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very condensed on this wet board when they raise versus a c bet to these type of value hands and just a little comparison here of the range makeup when an opponent calls so on the dry board we can see that looking at the green and yellow quadrants here 72 percent of villains continuing range is in the green and yellow quadrants which are trash backdoor flush draws gut shots and pairs less than top that is a massive massive amount of villains range that is very weak right so this means villains call on a dry board this is loose right when villains range looks like this that is a loose range then we look at the wet board call versus c-bet we can see just a comparison of the green so just a comparison of the green um quadrants here less trash and gunshot type hands less top pairs less than top and then a bunch of top pair we kicker top pair good kicker two pairs and sets so just the more red you see is the more value in villains range the more red tones so this red and then orange and then over here this red and this orange range makeup of villains when they raise on dry boards versus sea bets and then on wet boards versus sea bets so again top pair good kicker when they raise on a dry board versus a c bet we have 42 or we have 11 um top pair good kicker and then over here hands that are better than top pair good kicker that raise i guess we have actually we have 25 28 here value quadrant and then over here we have straight sets two pair over pair top pair good kicker that's going to be in the 40 45 percent um yeah 45 top hair good kicker plus when villains raise on wet boards compared to 28 percent my math is correct yeah 28 percent on dry board so raises on wet boards weight are tighter more value heavy than raises on dry boards which again you know makes intuitive sense right we can intuitively understand that villains on dry boards when they raise us they just have less value in their range it's harder to have good hands on wet boards easier to have good hands raises on wet boards tend to be tighter in their construction now we have some villain specific data points right so pay close attention to every hand even ones you aren't in lines and bet sizings used by your opponents are worth their weight in gold why are historical villain specific data points worth their weight in gold why are they so valuable they're tells they give us indicators as to how tight or how loose villains ranges are and then we get to make exploitative decisions against our opponents based on that information i have a poor soul here that i have found some hands that he played this is the same exact villain that plays both

two cards, feeling that the chance of winning the pot outright more than compensates for the poor position they'll be in when someone calls. My approach is a little different. I want to have some kind of a hand, in case I get called or raised and have to play the hand down. King-jack suited meets my minimum requirements for this situation, so I was comfortable making my move. As expected, the first player folded, as did the second, third, and fourth player in line. The only problem came from the button, who went all-in. He had me covered (his stack was bigger than mine) so his raise was the size of my remaining stack, which was $8,200. So the total pot at this point was $14,000. ($300 from the blinds, plus $1,500 from the five calls, plus my $2,000 bet, plus his $2,000 call plus his $8,200 raise = $14,000.) I needed to shove in my last $8,200 to win the $14,000 that's out there, which were odds of about 7-to-4. I did have some information about the player on the button. He had gone all-in before in several situations where he might have been bluffing, and in each case the other player had laid down his hand. I'd also seen him make normal bets, showing down reasonable hands when called. Since you only get so many reasonable hands over the course of a few hours, it was certainly possible that this all-in bet was a move of his rather than a legitimate bet. I also noticed that he started to move his cards to the center of the table as the hand developed, then pulled his cards back as he saw everyone folding in front of him. That's the sort of involuntary nervous mistake that indicates a player expected others to move in, but now realizes he might be able to steal a pot. I reasoned that I was probably facing one of three hands: 1. Ace-x. 42 2. A small pair. 3. A total bluff (two cards lower than mine). I was unlikely to be facing a high pair, since those hands had a mandatory raise before the flop. If I was up against ace-x , I was about a 6-to-5 underdog in the hand (unless x was a king, queen, or jack). If I was up against a small pair, I was about a 11-to-10 underdog. And against a sheer bluff, I was about a 2-to-l favorite. In each of these cases, the pot was offering me better odds than I needed to call, so I called. My opponent showed 7♠ 6♣ so my read on his move was correct. I had a nervous moment when the flop came 7♥ 5♦ 4♥ but I caught a King on the river to stay alive in the tournament. Example Hand No. 2. My next example shows a hand with three players in action, all observing each other. Notice how each player needs to see the table through the eyes of the other players in order to draw the right conclusions.

THE HAMMER OF FUTURE BETS 41 having the best hand, however. It means usually having the best hand, but bluffing sometimes as well, and mixing the two up in such a way so that you lose no matter what you do. If you fold, sometimes you’ll have been bluffed out, and if you call, usually you’ll be paying offa better hand. Neither play wins for you. If you call the $500 and check the river, you do so praying that your tough opponent checks behind you. Say she does check behind, and you win. Great, except you won only $1,000 for your trouble — the $500 originally in the pot and the $500 turn bet. You had to risk your whole stack, $3,000, for the chance to win that $1,000. Reverse implied odds forced you to put $3,000 at risk for the chance to win $1,000. That’s why the hammer of future betting is so powerful. If your opponent had been all-in on the turn, you’d have been in a much stronger position, even if the all-in bet had been $1,000 instead of $500. If she had bet $1,000 all-in, you would be getting straight $1,500-to-$1,000 or 3-to-2 odds to call. With money behind, however, you are in a sense laying odds, risking a lot to win a little. Final Thoughts When you possess the hammer, you take advantage of it by betting weak hands before the last round when you think your opponent’s hand is mediocre. On the other hand, you avoid using the hammer if you think it will hurt you. In practice, this means that with a deep stack and a good hand you should often check the turn against a player you think has a weak hand. A player with a weak hand is likely to fold to a turn bet, fearing “the hammer” of a river bet. However, if you check the turn, he might well pay offa river bet.

your bet with a real hand as a bet with not much of one. This is why you must bet your super-strong and semi-strong hands the same way—to keep your opponents from getting a tight line on your play and toinduce huge mistakes. If you don’t bet, you reduce the chances of anyone bluffing on the turn. Four players remain in the pot and no one likes to bluff into heavy traffic. And even if someone does lead bluff on the turn, it’ll only be for, again, 1,000, when you would have gotten 3,500 or 4,000 by inducing the checkraise bluff on the flop. When They Take the Lead Away Now let’s look at what happens when we have position in a multi-way pot, we raise pre-flop, and someone bets into us on the flop. To start off with, that’s a little unusual. In a multi-way pot, the natural flow is still to check to the raiser, albeit slightly less so than in a heads-up pot, where it is just about automatic. So take a breath before you proceed. Anytime anything is out of the natural flow of the game, that’s a good time to take a moment and figure out what’s going on. To figure out what’s going on here, start by considering where the bet is coming from. If it’s coming from player C, the player immediately to your right, you can read it as a weak attempt to pick the pot up, since a huge hand will tend to try to trap you. Pocket jacks would bet here; so would a bad ace, just to find out where they’re at—textbook weak leads. In this case and in a lot of cases that follow, I suggest you play this situation as if you’re heads-up. When the action goes check, check, and the player to your right bets, it’s as if you are heads-up in that moment. We know that heads-up in position against a weak lead, we’re just calling behind when we have a huge hand, so that the weak lead has a chance to makeanother mistake on the turn. The good news for flat-calling behind a weak lead multi-way is that you don’t discourage players A or B from trying something tricky if they’re so inclined. In their eyes, player C’s bet looks like an assumption that players A and B have nothing, thus an attempt to bluff into the pre-flop raiser. Your call behind looks somewhat weak as well and if player A or B was planning all along to check-raise, or gets that bright idea to squeeze right now, your flat-call builds a nice fat pot. It’s worth noting that a flat-call behind one player feels very strong, but the same flat-call in a multi-way pot feels weaker; you have so much trafficbehind you to deal with, you’re probably waiting to see what they do, right? So here’s a case—and you’ll see this over and over again in this book—where your correct action remains the same from one situation to the next, but the impact it has

which is pretty wide right so that allows you to three bet much wider yourself but again you're not going nuts you're not three betting every suited Ace you're not three betting Ace n off suit or pocket threes or 87 suited these hands just go right into the muck none of your opponents are going to do this they're going to play far too loose and you know what they're all going to lose if you make regular consistent blunders like a lot of your opponent will do in small and medium six games you're going to get crushed tip number four three bet often versus arrays again many players do not three betat often enough here we have a few charts I know that it's a little bit small on your end here we have a lowjack strategy which would be under the gun if we were playing six-handed versus a raise from under the gun e-hand here we have the hijack which is the position to the left of the lowjack versus a lowjack raise and here we have button versus a cut raise so you see these ranges get looser because the initial razor and the uh player yet to act are loose are in later positions as we go this way so let's take a look at lowjack versus Under the Gun notice not a whole lot of calling the hands that are calling are actually all really good and for that reason this is a spot where you got to play super tight because again under the gun should have a very strong range but also there are a lot of players yet to act who could easily wake up with a strong hand and put you in a miserable spot by three betting right you don't really want to call with Jack n Suited get three bet by somebody yet to act or four bet by the initial razor then you just have to fold immediately right so we see a pretty good amount of three betting most players do not three bet the king 10 suited the ace for suited the ace eight suited the king queen suited most people call or three bet king queen off suit Ace Shack off suit Etc and that's just a mistake here we have highjack versus a lowjack raise a pretty similar range because assuming your opponents are playing relatively tight strategies because they should if there's a rake in the cash game this is a spot where they they just can't get out of line and if they can't get out of line you in turn can't get out of line now look again you may want to play a little bit looser if your opponents are not going to format enough or if they're raising too wide but you can't get too crazy maybe you three bet a little bit more than this or maybe you call a little bit more than this but not much more here we have about as Loose as you

one of the most common things I hear from players is that shortstack poker is just bingo and that is absolutely not true I actually made a class discussing this exact concept for my members of poker coaching premium discussing this so check it out question is can we discuss stack size adjustments when we are late in tournaments and the average stack is 10 to 15 big blinds okay kind of a weird scenario but it does come up since we are all dealing with small stacks how do we further adjust for this without it being a shove fest how would you recommend to play small top pairs well we'll get in there maybe again if you all can hear me please let me know I need someone to type something in and there goes let's discuss the actual question because it's not actually very clearly defined so are we in or out of position what is the board what are the ranges right you always want to be asking yourself in these scenarios what is the actual question what are we trying to figure out and this was like that this questions me almost read of someone like complaining about the fact that many small and medium stakes tournaments do end up being 10 to 20 big line poker at least for some of the players of the table who are shallow stacked and a lot of people want to cry since we're dealing with small sex how do we further just without being at a shove fast anyone someone says something like shout faster bingo a poker or whatever it makes me immediately think they are not very skilled at playing shallow sacks so the next question may be kind of think the same thing well how do we recommend playing small top pairs that doesn't matter how do we play our range a range is what matters this got me to thinking about um well we'll get here in a second essentially I don't think most people are aware of what game theory optimal shallow stacked ranges look like so I've been spending today making them for all of you isn't they're not available yet but they will be available in the very near future they'll be included on poker coaching somewhere so look for those so let's talk about the various scenarios out of position as the caller position as the caller at a position as a razor in position is the razor right because there are many spots and all that really does define how you're going to be playing these scenarios so in general you should play a has discussed in the poker coaching homework you've done plenty of those all of that logic still applies except for you tend to want to have a little bit fewer drawers when you are talking about putting your whole stack and and very often you will be putting a whole stack in post flop so from out of position as the preflop caller when is that

