it give it up handy fires think you're all folding there the real question was did you run a bluff after you got caught now this is one of very few bluffs you can run what's going on here so what happened real quick and if you've seen me explain to check raise before and you didn't see this one coming that means we're not committing to it focus feedback fix it when you're studying focus then you're going to get feedback from me now that then you got to fix it you got to take it into the field with we're interrupting that process somewhere of purposeful practice if we didn't see this one and we've seen a check raise before let's get to it so we're not going to go super accurate on this but what we will show here so you got your king of hearts queen of diamonds and homeboy ears opening a lot we've noticed he's opening a lot all right cool good for him this is money he can do whatever he wants

Hand Range 195: SB vs BN (40bb) • All-in 2.3% / • 3-bet 14.1% / • Call 11.7% / • Fold 71.8%

at least has the case king, but more likely three eights. It’s also possible that he’s flopped quads, but that would be a rare occurrence. If there is a flush draw on the flop, then slow-playing would be silly. Your 142 opponent with the flush draw isn’t going to fold anyway, so you might as well make him pay to draw dead! After all, if he misses his flush, you aren’t going to get any more bets on the river. Put those bets in on the flop; your opponent won‘t put you on a full house. If you know the player on a flush draw to be extremely conservative and won’t draw to the flush with a pair on the board, you may not want to go too crazy on the flop. He is drawing dead, and you always want to encourage that! Flopping a Full House, Heads-Up. In a heads-up pot, it’s more than likely that your opponent has flopped nothing to the K-8-8 flop. Unless he has an 8, A-A, A-K, or a flush draw, it will be difficult to get much action. The best course of action here may be to slow-play your hand a little bit. Let’s say you have position on your opponent, and he decides to bet out. This is a tricky situation because you don’t want to lose him. If you raise here, he might throw away his hand. If you call, he might just check and fold on the turn. All you need to be concerned with is keeping your opponent interested in this pot. Hopefully he’s flopped trips, a flush draw, or has the A-A or A-K hand. If not, hopefully he makes a smaller full house on the turn. Maybe he has 9-9. How sweet a 9 would be on the turn! Again, you need to pay attention to the information you received pre-flop. Did your opponent raise coming in? Was he in early position? If so, the chances that he’s flopped three eights is remote, though A-K, A-A, or another pair is very possible. Against one of these hands, it’s usually a good idea to jam the flop as you are sure to get action. If your opponent calls from late position or from the blinds, you’ll be hoping now that he’s flopped three eights or maybe a flush draw. More often than not, your opponent is going to miss this flop. It’s unlikely he has the case king and also unlikely that he has an 8. In this situation, it might also be correct to slow-play your hand and hope that your opponent picks up a draw on the turn. You can do that only if you feel that your check on the flop won‘t give away your hand. The tougher your opponent, the less often the check on the flop is going to trap him. To trap a tough player here, play straight-forward and bet the flop. Flopping a Flush We touched on this subject a little when we discussed playing flush draws on 143 the flop. In that

Pre-flop: Hero could elect to 3-bet this hand for value, but with the presence of the Fish in the BB he wants to flat more of his thinner value hands in order to play pots with this weaker player in position and capitalize on his mistakes post-flop, but sadly the Fish folds. Even players with 46% VPIPs can be dealt 72o. Flop: As we're against a Reg, we care about balance and so Hero's first task is to decide if he wants a raising on this flop in the first place. Q1. Does Hero want a raising range? 1. Range Advantage: This time Villain's monopoly on the big overpairs doesn't guarantee him clear range advantage like in Hands 64 and 65. This is due to the board being much wetter. An overpair like QQ isn't such a mighty hand on this texture where two pair, sets and straights are possible in both

heavy on their stronger hands. When they do bet, it’s usually for a smaller size, with half pot being most common. Still, the same pattern is there: strong hands consistently bet, with the only exception being full houses and quads which have both bad blocking effects and little risk of getting drawn out on. Medium strength hands, including most top pair, consistently check . Draws have mixed incentives, with flush draws betting more consistently than straight draws . What About Less Favorable Boards? 🤔 The K84 flop is an especially good one for UTG, which is why they can bet their entire range, but the same principles apply even after they split their range by betting less frequently on less favorable flops. On 9 ♠ 8 ♠ 6 ♥ , for example, UTG bets less than half their range, still preferring a small size: UTG vs BB strategy on 9 ♠ 8 ♠ 6 ♥ It’s harder to generalize across turns on this board because the texture can change in so many ways, with overcards, board pairs, flush draws, and straight draws all possible. But with a few exceptions, we do see lower betting frequencies and bigger bet sizes, indicating more polar ranges : UTG Strategy by turn card, after bet 33%-call line on 9 ♠ 8 ♠ 6 ♥ . The notable exceptions here are the very best and worst cards for UTG. An offsuit 7 is the worst, as BB has more 7x in their range. Without the nuts advantage, UTG can’t pressure BB’s medium-strength hands with big, polar bets and so uses smaller bets. Ace and King rivers, on the other hand, help UTG more often than they do BB, so UTG bets these at a higher frequency. What About Shallower Stacks? Although solver outputs can look quite different with shallower stacks, the same principles apply: strong hands grow the pot 📈 medium strength hands pot control, weak hands bluff or give up, and draws navigate between fold equity and equity realization . What changes is the composition of these classes and the relative importance of competing incentives The threshold for what counts as a strong hand goes down , as less money is at risk when all in. Bet sizes are smaller because big bets are not necessary to get stacks in by the river. Draws are less valuable with less money behind to wager on the river. Here is the same K ♠ 8 ♥ 4 ♦ Q ♠ scenario but with 20bb effective stacks . What changes do you notice? UTG vs BB Strategy, 20BB deep. UTG’s most common bet size is 50% pot rather than an overbet. This is because 50% pot will still enable them to shove rivers comfortably when they wish to do so. Top pair bets more often . With only 20BB, hands like KT and KJ are strong enough to play for stacks and so no longer check for pot control. Second pair bets more often . Although these hands mostly fold if raised, UTG’s smaller bet size allows for more

Caveat: In real poker games, ranges are rarely perfectly polar, perfectly linear, or any other precise category. In most situations, they will be a mix of the various range types. 02 THE ELEMENTS OF GAME THEORY The Core Concepts The following are important concepts that will be used throughout this book when discussing game theory. Game Theory: A whole field of math and science that studies mathematical models of conflict or cooperation between intelligent, rational decision makers. It can be applied to economics, military tactics, politics, psychology, biology, computer science, and card games like poker. Game: Any interaction between multiple people called players in which each player’s payoff is affected by the decisions made by others. Utility: The overall measure of happiness players get from specific outcomes. Higher utility numbers imply that the outcome is preferred. Zero-Sum Game: A mathematical representation of a situation in which a participant’s gain or loss in utility is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participants. If the total gains of the participants are added up and the total losses are subtracted, they will sum to zero. (Poker is a zero-sum game if we neglect rake and ICM [Independent Chip Model] used at tournament final tables and SNGs; this will be studied later in the book.) Strategy: A full specification of a player’s behavior, describing each action a player would take at every possible decision point throughout the game. Pure Strategy: A strategy in which the same action is always taken at the same decision point. Mixed Strategy: A strategy that involves playing more than one pure strategy some frequency of the time at the same decision point.

they have they're going to tell you and the more information you have the more effectively you can make the right decision as to the best place to play poker for you the best place to invest your time and energy um speaking of that added value you know ask them if they have you know bad b jackpots um or or tournament series and you know this is kind of what you see if you drill down into the bravo poke graph if there's a big bad beat jackpot you're going to get a lot more people at the card room because everyone's trying to hit it but the games are probably going to be a little nittier because everyone's just trying to run the boards and see if they can hit the bad beat jackpot on the other hand if you go and there's a tournament series going on you're going to have a lot more players who are tournament players but who aren't cash game players who are more recreational than the typical cash game players because they go for the excitement of a tournament and a lot of them will go play cash after they bust the tournament probably not be in the right mindset for cash probably be a little stuck little chasing a little trying to get even so if you're a cash game player cash game specialist and you can find out when attorney series is going on and post up at the cash tables you are going to for sure make more money because you're going to be in softer games and then um yeah i guess i already discussed that that there's massive value during the tournament series so find out when they're when they're running find out when they're coming up and the floor people will tell you everything they're so excited to tell you about their big promotion their big yearly tournament all the satellites that are running to it and if you can plan your trips around when they're running their events whether it's the satellites whether it's a bad beat jackpot whether it's some other kind of promo you're just gonna get in better games and you're gonna make more money because those promotions are gonna draw people in who aren't as serious of players but they're there for the fun and the thrill and as we know that's where you're to make the most money in the card games all right so that was about what was that topic that was picking the right venue in time now we're going to look at how to save time and make money these are mostly just practical things but things i've learned over the years that save me a ton of time and get me in a way better spots and greatly increase my hourly rate when i go play cards so first thing to do is know your travel time great thing is bravo app will tell you where the casino is boom you punch that into a map

ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE POSITION 65 position, they will know that you have a stronger hand than average. In certain circumstances, they may be able to put you on a very narrow range of hands merely because you called out of position. For instance, say you are playing in a loose ten-handed game with observant, but not excellent, players. The blinds are $5–$10, and the stacks are $2,000. One player limps, and you limp in middle position with A♠9♠. Two players limp behind you, the small blind calls, and the big blind checks. The pot is six-handed for $60 total. You flop the nuts, J♠8♠5♠. Everyone checks to the player on your right, who bets $60. What should you do? Unfortunately, neither raising nor calling is terrific. You have the nuts, but the pot is only $120, and you have over $1,900 more that you’d love to get in the pot. Making that happen, however, will generally be quite difficult. One of your main problems is that you are out of position, both absolute and relative. Two players are between you and the button, and you act directly after the bettor. You know you have the best hand, so that’s not the problem. The problem is that, no matter what you do, your opponents will know you aren’t worried about your hand. The player on your right probably has a decent hand. After all, he was willing to bet the pot into five opponents on a somewhat scary board. He might have something like A♣J♣, but he’s unlikely to be messing around with anything much worse than that. (He might have had only the A♠for his bet, but since you have that card, that theory is out.) So no matter what you do, whether you call or raise, thinking opponents will interpret your action as if you had announced: “I know the board is scary, and any one of my five opponents could show up with a flush. And the player on my right just made a strong play by betting into a big field on this scary board. And I’m way out of position, both absolute and relative, so if someone does have a flush, I stand to lose at least my entire bet here and possibly more. But I’m not worried.” “Why aren’t you worried?” they’ll wonder. “Probably because you have a monster hand,” they’ll conclude. So even if you only call, if they have a hand as strong as ace-jack, they’ll fold. (Again, we’re assuming your opponents are aware, observant, and play decently.) Being out of position, you can’t hope to conceal the strength of your hand. Your only hopes for future action are either that someone misunderstood the situation or that someone else happened to flop a monster also (e.g., a king-high flush) and thinks that their monster is bigger than yours. Being out of position, whether absolute or relative, hurts you in two major ways: it often forces you to commit to marginal hands without much information (or fold the best hand), and it sometimes prevents you from

made hands or junk so it's a situation where it's kind of dicey to know exactly what both players have because on the coordinated boards both players have to be kind of cautious with their strong but non-nut made hands when the caller is in position right so this is a situation where the in position player can start to bet their strong marginal made hands on the turn if it does go check check on the flop but both players should proceed cautiously so let's take a look here we raise jack 10 of spades this is going to be an example against the outer position player they check the flop it goes check check notice here the opponent could have all sorts of um well their whole range right and whenever we check behind the jack tennis spades here we know we're just gonna be calling a turn bet on basically every turn because we have a very clear marginal made hand this time though the turn is bad for us right we still have our medium pair with our middle pair which is good so we're just going to go check check again because if i bet and my opponent calls or raises that's really bad right you can often ask yourself if i bet and get raised would it be terrible and if it would be terrible then checking often makes sense when you have a decent hand that can win at the showdown river goes check and now we've decided if we should put in a small value bet when you are betting on the river with a very marginal made hand that you are trying to get called by a worse marginal maiden you very frequently want to use a small bet size and that's what we do in the scenario we do use a small bet size and we're trying to get called by a nine or a seven which is perhaps even optimistic and the spot if you don't think your opponent will call with a nine or a seven but we'll always call the ten which you mostly lose to or an ace which you lose to then you shouldn't even bet the river even though we probably have the best hand so realize that just because you probably have the best hand does not mean you should always value bet you want to make sure that you can bet and get called by a decent amount of worse hands okay what about when it goes check bet call on a coordinated flop so this is when we raise someone in position calls we check the flop as we will do frequently on a coordinated board they bet and we call so in this scenario the flop better should again have their best made hands in their draws and the flop caller should have mostly marginal made hands and um that's a common scenario where the flop better should again continue betting on the turn a lot of the time so here we

who was the pre-flop aggressor and barreled twice whereas the big blind has played passively to this point with calls and no raises however given the big blinds calls it's unlikely his hand is very weak which means the button won't be betting his entire range here so let's move on to the next step where the goal is to determine where our hand fits among our opponent's Equity distribution Although our hand was ahead of the vast majority of the big lines range on the Flop when the big blind called bets on both the Flop and turn it lowered the probability of the big blind holding a weak hand which in turn decreased the number of hands R king 8 is ahead of on the river which from a probability standpoint increase the likelihood our hand is behind villain accordingly Although our hands started out firmly as red with high equity on the Flop here now on the river it's orange with decent Equity but not quite strong enough relative to the big one's Equity distribution to fire another barrel and where are hand ranks and villains Equity distribution isn't only impacted by hands and villains range that drop off when he calls it can also be negatively impacted by stronger hands that are added to the top of villain's Equity distribution when he makes a draw so for example let's say that instead of the three of Spades which is pretty much a brick the river is the five of diamonds even though some of the buttons stronger top pairs fired a third Barrel on the three of Spades turn on this five of diamonds turn almost no top pairs bet because the equity of this entire class has been diminished by the potential flushes in the big blinds range in this case not only is our hand ahead of a smaller portion of buildings Equity distribution because the big blind should have folded many of his weakest hands on the Flop and turn our hand is now behind a greater portion of villain's Equity distribution because it's very possible that the big blind has made a flush this crams down the strength of our hand which is now represented by yellow with mediocre Equity that being said we do see a tiny sliver of top pairs that fire a third Barrel which brings us to our last Factor card removal according to the solver there's exactly one kind of top pair that can bet on this River top pair with top kicker that also has a diamond why because holding the ace of diamonds makes it significantly less likely that the big blind has a flush this is especially true since we bet so large on the turn which means that in theory the big blind should have folded some of his weaker flush draws similarly we see that Aces with the Ace of Diamond are virtually all betting but Aces without a diamond are checking essentially What's Happening Here is that by lowering the probability or blocking

other hand when you are deeper like you can play a wider range of hands you just have to you know proceed with more caution post flop I guess that's what I'm saying um and as you get closer to the button obviously with the short stack you can shove wider than if you were in early position so just always try to make those positional adjustments based on your stack size and always be aware of ranges so what I mean by range you know we talked about it earlier is understanding what you know what the range of cards your opponent can have based on the position and the stack size and you know a few other factors so for example say you're you know you open in under the gun position say you have pocket aces and you raise it up and it folds around to the big blind and the big blind calls and the Flop is 987 with you know two hearts and you have eight of spades Ace of Spades eight of Clubs you have to be aware that that is a really good board for the big blinds range because the big blind is going to have more two pairs than you on that board because they're flatting with you know hands like nine seven suited nine eight suited eight seven suited things like that and the big blind can always have more flush draws than you because you they are you know they already have a big blind invested so they are getting a better price to call um so they're going to be flatting wider with you know suited hands that we wouldn't be opening in early positions so they're going to be calling with hands like King three of Spades where we're never gonna be you know opening that in an early position so uh they can always have more flush draws than you um so always be aware of ranges and yeah let's now move on to pot odds It's always important to understand pot odds and you know you don't have to be a math wizard in poker poker math is pretty easy but you definitely have to have a general idea of you know pot odds inequities and stuff like that so pot odds are considered the price in poker it's the ratio between the size of the pot and the size of the bet so let's look at an example so again pod odds equals the size of the pot to the size of the BET say the pot size is a hundred dollars and the BET size is fifty dollars so now the total pot size is a hundred and fifty dollars so you ha are getting a hundred and fifty dollars to uh you can you're getting 150 to 50 uh so you're getting three to one because what you do is you divide both sides by 50. so you are getting three to one pot odds so you're risking fifty dollars to win two hundred

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

sucks but that's not the great thing with acr players is they don't really go off the handle that often they uh i mean you'll see it sometimes but not is like when i deal with uh brazilians or eastern europeans it's just like what am i supposed to defend here like what range okay like all right i'm calling oh you turned another pair into a bluff all right cool um yeah anyway now here did you want to go full half pot why is that not a terrific idea you could go full half pot but something i wanted here is god i wanted a call from an ace because they're developing that wheel draw and a lot of times if you bet anything under half pot someone's developing a wheel draw and they got the aside they'll call whereas if you bet afbot this isn't a hundred percent but sometimes guys will go am i really going to call two barrels here would just stays high you don't really want them thinking so i i went a little a little lower here you're kind of hoping they uh the ace two the ace three you don't lose either the four or five you're not losing here we have jacks we are facing a race and a re-wreck what would you like to do now in this hypothetical situation uh you don't know a whole lot about these players but you do know they're fairly aggressive when they do play 10 seconds okay time is up we're going to go ahead and call here so we call and it is checked to us here on this board what would you like to do check or bet you guys should know what i'm going to say you should know in everything i'm teaching you is fundamentals when it comes to the limit holding it's the stuff most of us start with when we're playing in card rooms trying to make money in my private time i'll focus on much more complicated matters and i have coaches that teach me that stuff but this is when i'm just making money this is i'm going to tell you what i'm thinking most of the time so it's been checked to you here would you like to check or bot you have five seconds time is up we're gonna go ahead and check here the turn is the queen of hearts it is checked to you one more time would you like to check or bet i'm going to give you 10 seconds all right we fire and they fold if you did say bet on the flop i think that's okay but i want you thinking of the right things why would we be betting on the flaw we would be focusing on let me ask you this how big should that bet be why most people look at their hand and they play impulsively if you do that myself and a lot of guys that have been doing this our entire adult

Example No. 2. You pick up A♦K♠ in late middle position and make a modest bet. A superaggressive player on the button raises you. You just call. The flop comes K♥8♣3♠. What do you do? Answer: Just check, and when he bets at you, call again. Repeat on fourth street. On the river either check or make one bet of about half the pot and see if it gets called. Remember that against a super-aggressive player, all your hands are stronger than they appear, because he is playing weaker hands than most other players. Showing Hands Managing the hands you choose to show or not to show is a crucial skill for players of different styles. The most general advice, which is always sound, is not to show your cards unless you have a very good reason. The more hands you show, the more information about your style you're revealing to a shrewd and observant opponent. It's a good rule, and one that I personally never violate. But if you're playing a different style, there may be some tactical advantage to occasional showing a hand voluntarily. I once watched one of the most successful super-aggressive players as he played in the early stage of a major no-limit hold ’em tournament. Although I couldn't see his cards, I noticed that he was playing about one-third of the hands in the first couple of hours. He was the only name player at his table, and the other players were according him plenty of respect. He was grabbing lots of small pots with well-timed raises either before or after the flop. During the time I was watching, he never actually had to show a hand down. However, he would periodically turn over his cards when he bet and his opponent folded - an ace-king here, an acequeen there, a few pairs mixed in. What he was doing was controlling the table by showing the hands where he wasn't bluffing, as if to say "Look, I'm playing a lot of pots, but see, I really am holding great cards." Of course, he wasn't showing most of his hands, where he was no doubt holding utter trash. But since people remember what they see, and not what they don't see, he was leaving an impression of a player that could not be faced unless you were holding great cards. Since the super-aggressive style is built around stealing pots, it's very important for practitioners of this style to keep their bluffing frequency well-concealed. One tactic that works for this purpose is to make a bet on the end of a hand solely to avoid showing the hand down. It's an unusual move, but when it works you win the pot and keep your opponents from seeing what you're playing. Managing the Tournament When you play in a certain style, you should have a game plan for the tournament. Let's look at the conservative game plan and the super-aggressive game plan, and see how they differ. Conservative Game Plan. The conservative plan is pretty simple. Play tight, pick off

receive an enthusiastic reception including those given at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City and the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. More recently David has been doing consulting work for casinos, Internet gaming sites, and gaming device companies. He has recently invented a new game called Poker Challenge, soon to appear in casinos. David attributes his standing in the gambling community to three things: 1. The fact that he presents his ideas as simply as possible (sometimes with Mason Malmuth) even though these ideas frequently involve concepts that are deep, subtle, and not to be found elsewhere. 2. The fact that the things he says and writes can be counted on to be accurate. 3. The fact that to this day a large portion of his income is still derived from gambling (usually poker but occasionally blackjack, sports betting, horses, video games, casino promotions, or casino tournaments). Thus, those who depend on David's advice know that he still depends on it himself. Other Books by David Sklansky Hold 'em Poker The Theory of Poker Getting The Best of It vii About Mason Malmuth Mason Malmuth was born and raised in Coral Gables, Florida. In 1973 he received his BS in Mathematics from Virginia Tech, and completed their Masters' program in 1975. While working for the United States Census Bureau in 1978, Mason stopped overnight in Las Vegas while driving to his new assignment in California. He was immediately fascinated by the games, and gambling became his major interest. After arriving in California he discovered that poker was legal and began playing in some of the public cardrooms as well as taking periodic trips to Las Vegas where he would play both poker and blackjack. In 198 1 he went to work for the Northrop Corporation as a mathematician and moved to Los Angeles where he could conviently pursue his interest in poker in the large public cardrooms in Gardena, Bell Gardens, and Commerce. In 1983 his first article "Card Domination - The Ultimate Blackjack Weapon" was published in Gambling Times magazine. In 1987 he left his job with the Northrop Corporation to begin a career as both a full-time gambler and a gambling writer. He has had over 500 articles published in various magazines and is the author or co-author of 12 books. These include Gambling Theory ancl Other Topics, where he tries to demonstrate why only a small number of people are highly successful at gambling. In this book he introduces the reader to the concept of "non-self weighting strategies" and explains why successful gambling is actually a balance of luck and skill. Other books he has co-authored are Hold 'em Poker For Advanced Players, written with David Sklansky, and Seven-Curd Stud For Advanced Players written with David Sklansky and Ray Zee. All the "advanced" books are considered the definitive works on these games. His company Two Plus Two Publishing has sold over 300,000 books and currently has 22 titles to its credit. These x About Mason Malmuth books are recognized as the best in their field and are

sandwich. If you call, Players B, F, and G are all still active behind you, and they can all raise. You don't really know what it will cost you to play this hand, or how many players you'll be up against. You'll also be in the worst possible position after the flop. Under the circumstances, queen-jack offsuit just isn't good enough to stick around. It's clear to fold. Note that if the pot odds were much better, say 6-to-l or 7-to-l, then you could call even in these unfavorable circumstances. Action: You fold. 122 Part Six Betting After the Flop Introduction The flop is a defining moment in a no-limit hold ’em hand. In one swoop, 60 percent of the eventual board gets revealed. You may have already flopped a monster hand, or perhaps your opponent did. More likely however, is that you made no improvement, or only a modest one, and the same is true of your opponent. When watching the hands unfold on television, much of the betting, if not all of it, is now completed. It happens because we're often at the end of a tournament and the blinds and antes are large compared to the amount of chips in play. But at most other spots, this isn't the case. You're going to have to analyze the texture of the flop and play your hand on the flop: This includes betting, calling, raising, and deciding on how much each of these options is worth. Put another way, there's a lot more going on here than what most new players think. Play on the flop (and the later streets) can get very complex. So read this section carefully. Texture of the Flop When you stay in a hand and the flop comes, there are two things that you'd like to have happen. 1. You want the flop to improve your hand. 2. You don't want the flop to improve your opponent's hand. You can tell right away if the flop improved your hand. But you have to deduce if the flop helped your opponent or not. In poker, we call this analyzing the texture of the flop. Good texture (for you) means either the flop was unlikely to help a hand that might have reasonably called you before the flop, or the flop probably helped another hand, but not as much as it helped you. Bad or dangerous texture means a flop that might well have helped other players, but not you. Let's look at a few examples and see what good and bad texture look like. Example No. 1. You're on the button with Q♠ J♠ A player in middle position makes a modest raise, a player just behind him calls, and you elect to call with your Q♠J♠. (We'll ignore for now the question of whether or not this was a prudent move.) In each case, the flop leaves you with a pair of queens. 1. Flop A: Q♥8♠2♣ 2. Flop B: Q♦T♦9♥ 3. Flop C: A♣K♦Q♥ When analyzing the texture of a flop, keep the following facts