Thus, SB is not caught holding as much dead weight that must fold despite the alluring pot odds. This is less true when the original raise comes from the CO, because SB’s range overall is much weaker. Facing a late position raise, they had more incentive to squeeze the first time around , except at the very deepest stack sizes. Consequently, they have very few hands strong enough to stand up to two strong ranges – none at all, with 30bb stacks. Things are a bit less bleak for SB if it’s the BTN who calls the squeeze. They still don’t overcall much, but the BTN’s call is less intimidating than the CO’s. What Do These Ranges Look Like? Facing a squeeze, all players fold their worst hands . They four-bet or shove most of their best hands , keeping in mind that, depending on the pre-flop action, they may not have many such hands. The very biggest pairs call as a trap. Beyond that, we can distinguish between two types of ranges: those where the pot may go heads up , and overcalling ranges, where the pot will definitely be multiway if it goes to the flop at all. For an example of the former, here is the BTN’s range for calling a BB squeeze with 100bb stacks if the CO raiser folds in front of them : This range contains not just the hands that perform well multiway – pocket pairs and suited broadways Broadway A ten through ace straight. “Broadway cards” can also be used to describe any 10 , J , Q , K , or A card. – but also some smaller suited connectors and offsuit broadways which hold their equity poorly multiway. This is because the BTN will often play heads up in position against the BB in this scenario. If the CO has already called the squeeze , then the small suited connectors and offsuit broadways drop out of the range, leaving mostly pocket pairs and suited broadways: The very best offsuit broadways shove and most of the rest fold . Even when the CO has folded, BTN is eager to shove these offsuit broadway hands. With 60bb stacks , they shove most of them: These patterns persist in most other formations: some suited connectors and offsuit broadways are viable when the pot may go heads up, but these hands mostly shove or fold once another player has called. Suited connectors and offsuit broadways are viable when the pot may go heads up, but these hands mostly shove or fold once another player has called. Trapping is an important part of the original raiser’s calling strategy . Whenever they have a significant calling range, it includes AA and KK, often at full frequency. Here is the CO’s response to a squeeze with 100bb stacks : Their call rarely induces a re-raise, but these hands are resilient enough to invite overcalls. Even with 100bb stacks, a squeezed pot that goes multiway will result in a very low SPR post-flop , making these big pairs easy to

except perhaps the 'School for Scandal'. Foreigners, expecially the embassy crowd, fell for this coquettish masquerade. It was nothing to see a diplomat sneaking down the back stairs when he thought the coast was clear, hoping thus to be unseen lest he lose face in diplomatic society, such as it was. Next to Pop sat a foreign code clerk, snobbish and curly-headed, who declaimed endlessly about going back to fight but did nothing about it. He had lost heavily to me on several occasions and for some reason seemed to make a personal issue out of this and was always baiting me. Among the other five, I vaguely knew Herr Neilson, the anti-aircraft adviser; a munitions salesman; two sailors from the gunboat; and a dizzy aviator who was in Chungking demonstrating pursuit planes. The next day I heard he had failed to come out of a nose dive, and he and his plane had disappeared into the muddy banks of the Yangtze. The kibitzers were Ted White, a good-natured reporter from Time magazine who hoped to write a book (and did, two best sellers, Thunder Over China and Fire in the Ashes); Bing, a boyish Chinese lad, foreign-dressed, suave and diplomatic, who Ling said was in our service spying on foreigners; a pleasant Irishman and a quarrelsome Britisher both having something to do with Chinese salt taxes. Most of them, including the advisers, were overpaid and attempted to get rid of their money at the poker table. Also looking on was a striking black-haired woman. More than plump, she was smoking a huge black cigar. I had never seen her before, but when the men gathered about her called her Mickey, I knew she must be Miss Emily Hahn who, gossip said, was in Chungking to write the history of the three Soong sisters, Mmes Chiang, Kung, and Sun. I pinched Ling's arm and nodded at the kibitzers. 'What do you think?' I whispered. He whispered back, 'Old Chinese saying, "When No Tiger In Mountain Then Monkey Is King."' I think Miss Hahn must have overheard for she wrote some uncomplimentary things about me in her book China to Me to which I will refer later. Pop got up at last and gave me his seat, while Ling remained standing. They were playing the usual table stakes with dealer's choice - seven-card stud, HiLo, stud, draw, spit-in-the-ocean and the like. The code clerk, who held a job I had graduated from at half his age, had, as I said, taken an intense dislike to me and when I stayed in the pot bet in an attempt to run me out. Finally in seven-card stud, I made a straight on the fifth card - the first two were concealed - ? ? 9 10 J, and he showed three diamonds exposed: ? 1 9 6 Q D D D If the concealed cards were diamonds he held a flush which would beat my straight. But he was high with the queen, and checked. I bet 1000 Chinese. The next card I drew a

It is usually opened for the size of the pot, say three dollars and fifty cents.' 'You forget we cut the pot fifty cents.' 'Oh, dammit, don't be so technical. Suppose three stay. That's four players or about fifteen dollars in the pot, a worthwhile winning. Now bet twenty dollars or about a fifteen-dollar raise. You'll be surprised to see how many throw in the sponge. With only one or two stayers you've got a pretty good chance of winning. No one is going to back in on you after you've made a twenty-dollar bet, unless they have two wild cards or three of a kind above the ten, or at least I wouldn't. 'So your opponents draw. You stand pat. If they check, you spread. If one of them bets - well, that is a horse of another colour. You're in a mouse trap. Judge your man. Has he really got the guts to bet if he can't beat a pat hand ?' Monty shook his head. 'Kid, I can't tell you what to do under those circumstances. You're on your own.' 'Suppose under the same circumstances 1 raise and draw one card.' 'To what? 'To a bust - nothing.' 'What are you trying to make your opponents believe?' Monty asked. 'To believe I have four of a kind and am trying to make the fifth.' Monty laughed heartily. "These simpletons will never believe you. They'll think you're drawing to a straight, flush, or two pair.' 'You know I'm not simple-minded enough to draw to such cards.' 'Hell, no. But the point is, do they? Oh, a strong player may fall for your idea,' he added as an afterthought. 'Now, kid, you're playing real good and winning us some money - that's the proof. But you still gamble with weaker hands than I do.' He looked at his watch. I asked, 'Do you have time to go over again with me just what cards you stay on in deuces wild? You've given me a good lesson on the pat hand.' 'Those geldings can wait just thirty minutes for poker. I've got a date.' 'The smell of horses, moonlight and dew glistening on green grass?' I asked slyly. 'The smell of horses, moonlight, and wet dew glistening on green grass,' Monty corrected with a straight face. He had picked up a pad and was writing. After a few moments he said, 'Here, study this. It tells you what to play on, when to call, and when to raise. The x represents any card other than a face card or an ace.' A A A x x or better Raise K K K x x Raise Q Q Q x x Call J J J x x Call 2A A x x or better Raise 2K K x x Raise 2Q Q x x Call 2J J x x Call 2 2 x x x or better Raise Straights Raise Flushes Raise Full Houses Raise 'Never,' he said emphatically, 'stay with only one wild card unless you hold three jacks or better, not

Table 59: BB vs IP Action Frequencies (15bb) Defending the BB Versus IP (15bb) With 15bb, the average BB fold vs a min-raise is 22.56%. At this stack depth, the BB is too shallow to have a non-all-in 3-betting range. Something interesting to note is how the all-in frequency decreases as the opponent’s range gets stronger, going from 18% vs the BN to only 7.4% vs UTG, but the overall BB VPIP frequency remains constant because the BB calling frequency increases as the all-in frequency decreases. The solver likes going all-in pre-flop at this stack depth with hands that are ahead of the opener’s range but have bad post-flop equity realization and thus perform better by getting the money in pre-flop. Most pocket pairs make great rejamming hands except AA and KK, which get slowplayed vs LP, and the smaller pairs are played using a mixed strategy vs EP. Offsuit Ax are great rejams vs LP, but the fold equity vs EP is lower and so they get replaced by suited Ax. It’s important to notice how observing the kicker can help understand the way the solver chooses to rejam hands with blockers. For example, hands such as KQs have great equity vs calling ranges, but the solver likes calling it from the BB vs all positions, even vs a wide range from the BN. Instead, the solver rejams K5s-K3s. The reason for this is simply that the stronger Kx will have a higher chance of coolering the BN post-flop, plus they have way more post-flop playability, significantly increasing their equity realization. So, when choosing which king-high blockers to use, the solver prefers the ones with weak kickers that benefit from having fold equity yet still have fine equity against the opponent’s calling range. A similar effect can be seen with other hands. As an example, against a LJ raise, the solver

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what happens if we get really shallow stack now like 20 big blinds well 20 big blinds you you can't really three bet and then fold to a shove because you'll be getting pretty good pot odds let's say your opponent makes it two you make it five they go all in for 20 now at this point you have to call 15 more to try to win 42 and a half so you need to win what like 35% of the time almost everything is going to win 35% of the time on average so you can't really three bets small at 20 big blinds deep and then fold so you're just going to shove it all in with all the hands that you want to play and unlike a deeper stack three betting range that's very polarized where you're three betting the best hands plus some trashy hands now we're actually calling some of the best hands cuz they're so good and we're three betting a much more condensed range of hands that just have very very good value that may or may not flop especially well so it's usually going to be pairs decent suited High cards and some acex type hands the good ones for the most part plus low suited acex all right now let's discuss what under the gun should do versus a three bat from the button let's look at 60 big blinds deep so 60 big blinds deep you'll see that from out of position you do actually a decent amount of for betting although maybe not as much as you may think this is the thing a lot of people just have no clue what to do in in three bet pots you'll see here the hands at four bet are literally only Aces kings queens Ace King and then a few suited acex blockers like ace four suited and Ace 3 suited plus a little bit of King n suited here tiny bit and then we're calling everything else we want to continue but our calling range is actually pretty tight notice we're only calling the best suited Aces good suited connected hands Pairs and Ace queen off suit king queen off suit cannot play ace jack off suit cannot play you have to be very cautious when someone three bets you when you are out of position playing deep sacked let's take a look at 40 big blinds deep it's going to be a similar thing except for now we're going to be shoving more often from out of position because we're shallow to the point that we can't really three bet and then fold let's go back to this actually 60 big blinds deep versus five bet all in you see you call it off the best hands fold the Bluffs right pretty obvious um but I just wanted to show you to be clear notice when we're 40 big blinds deep under the gun versus a three bet now you are going to be shoving because you if they

sorts of hands are good candidates for this play: This is a condensed Condensed A capped range that is also tight. This range does not contain the strongest hands, but is lean and contains many medium strength hands. Also known as “depolarized”. calling range. BTN four-bets their strongest hands (notice there is no trapping with AA and very little with AK s or KK ) and raises some hands with good blockers that are either barely or not quite strong enough to call. The hands that most prefer calling are the biggest suited cards and pocket pairs 99 – QQ . These hands both have a lot of raw equity and retain that equity well in multiway Multiway Describes any hand where three or more players see the flop. pots . The other low-frequency calls function as board coverage , enabling BTN to make strong hands on boards where they would otherwise be weak, and weak hands on boards where they would otherwise be strong. The absence of AA in BTN’s cold calling range does not mean they have no traps. It merely reflects that AA is not the best trapping hand at this stack depth, because it benefits so much from re-opening the betting in case CO wants to shove. If BTN calls, HJ four-bets, and CO folds , then BTN can back-raise Back-raise When a player calls, and then re-raises after another player has raised on the same street. JJ – KK and AK ; these are the traps. If, however, HJ four-bets and CO shoves, BTN calls only with KK and benefits from the opportunity to fold everything else with only 8bb invested. They respond almost as tightly to a HJ four-bet and CO call : Cold Calling From the BB Even from the CO, cold calling is a bad idea. It’s not that CO is so much worse a position than BTN, but rather that almost all of BTN’s cold calling occurs when facing action from the latest possible positions . Only BTN has the opportunity to cold call in position against a HJ open and CO three-bet. Cold calling is less appealing against earlier position action , as both the raiser and the three-better will have stronger ranges . The other seat where you will sometimes have the opportunity to cold call in position (against the three-better, anyway) is from the BB. Here are the BB’s frequencies facing a BTN open and SB three-bet at various stack depths: BB does a bit of cold calling when the SB three-bets CO and HJ opens as well, but it quickly drops off. As their opponents’ ranges get stronger, BB has less incentive to play the more modest hands that would benefit from cold calling. At 100bb , BB’s cold calling strategy looks quite similar to BTN’s, with an emphasis on big suited cards and medium pocket pairs : At 60bb , however, their cold calling strategy is built around AA : This is less about getting to realize equity after the flop with marginal hands and more about not

Rag A low ranking card perceived to be of little value given the hand, board or context of the situation.

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

analysis is results orientation. I'll rarely include the results of a hand history and I almost always advise my students to omit them from theirs. Hero winning less money in this hand than in the hand before is not enough on its own to conclude that he played worse in this hand. I've included the monetary result as an exception on this occasion and, ok I admit it, purely for shock factor. While I am trying to show the massive discrepancy in final winnings that can arise from not building a pot early enough, it's important to see the bigger picture so let's forget about the results and look at that. The flop check is a mistake because Hero will win far less on average with this line. In other words, the EV of this line is much lower than that of Hero's line in Hand 31. We know this not due to the monetary result of this one hand, but due to our understanding of value betting and the importance of building pots vs passive players who are not going to oblige and do it for us. In this hand, Hero commits something I call the Exponential Mistake. I drum this error into my students as something to avoid. Hero's failure to build the pot on the flop in Hand 32 meant that his turn bet could only be a fraction of what it should have been. His smaller turn bet made the river pot three times smaller that it was in Hand 31, meaning that his final bet could only be around a third of the size. If Villain is truly horrific, Hero could even consider betting more than the pot on the river to compensate for his earlier failure, but this is a less reliable and silly way to get value. We should expect even stationy Fish to fold more to such an overbet, as their price will be substantially worse. The gradual pot building route using large but not enormous bets on each street is by far the best way to maximise EV in these situations. Hand 31 should serve as a stellar example of how to value bet strong hands against weak players.