Quick Comment This section is faster paced than the previous one. It consists of a series of brief ideas to improve your no limit play. Some of these ideas are restatements of concepts introduced earlier in the book. This repetition is intentional; important ideas are more likely to sink in if you read them more than once. As we stated in the Introduction, don’t ignore or skim this section simply because it comes second; it contains some of the most important information in the book. Also, keep in mind that many of the ideas presented in “Part I: Fundamentals” reappear here. And as stated earlier, this repetition is intentional since we present particularly important ideas in both formats. The concepts are also listed in no particular order. However, we did number them so that if anyone wants to discuss the concepts on our Two Plus Two Forums or elsewhere, they will be easy to refer to. With no further ado, here they are. 163

♦ Is often on tilt. ♦ Doesn’t take criticism. ♦ Short-term results oriented. ♦ Has a huge ego, therefore plays against better opponents all the time. ♦ Plays too many tables and autopilots, generally playing their B or C game. ♦ Doesn’t take care of their health, eats junk food and never works out. ♦ Drugs/alcohol abuse. ♦ Doesn’t have good sleeping habits, has no problem with going out and partying the night before a big event. ♦ Jumps directly from bed to the poker tables. ♦ Tells bad beat stories and complains about how unlucky they are to poker friends. Tournament Life I mentioned earlier how MTTs are fundamentally different to cash games and also how top MTT players have a good grasp on how to adjust to the different stages of a tournament. This is because they understand the concept of tournament life. Winning a Poker Tournament Winning a tournament can be seen in two different ways. We all know that the winner of a tournament is the player who wins all the chips, but another way to see it is that the winner of a tournament is the last player standing. Tournaments are about survival, outlasting your opponents rather than trying to bust them yourself. So, tournament life refers to the value of still having chips in a poker tournament. If tournaments are not driven solely by Chip EV (cEV), what other factors should impact your decisions at the table? The EV of Future Hands

beat already. But all at least have outs. Heads-up, you wouldn’t worry so much about people hitting their kickers, but here you have to. Remember, the two ways for a board to be textured are multiple flop cards related to each other and multiple opponents working against you. If everyone checks to you on the turn, you can’t afford to give a free card, so bet. You’re less afraid of opening yourself up to a raise bluff, because people are much less likely to be bluffing in a multi-way pot. If you get check-raised on the turn, you can fold. If someone does your betting for you on the turn, the same lines of play apply as when you bet the flop, with your call, raise, or fold decisionsdependent on where the bet comes from and how you read your opponents. As before, the more players to act behind you, the more you should lean toward a raise to knock the remaining players out of the hand and get a better hand to possibly fold. Also, if a weak-tight player bets into the field, consider a fold instead of a call, particularly if that player is first to act. If there’s a bet, and two callers are between you and the bettor, lean toward folding. There aren’t a lot of hands you can put the other players onthat don’t beat you. If only one caller stands between you and the bettor, you can raise as a semi-squeeze play, putting player A in a tight spot with player B still to act behind him. That guy will fold a stronger range of hands than normal in that spot; then you only have to worry about player Bfolding. Generally speaking, you want to be more willing to play against fewer callers and less willing to play against more. To review, if the action on the flop comes from your immediate right, flat-call and see where you’re at on the turn. If you’ve gotten heads-up, play it like any other heads-up hand. If it’s still multi-way on the turn and everyone checks to you, bet. However, if there’s a bet and more than one call (or raise) on the turn, you can pretty confidently get away from your AQ, because if someone didn’t hit his kicker on the turn, he’s been sitting on two pair or a set from the start. Okay, we’ve covered what to do when you’re in position with AQ and everyone checks to you on a flop like A-9-3 rainbow. We’ve also covered what to do when you get a bet from the player directly to your right. Next, let’s look at what happens when the lead comes from someone in first or second position. If player A bets and B and C fold, you can flat-call and play the rest of the hand according to your heads-up recipe. Easy enough. If he checks the turn, you check, and if he bets the turn you raise, unless the usual exceptions apply. If player A bets and B or C (but not

i probably raise it because i think of suited sixes who cares um so last suit nine suited sixes you just raised most of your cutoff range obviously offsuit nines you're going to raise more offsu aces than just like these hands i i know personally like k8 off is the bottom of the kx range i know h5 off is the bottom of that range but like the point of this is to get a majority of the range right like i know i'm raising more suited kings suited queens um but now you are getting a majority of the range here with the cutoff okay 40 bb hijack offsuit 10s suited sevens you guys are starting to see the pattern right you guys it's just like you just get a little bit tighter so now you go to the hijack 40 big blinds boom offsuit tens suited sevenths much easier way to think of these ranges you go to the high the low jack okay now like the low jack i think off c10 the off c10s are still gonna stay in it's gonna be like offsuit tens and suited eights in the low jack does the range change if you're playing low stakes no it does not it actually would potentially get wider if people are too tight and don't three bet you enough so 40 bb low jack i'm going to say these are like me my guesses this is how i make sure i'm doing it right so off suit 10 still i'm gonna say officer tens suited eights in the low jack low jack boom suited eights i'll suit tens okay i'm nailing almost all the range right now you know if i'm missing king five suited or something like i know i'm gonna probably if i know suited eights i'm not raising i'm raising king seven suited at least um under the gun one we're gonna start to go to the suited nines and mix up it's gonna be like offsuit jacks okay so now these off suit tens are coming out so it's off suit jacks and now the suited eights are still in there at under the gun one so and then under the gun it goes to suited nines officer jacks okay seems like a lot of people thought that i've seen a lot of um the same under the gun one and under the gun two are the correct are the same uh this is under the gun seven this is under the gun eight that's how i think about it this is an under the gun eight handed and this is under the gun seven handed i'm way too tight under gun one how do you vary these ranges if there's disparity in sacrifices between you and the blinds um that way you have to use some you know if you have 40 big blinds and you know you have to start to use some fudge work on which ranges you want to start to use depending on um like

Limit The maximum or minimum amount that can be bet. No limit hold ‘em is described as such due to the fact that there is no maximum amount that can be bet on any street. This can be contrasted against fixed limit and pot limit games, where only certain amounts can be bet.

blind has seven six off in its range whereas the button only has 7 6 suited in its range which gives the big blind more straights the big line also has a higher percentage of two pairs including 10 5 and 10 4 suited and 8 5 and 8 4 suited in short this turn card uncaps the big blinds range making it more balanced prompting the solver to seize the initiative with a portion of its range by making a small bet and my range on the other hand is a representation of our final range morphology polarized as most of you know a polarized range consists primarily of very strong hands and very weak hands with relatively little in the middle a polarized range is typically created when a player has and maintains the initiative by betting across multiple streets usually with larger sizes designed to get stacks in by the river so in this case by being the pre-flop aggressor and continuing to bet on the flop with large sizing my range started to polarize because generally speaking mid-strength hands have a lower incentive to bet big since a big bet is more likely to cause villain to fold worse and only call with better now in this case the five turn depolarized my range to a certain extent by adding more strong hands to villains range which in turn weakened many of the hands in my range however overall my range is still mostly comprised of strong hands represented by the reddish colors and weak hands represented by the bluish colors because a polarized range tends to be mostly comprised of strong and weak hands most of the time the polarized range will be on offense since both of these classes of hands generally have a strong incentive to bet however in situations where a polarized range is on defense since the middle part of a polarized range tends to be lacking it will usually face smaller sizings targeting the trash portion of its range but in this case villain refrained from betting and so i continue with another three-quarters pot bet this lower card adds some lower pairs to the big blinds range such as 7 5 and 9 5 hearts on top of this when the big blind simply called my flop bet and refrained from donking on the favorable turn card it compressed his range towards the middle of the equity distribution even further the net result of all this is that the big blind range has become even more mid-heavy and so we aren't going to be using any small sizings in the buttons shoes we're betting three quarters pot or more to get max value with our strongest hands including our queens and to apply max fold leverage with our bluffs in an attempt to get the big blind to muck some of his weaker pairs and draws which it would be much less likely to do versus a smaller bet but the big blind calls the river is the seven of spades

I think it's just concerned about like he's folding all his eights and only calling with a king so he's blocking some of his like calling range I guess sometimes it's hard to understand why I was doing some of this stuff but yeah that's the ace of clubs we're gonna move along here because we're running long here so ace of clubs we covered that let's look at the low flush completer now the three of clubs so how do equities change on the three of clubs turn card from the flop I see some answers on here we want to know how the equities what the equities look like on the 3a club's turn card see Doug saying imposition has a nut advantage but not a range advantage out of position equity goes up out of position equity goes up and Doug hit this perfect the imposition has a range advantage or sorry it if in possession has a nut advantage but out of position has the range advantage I believe that is gonna be correct so three of clubs yeah out of position goes to 53 percent equity in position 47 so this is similar to the deuce of spades the three of clubs is kind of a brick the three is a brick because it doesn't really complete a lot of two pairs etc doesn't bring any straights but it does bring the flush the club so out of position 53% forty seven percent so all the parishes stay the same basically out of positions top pair went from 10% to 20% the big thing that changed here is the flushes out of position has 11% flushes now in position has nine percent though so that's a key thing on the ace of clubs on the ace of clubs the in position player only had five percent flushes now on the three of clubs he has nine percent flushes and that's because now in position can have the nut flush so in position has top pair advantage in terms of he has stronger top pairs and he has a flush advantage in terms of he has stronger flushes now out of position has a few more flushes than them but in position has stronger flushes and so the in position player basically just has nothing a lot more that's where the range advantage comes from and out of position has nothing 21 percent of the time ace high or nothing in position has he's higher nothing 40% so in position still has nothing quite a bit now and we'll look at this three of clubs here's the equity 56:43 and again this is even though out of position has an equity advantage he's not leading very often here because he doesn't have a nut advantage in terms of he chuck raised a lot of this nut flush draws and in position has a lot stronger flushes and stronger top pairs and still has all the sets and two pairs so as a proportion imposition still has stronger hands

button is necessary in hold 'em, draw lowball, and five card draw. Buy in: The minimum amount of money required to sit down in a particular game. Call: To put in the pot an amount of money equal to an opponent's bet or raise. Call a raise cold: To call a double bet — that is, a bet and a raise. Caller: A person who calls a bet or raise. Chase: To continue in a hand trying to outdraw an opponent's hand you are quite sure is better than yours. Card room: The area in a casino where poker (and sometimes panguingue) are played. Check: To decline to bet when it is your turn. Check-raise: To check and then raise after an opponent bets. Chip: A round token in various denominations representing money. Among many professional gamblers it is also called a check. Cinch: The best possible hand, given the cards on board, when all the cards are out. 280 Appendix В Closed hand: A hand in which all the cards are concealed from one's opponents. Come hand: A hand that has not yet been made, with more cards still to be dealt. Thus, a four-card flush would be a come hand. Crying call: A call with a hand you think has a small chance of winning. Cut the pot: To take a percentage from each pot as the profits for the person or the casino running the game. Dead hand: A hand a player may not continue to play because of an irregularity. Dead money: Money put in the pot by players who have already folded their hands. Dealer's choice: Poker in which the player whose turn it is to deal may choose the game for that particular hand. Draw: 1. To take one or more cards. 2. A form of poker in which each player receives five cards and then has the option of discarding one or more of them and receiving new cards in their place. Drawing dead: Drawing to try to make a hand that cannot possibly win because an opponent already holds a bigger hand. A player drawing to make a flush when an opponent already has a full house is drawing dead. Draw lowball: A form of poker in which the best low hand wins. See Appendix A. Glossary of Poker Terms 281 Draw out: To improve your hand so that it beats an opponent who had a better hand than yours prior to your draw. Door card: In stud games, the first exposed card in a player's hand. Double belly buster: See Open-ended straight. Early position: A position on a round of betting in which you must act before most of the other players. Edge: An advantage over an opponent. Effective odds: The ratio of the total amount of money you expect to win if you make your hand to the total amount of bets you will have to call to continue from the present round of betting to the end of the hand. Equity: The value of a particular hand or combination of cards.

Rivered A term used to describe a situation where a player loses a hand, because his opponent made a better hand on the river.

you to an EV increase compared to the simplified strategy of range-betting for a small size. Start by looking for the exceptions, the hands that purely bet one size or the other. The immediately apparent ones are AQ s, K8 s, K7 s, and K6 s. If we dig deeper, we see that some of the other mixes are suit-dependent. For example, the medium pocket pairs with a heart tend to mix, but without a heart, they tend to purely bet small: Some traces of this behavior can be found for hands like K5 s as well for example: What do these hands have in common? They are all medium-strength , reasonably strong hands ahead of much of BB’s range but in bad shape against top pair or better. That suggests the reason why they prefer the smaller size: they benefit from denying equity and getting called by BB’s weaker hands (the ones that might fold to a larger bet). However, if they put too much money into the pot, they will concentrate BB’s range around the strongest hands against which they perform poorly. Thus, they avoid the larger bet size and bet 24% pot exclusively. We can confirm this by looking at the equity buckets , where we can see that UTG uses the big size most often with their strongest and weakest hands, and the small size mostly with their middling hands: The bigger you bet, the more you concentrate your opponent’s range around their strongest hands. This explains why the small size is used . UTG wants to bet their medium hands, but they can’t do so profitably for a large size. We can prove that with a custom solution only allowing the 76% pot bet . In this scenario, UTG cannot profitably bet their entire range, and it is these same medium-strength hands that fill out the checking range: Explain the Anomalies The primary purpose of the small continuation bet appears to be to accommodate the many medium-strength hands in UTG’s range. This is not a complete explanation, however, because it does not account for the presence of strong hands like AA and K7 s in the small betting range. Why don’t these hands strictly prefer the larger bet, given that they actively benefit from growing the pot against the top of BB’s range? The common explanation is that these ‘monster’ hands “protect” the medium hands by discouraging BB from raising, but that’s a bit misleading . It implies the strongest hands are making a sacrifice by foregoing a higher EV option for the sake of other hands in your range. This kind of sacrifice is never a feature of GTO solutions. Solvers do not give up EV with one hand to increase the EV of another. If a hand mixes between multiple bet sizes, then, at equilibrium, it has the same EV with all of them. Solvers never sacrifice EV with one hand to increase the EV of another. That raises a new question: where does the EV in the small bet line come from for the

is more likely to affect your decision in no limit than it is in

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 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

found that many middle and short stack players tighten up far too early say there are 150 players remaining in a tournament and 100 get in the money some middle Stacks decide all right I'm going in lockdown mode I'm getting that cash and they go from a 35 big blind stack down to something like a 20 big blind stack they collect their cash and they're thrilled but they don't realize they really really ruin their chances of making a Deep Run and actually winning also realize that the payout structure of the tournament will matter some tournaments have a very flat payout structure and some tournaments have a very steep payout structure for example a long time ago when I won these WPT trophies back here first place got a third of the money 33 of the entire prize pool nowadays the number something like 15 so a long time ago you are highly incentivized to gamble hard and try to win back then I bubble all the time because Nicole wants to win the tournament now the goal is a little bit less to win the tournament and the goal is to hang out and slowly move up the payouts so always make sure you're aware of the payout structure that you have in your particular venue I have found that a lot of small buy-in local events often have pretty steep pile structures so make sure you're aware of that if that's the case let's take a look at a simple ICM example let's say four players remain in a tournament and each of them have 25 of the chips this is when we're at a final table here are the payouts versus a thousand bucks second is 700. third is four hundred fourth is 200. if you're unaware of what ICM is Google it I'm sure you'll find an article in the scenario based on ICM each player's stack is worth 575 on average which you can easily figure out because they all have the same amount of chips right it's all the payouts divided by four players this is 575. all right if you get it all in with 50 equity say you get it in with a classic coin flip 50 50. your Equity becomes eight hundred dollars when you win solved by an ICM calculator again Google that you'll find it you just type in the payouts type in the stacks you'll see your equity and when you lose you're going to take fourth place for two hundred dollars giving you a thousand dollars total but that's terrible because you and your opponent both put in 575 dollars in equity total and you're only getting back a thousand you put in 1150 and you're getting back a thousand wear that under other 150 bucks go well it went to the players who just sat there and folded and when there are payout implications like when you're on the bubble of a tournament you make a large chunk of money by staying out of the

lands on the board postflop. What are the chances that they win? The probability is exactly zero, since all the aces, kings, and queens must be held by the 6 players. GTO Wizard the #1 App for Poker players Study any spot imaginable Practice by playing vs. GTO Analyze your hands with 1-click START CRUSHING NOW JOIN DISCORD Author Tombos21 Tom is a long time poker theory enthusiast, GTO Wizard coach and YouTuber, and author of the Daily Dose of GTO. Latest article Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first decade of my career. But after my first… Relationships and Poker In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve… Do Multiple Sizes Matter? Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results… The Science of Learning Applied to GTO Wizard The way we were taught to study in schools was flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN preflop raiser in a 100bb cash… When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody… Protect Equity and Prosper When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend… Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative poker thinking. When you’re value betting against… Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots When the BTN open-limps off a short stack, the postflop play against the BB should… I’d Rather Be Drawing Which is the better hand on a K♥8♦5♦ flop: K♠T♣ or 7♥6♥? OK, I’ll admit… The Curious Case of Open-Limping Buttons Before the advent of solvers, open-limping was considered the province of passive, gambley recreational players… Cleaning Out Sticky IP Callers A “sticky” player on your left, one who calls your preflop raises too often and… Defending Against Tiny 3-Bets Tournament poker is about precision. Cash games, where stacks typically run into 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

Hand Range 146: BB vs SB 4-bet (60bb) • All-in 27.4% / • Call 14.2% / • Fold 58.5% BB vs SB Limp

should you have different bet-sizes for different flops? Different flops will have a different effect on the ranges’ equities and polarization. Our test with the [0-1] Toy Game proves that bet-size is affected by the range polarization and also that using the wrong bet-size can cost EV. This suggests that GTO play on different types of flops will involve the use of flop-specific bet-sizes. To test this hypothesis I ran all 1,755 flops in a Single Raised Pot (SRP) BB vs BN scenario with 40bbs effective stacks. In one simulation I used four different bet-sizes: min-bets, 1/3-pot, 1/2-pot and 2/3-pot, and got IP average EV across all flops accounting for each flop’s individual weight, in order to represent all 22,100 specific flops (accounting for suits). Then I re-ran the same scenario using only the 1/3-pot size. The results are summarized in Table 95. Table 95: Summary of Simulations with Varying Bet-sizes The average EV difference across all flops is -0.14% of the pot, or 0.9 bb/100, when using a single bet-size compared to using four-bet-sizes. However, this test compares the single bet-size simulation to a simulation that has four-bet-sizes and can maximize the EV of each individual combo by choosing any of the four available bet-sizes. This is different than running each one of the 1,755 simulations using only the best of the four-bet-sizes for each flop. Still, if I had done that, the EV of using only the “optimal bet-size” among the four options cannot be higher than the EV of using 4 bet-sizes that maximized each combo’s EV because if that is the case, the solver will only choose one of them even when having four options to choose from. At most, the EV of solving each flop with only one optimal bet-size has to be the same as the EV of a simulation that has all four-bet-sizes. Assuming perfect play from each player, the average EV loss using only the 1/3-pot size in the tested set up is at most 0.9bb/100. This number could change with different stack depths and different ranges, but it gives us a reasonable starting point, since this is the average across all 1,755 flops. It is not the same as if it was -0.9bb/100 lost on a single flop, so this number is very significant. However, it assumes perfect play from both players and we know that is far away from real poker, as both Hero and Villain will make mistakes. Some people advocate for oversimplifying their strategies with a “single bet-size fits all”

bad and they label in their head that that player who made that bad play is bad but that doesn't really tell you what you need to be doing against that player right maybe this player random or random an absurd Bluff so against this player maybe you should be calling down far wider or at least calling down far wider in specific scenarios because maybe they ran a bluff when the board was really good for their range or maybe they ran the bluff when the war is really bad for their range right whatever you can't extrapolate too far off of one individual hand Maybe you're a bad opponent actually fold it out face off with something like the third nuts on the river maybe they're bad but nitty so you want to make sure you're not just labeling your opponents bad you want to label your opponents as this player folded out two three streets of aggression when the board went out kind of bad for the third nuts stuff like that right you want to make it really really clear in your mind maybe by writing it in your phone maybe by physically writing it on notepad whatever what you should be doing against your opponent who makes a bad play when you are playing I realize you will inevitably get distracted it happens to all of us do not be too harsh on yourself you but you need to find ways to consistently and routinely re-center yourself when you are playing so what I personally do is that I'm I'm pretty good at paying attention for like 10 minutes at a time after that my mind starts to wonder so what I personally do is when I'm under the gun First Act and I fold which you'll usually do I get up and I walk around the table which results to me getting up and walking around the live poker table every 20 25 minutes or so I'll walk around the live poker table and I will look at everyone's chip sack and figure out how many chips each player has roughly and I'll also sometimes you know take my eyes and look out the window if I can if there is a window or look across the room and try to get my eyes a little break from like just looking right here in front in front of me right I think that's usually pretty nice to do maybe get a little stretch in but getting up walking around that will help your body out a bit and also give yourself a little break from playing poker I realize that in poker tournaments you get a break every two hours which is you know some but not much and in cash games you just don't get a break you take your own breaks and some players literally never take breaks but you do need to take breaks you need to relax rest your mind and take your mind off of Poker for a little bit okay

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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 M. Malmuth and is one… How to Study GTO Solutions Tools like

Hand Range 130: UTG+2 40bb • Raise 2.3x 20.6% / • Fold 79.4%

Paint cards A royal card that is traditionally depicted with an image on the card, that is any K, Q, or J. Players often ask the dealer to put some "paint" on the board when these cards are their outs. Synonymous with "face cards".