Spending some time playing around with different inputs yourself and seeing the resulting outputs is invaluable. The above tools are for cash games 💸. MTT players tend to experience even greater variance. Try this MTT Variance calculator! Bankroll management guidelines The purpose of this article is to give you the tools to build your own bankroll management strategies, rather than prescribing some answer. Your BRM is a function of your risk profile. However, we’ve outlined some very basic BRM guidelines below based on common wisdom: For cash players : 35 to 65 buy-ins Never risk more than 5% of your roll For tournament players : 75 to 125 buy-ins Never risk more than 2% of your roll Kelly Criterion The Kelly Criterion tells you what portion of your bankroll you should risk. It considers your edge and odds on a bet and outputs how much of your bankroll you should risk. “The core of bankroll management strategy is to maximize your edge without overplaying your roll. This is what Kelly does.” The formula for the Kelly Criterion is outlined as follows: f = the fraction of bankroll to bet b = the decimal odds – 1 p = the probability of winning q = the probability of losing, which is 1 – p Let’s try an example You play HU SnG and average a 5% return on investment (ROI). Your bankroll is $1000. What stakes should you play to grow your bankroll as fast as possible? A) $100 buy-in B) $50 buy-in C) $25 buy-in D) $10 buy-in 🎲 Answer B) $50 buy-in The basic premise of the Kelly Criterion is that you should risk your edge ! For a simple 1:1 wager, if you have a 5% edge, you should risk 5% of your bankroll, which comes to $50 in this example. Here’s how to solve this with math: b = 1 p = 52.5% q = 47.5% f* = p – q = ROI f* = 5% 5% of $1000 = $50 This is based on a “Full Kelly” strategy. A full-kelly strategy is like redlining your engine! In practice, it’s often better to implement half-kelly or even quarter-kelly strategies. A half-kelly strategy captures 75% of the growth while only taking on 25% of the variance. So C) $25 BI might be a better answer in practice. Optimal Bankroll Management Strategies The Kelly Criterion tells you what portion of your bankroll you should risk. How much you should risk depends on your win rate and variance. Just remember that Kelly is the boundary, not the goal! You should invest less than Kelly in practice. We can use math to translate a poker win rate in Cash Games or other formats to optimal BRM strategies. We’ve built a handy BRM Optimization tool to help you move up faster! 💪 This calculator finds the minimum bankroll required to justify moving up stakes and taking on more variance in exchange for a higher hourly win rate. We’ve also included a (beta) calculator for MTT players ! Kelly becomes more complicated for bets with

Hand Range 145: BB vs SB 3.5x Raise (60bb) • 3-bet 12.1% / • Call 54.3% / • Fold 33.6%

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at showdown unimproved. Often used to describe a medium-strength hand, in contrast with a value hand or air. to bluff but not so much value that they want to grow the pot. Checking is not weak. This is true for both players, but more so for the in position player. The out of position player has more incentive to check strong hands because their check does not close the current street action. Thus, OOP checks on earlier streets are more likely to represent traps that missed the opportunity to check-raise, whereas IP checks are more likely to represent medium-strength hands. That said, unless the river card dramatically changes the board texture, strong hands are unlikely for both players after the flop and turn check through. This means that hands that were not strong enough to bet for value on earlier streets may be good value bets on the river . Essentially, the earlier street checking “promoted” them even if the turn and river cards did not. Rivers That Change the Equity Distribution Neither player has much incentive to check strong hands. So the question to ask when a new card is revealed is how many hands that were marginal (and thus good checking candidates) on the previous street were improved by this new card. Of course, nearly any card could be an occasional promoter to a set or two pair, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re looking for standouts, exceptional cards that act as frequent promoters to many new, strong hands. Overcards to the board are the most common example, Aces especially. Flush cards and sometimes straight cards fit the bill as well. For our purposes, we’re primarily concerned with whether the river card upsets the earlier range dynamics , since turn checks will once again condense both players’ ranges even if the turn card made some stronger hands possible. Because the in position player has the more condensed range after they both check the turn, they usually benefit most from a river card that improves many previously marginal holdings. Heads Up With the BB River scenarios after the BB checks the flop and turn and the preflop raiser checks behind twice bear a strong resemblance to turn scenarios after they both check the flop . The preflop raiser generally still has the stronger range but also the more capped range, which incentivizes the BB to make some polar bets and raises. For example, here’s an equity distribution Equity distribution A line graph or scatter plot of a player’s hand vs range equity, sorted from weakest to strongest, such that the equity of every individual combination in the range is represented. Commonly used in game theory analysis. graph of CO vs BB in a single-raised pot with 40bb stacks in an MTT on T ♦ 8 ♠ 5 ♣ flop: Not only does CO have 57% of the equity, but their range is stronger across the spectrum. Their best hands are stronger than BB’s best hands, their middling hands are stronger than BB’s middling hands, and their worst hands

the other hand, if he bets me $7,000, the reverse is true. So, I always try to make the bet that puts him in jeopardy, not me. If he’s right and I’m bluffing, he’s going to move in with his $20,000, and I’m not going to call him. So he’ll win $7,000. But if he’s wrong and I’ve got a hand, he’s still going to move in, but now he’s going to get called. And he’s going to lose $20,000. So he’s laying me about 3 to l, his $20,000 to my $7,000. I put the commitment on him. I make him commit himself. I’m not committed no matter what he thinks. That’s the beauty of it. He’s thinking about my bet and wondering how much more he’s going to have to put in there. It’s an either/or situation. Either I’m bluffing, or I’ve got the nuts. And against me, he knows it could cost him $20,000—his whole stack—unless he throws his hand away. And you’d be surprised how many times they say “Take it Doyle,” “Take it Doyle.” They just throw their hands away over and over and over again. I mean, even I’m surprised. I think to myself, “Well, he can’t throw this one away.” But I bet anyway. And there goes his hand—chunk! It finally gets to be mechanical with them. And I’ve won another pot. I’ve stolen so many pots I can’t begin to count them. And most of the time, I’ve actually had to force myself to bet. I’d be playing all night without one decent hand. Yet I’d win every pot because I didn’t bet into the nuts. It goes on and on like that. I pick up a hand, and I’ve got nothing. The flop comes out there, and I’ve still got nothing. So I kind of have to hit myself to bet at it, because there’s a guy I’ve been pounding on and pounding on. And all the time, I’m thinking, “How can he throw his hand away this time?” But I bet and away it goes. Chunk! One more time. If he takes a stand and raises me, I go back to my basic philosophy. If I’ve got a hand, I’ll go with it, even though I know it might be the worst hand. By now, you should have a very good idea of how I play no-limit hold’em. I hope this somewhat lengthy introduction gave you a sufficient feel for my style of play, and I hope it will help you to understand how I play specific hands in various situations. I’ll discuss those shortly. However, when you read those discussions you should realize it’s quite 357 difficult to state exactly what I’d do with a specific hand in a particular situation. So many things are involved. No-limit hold’em is a very complex game. Most of the things I say are an accurate reflection of what I’d generally do. But I might do something else or even the completely opposite depending on who’s in the pot with me and whether or not

HERBERT O. YARDLEY The Education of a Poker Player Including where and how one learns to win Introduced by A. Alvarez The Education of a Poker Player Herbert Osborne Yardley was born in the small frontier town of Worthington, Indiana, in 1889. Following the death of his mother in 1905 he inherited $200 and, by his own admission, 'thereafter I did pretty much as I pleased'. He began frequenting a poker saloon in Washington even though he was still in high school. Class president, editor of the school paper and football captain, he was nevertheless academically average but had a flair for mathematics. He had ambitions to become a criminal lawyer but the year 1912 found him working instead as a code clerk in the State Department, a job which made full use of his mathematical skills and shrewd poker-player's mind. In 1917 America entered World War I and Yardley persuaded his bosses to let him set up a code-breaking section with a staff of 160. Officially this was called the Cipher Bureau, Military Intelligence 8; more familiarly it became known as the 'Black Chamber'. Some 200,000 messages were decoded, with Yardley himself breaking the Japanese diplomatic codes and finding himself a marked man in the Orient as a result, before the department was closed down in 1929 on the instructions of Secretary of State Henry Stimson, who remarked that 'Gentlemen do not read each other's mail'. Out of a job, Yardley set to work on The American Black Chamber, a no-holds-barred history of the organization's activities which scandalized the political and diplomatic world but became an international best-seller when published in 1931. A later book by Yardley, Japanese Diplomatic Secrets, was banned by Act of Congress in 1933, by which time its author was hard at work developing secret inks. His venture, however, proved a commercial failure, and between 1933 and 1935 he turned his hand to novel writing with The Red Sun of Nippon and The Blonde Countess. The latter was filmed by MGM as Rendezvous, starring William Powell, Rosalind Russell and Cesar Romero, with Yardley as technical adviser; the New York Times called it a 'lively and amusing melodrama'. In 1938 he was hired by Chiang Kai-shek to monitor the coded messages of the Japanese armies invading China; he worked in Chungking under an alias with the cover of being an exporter of hides. In 1941, with Japan now at war with the United States, he was recalled and went back to working for the US Government, but not at code-breaking. Having had no career to speak of for the last thirty years of his life, by 1957, when The Education of a Poker Player was first published, he could often be found playing cards with gullible journalists in the National Press Club in Washington. Though the 'Black Chamber' scandal had earned him some official distrust at home as well as abroad, he was nevertheless buried with full military honours in Arlington National Cemetery on his death in 1958. According to one commentator, 'he was basically an attractive personality

ended up turning some draw for opponent puts us in we just can't fold that's really something you're gonna find very often is that you're just not folding if you make anything when you have 15 big blinds sorry your gum broke and that's okay so we're getting something like this and I think this is pretty reasonable obviously you could adjust a little bit but I think it's fine you may ask why we're like folding perhaps a six off suit but not King nine because King nine has a little bit more equity market says so we're check calling queen nine at diamonds here again depends on the opponent size right look at the hands that are on the cusp take a look at the cusps pans right queen nine clearly a cusp and King nine clearly a cusp and King eight clearly a cusp and so these hands as your opponent bets bigger you should start folding as your opponent bets small you should start calling so if you check and your opponent bets one and a half big blinds into the five point five big one pot yeah you should be calling with a lot of these hands I mean you don't love it but you should and it's nice because you're kind of protected because you have a decent amount of strong hands to check call with you may want to strengthen your check calling range even more like I have no problem check calling seven five suited jack ten jack nine if you think your phone is gonna continue barreling but very often what people do is they raise preflop the continuation about 1 times and they check down and notice a lot of hands that call once and then check down in the scenario do well enough I mean I'm not saying they're the best things ever but when you check call it like ace 9 and it checks down you you often win so that's what I would be doing in this scenario all right in position as the caller this is when someone raises you call on the button let's say so in this scenario when facing a bet which you often will you should raise all-in with strong made hands and draws on coordinated boards and call with strong made hands and draws on uncoordinated boards if your arrange is especially strong as it often will be in the spot you should consider trapping with much or all of your range by calling so what I mean by that is well cut off men raises you call on the button take a look at this range this is the button flatting range remember put yourself in this scenario how often does the button raise and you flap but men raise it I'm sorry cut off men raises you flat on the button I don't think many people are flatting like this with these hands but you should be notice here it should be very clear the hands that are not selected like

Mastering the Chiplead: The Scalpel and the Sledgehammer When you have a lot of chips at a final table or in another situation with extreme bubble factors Bubble Factor Bubble Factor measures how much more losing hurts than winning helps you in MTTs. It’s a measure of survival pressure and a valuable tool for understanding ICM spots. It’s defined as the ratio between how much tournament equity ($EV) you’d lose getting stacked, divided by how much $EV you’d gain stacking some player in the tournament. BF = | $EV Loss | / | EV Gain | when stacks are fully invested. Each player has a unique bubble factor against every other player in a tournament. In a chip EV scenario, the BF is 1 because losses are equal to wins. In an ICM scenario, losses hurt more than wins, so the BF is greater than 1. , you are in a great spot. Not only is your stack worth a lot because of the raw value of your chips, but covering other stacks enables you to accumulate more chips by winning pots against opponents who wish, quite appropriately, to avoid risking elimination by getting all-in against you. This is sometimes referred to as “bullying” the table, but in reality, playing a big stack is more about subtlety than raw aggression. The ideal tool is the scalpel, not the sledgehammer. Your objective is to apply a lot of pressure to your opponents without taking on a lot of risk yourself . Playing a big stack is more about subtlety than raw aggression. Consider a 9-handed final table with an average stack of 35bb. You are the chip leader on the BTN with 88bb, and the blinds have above-average stacks of 40bb and 45bb. If you were to open shove Shove One of several slang terms for going all in. , you would apply 45bb of pressure to the blinds, but you would also risk 45bb yourself. That’s the sledgehammer. It would be very hard for these players to call you, but if they did call, they would almost certainly have a big hand. GTO Wizard’s preferred approach is to open for a minimum raise with 74% of hands, including those as weak as 82 s and Q2 o. This is the scalpel. At minimal risk to yourself, you exert tremendous pressure on the blinds. Few hands are strong enough to risk a big confrontation with you, so the blinds fold relatively often and three-bet rarely . Here is BB’s response to this raise. Not even KK is strong enough to be excited about a big pot! 24% may not seem like an especially high folding frequency, but in a ChipEV scenario with 45bb stacks , where being covered is irrelevant, the BB folds just 12% to a BTN raise, despite the BTN having a stronger range Range A collection of hands that a player could feasibly be holding given the action of the current hand. Ranges are used conceptually to discuss and analyse the various holdings a hero or villain could have in