Hand Range 2: A Typical 7% Raising Range

but let's say both of them if both of them were playing wider ranges it missing half the time age which tends to be about pretty typical they're both missing together only 25% of the time okay so let's say they both have like really wide ranges and both players in this fifty percent of the time well you have to to find out how often both of them miss it's going to be about it's only gonna be a 25 percent around there now caveat emptor the one thing I don't like about this method is it assumes the two calling ranges are independent of each other technically if button calls it probably widens the big blinds calling range but it's a good thought experiment if both players are defending draws in pairs which I honestly think is pretty close to accurate then oftentimes if that button is tighter then they're both folding less than two times out of ten and yeah it tends to be the best you're gonna get with super wide calling ranges is maybe like thirty percent so the two options I really want you guys thinking if you want a bet here with a backdoor flush show or something like that is one-third pot because one-third pot needs to work about 25 percent of the time but both players missing the board is not going to happen that often so it's really hard to squeeze that in there and unless you have like a really defined betting strategy on turn and River I'd really warn against larger bets if you're trying to set something out the larger bets can be justified but you do after really what you're up to now when do you want to bluff that multi-way you want there to only be two other players three or more is extremely difficult you want wider cold callers in position and out of the big blind you want to board with only one card over nine or none at all in that card can't be an ace you don't want multiple draws on that board and if you have backdoor draws that would be preferred okay so reviewing what we learned today multi way pots suck because it's difficult to bluffing them if we are facing 25 to 40 big blind stacks we can often buy the button with a larger than 3x raise when we're on the cutoff if we are facing short sax however there is an array size that will really dissuade them so we should go back to normal race sizes and that also works with really big stacks as well now earning two to three buttons in orbit is the nectar of winning poker because the big blind is the worst player at the table and the button gets to play with the big blind the most often so most of this lecture I just really wanted to focus on how we can just take that button for our own that's mostly gonna happen from the cutoff but you should

According to the blocker matrix: ♦ All hands block themselves ♦ Hand 1 blocks Hand 3 ♦ Hand 3 blocks Hand 1 ♦ Hand 6 blocks Hands 8 and 9 ♦ Hands 8 and 9 block Hand 6 ♦ All other hands do not block each other. Of course, a real river solution would include many more hands, with different weights and a more complex blocker relationship, but in essence all you need to fully define a river situation are the ranges table, the blocker relationship, and a game tree with the pot size, stack sizes and a betting structure. This is, in fact, how all GTO solvers work. They have a list of all possible rivers and which hands have blockers on each river. The hands are listed in order of strength and the players’ ranges tell the solver who has which hand and how often they have it. It doesn’t matter how the players got to the specific river situation. As long as they arrive to the overall same structure, the GTO strategy pair in that situation will be equivalent. For example, the nuts/air vs bluff-catcher situation can be described in a different way with different hands. However, as long as one player has half of their range as the effective nuts, and the other half being air relative to their opponent’s range, and the other player’s range is 100% of bluff-catchers, then the GTO solution will be the exact same.

that anything more will begin to feel uncomfortable. Okay, now you find yourself down $500, then $1,100, then—before it 79 registers—you’ve zoomed past $1,500 and are losing $1,800. You’ve entered dangerous territory. And it gets worse. And worse. Hours later, you find yourself losing $4,530. Now, your mind is numb. I believe that most people at this point can’t mentally comprehend added losses. It all feels the same. You’ve crossed Caro’s Threshold of Misery, which is the point at which mental and emotional pain is maximized and anything further won’t register. You must be aware when you cross the threshold, because beyond it decisions don’t seem to matter. This is true in real life, too. When romances unravel or businesses fail, you might cross the Threshold of Misery and stop caring about making critical decisions regarding other things. That’s because the pain is already maximized and anything else that goes wrong can’t add to the agony. Listen closely. At these times, in poker and in life, the secret is to keep performing as if you care. Remember that, although you can’t emotionally feel the importance of making quality decisions at the moment, there will come a time when you will feel that importance and be grateful for the good decisions that you make now. Yes, you’ve crossed the threshold and decisions don’t seem to matter. They do still matter, and anything that suggests otherwise at this moment is an illusion. Strategy and Tactics TIP 16 Even some professional players make the mistake of betting aggressively after deceptive players check. They’d earn much more money if they didn’t have this bad habit. Throughout your poker playing years, always think about the player you’re about to bet into before firing away with a medium-strong hand. If it’s a tricky player, you should be much less motivated to bet, because he won’t just fall in line and call meekly. He will surprise you occasionally by raising as a bluff, sometimes getting you to throw away the best hand. And he will also tend to get maximum value out of his strong hands by raising daringly, costing you an extra bet whenever you call and lose the showdown. You should tend to bet much more often when the check comes from meek and non-deceptive foes. So, you should not bet as 80 frequently or as willingly after a deceptive opponent checks. Make that a part of your permanent game plan. TIP 17 This is another MCU maxim that some professionals too often ignore, costing them extra profit for their whole careers. When a frequent bluffer waits to act after you, there can be considerable value in letting him make his primary mistake—bluffing too often. Against this type of player, a medium-strong hand will often earn more in the long run as a bluff catcher than a hand you would bet aggressively for extra value. TIP 18 One of the reasons bluffs are successful is that they often beat other equally weak hands. Had you checked, you would have won some showdowns between garbage hands. And you

As we learned in Chapter 4 on c-betting, non-made-hand equity helps to make a light c-bet more profitable. Light c-bets are just one sort of bluff. Another sort is raising flop bets and equity is no less important for that either. While opportunities to semi-bluff raise are fairly abundant, raising flops as a pure bluff with very little equity is less attractive without a lot of fold equity or an opponent who won't adjust well even to a blatantly aggressive strategy of raising the flop with a very bluff heavy range. Here are some factors that make us more inclined to raise rather than float/chase the flop with a non- made-hand in an open action spot. Figure 43 - Raising Non-Made-Hands Fold Equity: A familiar guest by now. Why would we want to bluff raise if we expected no folds? Position: Here we see the opposite of what the position factor normally tells us. We're no longer comparing calling to folding, but to raising. Being in position makes floating with fold equity a more preferable choice, where as, being out of position reduces the EV of a float, increasing the incentive to win the pot immediately with a raise and go after the fold equity more directly. The thought is that future streets are less favourable when they have to be played out of position, so let's try to avoid them. SDV: Hero might have a non-made-hand like a flush or straight draw that also has some SDV in the form of a tiny pair or ace-high. The more likely the hand is to win at showdown, the less necessity there is to turn it into a bluff and go after fold equity. In fact, one mistake players often make is to over value the prospects of bloating the pot with these hybrid pair + draw hands. Generally they play very well for calls rather than raises, though there are exceptions. Pot Odds: Again, the opposite of how this factor normally affects matters. Good pot odds make floating and chasing better. Bad pot odds might mean a raise is the superior way of capitalising on fold equity + pot equity.

hey everybody this is Alexander Fitzgerald or sassinato doing another one of my webinars for Jonathan little today we are going to be discussing exploitative continuation bet sizing refining our Basics why you should change your back sizes 90 plus percent of your opponents in an hbt are in a low six cash games have no idea who you are they are generally playing their hand and not getting too calibrated versus players like this you can manipulate them with some basic bet changes today I'm going to show you how to exploit basic regulars so you can make more money so the truth is guys with the vast majority of opponents they're more or less playing their cards in their fixed strategy and if you know what those fixed strategies tend to be and they tend to be the same ones all over the world uh just because people tend to learn poker the same way you can manipulate them somewhat so we're going to talk about that today but what about balancing is something a lot of people ask balancing is important when you're playing against higher level opponents I I was lucky enough to make a final table in Prague at the butt end of 2016 for example and there I had to do a lot of balancing because versus very educated opponents there's no C betting 100 of the time but it it's also important to be balancing when you play the same people every day and in wcp 2ks and hire you a Euro one case and higher in cash games will require require balancing uh just because you're going to be playing against the same people every day but for the vast majority of people you only get so many hands with them it's going to be about 40 or 50 and if they've never really seen you and that that has to go with cash games or tournaments as well if they've never really seen you in those 40 and 50 hands they're going to have their way they're going to react and that's going to be it we can manipulate them this Playbook I use this Playbook often when I'm playing against people the first time it's been very useful in Stateside wpts up to 3.5 K's and most tournaments in Vegas uh the higher Stakes venations that that's when people start attacking your seabeds a little bit more and obviously wcp 2K isn't higher uh it works great in tournaments up to 200 weekday tournaments in uh online tournaments so online if you're playing Sunday Majors you're fine that if you're playing up to 109s during the weekdays you're fine but those 162 200 daily tournaments that that's where people start attacking you online so I wouldn't use this stuff as much there and again it has to do with the player base if it's a very educated player base which is more rare Than People realize they're going to be attacking cbets quite frequently but the vast majority of even regs that

worth a call because you're getting 6-to-1 pot odds. Those 6-to-1 odds the pot is offering you (excluding bets on the end) are greater than the 4-to-1 odds against your making your hand. However, when there is more than one card to come, you must be very careful in determining your real pot odds. Many players make a classic mistake: They know their chances of improving, let's say, with three cards to come, and they compare those chances to the pot odds they are getting right now. But such a comparison is completely off the mark since the players are going to have to put more money into the pot in future betting rounds, and they must take that money into account. It's true that the chances of making a hand improve greatly when there are two or three cards to come, but the odds you are getting from the pot worsen. Reducing Your Pot Odds With More than One Card to Come Let's say you are playing hold 'em, and after the flop you have a four-flush that you are sure will win if you hit it. There are two cards to come, which improves your odds of making the flush to approximately 1 3 /4-to-l. It is a $10-$20 game with $20 in the pot, and your single opponent has bet $10. You may say, "I'm getting 3-to-1 odds and my chances are l 3 /4-to-l. So I should call." 49 50 Chapter Six However, the 1 3 /4-to-1 odds of making the flush apply only if you intend to see not just the next card, but the last card as well, and to see the last card you will probably have to call not just $ 10 now but also $20 on the next round of betting. Therefore, when you decide you're going to see a hand that needs improvement all the way through to the end, you can't say you are getting, as in this case, 30-to-10 odds. You have to say, "Well, if I miss my hand, I lose $ 10 on this round of betting and $20 on the next round. In all, I lose $30. If I make my hand, I will win the $30 in there now plus $20 on the next round for a total of $50." All of a sudden, instead of 30-to-10, you're getting only 50-to-30 odds, which reduces to l 2 /3-to-l. These are your ef ective odds — the real odds you are getting from the pot when you call a bet with more than one card to come. Since you are getting only 12 /3-to-l by calling a $10 bet after the flop, and your chances of making the flush are 1%-to-l, you would have to throw away the hand, because it has turned into a losing play — that is, a play with negative expectations. The only time it would be correct to play the hand in this situation is if you could count on your opponent to call a bet at the end, after your flush

Alternatively, he could be making a simple probing bet. If he didn't bet, you certainly would have, so he could be making his only play to win the pot. Now you need to figure out a defense against a probe. Note that the texture of the flop was good for you - no cards higher than your pair. It could be better, if three different suits were represented or there was no possible straight draw, but those are small risks. You shouldn't be worried that your opponent stayed with nine-eight or four-trey. It's more likely that he has one of the following five hands. 1. He paired the board. 2. He made a straight. 3. He made a flush draw. 4. He's bluffing because three low cards came. 5. He has a big pair or trips. You've got two choices. You can just call, or make a pot-sized raise, something like $200 or $250. If that bet gets reraised, though, you're up against a big pair or trips, and you're throwing the hand away. The low-risk approach to this pot is just to call, and if your opponent doesn't have anything, you'll find out after fourth street. Action: You call. Pot now $270. Fourth street is A♥. Big blind now checks. Question: What's your play? Answer: The big blind might be setting an elaborate trap, but you should like to go with the simple explanation. He's got a couple of high cards, the flop missed him, and now the ace didn't help him. He's made one play at the pot, but he's unwilling to make a second play for it. So you should bet out, and expect him to fold. Beginners are prone to fall into the trap of assuming that their opponents are totally inscrutable, and every play is part of some convoluted snare. In fact, most bets mean what they appear to mean. Remember this, because it will help you make a lot of money. If the action around the table indicates you have the best hand, then you probably do, and you should bet it accordingly. Resolution: You bet $250, and the big blind folds. 145 Hand 6-12 Situation: Early in a one-table satellite tournament. Your hand: K♥J♠ Action to you: Player A raises to $40. Player B calls. Players C, D, and E all fold. The pot is now $110. Question: Do you fold, call, or raise? Answer: Before you get too excited about your two face cards and your good position, review what just happened. The player under the gun opened with a raise, indicating a strong hand. The player behind him flat called. From the Gap Concept, you need a stronger hand to call a raise than you would to open the pot in the first place. Right now, there's no reason to believe your hand is other than third best. True, you have position, and that's nice, but it isn't enough to compensate for the fact that your hand doesn't belong in this pot in the first place. Throw it away. Action: In fact, you