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same Concepts as before still apply you want to consider who gets to apply pressure on the other players because that's going to dictate post flop aggression heavily typically you do not want to play huge pots when they payout implication pressure so when that is the case which is usually going to be the case when you're not the big stack your bet sizes should reflect that and move down this is why you see a lot of the best players in the world using one big BL continuation flop bets in a lot of scenarios post flop at final tables when they are the short stack because they are trying to not get all in they have a range Advantage they even have a nut Advantage but they don't want to play for all the money keep that in mind so when you are the one who is able to apply a lot of pressure you're usually going to be betting often using a small amount you again you don't need to like load money into the pot unless you are in a scenario where you can make your range very polarized but when you're not the big SA can be super passive so as the big sack this is going to result in more check raising more leading say medium sack raises you call the big blind and it comes 764 a board that's normally really good for the big blind maybe you don't want to be leading when you have 50 big blinds in the scenario normally and your opponent has 40 because you're a little too deep stacked but in this scenario to final table maybe you can just bet start loading money into the pot again we're not going to get into all of that today but essentially big sacks get to put money in the pot because of the concept of risk premium which we discuss again in the advanced tournament course and tournament Master Class of Poker coaching and that forces the shorter stack to need to have a whole lot more equity in order to continue which results in them folding far more often than they would otherwise and this gives the big stack a very nice Advantage at the final table because it lets them slowly chip up as long as they're not insane and just loading their money into every single pot that's G be it for today if you enjoyed today's video do me a favor click the like And subscribe button below you make the final table I hope you crush it I hope you of these tips to help you make sure you check out all the resources we have available for you good luck in your games have fun and you make the final table I hope you run super duper hot I'll talk to you next time

even be able to win that bet on the river when the pot is secured. This play is a valuable weapon that has to be added to your arsenal if you want to be a winning triple draw player. Finally—and this should go without saying—you should just call when you are a card behind. If you improve from a two-card draw to a one-card draw, but your opponent was already on a one-card draw, you should simply be a caller. If you are up against a player who was already pat and you are on a one-card draw, you should usually just call unless you have reason to believe he has a weak hand, in which case you may choose to raise. There is more on that in the next section. When To Raise The most obvious reason to raise is that you have the best hand. For the most part, with a seven, 8-5, or even 8-6, you should raise since you probably do have the best hand. In a multiway pot, it’s even more important to raise with one of these pat hands in order to put pressure on those opponents trying to outdraw you. They surely will call one bet drawing to a wheel or a good eight, but for two bets you may be able to get them to lay it down, depending, of course, on the players. Even when heads-up, you should raise with a seven or an 8-5, then follow through with a bet on the river. Hands ranked one through five are difficult to outdraw. Your opponent can’t possibly have too many outs if he is still drawing. Even if your opponent is drawing to a 2-3-4-7 against your 2-3-4-5- 8, he can only win the pot with a 6 or one of three remaining fives—a total of seven outs. If your opponent has a pat eight, chances are he won’t break it, thinking you might be making a play at the pot. Making a Play at the Pot What do I mean by making a play at the pot? Sometimes if you have an excellent draw, you might be better off spending an extra bet, hoping to force your opponent to break a pat hand, rather than just calling in the hopes of outdrawing him. For example, say you are on the button with 2-2-3-7-7. Your opponent raises before the first draw, and you reraise him. 311 Now your opponent draws one and you, of course, draw two. Your two new cards are a 4 and another 2, giving you a wheel draw, 2-3-4-7. Next, your opponent bets. Because of your position, your strong draw, and the valuable discards you’ve mucked, you decide to raise it. Your opponent calls and decides to stay pat. Right there you can assume that your opponent doesn’t have a very strong hand. If he did, he probably would have reraised once more. Also, since you have seen three deuces and two sevens, it’s a lot more likely that your opponent has a hand like 3-4-5-6-8 or even 3-4-5-8-9.

and your opponents’ boards: Example One You: 3-4 5-J 247 Player One: x-x 6-7 Player Two: x-x K-9 In example one, you must definitely fold right away, even if you put two bets in on third street. The reason for this is that if you call Player Two’s bet, Player One will definitely raise. Then Player Two will raise again putting you in the middle and forcing you to call at least two, and probably four more bets to stay in the hand. You will almost certainly get jammed out of the pot if you call, so save that bet. Example Two You: 3-4 5-J Player One: x-x 6-Q Player Two: x-x K-9 Can you guess what the action will be in Example Two? Even if Player Two were Stevie Wonder, he would still bet out into these two boards. Call, cross your fingers, and say a quick prayer. Again, you must catch good immediately to continue with the hand. If not, ditch it. Getting Quartered For Omaha eight-or-better players starting to play stud eight-or-better, remember this: In Omaha, getting quartered is a very real fear, even when you have the nuts. A pot gets quartered when one player has the high and two players have the same low, or vice versa. When this happens, the two players with the same hands—usually the low hands—wind up with only one quarter of the pot and actually lose money if they are two of the only three still in. In Omaha eight-or-better, getting quartered happens a lot, even when you have the nuts, because players get to play two cards out of the four in their hands and share three of the five community cards. This makes it considerably more likely that two players will wind up with the same hand. But in stud eight-or-better, this almost never happens, because you have to play five cards out of your hand and you share none. Therefore, when you have a board lock in stud eight-or-better, go ahead and cap it on the end, don’t stop raising as you would in Omaha eight-or-better. For example: Example One 248 You: A-2 5-7-8-Q 3 Player One: x-x 6-7-8-Q x Player Two: x-x A-8-K-9 x Okay, here you have a 7-5, unbeatable against these two boards. The best Player One could have is a 7-6 low and the best Player Two could hope to muster is an eight perfect (8-4-3-2-A) not good enough, unfortunately for your opponents. Keep the pressure on here. Raise and reraise until the cows come home. Although you can’t scoop, you have half locked up for sure. There are times, however, when should not raise even when you obviously have the best low draw. There are two reasons: (1) You don’t want to knock anybody out. You want full value. (2) If you miss, you wind up with nothing anyway. You lose the minimum as well as disguise the true strength of your hand. Let’s look at an example that illustrates these points: Example Two You: 2-3 5-6 Player One: x-x K-Q Player Two: x-x

profit of $600. If you were to call me every time, you would beat me out of $200 six times when I'm bluffing and $ 100 18 times, when I don't bet, for a total of $3,000; but I would beat you out of $200 18 times when I bet with my good hands for a total of $3,600. Once again my profit is $600. So other than being a psychic, there is no way in the world you can prevent me from winning that $600 per 42 hands, giving me a positive expectation of $14.29 per hand. Bluffing exactly 6 times out of 24 has turned a hand that was a 4-to-3 underdog when I didn't bluff at all into a 4-to-3 favorite — no matter what strategy you use against me. We can now move to the heart of game theory and bluffing. Notice first that the percentage of bluffing I did was predetermined — one time every 19 bets or 5 times every 23 bets or 7 times every 25 bets. Notice secondly that my bluffing was completely random; it was based on certain key cards I caught, which my opponent could never see. He could never know whether the card I drew was one of my 18 good cards or a bluff card. Finally, notice what happened when I bluffed with precisely six cards — which made the odds against my bluffing in this particular instance identical to the pot odds my opponent was getting. In this unique case my opponent stood to lose exactly the same amount by calling or folding. Game Theory and Bluffing 185 This is optimum bluffing strategy — it makes no difference how your opponent plays. We can say, then, that if you come up with a bluffing strategy that makes your opponent do equally badly no matter how he plays, then you have an optimum strategy. And this optimum strategy is to bluff in such a way that the odds against your bluffing are identical to the odds your opponent is getting from the pot. In the situation we have been discussing, I had 18 good cards, and when I bet my $100, creating a $300 pot, my opponent was getting 3-to-1 odds from the pot. Therefore, my optimum strategy was to bluff with six additional cards, making the odds against my bluffing 3-to-1, identical to the pot odds my opponent was getting. Let's say the pot was $500 instead of $200 before I bet. Once again I had 18 winning cards, and my opponent could only beat a bluff. The bet is $100, and so my opponent would be getting $600-to-$ 100 pot odds when he called. Now my optimum strategy would be to bluff with 3 cards. With 18 good cards and 3 bluffing cards, the odds against my bluffing would be 6-to-1, identical to the pot odds my opponent would be getting to call my bet. If the pot were $ 100 and I bet $ 100, I'd have to bluff with 9 cards when I had 18 good

MTTs Success as the BB in limped pots begins before the flop. The BB’s equilibrium strategy… The Absurd Game Theory of Chopped Boards A “chopped board” in poker is one where the community cards make up the best… Playing Limped Pots as the SB in MTTs MTT confrontations between the small blind and big blind force no-limit players into uncomfortable situations,… The Art of Learning Poker In his book The Art of Learning, chess and Push Hands champion Josh Waitzkin describes… Is Donk Betting for Donkeys? “Donk betting”, or betting from out of position into the player who was the aggressor… Delayed C-Betting This is a companion piece to Probe Betting. It stands on its own, but understanding… Probe Betting As far as rules of thumb go in poker, “check to the raiser” is a… ICM and Blind Battles: The Big Blind This is a companion piece to this article on the SB’s strategy for blind vs… ICM and Blind Battles: The Small Blind ICM incentivizes more conservative play, which means that at stages of the tournament where risk… The Initial Bettor’s Advantage The mathematics of poker holds a little-known secret: the first bettor enjoys better bluffing odds… Mastering the Chiplead: The Scalpel and the Sledgehammer When you have a lot of chips at a final table or in another situation… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in Cash Games Our never-ending quest for money and fame leads us to the flop. We open the… How ICM Impacts Restealing From The Blinds When I first started working with preflop solves, one of the features I found most… The ICM Benefits of Late Registration in Poker Tournaments Why do so many professional poker players register late for tournaments when they clearly would… Flop Heuristics: OOP C-Betting in MTTs Playing against an in-position cold-caller is dramatically different–and dramatically more difficult–than playing against a caller… Counterintuitive Calls Solver outputs such as those provided by GTO Wizard are models of no-limit hold ‘em,… How To Negotiate Final Table Deals Most people’s first introduction to the Independent Chip Model (ICM) is not from studying bubble… How does ICM impact PKO strategy? If you have read The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments you already know why we… Understanding Blockers in Poker Often when looking through a solver’s meticulously crafted grid of deception, one of the following… Flop Heuristics: IP Cold-Caller in MTTs A Cold-call refers to the act of calling a preflop raise when you don’t close… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in MTTs In the world of poker, the flop is a crucial stage of the game that… Flop Heuristics for Defending the Blinds in MTTs The field of Game Theoretically Optimal poker is extensive, and thus, to simplify our strategy,… Multiway strategy in Progressive Knockout Tournaments Progressive Knockout (PKO) tournaments are much more complex than traditional MTTs. The fact that players… How To Calculate Raises In Poker One of the most frequently asked questions in poker is how to calculate the size… Principles of River Play The river offers the least complicated strategy of any betting street. With no