Payout structure The payout structure refers to how prize money is distributed among players in a tournament. It shows what percentage of the prize pool goes to each finishing position.

um if we do shove here what should the opponent call off with we led the Flop kind of polarized we basically call off with all of our pairs all my pairs are calling off for the most part here just because all our pairs are in pretty good shape we're only folding out pairs that have a kicker that is very disassociated from the board notice a lot of repairs have Pairs and draws all those called interesting to see that like Jack six with a backdoor flush for all calls the Jack six without a back door flush draw folds so the back door Equity is important right back door draws and gut shots and whatnot are very very important notice all the queen six for the most part folds because none of those Queen six off suits have no backdoor flush draw right that said sevens are good enough to call off for the most part interesting to see some sevens Queen Seven and Jack seven actually fold I'm surprised at that but whatever um notice the best eights are gonna call it off eights with back door draws all call it off Ace Jack randomly with all the ace tracks called off for fun notice the threes and the fours are doing a lot of folding right bad straight draws are not particularly good notice the gut shots to the nine are all folding as well those are not gonna be good enough to call against the shove all right what happens if we check instead we are going to check the Flop sum notice we're playing a very mixed strategy here so when we do check we're still gonna have a decently strong range now the low Jack does not get to bed all that often they're only betting 40 of the time and when they do bet it is super polarized this is what a polarized range looks like by the way we're betting all of our best hands that are almost always vulnerable top pair good kicker and better and then we're gonna bet some draws draws here are going to be lots of nines and eights and a bunch of sporadic junk that that has some Equity right notice Aces and Kings check back to hopefully protect the rest of our junkie checking range we're betting Queen's Jacks hands and nines and eights because those are almost always good but vulnerable whereas Aces and kings are way less vulnerable right they have to worry about fewer over cards let's say we do make our small bat notice by the way our big bets are mostly going to be the hands that are most vulnerable so we see tens almost always betting uh 5.5 big lines whereas if we take a hand like eight seven you know it's just a worse hand in general that that hand is going to be mostly betting uh 1.4 big blinds so when you're using the solver it's important to realize that the ranges we bet one 5.5 compared

What is the Game of Poker all About? There are many reasons people play poker. Some play to have fun and socialize, others play for the thrill of running a big bluff or outthinking their opponents, and others play for the glory of winning a tournament, a bracelet, or making a living. Whatever their motivations are, no one plays poker to lose money and so, at their core, all poker players share the same goal (even if they do not realize it) which is to generate and maximize profit! ♦ What is profit? ♦ Profit = opponent mistakes - our mistakes If you play in an environment where most players are simply terrible and play for a lot of money (such as in the golden age of online poker right after the Moneymaker Effect and before Black Friday) you can play quite poorly and still make a lot of money, as long as your opponents play worse than you. In fact, the opposite is also true. You could be the ninth best player in the world but if you made a point to only play against the eight players who are better than you, you will get destroyed. In the current poker ecosystem, exploitative play will still make a lot of money but, as the average player becomes more skilled, the ratio of good players to bad players constantly increases. This leads to smaller edges because vigilant Villains are trying to exploit us at the same time as we are trying to exploit them and we no longer have the luxury of being able to ignore our own game. Many famous “top players” who failed to adapt and improve over the last few years have seen the game pass them by, forcing them to quit or move down because they can no longer beat the games. Of the two components of the profit equation (our mistakes and our opponents’ mistakes) you have little to no control over how your opponents play, other than selecting good games to play. However, you can always work on minimizing your own mistakes. So how do you generate and maximize profit? ♦ Fix leaks in your own game and find what others are doing wrong. ♦ Adjust to exploit them.

The reason for Hero's flop check is not that he thinks c-betting to be -EV . A small c-bet of 2.5BB would only need to work 2.5 / (2.5 + 4.5) = 36% of the time to break even minus a bit for the gutshot draw. This should be very easy to achieve, but a delayed c-bet is a better plan against a player who will have a stronger pre-flop flatting range out of the BB vs. a BU min raise than most and one who is likely to play fit-or-fold on the turn. On the turn, Hero plans to fold to a reasonably sized bet from this Nit, but is now very happy to bet facing Villain's second check, which limits his range considerably. In fact, this Villain is even more

Hand Range 248: HJ vs LJ (25bb) • All-in 1.8% / • 3-bet 4.5% / • Call 7.3% / • Fold 86.4%

expressed odds, the odds that are currently being presented by the pot. Just as important, however, are the implied odds, the odds that will eventually be offered by the pot after all the betting is done. In many hands, the expressed odds will not justify a call, but the implied odds will. In our previous example, for instance, you are drawing at the nut club flush. If you hit that flush, and you have estimated your opponent's hand correctly, you will win. If you miss, you will lose. But if you miss, you won't have to invest any more money in the pot, whereas, if you hit, you may win some more money from your opponent. That's not certain, since the third flush card will be visible on the board, and your opponent may not want to call a large bet. Suppose you believe that he will fold a large bet on the end if the flush card hits, but he will probably call a smaller bet, say one of $500. In that case your implied odds for your call on fourth street would be the $1,500 currently in the pot, plus the extra $500 you could win on fifth street, measured against the $500 required to call, or $2,000-to-$500, which is just 4-to-l. That's about the odds of making your hand, so the call is reasonable (but wrong because he will not always call the bet). To be more precise in your calculation multiply the size of your intended bet by the probability he will call it. The resulting "expected value" of his call should then be added to the pot to get your implied odds. Obviously you should also use this method to determine how much to bet in the first place. Normally you should choose the bet with the higher expected value, though in a tournament you might choose a slightly smaller expected value to get a surer call. In no-limit hold ’em it is often correct to accept slightly unfavorable expressed odds to draw at monster hands that can win all your opponent's chips on the river. This is even more true of 57 potential straights than of potential flushes, since straights are easier to conceal. Hand Analysis Calculating pot odds is a simple enough business. Look at the pot look at the chips required to call, and make some rough adjustments if there could be more action in the hand. Divide one by the other, and you have your pot odds. If pot odds is mostly a science, hand analysis is mostly an art. Here you have to figure out what hands your opponent might be playing that would account for his bets so far, and then how likely each of those hands is, and then figure out how likely you are to beat each of those hands, given the hand you have. At the end of this process, you'll have a probability that you can win the hand. It will necessarily be a rough estimate, based in part on what you know about this opponent in

Thus, you may win a larger pot than you would have otherwise expected. Both the semi-bluff and betting a marginal hand rather than risking giving a worse hand a free card are cases of the general precept that it is usually better to be betting than calling. By betting as a semi-bluff you have a chance of winning the pot right On fourth street an opponent with bets. You've caught the 98 Chapter Eleven there, something you are usually hoping to do, and you have shown greater strength than you really have. If you catch scarylooking cards after you have been called, you are still likely to win pots you wouldn't otherwise have won. When you bet now, your opponent is quite likely to fold. On the other hand, when you don't improve and are caught in a semi-bluff, that can be of value as an advertisement for the future. A final advantage of the semi-bluff, as I suggested in the previous chapter, is that you can sometimes use it to get a free card. Let's say an opponent in hold 'em bets on the flop, and you raise with a four-flush. If that player calls your raise, it is likely he will check to you on fourth street. If you haven't made the flush, you have the option of checking behind him for a free card. Semi-Bluffs and Pure Bluffs A pure bluff is a bet, which, if called, has no chance of winning in a showdown. A semi-bluff is a bet with more cards to come which, if called, is probably not the best hand at the moment but has a reasonable chance of becoming the best hand. Many expert players believe their bluffs should have negative expectation. They see them as a form of advertising that will lead to their being called on other occasions when they do have the best hand. However, I believe pure bluffs should have no worse than zero expectation as I shall explain in more detail in a later chapter. At the same time, I agree that bluffs are an important part of a player's game. If you never bluff, your opponents will always know you have a legitimate hand when you bet. They will be likely to play correctly on the basis of what you have in your hand, which is to their advantage and your disadvantage, according to the Fundamental Theorem of Poker. Since it is correct to bluff occasionally so that you don't give away too much information when you bet with a legitimate hand, the question is when to do it. Clearly, you cannot establish a regular pattern of bluffing. Observant opponents will soon pick it up, and you will be caught bluffing too often to make it profitable. The Semi-Bluff 99 Rather than try to guess when to bluff, especially against tough players, use your cards to randomize your play. {See Chapter Nineteen, "Bluffing and Game Theory.") In early betting rounds, with more cards to come, the most convenient and profitable way to use your cards is to bluff

♦ Call when you hold a hand type B ♦ Raise when you hold a hand type C If your betting range consists only of hands type A, your opponent’s play will be trivial. All they have to do is always fold when you bet. Similar principles apply for the other types of hands. By incorporating different types of hands in your ranges, you make it more difficult for your opponents to consistently make the correct play against you. So, diversity of range increases your informational advantage and makes it so that you can force your opponents into making mistakes. A mistake is defined as a decision they would not have made if they could see your hole cards, not a decision that is bad against your range. This is a different type of mistake that does not happen when you play against a GTO opponent who has perfect knowledge about your strategy. An example of a mistake a non-GTO player could make against your range would be when you have a perfectly polarized range (hands with either 100% or 0% equity) and your opponent goes all-in with a bluff catcher, making your play trivial. You simply call when you have the winning hand and fold the losing hand every time. Giving your range composition, the Villain’s correct play against your range should be to always check, then when you bet, he has to call with some frequency depending on your bet-sizing. Sometimes Villain will call and lose when you are value-betting and sometimes, Villain will fold when you are bluffing. This is the type of mistake you can force a GTO player to make even when they have perfect information about your range composition. Strong ranges are ranges where the informational advantage is very valuable and that is when the Villain’s correct play varies drastically depending on what part of your range you are holding at that specific time. Let’s recall the solution of the clairvoyance toy game with $100 stacks and a pot of $100. The EV of the game for P1 is $75. Thinking about this game from an informational standpoint, P1 has perfect information, as the opponent’s range is exactly one hand, KK, and P2 has the worst amount of information possible. They know Villain has equal probability of having two hands and the correct action when facing a bet is the complete opposite depending on which of those hands Villain holds.

both) calls, you can flat-call too, but for a very different reason. In this case, you’re not just calling, you’re overcalling and that’s a clear signifier of strength. No obvious draws on the board means your opponents won’t think you’re drawing when you call. Your opponents also won’t think you’re calling to float, a play generally reserved for heads-up situations. So they’ll have to figure you for a real hand, one you’re willing to pit against two players. No need to raise, as your call already signals enough strength for you to take control of the hand on theturn. If the action on the turn goes check, check to you, you bet against the two opponents. This plays differently than heads-up, where if it’s checked toyou on the turn, you’re supposed to check behind. Your call on the flop indicated such strength that you’re not likely to get bluffed, and only the strongest hands will likely check-raise you here. In other words, by overcalling on the flop, you leverage the traffic. In their view, you can’t be on a draw, you’re probably not overcalling with a crappy ace, and you’re likely not floating. That all adds up to a good ace or better, so a check-raise on the turn from any of them means they can beat that. Good news: You don’t risk folding the best hand. If one player folds and one calls, play the river with caution, checking behind if it’s checked to you. After all, that caller has something, right? And he’s unlikely to fold the river once he calls you on the turn. If he leads into you, take a read. If you think the bet is defensive, meant to minimize hisloss with a hand he’s unsure of, you can easily call, or raise if you believe he’ll fold AK or better in this situation. If you think the bet is real, decide whether you think you have the better hand enough of the time to warrant a call. For example, if the bet offers you 3-to-1 from the pot, do you believeyou’ll win with your AQ here at least 25% of the time? If yes, call. If no, fold. If you bet the turn, both players call, then player A bets out on the river and player B calls, lean strongly toward folding. I mean, seriously, what on Earth can you beat here? A crazy player betting AT into two people on the river and another wacko calling with worse than that? That seems like a stretch, no? If player A checks and player B bets, flat-call. IfA check-raises, you have an easy fold. IfA bets and B folds, take a read whether the bet is defensive, then follow the same thinking as above. Let’s say the action isn’t checked to you on the turn after your overcall on the flop. Instead, player A bets and player B folds. Now, just play the hand as if you’re heads-up. Lean toward a raise, but call if you think the river bet will be meaningful enough to trigger an

anything, then it would be ridiculous to 3-bet a strong hand for value like AKo, fold a mediocre hand like QJs and then 3-bet a bad hand like 75s as a bluff. Instead Hero would 3-bet some of the mediocre hands along with the good hands and then fold the weaker hands. This is no longer a polar strategy. Have a look at Figure 52 below for a visual representation of what's going on here.

and we’ve already determined that those are easier to execute successfully. Let’s look closer. Certainly, the most obvious of this type of situation is when, in a hand that saw the flop multi-way, the action on the flop goes bet, fold, fold, to you. Now you’re just back to the heads-up situation and, especially if the original bettor had the pre-flop lead and could be c-betting, you can call with air here, betting on the turn if it’s checked to you or maybe raising if it’s bet and you feel your opponent is vulnerable to folding the best hand. Nowyou’re not bluffing a multi-way pot, but rather a formerly multi-way pot that’s now heads-up. It’s not as if the action went bet, call, call, and you’retrying to bluff three people off their hands (which, except with strong suicidal tendencies, you wouldn’t want to try). You can try this float even with players to act behind you, either if only one player is left or if multiple players yet to act have already shown weakness. Let’s say you’re in a four-way pot in the cutoff. Player A bets, B folds, and now it’s up to you. With only one player left to act behind you, you could try flat-calling weak; if D folds, you’re nowperfectly set up for a float. And your call will trigger a couple of good reactions. First, it’ll be difficult for D to call; he has to overcall you and, as we know, that requires greater strength. This makes it more likely that D will just go away. Meanwhile, it’s hard for player A to figure you for a float, since you called, even though you had D still had to act behind you. Player A credits you for more strength than you have, increasing his likelihood of laying down on later streets. So not only does your flat-call put you into a heads-up in-position situation, it telegraphs great strength to your one remaining opponent, at the lowest possible cost to you. Sweet, huh? You can also make this kind of play if multiple players are left to act, but they’ve already shown weakness. If you’re on the button in a four-way pot and players A and B check to C who bets, you can float-call there; A and B have already indicated their lack of interest in the hand. Thus, you can treat the hand as functionally heads-up before the action even gets to you (with your scary, strength-signifying flat-call decreasing A and B’s interest that much more). You can make this play out of position as well, though it’s harder. Let’s say you’re in first position and check. Player B checks, C bets, and D folds. You could flat-call to float, knowing B has already shown weakness and will likely fold if you call. As you’ll usually get around 3-to-1 to call in that spot, you need to believe your bluff will work only 25% of the time to break even on the play. The last way to leverage what look to be heads-up situations in multi-way

Diagram 36 No Donk Bet Flops (0%-10%) The vast majority of flops belong to this category. Pretty much all flops that were not included in any of the other groups. In general, this means trips, monotone, high card paired, disconnected two-tone, HXX and AXX flops are bad donk betting flops. In general, this group of flops are bad for the BB, providing an average of 39% equity and low EQR of 76%, for an average EV of 30% of the pot. On these boards, IP’s range is so strong that OOP is forced to check with a high frequency, for an average donk bet frequency of about 1%. OOP’s range is so weak that it doesn’t have enough strong hands compared to IP to be able to split this range so, for the most part, removing the option to donk bet on these kinds of flops does not reduce BB’s EV too significantly. Playing a 100% checking frequency is recommended.

the joker and dealt. I passed. The next four players passed, making five in all. The drummer, the sixth player, opened with a $5 bet. Monty came out roaring with a $15 raise. I called. Monty showed no signs of annoyance though I knew he hadn't planned for more than one player to draw against him. The drummer called, which was according to Monty's plan. I drew one card. 'Flushing, kid?' Monty said pleasantly. I didn't answer. I never talked while playing poker except to announce my bet and the showdown. I was afraid that my voice would crack; in this case, I was sure it would if I opened my mouth. The drummer took three cards. Monty said, 1 play these,' meaning he was standing pat. The drummer, after a peek at his cards, checked. Without a moment's hesitation Monty bet $50 - but not as boldly, I thought, as before. It was obvious to him that I had backed in the pot and was drawing to a straight or a flush. He was certainly taking me for a sucker. I had learned early never to risk money drawing one card to a straight or a flush unless there was in the pot at least five times the amount of the bet. When Monty bet $50 I raised him $100.1 didn't have a thing but I was playing it safe, I thought, with Monty betting right-handed. I felt sure he was standing pat on a bust. I wasn't concerned too much about the drummer who had checked. Even if he had helped his hand, he would hesitate to call, with me taking one card and raising. The drummer showed his openers of two kings and folded. Monty shook his head sadly. 'You lucky little bastard,' he said and threw in his hand. 'Imagine drawing one card with all that money at stake.' I tossed my hand in the discards and drew in the pot with trembling hands. I got up and cashed in. I had more than my original stake of $250. I was shivering with excitement, and I huddled around the fire which Dummy had lighted in the early hours as if the warmth of the stove would stop the shivers. It was too late to go to school so I sat down to watch the play. I had fallen asleep when I heard Monty's fist bang the table. Here he goes again, 1 thought, but when I looked, 1 saw him using his left hand to bet. He wasn't bluffing this time, I reflected. As the play was recaptured later, Monty had used the same tactics on the drummer he had tried on me and then later on both me and the drummer - raising and standing pat. But now the circumstances were different. Monty was betting with his left hand. It seems that the drummer had opened with the usual bet and Monty raised with the drummer staying and drawing three cards. Monty, as before, stood pat. The drummer made aces up and checked to trap Monty, for

He had gotten fairly proficient and decided he liked it more than his studies. So at the age of 20, Todd started his career as a pro. It soon became apparent that he had the skills to win. When he was 21, Todd won first-place at the $200,000 main-event in the Diamond Jim Brady tournament at the Bicycle Club in Los Angeles. It was the first of nine career wins in big tournaments. Todd had an uncanny ability to remember things, even as a young child. I’ve always thought that a poker player’s greatest gift is the ability to recall past hands and events, and I’m sure that his amazing knack for vividly remembering the past has helped him a lot. Allow me to exercise my bragging rights by telling you a little story about Todd. I always knew that he was a great hold’em player, but he supported my belief in spades this past year in the two biggest games I’ve ever heard of. A brilliant businessman came to Vegas to challenge the world’s best poker players. It was clear to me that his strategic capabilities extended beyond business and into poker. He wanted to play so high that his poker challengers needed to pool their money just to accommodate him. For ten days this wealthy executive battled different players to a standstill, a very rare feat for someone who doesn’t practice day-in and day-out. We were all impressed. Then Todd sat down to play him heads-up in a “friendly little game” of $50,000-$100,000 Texas hold’em. On the first day of their two-day match, Todd won $7 million. He slipped a little bit on the second day, tallying only $6.5 million more. I’m certain this game will become a part of poker folklore. Todd’s winnings in that Texas hold’em game were over $20 million. He also 223 plays daily in the world’s largest ongoing poker game, in which he is one of the most consistent winners. But, although his strengths at hold’em are unquestionable, his insights into seven-card stud eight-or-better are perhaps even more remarkable. That’s why I’ve chosen him to write this chapter. There’s no doubt in my mind that you’ll be hearing the Brunson name in poker for years after I’m gone. INTRODUCTION Seven-card stud high-low split eight-or-better to qualify for low, commonly known as eight-or-better, is found in home games and casinos throughout the world. In seven-card stud, each player is dealt three cards to start, two down and one up. This first upcard is called the doorcard. There is a round of betting, then three more upcards are dealt to each player with a round of betting following each card. Each player then receives his final card, known as seventh street or the river, which is dealt facedown. A final round of betting follows. Throughout this chapter, I’ll use examples to identify each player’s cards. The first two cards shown will be the players initial two hole cards and the next one, two, three or four cards are the upcards. A final seventh card will either be

like 3 000 chips and that's a disaster too so so we're like king jack i bet small i try to target pocket eights pocket sevens those types of hands what if he had a queen with a queen i'd bet small sometimes and then i'd bet like medium to largest like twelve thousand ten thousand something like that to target like king x pocket jacks type hands so let's take a look here really quick uh button cutoff hijack low jack big blind single raised pot uh board is king five king five queen yeah i don't go for the bet three bet very much because people with value because people don't raise enough so i don't think it's that worthwhile it's great with your medium straight fans yeah i mean i i wouldn't be surprised if this villain had a flush here like makes some sense to check back with like seven six of clubs on the flop or something i don't think it's unreasonable they probably should just bet range but people don't we check you see you're like they're supposed to always bet they don't that's fine it's gonna make the sim a little bit weird but if you see here like there's some like non-zero checks here with flushes and stuff for sure like it's kind of gonna be a weird sim because they check back so they don't like check much but it will work out here turn deuce of clubs yeah you rolled a small number so we check a lot here here's queen five we mostly bet um you know here's like some we we bluff i'm not gonna look like spend too much time here here's a king we bet small so we've got like five big blinds here perfect they got our bet size here he calls rivers the queen of hearts please check queen five damn it i guess we're not getting enough value bets i don't know let's see here any full houses here that check here's pocket fives all right similar hand here pocket fives checking um so with fives it's kind of nice because we unblock the queen right we unblock the queen so make it more likely as a queen here's uh what's another one pocket deuces we check a lot with deuces um here's like king x so we got small with like king jack king 10 king nine uh the really big bets come from like flushes so like i would do this with nine four clubs i don't feel comfortable check raising nine four clubs here yeah it's like 33 150 this is kind of stupid like these sizings but like when we check here like you see here there's not a lot of fl like there's some flushes here for sure and there's some queen x here so like as we put more queen x in the range here and we put more flushes in the range here checking becomes very very very viable like i'm fine with my answer to like check

Bet-Sizing for Information Betting or raising “for information” is a popular tactic among many poker players, particularly unschooled ones. They see betting primarily as a way to find out “where they’re at,” and they don’t really think about the value of the information compared to what they pay for it. Information has value only if it • Is specific and accurate. • Allows you to make more profitable decisions now or in the future. Obviously, there are shades of gray. Perfectly specific and accurate infor- mation is the best, but in poker that’s usually only a pipe dream. Information that is highly reliable, though, is generally worth a lot more than merely sugges- tive information. That is, knowing that your opponent has either pocket aces, pocket kings, or ace-king is likely far more valuable than simply knowing that he has a “good hand, probably.” The former information may be worth paying something (or taking on extra risk) to get. The latter probably isn’t. The information also has to allow you to make more profitable decisions now or in the future. If you have pocket aces in the big blind, and your opponent moves all-in, how much would you pay to see your opponent’s hand before calling? Hopefully nothing, since you’re calling no matter what you see. The information is perfectly specific and accurate, but it won’t allow you to make a more profitable decision, so it’s worthless. Quantifying the Value of Information Sometimes you can put a specific price tag on what information is worth. For instance, say, instead of pocket aces in the big blind, you have pocket kings. Now it’s worth something if your opponent shows before you call, as you can fold if you see aces. Say your opponent has raised $100 all-in, and you think (correctly) that she would do this with pocket aces through nines, ace-king, and ace-queen. With kings, you’re calling against every hand except aces. When she has aces, you’re roughly a 4.5-to-1 dog, so calling costs you $64 (assuming, for simplicity, that 52