calls so we're really not winning the big game that much because the big blank can just have king queen and king Jack here and you don't really want to be by betting bigger what you're doing is they fold more and then you're narrowing their range to these stronger hands more often okay so the only over pair we have that wants to bet big here is aces so in terms of these bet big spots a lot of times it's going to be who has the overpair advantage and who has the strongest top par like kicker wise Advantage it's not who has the sets in two pairs a lot because they just make up such a small percentage of your range we're not really worried about that until later in the hand on the Flop we're kind of worried about like how many top pairs can we press our small bet Advantage like air advantage here and when we bet small here okay I don't know why my search thing is so we're betting 30 to win 120 uh 30 to win 130 when we Bluff here the pots 100 if we bet 30 we're bet risking 30 chips to went 130 so if it was 120 we'd expect a fold about 25% of the time so we need a fold slightly less than that like 23% when we bet small here they're folding almost 44% of the time and the reason is is because they have all this 98 off 97 off 96 off 86 76 75 Queen 5 Queen 4 Queen 3 Jack five like all this air that's just autof folds right like they're folding 45% of the time we only need them to fold 23% right so therefore we're just profitably bluffing with any two cards because they're folding too much does that make sense so that was the first flop why we bet small let's look at 74 deuce and we'll see if I have the very next flop and this flop here I I said we were going to bet really big on 74 du so I want to show this Equity graph okay this is really kind of a cool tool here to use in this Equity graph so in the equity graph here you can see so what this basically does is presents the um how much Equity each hand has and like the percentage of their range so like our best hand here is at the 100th perc so our best hand is like you know are both like pocket Deuces like we have slightly um more and then the it goes down to like our worst hand is like 53 suited their worst hand is 73 suited essentially so at every point you can see we have this nice little Gap in our equities this is what I was talking about with we were we're winning both the small game and the big game here however we're just betting small because cuz there's not a lot of hands here

general all right well I'm gonna have this on my to-do list good good I can't wait for it to see that in history yeah of course a chidwick cause and then you get the six of diamonds yeah and it goes badouki on the turn and so I think that this is like kind of a cool spot because when it comes to the flush draw let's look at it it becomes pretty easy to find your Bluffs like if it comes with the six of hearts your hearts just get to Barrel at a really high frequency click on clubs here to see what happens to the clubs they're they're not so much and they're gonna withdraw right exactly they're going to Barrel a much lower frequency and this is a common thing where if you turn the back or flush draw you just keep adding because we're also betting with all her good hands right especially out of position right but when it goes for Doogie you have to find it's a little bit trickier to pick your Bluffs right because you don't have any flush drawers there's no lot there's fewer logical ones exactly there's fewer logical ones like take some random stuff and try yeah and now 98 goes pure yeah right whereas on the six of Hearts you differentiate excuse me and you and you Barrel more Hearts when it goes rainbow you have to use 9A it's a pure Barrel in turn because there's less intuitive Bluffs and it's one of your intuitive gloves okay notice that I was betting and eight six is betting I think that was a little bit dicey I don't think I would have bet those I mean this is something I've been trying like really trying to implement is these bottom pair type Bluffs yeah whatever these things are I don't know what these things are but uh GTO doesn't yeah I think that you see it most commonly in position versus big blind spots Ace King X when you turn the two pair they become or when you turn the two pair blocker rather they become extremely good barrels um because when you bet this hundred size he has A6 he has King six he has seven six and so blocking those two pair combos is just huge um and when you turn a six you really don't have that much Showdown value right you only really have shown against exactly Jack 10 Queen 10 Queen Jack yeah not a lot and a little bit of these low Pairs and those hands have loads of equity exactly and they're also going to Bluff you at some frequency right right so you're not going to react they fold like that's fine yeah absolutely and so blocking two pair of combos in this spot is just really great we're gonna have to go back and update the tournament masterclass because uh this is a hard thing to throw in there for sure it's it is tough it happens a lot

the spot you probably want to go slightly bigger also from out of position you usually want to go slightly bigger not always but sometimes all right turn to Queen of Diamonds pretty bad card of course I check bonobet's 32 with 43 behind only annoying spot um obviously I'm not folding though this is a hand that is way too good only question should I call her Jam and if you think about the player's logical Bluffs what would they even be they would be hands like ten of Hearts ten of diamonds or ten of diamonds ten of X right that's a logical Bluff maybe he has like nines eight sevens those names are all drawing pretty thin but at the same time they may not feel inclined to Bluff the river so definitely a rough scenario because I don't think a lot of their logical Bluffs are going to keep bluffing on the river so if they're not going to keep bluffing the river with lots of logical Bluffs we probably just want to get it in now to protect the equity also notice that in this scenario if we do shove the opponent's gonna be getting really good pot odds they're gonna have to put in 30 to win what 200 or no what uh how much is it yeah 30 to win 200. so like they're gonna call it off with all their stuff right so I think we just want to call it we just want to rip it in I think that's the only play that makes any sense we shove they call eight seven of diamonds and we have been vanquished that's why GTO is no good you just have to be able to look them in the eye and tell if they have a good hand you know if only poker was as easy as just looking at someone and winning all of their money unfortunately it is not that easy unfortunately it's not that easy it's tens and nines betting to flop that often some players will some players won't I don't I don't hate it I think it's probably okay but um yeah we lost sometimes you win sometimes you lose and that's how it goes someone who's not losing recently is our newest poker coaching coach Brock Wilson you've been paying attention to the poker news literally yesterday he took third place in a very big tournament for four hundred eleven thousand dollars huge congrats to him and right now we are having a Labor Day sale at pokercoaching.com and we have brand new training exclusively from Brock Wilson who's out there crushing the games current videos up at this point include an introduction to pile solver reviews and discussing very very common spots for in position versus big blind how you should be playing those scenarios and thinking about those spots I know a lot of spots we went through today were apparently somewhat unknown to some of you all and he goes through a lot of those spots

C-Betting OOP in 3-Bet Pots Continuation betting from out of position can be a dicey proposition in single-raised pots. Cold… Dynamic Sizing: A GTO Breakthrough Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Dynamic Sizing Benchmarks Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Understanding The Impact Of Field Size On ICM In Poker When people talk about game selection in multi-table tournaments (MTTs), they invariably talk about the… Defending vs BB Check-Raise on Paired Flops This is a companion piece to Attacking Paired Flops from the BB; you will get… Mastering PKO Final Tables Final tables can be the most exciting and rewarding phase of a tournament, and being… Attacking Paired Flops From the BB Paired flops present unique challenges to both a preflop raiser and a BB caller. The… KK vs QQ vs JJ at WSOP Main Event With only fourteen players remaining in the 2023 WSOP Main Event and blinds of 400K/800K/800K,… Responding to BB Squeezes You open raise, someone calls, and the BB squeezes. How should you construct your strategy?… Crushing a Top HUNL Poker Bot In 2022, Philippe Beardsell and Marc-Antoine Provost, a team of Canadian programmers from Quebec, developed… GTO Wizard AI Explained We are excited to introduce GTO Wizard AI, formerly known as Ruse, the world’s best… GTO Wizard AI Benchmarks GTO Wizard has combined the power of artificial intelligence with traditional solving methods to bring… Table Management in PKOs Perhaps the most important strategic consideration in Progressive Knockout Tournaments (PKOs) is making sure you… Overcalling From the BB In poker, overcalling refers to calling a bet or raise after another player has also… Understanding Which Mistakes Cost You the Most Money I am fortunate enough to have worked for many years with the mental game coach… Overbetting The Flop in Cash Games Although most commonly analyzed on turns and rivers, flop overbetting can be a devastating weapon… Using New Skills at the Poker Table How many times has it happened to you that you make a mistake only to… Flatting Ace-X Hands Shortstacked Playing out of position is tricky, but it’s an essential part of tournament play. With… Playing Limped Pots as the BB in MTTs Success as the BB in limped pots begins before the flop. The BB’s equilibrium strategy… The Absurd Game Theory of Chopped Boards A “chopped board” in poker is one where the community cards make up the best… Playing Limped Pots as the SB in MTTs MTT confrontations between the small blind and big blind force no-limit players into uncomfortable situations,… The Art of Learning Poker In his book The Art of Learning, chess and Push Hands champion Josh Waitzkin describes… Is Donk Betting for Donkeys? “Donk betting”, or betting from out of position into the player who was the aggressor… Delayed C-Betting This is a companion piece to Probe Betting. It stands on its own, but understanding… Probe Betting As far as rules of thumb go in poker, “check to the raiser” is a…

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

their game is as crucial if not more important than knowing all of the probabilities. The ability to read and then exploit your opponents weak tendencies is the difference between being a winning player and a below average player. Some important considerations, but not all of them, to watch for are: 1. How many hands do they play and how many times do they come in for a raise? If your opponent is always limping into the pot in any position then you should mark this player as weak. The next step is to see if they are a calling station or able to lay down a hand to a big bet. One note on how many hand they play. This is not always accurate but can be relied upon because in an initial read, the player may have been getting good cards or a player may have been getting bad cards for a long run. Looking at how they bet after the flop and with what types of cards will give you an indication if they play too many weak hands. 2. If they always limp into the pot then they are weak and should be abused for this issue? Re-raising and stealing from them is usually easy and many times, they will be calling with nothing. Once again, find out what their starting hand requirements are and if they respect positional advantage. 3. As the hand progresses, do they increase their bets with the best hand or do they let the opponent stay in the hand with small bets? This is another indication of whether the player is weak and can be bluffed out of a hand. A solid player will increase they bets as the hand progresses or will re-raise to find out where they stand. 4. Will your opponent call to the river with a drawing hand? This is called, calling off their stack and is another indication of a weak player/calling station. You must identify these players to protect yourself and to extract money at the correct time. 5. How often do they slow play or check-raise a hand? You can set up plays if you know this player has a tendency to check-raise or avoid disaster if they over bet the pot on the River after showing weakness. I often take into consideration what type of a hand will be necessary at the showdown for different opponents at my table. I will be apt to stay in the hand with top kicker and Top Pair against one type of player but require 2- Pair or a set with redraws against another player. How aggressive or weak are they? Does your opponent raise with a 2 Flush Draw, slow play a set, protect their hand with TPTK or over bet the pot when they have a weak kicker but top pair? Will they lay down their cards to aggression or do they re-raise when challenged? Notice what size bet or raise will force a player to fold. This is important and may allow you to make some

with a lot of weak hands. If this situation comes up again, and there hasn't been a big raise, I know I can probably steal the pot from him with a bigger than average raise. Ask a casual player what separates him from the top players, and he'll probably have trouble giving you a good answer. Some think good players are just innately lucky. Others think they are just better bluffers. Still other think they can read your cards by dissecting every tick and twitch of your expression. The truth is that good players are really good at remembering everything that goes on around the table, and making use of the information in a logical fashion. I've just made a mental note about a tendency that Player A seems to have. Player A is especially important to me because he's the player directly to my left. All my steal attempts have to go right through him, so I need to know as much as I can about how he behaves. Will this information help me steal a pot later on? Maybe. Isn't that a lot of work and effort just for a better chance of perhaps stealing a pot or two down the road? Yes, it is. And that's the heart of good poker. Keep making these little mental notes, and after a couple of hours you'll know a lot about the players at your table and your results will 48 improve significantly. Hand 3-2 Situation: A single-table satellite for a major tournament. Four players have been eliminated, and we are down to the last six. The small and big blinds are loose, aggressive players who like to play a lot of pots. Players A and C seem very tight, with B about average. Your hand: Q♠4♠ Action to you: Players A, B, and C all fold. Question: Do you fold, call, or raise? Answer: Many players who learned their poker from watching television think that you can steal a pot pretty much anytime you want, just by tossing in some chips and chuckling as the other players get out of the way. In the real world, it's not quite that easy. You need to pick your spots, find good situations, vary your betting patterns, and not overdo it. In this hand, if I had no other information on my opponents, I'd simply let the hand go. When I steal, I like to have some kind of a hand to back it up. Even a hand like ten-nine unsuited has some straight possibilities working for it, so if I were in a position to steal, I might make a move with that hand. Q♠4♠ has a flush possibility, of course, but without the king or ace of the suit in my hand, there's also the possibility that I could make a flush and lose all my chips. If I knew that the players behind me were tight, and I'd seen them fold small raises in similar situations, then I would make a move here. I'd try to raise whatever amount I had