Diagram 17: Risk Premium Returning to our 10-person SNG example, as we saw in Table 39, the BN who is the chip leader with 6,000 chips can go all-in with any two cards. I mentioned that according to ICM, the blinds are forced to call with very tight ranges because of the money bubble. In fact, after the BN goes all-in with 100% hands the SB, who is the second stack with 1,800 chips, has a calling range of only AA-TT. If the SB folds, then the BB has a calling range of only AA-88, AKs, and AQs. Let’s calculate the cEV of the BB’s call with AKo against the BN’s all-in, assuming the SB has already folded, based on the equities in Table 40.

a bluff. Now here comes the turn card, and it’s … whatever, since you weren’t calling to hit your hand, anyway. Your opponent checks. Now you can bet about half the pot, or 1,000, what a real hand would bet there. Total investment for the hand so far: 1,500. If he folds here, you won his 500 flop bet for 1,500 rather than 1,800. Greatest gain for the smallest price. As a bonus, you got to see your opponent act twice. More information for less outlay. Can you see how much better this is than just barfing all your chips into the pot on the flop? Of course, you might get check-raised on the turn and have to fold. But that’s okay; you won’t forfeit a pot you could have won at showdown. Remember that the reason you don’t like to bet just one pair on the turn is that if you get check-raised, you might be folding the best hand, a wholepot mistake. When you’re bluffing, you never fade that mistake. Remember also that your half-pot bet on the turn has to work only 33% of the time tobreak even. Considering the weakness your opponent has shown, that doesn’t seem like such a high bar to jump over, does it? At times, of course, your opponent won’t obligingly check to you on the turn. Suppose he leads into you again. If you read him for strength on thesecond bet and have to bail on your bluff, it still ends up being cheaper than if you’d raised on the flop. You’re out of the hand for a mere 500, your call on the flop, instead of the 1,800-2,000 it would’ve cost you to raise, get re-raised, and find out you can’t win. Even better, where you’d have to fold your bluff to a re-raise on the flop, you don’t necessarily need to surrender when your opponent fires againinto your float. Though you’d prefer the action to go bet, call on the flop, then check, bet, fold on the turn, you can still consider bluff-raising into that second barrel, if you think your opponent is vulnerable. The bluff-raise on the turn tells the story of a super-strong hand, one that trap-called on theflop to raise the turn, the kind of line you’d take with made hands like top pair, two pair, or a set. If you sense enough weakness when your opponent bets the turn, you can raise on a stone-cold bluff. This isn’t a play you make every time, so feel free, if it makes you more comfortable, to save it for situations where you’re semi-bluffing and might yet make your hand. For instance, let’s say you hold a hand like QJ on a K-T-2 board. You opponent leads into you on the flop and you just call. Now the turn is a deuce or some card that doesn’t help either you or the board. Your opponent leads into you again, but you read weakness. Your bluff-raise tells a hugely strong story. If your read is right, you win; if not, you

THE CONCEPTS 169 The turn is the A♣. You check, and your opponent checks. The river is the 2♢. Since your opponent called on the flop, she probably had at least something at that point. She may have flopped a pair, or she could have flopped one of several possible draws. It’s also possible either that she flopped nothing or that she slowplayed two pair or a set. When you checked the turn, and she checked behind when an ace came, that sequence supported the possibility that your opponent held either a draw or a modest pair. The river obviously didn’t complete any draws, so if she held a draw on the turn, her hand is now busted (though likely still better than yours). But it’s also quite likely that she holds a modest pair (now two pair). Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that she has a 60 percent chance of having a modest two pair, a 20 percent chance of having a busted draw, a 10 percent chance of having “nothing,” and a 10 percent chance of having trip deuces or better. If you bet, you think she’ll call roughly 70 percent of the time (when she has a modest two pair and when she has trips or better). You also think she’ll bluff-raise occasionally with her “nothing” hands and busted draws. Given these percentages, you decide that a bluffbet wouldn’t be profitable. So you check. She bets $50 (into the $90 pot). Now the scene has changed completely. The fact that she bet helps you narrow down her hand range con- siderably. Specifically, she would be far more likely to check her modest two pair hands, hoping to win a showdown, rather than bet them. So the fact that she bet means that she probably either has trips or better (10 percent overall) or she has “nothing” (30 percent, overall). If she’s a frequent bluffer, she could easily have nothing now the majority of the time! A small check-raise (say $70 more to $120) will leave you betting $120 to win $140. If you’re right, and she’s bluffing the majority of the time that she bets, then your check-raise bluffis profitable while a bet-out bluffwouldn’t have been. In fact, even if our assumption that she’d rarely bet modest two pair hands is somewhat wrong, she’ll often fold those hands anyway to the check-raise. It’s counterintuitive, but true: Sometimes a check- raise bluffwill be profitable when a bet bluffisn’t. Concept No. 11: A big bet is the most relevant and accurate infor- mation available. When reasonable players make extremely big bets on the turn or river, and you’re trying to figure out what i they have, all information from the past takes a backseat to the fact that they’ve made a big bet. That is, don’t think along the lines of, “There’s no way he could have seven- four. After all, he raised preflop, and he’s as tight a player as they come.” Once the big bet comes out, if seven-four makes a big hand, then he very possibly

Re-raise To raise after there has already been a raise on the current street. Interchangeable with "3-bet" but is generally only used in regard to post-flop play.

so let's take a look here at King 72 versus King Queen 10 LoJack versus big blind again thinking about ranging activity of the opponent's range on King 7-2 if they don't have a king of seven or a two they're pretty unhappy right and they're gonna have a really difficult time continue against any bad so the scenario we see that we're using mostly very very tiny bets whereas on king queen 10 now we are using bigger bets in general I mean we have tiny best as well but we also are using a large chunk of 60 pop bats on the king queen 10 because if you think about on king queen 10 the opponent could easily have a pair which is pretty good they could have a jack which is pretty good or an ace or nine which is also pretty good whenever a lot of their range is pretty good that leads to you betting using bigger sizes next stack depth stack depth essentially determines your stack off threshold which is the point at which a hand becomes happy enough to get all the money in right away for Simplicity it makes the proportionally weaker hands count as the knots for example if you have pocket tens on eight seven four you're more than happy to get your money in 20 big lines deep but if you're playing 75 big blinds deep that may not be the case right so essentially when you're playing 20 big blinds deep pocket tenses the knots or the effective knots on 874 but it is not the effect of nuts whenever you're playing very deep stacked so your stack off threshold determines which type of hands are included in the idea of nut advantage and the deeper stacked you are the more nutted a hand must be to determine if it actually is counted as part of you are not range here's a very clear example of this where we are looking at an 854 board with a flush draw in this scenario 40 big lines deep you see that we're actually betting pretty frequently here over half the time 50 55 and hands like pocket tens and nines are just betting big sixty percent pot every time is trying to get money into the pots these hands are very happy to play a big pot we're also betting a lot of our nines and over Pairs and whatnot just very happy to get the money in and the reason we get to bet using a kind of big size is because all of those hands count as part of the nut Advantage but if you look at when we're playing just a little bit deeper 75 big lines deep you'll see now we are betting tiny 25 pot with the vast majority of our range and that's because now all these over pairs don't really count as the nuts because if you look at our range first off we don't really have seven six suited whenever we're raising a little

Diagram 56: Big Bet-size: Average Flop Equity Buckets In general, when a big bet-size is used by IP, the BB has the most depolarized range with about 4-5% strong hands and a higher number of good hands, 19-36%. When a small bet-size is used, the BB has 7-9% strong hands (twice as many strong hands) and a lower number of good hands, 20-27%. So, IP sizes up when OOP has many hands that can potentially call the flop, and sizes down when OOP potentially has more raising hands.

42BB with an overbet 75-80BB left behind. In a 3-bet pot there is no such issue and Hero's sizing, especially that of his flop c-bet, can be far smaller and still allow for the full amount to go in by the river. A bet of just 9BB here would create a pot of 36BB on the turn, which is very easy to work with in setting up a river shove. In this hand, the hole cards are again marked with the sacred Xs that indicate that it's Hero's range and not any single part of it that will be the focus of our attention. Smaller c-bet sizing of around half pot is actually very agreeable to both Hero's light c-bets and his value c-bets. The former are always keen to decrease their RFE and make bluffing more profitable, while the latter are happy with any sizing that allows the money to go in over three streets. On wetter boards and vs. weaker opposition it can sometimes be better to build a bigger pot earlier with value hands since urgency of value is of higher importance and balance of lower importance. On a board this dry though, and against a Reg, all of Hero's c-bet range is comfortable betting 9BB. Remember that a linear 3-betting strategy is usually advisable SB vs. BU since Hero doesn't want a flatting range by default unless he knows that BB rarely squeezes. This means that Hero will have an overpair much more often on this flop than Villain will and Hero's overcards will often dominate Villain's. This equates to significant range advantage for Hero. Villain will struggle to stop a half pot c-bet being +EV with any part of Hero's range. After all, it only has to succeed 33% of the time minus equity adjustment to break even (See Figure 23) Hero bets 9BB. It doesn't really matter what Hero has in this spot. A 9BB bet with his whole range is sensible and hard to exploit. This does not mean, however, that this strategy is always best. If Hero had reason to think Villain was unbalanced in some respect, then he could of course deviate from this plan. Against opponents who stab a lot of flops (have high Float Flop stats) Hero should develop a checking range and frequently check/call the flop. Against Villains who float (not the same as above) the flop relentlessly he could check/fold some hands and exploit them by betting a more value heavy range. The list goes on. In summary, the main lesson here is that 3-bet pots are often more c-bettable than single raised pots as smaller sizing will always improve the RFE of light c-bets and there's no downside to this. There is no part of Hero's range that suffers from the pot growing more slowly. C-Betting Light We should already be experts on these decisions in single raised pots due to reading Chapter 4. It's now time to apply our knowledge to 3-bet pots. As we saw from the last hand, the following will be true.

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

Donk bet Any bet made by a player before the previous street aggressor has had an opportunity to act. A donk bet can only be made by a person out of position relative to the last aggressor on the previous street.

straight draws (eight outs). Note: Here is a word of caution about straight draws. If a flush is already possible, you might be drawing dead, or at the very least have lost two of your wins (as these cards put a four-card flush on the board). So, as a general rule, it is incorrect to draw to a straight when a flush is already possible. Also, the mere presence of a flush draw reduces the value of straight draws, as you are faced with the possibility that 25 percent of the cards that fill your straight might make someone else a flush. If two flush draws are on the board, only half your outs are totally “clean.” This is often enough to make folding the correct play, unless the pot is very large. Tip # 35 of 52 You can avoid numerous dangerous situations on the turn in multiway pots. This tip identifies and discusses common situations that can burn up your chips if you’re not careful. We hope it will allow you to navigate better through some rough waters. These points pertain to multiway pots, those involving four or more players. Playing Second Pair When Someone Bets In a pot with several players, one of whom is betting, it usually takes more than second pair to get the money. So, throw this hand away. You have only five cards to improve (meaning only about one in nine times will the river card rescue you), and there are no guarantees that even making two pair or trips will be enough. Your two-pair card may make someone else a straight or a flush. Staying in With Top Pair When Others Are Betting and Raising Your play here depends upon a few factors: your knowledge of how the bettor and raiser play, the texture of the board, and your kicker. • First, if the raiser is a very tight player, he can almost certainly beat top pair. If he has a set, you are drawing dead. • Second, if there is significant action with a board containing a straight or flush possibility, it is likely one of those hands has been made. Top pair won’t win in this case, either. • Finally, if you don’t trust the raiser to have a big hand, and the board is not all that threatening, you should examine the strength of your kicker. For example, suppose there has been a bet and a raise on the turn and the board is A-J-9-5. If your hand is A-6, you have an easy fold. However, A-K might be the best hand here. Against opponents capable of raising with any ace, you would be folding the best hand too often if you muck your A-K. Staying in With Top Pair Against an Overcard on the Turn When you hold top pair on the flop, an overcard comes on the turn, and someone else bets, most of the time this action is an indication that you just got outdrawn. Assuming this is the case, you are now left with second pair, analogous