player folds Three Queens. 5th calls on Three Kings. Winning Band Three Aces, held by 6th player. 3RD DEAL The Deal 1st player is dealt 2 A 7 4 3 Two Aces. He will open and draw to Two Aces, a sucker play. He should never open or even stay with less than Three Jacks or a Full Hand. Two Wild Cards, of course, is a very strong hand. 2nd player is dealt Q Q 6 5 4 Two Queens. 3rd ,, ,, ,, 2 2 A 6 5 Three Aces 4th ,, ,, ,, a bust 5th ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, 6th ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, *7th ,, ,, ,, J J J 4 3 Three Natural Jacks * The Dealer The Betting 1st opens with Two Aces. 2nd stays on Two Queens. Such optimism is admirable but if he continues to play like this he will go broke. 3rd raises on Three Aces. 4th, 5th and 6th hands fold. 7th calls on Three Jacks - a very questionable play. 1st player stays on Two Aces, sending good money after bad. 2nd also calls. One never ceases to wonder at calls on such weak hands. After the Draw 1st draws Three cards Makes 2 A K Q 10 Ace High Straight. 2nd draws Three cards. Makes Q Q J 9 8 No change. Two Queens. 3rd draws Two cards. Makes 2 A A 2 7 Four Aces. 7th draws Two cards. Makes J J J 3 4 Three Jacks. No change. The Betting 1st checks the Ace High Straight. 2nd checks Two Queens. 3rd bets with Four Aces. 7th folds Three Jacks. 1st calls with Ace High Straight. 2nd folds. Winning Hand Four Aces, held by 3rd player. 4TH DEAL *The Dealer The Betting 1st player checks a bust. 2nd opens on Three Eights. I need Three Jacks to open but I wouldn't open at all unless I was sitting close to the Dealer's right. This game has Five Wild cards so there is no worry about passing up a good hand, for nearly all pots are opened - mostly, of course, on weak hands. 3rd stays on Three Natural Nines. The reason this game is so easily beat is because players are so eager to throw away money on hands that percentage players would toss in the discards. 4th folds a bust. The Deal 1st player is dealt a bust 2nd ,, ,, ,, 2 8 8 A Q Single Deuce or Three Eights 3rd ,, ,, ,, 9 9 9 K 6 Three Natural Nines 4th ,, ,, ,, A bust 5th ,, ,, ,, 2 4 5 6 7 Eight High Straight 6th ,, ,, ,, 2 3 4 5 9 Single Deuce *7th ,, ,, ,, a bust 5th raises on an Eight High Straight. 6th and 7th fold. 1st folds. 2nd and 3rd players stay on weak hands. After the Draw 2nd player draws Two to Three Eights. Makes 2 8 8 5 3 No change. 3rd player draws Two to Three Nines. Makes

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

Hand Range 331: LJ 60bb (2.3x vs HJ 3-bet) • All-in 4.5% / • 4-bet 16.9% / • Call 34.3% / • Fold 44.3%

It must not have seemed like a big thing to her, such a small mistake. But sometimes choices we make have consequences beyond what we could ever imagine. I remember Doyla every day, and the shock and the sadness of losing her will never end. But I’m at peace with God. Had I not come to accept that peace, I could never have returned successfully to poker. I finally came to understand that Doyla’s and Louise’s Christian beliefs were right for me. And I was ready to revisit poker with a new vigor. I moved to California and found very soft action at the poker tables. At the Bicycle Club, I won over a $1 million very quickly. I was back. Essex, England I’ve become more reflective about life as I’ve continued to mature. It’s strange to realize that a man can get to be fifty, sixty, and now seventy and still find himself maturing. But that’s what happens. About twenty years ago, I took an interest in genealogy, wondering how I came to be. I learned that Roger Brunson, the first historically recorded Brunson in America, could be traced to Connecticut in 1625. And you can trace my lineage back to Essex, England in the 1500s. Actually, the early surnames in my family weren’t all Brunson. They were Brownson, meaning son of Braun, and Bronson. But these were all related, all from the same family tree. I discovered that, except for Native Americans, no families can trace their roots to this continent further back than the Brunsons. Sometimes I wonder if any of the Brunsons who preceded me had gambling in their natures. Were they great risk takers? Did they overcome adversity or get buried by it? What anguish did they face that involved their families? What victories made them proudest? History doesn’t provide me enough detail. Still, I wonder. As for me, life’s path has been peppered with pretty panorama and disastrous detours. Maybe everyone’s life is a little like that. Maybe things that happen to you just seem magnified and out of proportion when compared to events that happen to others. 28 Thinking Back The events that I most remember play out in my mind like sound bites. Occasionally I can’t recall details or events until one of these monumental moments in memory gets me started, and then that trigger leads me to the next remembrance and the next. Like my children leaving the nest. Like when my closest friends and some of my family began to die off—Sailor, D.C., Mom, three aunts, and four uncles —all within two years. And this, once again, got me to wondering about the meaning of life. What’s it all about? But this time, my newly discovered faith brought me through. Then there were those bad investments—television stations, mining ventures, you name it. Despite my advanced education in business, I just couldn’t seem to get it right. Maybe the Lord intended for me to be a poker player. Maybe poker is my path to greater awareness. Maybe whenever I stray from that poker

so every time OOP takes an action, this reveals some information about their range to IP, who can use this information to his advantage before having to make a decision. This continues to the river, where IP will have the most complete information possible regarding OOP’s range. Furthermore, when studying complex strategies in Chapter 4, we established that there is a direct correlation between stack depth or SPR and Hero’s ability to realize equity. Deeper stacks benefit the IP Player and hurt the OOP player. For this reason, OOP tends to use larger bet- sizings than IP, either to get more folds and end the hand immediately or, if called, to decrease the positional disadvantage by reducing the SPR. Another measure OOP takes to decrease positional disadvantage is to avoid splitting their range on flops where they have a large range disadvantage and thus not give away any information to IP by checking 100% of the time, as seen in the donk betting section of this chapter. Being IP with a weak range is not as bad as being OOP with a weak range. In general, strong ranges will realize most of their equity and sometimes even over-realize it when OOP, while weak ranges heavily under-realize their equity when OOP. For this reason, over-folding the big blind to steals was a predominant strategy in both live and online poker for many years as players generally tried to avoid this unfavorable situation. This in turn created an opportunity for observant players to capitalize on this by loosening up their opening ranges and attacking the tight players’ big blinds. Subsequently, players started to readjust their BB strategy and began calling very wide vs open raises, which resulted in the BB defending way too many marginal hands that made post-flop play too difficult for the BB, hurting their overall EQR. Now, with modern solvers, both pre- and post-flop play have in general improved drastically, resulting in players defending in a close to optimal fashion from the BB. This is particularly true in high stakes online cash games where most regulars play a sound baseline pre-flop GTO strategy and are now forced to look for possible edges elsewhere. However, even at the highest level, players still make mistakes. The game is not completely solved and there is always room for improvement and exploitation. The goal with this chapter is to improve the players’ underlying understanding of the game so that they are capable of finding these edges by themselves and to turn them into winning strategies applicable to their own games. 12

Hand Range 43: HJ vs CO 3-bet • 4-bet 22.2% / • Call 14.5% / • Fold 63.3%

Hand Range 4: A Typical Early Position Raising Range You must be careful about the information you give away after taking certain actions, because the more information your opponents have about your range, the better decisions they can make. Professional poker players come to the table with a well thought out plan. They have done the

Splash the Pot—To throw chips into the pot in such a way that they hit chips already in the center. Not allowed; it prevents the dealer and players to ensure you put the proper amount in the pot, since your chips are now “splashed” in with the others. Chips are placed in the pot in front of you, with separation between your bet and the pot. Split Pot—A pot in which a single player does not win the whole pot, either because both players have the same hand or the game is a high/low inwhich the high hand wins half the pot and the low hand wins the other half. Players sometimes split a pot by agreement. Squeeze Play—A form of bluffing where you re-raise two players in order to squeeze them out of the pot. Specifically, when there has been a raiseand a call to you, a re-raise bluff is called a squeeze play. Stack Size—How many chips you have in your stack. Steal—To bluff. To win the pot when you don’t have the best hand. To take the pot from a player who would win at showdown. Steaming (Steam)—See “tilt.” Straddle—To place a bet out before the cards are dealt when a player isn’t in one of the blinds. Usually happens when a player is on the button or under the gun. See “Live Straddle” and “Dead Straddle.” Straight—Five cards consecutive in rank. For example, T-9-8-7-6. Straight Draw—A hand where you have four consecutive cards and are trying to draw the fifth consecutive card to complete a straight. If you flop a straight draw, that means you flop four cards to a straight and are looking to hit the fifth card on the turn or the river. Can also refer to a gutshot straight draw. Street—A round of betting. String Bet—Any bet made in more than one forward motion. For example, if you say, “I call” and put your chips into the pot, then say, “I raise” and go to put more chips into the pot. It’s a string bet any time you place chips in a pot, then try to go back to your chip stack to put more chips in unlessyou verbally declared your intent before taking any action. Never allowed in a card room. Stuck—Losing in a cash game. Suck Out—Winning with a hand that’s a big mathematical underdog. Suited Connectors—Cards of the same suit and consecutive in rank, e.g., 8♥7♥. Sweat—To watch intently, anticipating an event, hoping for a good result. For example, in hold ’em, if you’re against a player with a flush draw, you’re sweating the cards, hoping no flush hits, or “sweating the flush draw.” If you have AA and are all-in against a player with TT, you sweat the T, hoping it doesn’t hit. The player with TT is also sweating the T, hoping it hits. If you have a bet on a football game, you can be said to be sweating the game. Table Captain—A player at the table who’s running the action, telling other players what to do, correcting and

there's a lot of short stacks behind you because if they pick up a hand then you have to call it off but you can remember also though like once you three but like these 20 big blinds stacks they're probably only gonna stick it in with the top five to seven percent of hands and so it's not gonna happen that often and if you do have a hand like say Jack ten suited you still have decent equity against hands an ace king an ace Queen sometimes they'll have pocket nines you have two overs so you want to have like reasonable hands when there's you know stacks behind you but even in a polar reign like your Bluffs are still going to be strong enough where one of the short stack streams behind you it's not the biggest disaster in the world to have to call it off with 87 suited or King seven suited so Laura asks do I use a mixed strategy rather than a pure polar strategy so Laura's question is asking if I use a mixed strategy where I might three about a hand 50% of the time and call it 50% of the time first is a pure strategy where I only three bet this hand or I only call this hand and here's my thing on pure versus mixed strategies when a strategy is mixed so let's say you're using a solver like piyo solver and it's saying that you should three bit ace jack-off see 50% of the time and you should flat call a strike off 50% of the time it's using a mixed strategy it's mixing up so it's ace Jack it's trying to balance it's flattering range and it's 3-betting range so when a strategy is mixed it means the value of three buddy an ace jack and the value of calling three Jace Jack or the exact same so the only time that pyro solver or any of the solvers that you look at uses a mixed strategy is when the values are the same if it's way more profitable to like for example you'll never see a mixed strategy almost with aces because it's either gonna be way more profitable to three bet them versus basically whenever your deep stack or in some of those situations that I said it gets polar you know if you get three bet and you have 30 big blinds you know it will just say pure flat call with aces because you block their value range and you should flat call so what I'm getting out here is mixed strategies if your planning is a perfect opponent yes you might want to have a mixed strategy but what a mixology is is basically the inputs you get in so the tendency of your opponent matters much more so if your opponent flat calls too much or your opponent folds too much or your opponent plays poorly preflop or your opponent doesn't for bet enough like these are all gonna make one

river. Now you also have to fade the possibility of a full house, which makes your decisions on the hand murderous. So it’s only two-thirds of the .8% of the time you flop your flush that no other suited card hits on the turn and the river. That leaves you with about a .5% chance of flopping a flush and getting all the way to the river unmolested by another flush card hitting. Cut that down to about .3% when youinclude the board pairing (which will kill your action or just kill your hand). So about one time in 300 or so, you’ll flop perfect and stay perfect. And that’s only if your flush is good when you flop it to begin with. I think we can write off that circumstance from reasonable consideration, don’t you? So yeah, flopping a flush is just a dream, but flopping a flush drawis a reasonable possibility, right? Let’s say you jump in with that 87s and the flop comes Q♠-6♠-2♦. You flopped your draw. That’s awesome. That happens one time out of nine, so it’s unlikely, but not water-into-wine unlikely. If we don’t include implied odds, for you to break even on the flushy flop at your 10-handed table, you need nine people playing with you. Just to breakeven on flopping a flush draw! Break even, that is, if flopping the draw wins you the pot, which it doesn’t, because all you currently have is 8-high. You haven’t even made your hand yet, so don’t get so darned excited. In a multi-way pot, you’ll have to complete the draw in order to win, because multi-way you aren’t winning with that 8-high. It’s not like you are heads-up and could semi-bluff just one guy, right? So in order to win, you still have to see the turn and river, and do you think your nice opponents are going to let you do that for free? Not at mytable they won’t. The odds of making a flush on the turn or the river are well-known: You’re about a 2-to-1 underdog to complete. But that’s only if you get to seeboth cards. You’re only about 20% to hit the flush on the turn alone, if that’s the only card you get to see, and let’s face it, if someone bets into your draw on the flop and the draw misses on the turn, you’re likely to get bet at again and then you’re almost always folding. So if you almost always only get to see one card with your 8-high flush draw, you really need to be getting 4-to-1 or so on the call or you need some pretty compelling implied odds. And all the problems with implied odds that we discussed in contemplating flopping a flush apply here too—only worse. When you make that flush on the turn and bet it (you have to, since you can’t allow any free cards with this vulnerable hand) andsomeone moves in on your sorry ass, how are you feeling now? After all, your opponents called with something on the flop

small blind is incredibly simple. If two or more players have called, you should call with everything! Yes, even 7-2 offsuit* is worth an extra chip in this spot. Just don’t get carried away if you flop a deuce. The time to consider folding the small blind for one-third of a bet is when only one player has called, you are holding a bad hand, and the big blind is a frequent raiser. As long as those conditions aren’t all there, though, you should put in the extra chip. Tip # 12 of 52 Call a raise from an early-position raiser only with very good hands. A raise from a typical player in early position nearly always signifies a hand of great strength. As a result, you must elevate your playing standards considerably. One of your goals in hold’em should be to try to enter pots with what you think is the best hand as often as possible. Calling early-position raises with a wide range of hands is not the way to accomplish this objective. What hands are playable against an early-position raise? In the absence of other callers, if you stick to a very selective strategy of playing only A-Q suited, A-K, or a pair of jacks or better, you avoid putting your money in with the worst hand too often. At first glance, it would seem that T-T is a good hold’em hand. And it is. However, when the first player in has raised the pot, you should ask yourself, “What range of hands is he likely to be holding in this situation?” If the raiser is a solid player, toss those two tens into the muck. The reason for this is that most solid players raise up front with only a few hands: A-A, K-K, Q-Q, J-J, T-T, A-K, and A-Q. Your two tens are a big underdog if your opponent has a pair, and only a slight favorite against AK or A-Q. It is important to avoid these types of either-or situations in hold’em as much as possible, if you plan on winning at the game. Either you’re a big underdog or you’re a slight favorite. However, if the early-position raiser is a loose or reckless player, you are playing too tightly if you fold your tens. The reason is that a maniac raises the pot with a huge number of hands that are dominated* by your pair of tens, including smaller pairs, A-x, or even hands like 7-8 suited. Against this type of opponent, the correct play is to reraise in an attempt to play your pair heads up against the maniac. Tip # 13 of 52 When a player in late position opens the pot for a raise, you should reraise liberally from the small blind if you plan on playing. There are several reasons why playing your hand this way is correct, all of which center around the basic truth that players open-raise from late position with less than-premium hands. After all, you do this yourself (see Tip 5). What sorts of hands might you

Sit and go (SNG) A poker tournament with a specified number or maximum number of players that starts when a certain number of players have registered. Unlike regular tournaments, which started at a specified time.

Variance and Bankroll Management Vital Soft Skills for Every Poker Player Despite our best efforts to maximize our edge at the tables, at its core poker is a gambling game. It is beatable, but it is still built around the same foundational pillar as every other casino game: crazy, gut-wrenching, mind-numbing variance! Watch the video Is Poker Luck 🍀 or Skill? Both! How much luck or skill depends on how many hands you play . Tiny edges get magnified in the long run. In the short run your results are mostly dictated by luck. But even a small edge over a long enough timeline becomes inevitable. Your results are mostly dominated by luck in the short run, and by skill in the long run! What Exactly is Variance? The term variance refers to a statistical measurement of the spread between numbers in a data set. In poker, variance refers to how “swingy” your results are! In higher variance games, a player’s results can deviate further away from their expectation over a given sample. Variance is measured with the “Standard Deviation” metric. You can find this metric in most poker HUDs, but it can also be calculated directly from your results. For cash games, this is measured in BB/100. Let’s look at some examples. The following charts are examples of 20 random runs given a set of inputs (credit: Primedope) Low Variance results Note that the best and worst runs are between -1,000 BB and +10,000 BB. High variance results Note that the best and worst runs are between -17,000 and +22,000! Both players have an identical win rate , but the higher variance player has a much larger spread between their best and worst runs! The law of large numbers The gambler’s fallacy is very common among poker players . Let’s say we flip a fair coin, and it lands on heads 6 times in a row. What is the probability that it lands on heads the next flip? If you’re superstitious, you might think you are “owed” tails. But that’s simply not how reality works. The next flip is 50%/50% . You’re just as likely to flip a 7th heads as you were to flip heads the first time. After thousands of flips, we would expect heads and tails to even out. But that’s not because of some universal Karma; it’s simply the law of large numbers . Imagine we flip 1000 times and heads retains the 6-flip lead. At this point, we’ve flipped 503 heads and 497 tails – this is actually the expected value when starting with a 6-point lead. At this point, it’s 50.3% heads, 49.7% tails. Now imagine we flip 100,000 times and retain the same 6 point lead. Now it’s 50.0003% heads and 49.9997% tails. The “luck” appears to even out despite tails never catching up. This is the law of large numbers . Similarly, just because you’ve had bad luck doesn’t mean you are “owed” any rungood. The deck owes you nothing . Each hand is an independent event without memory of how you got

never lose further chips. Also, the lowest P1’s EV can get is 0.5 pot because they have the winning hand 50% of the time. So even if they simply check all the time they still get at least 50% of the pot. Notice how at a bet-size of about 4x pot, P1 captures 90% of the pot. After that the gains become quite marginal to the point that betting 10x pot will only win about 5% more of the pot, 95% total (Diagram 132). What happens when P2 has some traps in their range? Is there a cap to how big P1’s bet-size can be? Diagram 132

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 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?

great that's the exact image we want that's why of the five post flop tricks you can use number two is over bet the turn when you're a colony caps is range all right guys here we go we're gonna keep him common you're in a live tournament in Vegas a 1k the cutoff is a younger guy he's been very aggressive so far although you don't know a ton about him you call out of the big blind because you're not sure what to do vs. is for bet if you three bet and you think he's probably for betting often you want to give him a chance to hang himself the board comes Jacka diamond seven of clubs for clubs you check all on this flop to allow him to keep firing this turn comes out the two of hearts you check to him and he quickly bets 450 you call the river is the King of Hearts now here do you want to lead out do you want to check fold do you want to check call or do you want to check raise let's see your guys's answers so we have one we have one we have a lot of people saying see but few people save check raise some people say that Bob said that Mike C said shet call gonna give you a few sections a few a few of you had questions I'll be sure to answer that at the end all right everybody so what you should do is you should lead out here you should bet 1300 why lead there guys what did you think of this turn lead I want you guys looking for this because you'll see this a lot from grinding regulars okay I really pay attention to this next part because I started making way more money at No Limit Hold'em once I started being able to spot this what did you think of his turn lead think about it if you had a set wouldn't he be trying to get more value if he had a draw wouldn't he be betting more trying to get us to fold a seven or something like that what he's doing is what a lot of aggressive players do it's buying the show down unfortunately he's doing it to a player who can see through it and he's given away the strength of his hand through his sizing so in this guy's defense this play is gonna work versus most people because well 90% of the people in the chat didn't say lead-out so if he is trying to get a cheap showdown and get a little value out of 5 6 maybe some lesser pairs some flush rows and whatnot uh he's gonna get a showdown a really cheap showdown there it's a good play but I want you guys to be able to spot it so you can take advantage of that and the way a lot of them give it away if you just that's a normal amount here

to know what the ranges are going into the term before we before we continue so we talked about this last time King eight for this is kind of the basic piosolver setup and the key thing here is this is the strategy that it's suggesting this is out of player position player first first thing I want to point out there's no leading from out of position says 1% but I only solve this to like 1% accuracy if I ran it all the way to 0% where it solves it completely this would go to zero and it would be a hundred percent check why is out of position 100 percent check we talked about this last time because out of position only has 38 percent equity he's at a big range disadvantage so out of position is always going to check to the imposition player and never choose to bet and we talked about this last time as well once out of position checks this is imposition strategy in position is gonna bet every single hand as range same scenario it says we're gonna check three percent of the time basically if I ran this down to zero percent it would have us bet a hundred percent of the time and yeah Mike that's why I'm setting this up we're gonna owe for all the examples we're going throughout the term we're assuming it's gonna go check in position bets and big blind calls and so we're gonna be looking at the ranges so key thing here is going into the turn so after the flop going in and turn in position has every single hand still so Harris it we don't really have a here in a villain because we're gonna be looking at both players in this range we're looking at this as an outsider basically so we don't really have hero in a villain just out of position in position so keep key takeaway one is that in position player is gonna have every single hand here on this grid going into the turn because he's betting a hundred percent of his hands for three big blinds there's ten big blinds in the pot so 30% bet and the reason he's betting small is just because he has a huge range advantage and he wants to bet every single hand in his range so we're gonna do the bet and then we're just gonna look quickly at what the big blind strategy is so we have an idea of what his range is going to the turn a couple of things to point out first let's look at what types of hands the big blind is raising so he's raising about twelve percent of the time so let's look at his nutty hands he doesn't have pocket Kings pocket eights he's raising a hundred percent of the time so he never has pockets going to the turn there's about a sliver of it but like I said if I ran this to a hundred percent it

can be improved by studying and using the content in the poker coaching premium members area or if you don't have a membership at poker coaching premium yet you can improve your win rate by watching more of the free training content that's available right here on youtube next up we have the level of competition and this can be improved by game selection if you're playing in games that are softer if you're playing games with weaker players lesser competition you're going to naturally as a result of that have a higher expected dollar per hand ways you can look at this when you're scrolling through a lobby you can look for tables with a high players per flop percentage because it usually means players are playing too loose you can look for tables with a high average pot which it doesn't always check out but sometimes if the average pots really big it may be because someone's tilting and you know going all in every hand and the best way to identify good games is if you have your opponents pre-labeled because you've played lots of sessions with them and you look for your mark of the um whale at the table and try to get in those games whenever those players are on third thing that's going to affect your dollars per hand is your state of mind and body and the way to improve this is the self-care the off the table the mental game side of poker by putting some time and energy and attention and effort into fitness into diet maybe into meditation into socializing into having fun you're going to ensure that you always feel your best have a minimal amount of stress and can therefore play your best when you sit down at the tables and finally one of the things that we have that affects your dollars per hand is the actual stakes that you're playing obviously higher stakes with the same win rate in terms of big blind per 100 is going to be more dollars per hand the same win rate at a lower limit would lead to lower dollars per hand so just as an example if we're winning at eight big blinds per 100 at 50 nl that would be four dollars per hundred hands or four cents per hand for winning at six big blinds at a hundred no limit which is a lower win rate but a higher stake we're making six dollars per hundred hands or six cents per hand and if we're winning at four big blinds per hundred which is half the win rate we had at 50 nl but we're playing at 200 nl now we're making eight dollars every 100 hands or eight cents per hand now it's easy to think okay well i want to make the most money so i just got to go move my way to the highest stakes and it's not that simple because there are a few factors at play one the level of competition is

play them accordingly. When you believe your hand is mixing options because it’s indifferent at equilibrium, then the EV of both options will be close against a well-balanced opponent, so it won’t matter which you choose. This frees you up to act on hunches , as even if you are wrong and play a pure strategy to exploit a mistake your opponent isn’t making, you won’t pay the penalty for it (unless they are actively unbalanced in the opposite direction from what you assumed). Once you understand which of your opponent’s actions incentivize you to take each line, you can consider which imbalances are more likely. Against an overly aggressive opponent, you’d purely bet small with your strong hands to induce raises, as we saw in our example above. Against an overly passive opponent, you’d purely bet large with the same hands because you wouldn’t expect to make the money you’re “supposed” to make from inducing raises with the small bet. Your opponent’s imbalances do not need to be as dramatic as the ones in our examples. We deliberately looked at extreme examples to make the point more clearly. Here is UTG ’s continuation betting strategy if we nodelock BB to check-raise half as often against both bet sizes (and never to donk bet, which the solver would otherwise do to compensate for the reduced check-raising but which a passive opponent presumably would not): Strong hands still mix between both sizes, but the big bet size is preferred much more often in general. The same hands retain their preference for the small bet, however, such as JJ , K6 , and AQ without a heart. Conclusion Pure strategies are indicative of hands that have strong incentives to take a particular line. Understanding those incentives helps you see why that line is strategically important. Deception is also important, however, so it’s rare that you can get away with only taking that line with the “obvious” hands. Your opponent could deduce what you’re trying to accomplish and adapt their own play to frustrate your efforts. Nodelocking enables us to simulate this process. We can lock the Hero to play a less deceptive strategy and see what that incentivizes the opponent to do in response. Those responses are what motivate Hero’s own mixed strategies, creating a balance between the opponent’s potential exploits and Hero’s “traps” . With all those heuristics sorted out, we can come away with practical considerations to guide in-game decision-making. In this example, we determined that medium-strength hands strongly prefer small bets, while stronger hands are torn between betting bigger to win more from calls or smaller to win more from raises. Both sizes are equally profitable at equilibrium, but your opponents will not play perfectly balanced strategies. Guided by the heuristics you learned, you can make judgment calls about which size will be better in a specific situation. 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

Hero folds. Reason 3 - Playing with Weaker Players Poker is a game of skill. Our EV in any given spot where there are future decisions to be made will change based on our skill level relative to that of our opponent(s). The presence of weaker players in a hand can be an incentive to call an open in a situation where Hero is neither in good shape vs the opener's range nor has the requisite implied odds. Let's look at an example: In Hand 45, 87s was an easy fold as the table contained no Fish. Here we have a completely different situation where both blinds are likely to come along for the ride and to play badly when they do. This post-flop situation is far more favourable. Hero's suited connector is not as powerful a mining hand as a pocket pair and hence needs extra implied odds in order to invest 3BB. The two Fish sitting out of position to Hero provide these nicely. We mentioned before that the top pair hands that a medium suited connector can flop are fairly weak and suffer from a degree of reverse implied odds against the UTG opener's overpairs. This is less of a problem in a multiway pot. Multiway, with Fish involved, UTG will have to play very fit-or-fold and Hero can simply toss away his hand on a flop like 8h4s3s should UTG c-bet without getting trapped for any bets at all. In fact, being able to make folds like this is an illustration of why a skill advantage translates into higher EV scenarios pot-flop.

bigger raise sizes (up to 5x) but there is no substantial EV loss by using 3.5x, and so I believe that using sizes bigger than 3.5x is overkill. Hand Range 96: SB vs BB (15bb) • All-in 23.7% / • Limp 61.5% / • Fold 14.8%

holding. Yes. The whole range of hands is playable under the right circumstances from the button. That’s how valuable position is. Now in practical terms, you don’t want to raise every time and play every hand, because you’ll simply trash the credibility of your button raise andyou’d rather your opponents give you at least a little credit when you raise. But if you throw away the 15%-20% that are the bottom-feeders you’redealt (your 72o, T3o, and so on), you’ll still push pretty damn hard from the button and, given your position, that’s pretty damn good. So here you are playing a restrictive set of hands in first position and an unrestrictive set of hands in last position. What about all the stops inbetween? Again, considering only those times when it’s folded to you and you have first action, you should plan on loosening up as a function of your position. While this might look like something you’d learn from a start chart, bear in mind that it’s parabolic, rather than linear. Why? Because in the two or three spots after first position, you don’t gain much in the way of position. Too many players are yet to act and when you get called, you’ll be playing the hand out of position and it won’t be very fun. So stay snug, and stay out of everyone’s way, in the early-position spots. When you get to the middle positions, you can start to add in your AJ and KQ and KJ and AT suited kinds of hands. And as you near the button, you can really open it up. When you raise from the cutoff (one before the button) or hijack (two before the button) seats, you’re likely to end up with the button when you raise. Naturally, you don’t want to play pure trash, but you can begin open-raising with your KTs, QTs, small pairs, suited aces, suited connectors, and similar hands that you’d muck everywhere else but here, where that curve gets steep. Why such freedom? Again, it’s not the reduced likelihood of someone behind you having a big hand, but the increased likelihood of getting to play the hand in position if anyone calls. What becomes clear when you start to think ahead to how to play the hand going forward is that whether you have the best hand or the worst hand or somewhere in the middle, all hands are harder to play when you have to act first after the flop. Positionis literally the key to everything. And once you realize how hard it is to play hands out of position, you naturally start to avoid getting involved early. The Illusion of Suit Value Before we go any further, let’s take a little detour into suitedness. I know you’re thinking that the hands I suggest you play from the earlier positions seem reasonable—except I’m overlooking tasty hands like JTs (jack-ten suited) or A9s or 87s. Actually, I’m not overlooking them. Rather, I’m looking them off, because as colorfully coordinated as they are, I’ve got to go to my late

,, 6 6 6 Three sixes. 3rd ,, ,, ,, K 7 K Two Kings. 4th ,, ,, ,, 8 9 J Jack High. 6th ,, ,, ,, J 8 7 Jack High. 7th ,, ,, ,, 2 A 5 Ace High. The Betting 2nd hand holds Three Sixes, two of which are exposed. He bets. 3rd raises on Two Kings, according to the book. 4th, 6th, 7th and 1st players all fold. 2nd player just calls, waiting for the kill with Three Sixes. The Deal One Down Three Up 2nd player is dealt 6 6 6 3 Three Sixes 3rd ,, ,, ,, K 7 K 9 Two Kings. The Betting 2nd player with Two Exposed Sixes checks. He knows 3rd will bet. 3rd bets on Two Kings, taking the bait. 2nd raises with Three Sixes. 3rd should know he is trapped and should fold, but he calls. The Deal One Down Three Up 2nd player is dealt 6 6 6 3 A Three Sixes 3rd ,, ,, ,, K 7 K 9 8 Two Kings. The Betting 2nd player is High with Two Exposed Sixes. He bets. 3rd player knows he is beat but is curious enough to call. It is hard to drive out a sucker once he has his money in the pot. Winning Hand Three Sixes, held by 2nd player. 2ND DEAL The Deal One Down One Up 1st player is dealt 9 9 Two Nines 2nd ,, ,, ,, 4 5 Five High 3rd ,, ,, ,, A J Ace High 4th ,, ,, ,, J 9 Jack High 5th ,, ,, ,, 7 9 Nine High 6th ,, ,, ,, K 5 King High 7th ,, ,, ,, 8 8 Two Eights The Betting 3rd player is High with the Jack. He bets. 4th player calls on J-9. This is an especially poor call because two of his Nines are exposed. 5th also calls. This is a poor call for the same reason. 6th calls on K-5. 7th raises on Two Concealed Eights. He thinks more of Two Eights than I do. 1st player sees an opportunity to win a small pot and re-raises on Two Concealed Nines. 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th players cannot stand a double raise and fold. 7th player calls on Two Eights. The Deal One Down Two Up 1st player is dealt 9 9 J Two Nines 7th ,, ,, ,, 8 8 K Two Eights The Betting 7th player is High with the King. He checks his Two Eights. 1st bets on Two Concealed Nines. 7th calls. He thinks he is beat, but hopes to draw out. The Deal One Down Three Up 2nd player is dealt 9 9 J 2 Two Nines 3rd ,, ,, ,, 8 8 K 2 Two Eights The Betting 7th player is High with Two Concealed Eights and the King, and checks. 1st player bets his Two Concealed Nines. 7th at last folds. Winning Hand Two Nines, held by 1st player. 3RD DEAL The Deal One Down One Up 1st player is

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

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 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

Hand Range 75: SB vs BN 4-bet • 5-bet All-in 17.3% / • Call 56% / • Fold 26.5% The BN 4-betting range is very polarized, so the SB is less incentivized to 5-bet and more incentivized to call, choosing to slowplay AA 100% of the time. The SB 5-betting range is KK, QQ, AK, JJ (29%), TT (27%), and A5s (74%), while the calling range is 55+, 76s+ AQo, ATs+, KTs+, A4s, A3s, AJo (37%), A9s (67%), A5s (74%), K9s (74%), QTs (72%), and K6s (Hand Range 75). Big Blind

100 essential tips the master no limit hold them by me check it out on Amazon and D&B poker that's going to be it for today I hope you enjoyed these 10 tips that you must Master to crush live cash games good luck in your games have fun click the like And subscribe button down below click the notification Bell and if you have tip number 11 that you think I should share next time or you just want people down below to know it so they don't screw up and spot that maybe you screwed up in the past type it down there we all appreciate it good luck have fun and hope you wi all the money in the cash games

gain a lot of value with the top of your range facing polar ranges it's the exact opposite you should for bet much less against polar ranges and if you do choose to for but hand play ability does not matter really at all what matters is having a blockers to the five bet shoving and having blockers basically to the value portion so if we look here at the polar range it's Jack's queens Kings aces ace king king queen suited one of the most important cards that have you know good hands too for that would be well Ace King would be one of the best hands because you block aces you bought Kings you bought ace king you block a screen you bought king queen suited hands like you know King Queen off suit becomes a good hand to floor bet because you block all the Ace King combos pocket kings pocket queens you want to have hands that cards in your hand that block this value portion of the range and you don't want to have cards that block the weaker parts of their range the the bluffing and the reason you want to be your hand playability doesn't matter like I might for bet a hand like a seven off suit B and the reason I can for bat a seven off suit against a very polar range is one I block hands like aces aces Ace King and ace Queen but to this range is almost never gonna flat call if I for bet he's gonna jam with Jack's plus all these red hands he's gonna go all in with and then he's gonna fold all the blue hands and so he we almost never see a flop when we're facing a polar range and we for bet so pan playability really doesn't matter at all versus if I'm playing a linear range I never won a three bit or four but a seven off suit because he can flat call with a wide variety in hands a key point here is slow playing big hands like pocket aces and pocket kings becomes much more attractive when you're facing a polar range especially often in position with 50 big blinds or less having no four bet range can be correct so in tournaments it's becomes really profitable against aggressive three betters who use polar ranges to just flat call with aces and kings and the reason is is that an especially aces ace is more so than kings but look at these Bluffs that someone might be choosing like ace 5-seater through ace deuce suited like King 7 suited ace 10 off suited connectors those hands have horrific equity against pocket aces and you want to just flat call and let them flop a pair rather than they're just gonna fold those hands preflop if you for bet so like a popular hand you might see one c1 someone 3 bet with is like King Jack offsuit with 50 big blinds which we talked about in

Appendix 1 - More About The Author Peter Clarke, known in the poker community as 'Carroters', is a professional poker player, coach, video producer and author. He runs a thriving online poker community full of his private students and has been teaching online poker since 2010. His favourite hand is Jc9c. Outside of poker he is an avid chess and bridge player. For details on private coaching from Peter, free poker instructional content and more information visit his website at www.carrotcorner.com. For an archive of over 200 training videos from Peter and hundreds more from other poker instructors visit micro and low-stakes focused training site: www.grinderschool.com. Grinderschool.com is currently offering one free month of a poker training subscription for new members who have purchased this book. Please use referral code: Grinder's Manual.

you just lose small amounts of money to your opponents who are a little bit loose and aggressive let's take a look at another hand here we have jack ten of spades we raise it up big blind calls flop comes nine seven six okay we know immediately on these coordinated boards we want to be doing a lot of checking but we want to bet with our best made hands and our draws is this a draw well yes it is right we have a gut shot straight draw two over cards and a back door flush draw a backdoor flush draw means we need two more spades to come which doesn't happen all that often so in this scenario when our opponent checks we are going to go ahead and bet so we do bet the opponent calls turns an ace this is a very good card to keep betting because if you think about our opponent's check calling range it's gonna be a whole lot of one pair hands they could be ace 9 a7 or a6 but it's also going to be a whole lot of king 9 king 7 king 6 queen 9 queen 7 queen 6 right and these hands just got way worse so this is definitely a spot to keep bluffing with a hand that is still a draw it's a weak draw but it's a draw we should keep betting so we do bet opponent calls river is now the king of spades and this is actually a kind of dicey card because our opponent could very easily have king 9 king 7 king 6 or a sign a7 a6 but they could also have a lot of hands like 9 8 8 7 8 6 right they can have a hand like queen 8 that is queen high that we really want to bluff out they could have um a lot of really just a lot of marginal one-pair hands they decided to call to turn also some players even if they have a hand like ace two of clubs they would check call the flop they'll check call to turn if you bet big on the river they'll actually fold that because if you think about it from our opponent's point of view i'm betting the flop using a kind of big size i'm betting the turn using a kind of big size and then i'm betting the river i'm going to use a kind of big size and that's gonna put our opponent in a really really tough spot so this is a situation where we definitely need to bet we have a hand that cannot win at the showdown when you cannot win in the showdown you probably want to bluff a decent amount of the time whenever you were the aggressor on the previous rounds we do bet this time using a pretty big size about the size of the pot and our opponent folds so good next here we have jack ten of spades we raise it

first pay attention to who raised the pot, and from what position. You should tend to play tighter when the raise is from an earlier position, or when a solid player has raised. You can be more liberal in your playing standards against loose or late-position raisers. For example, you should fold A-8 suited against an early-position raiser, but this hand is definitely worth a play when the raise is from late position. Next, consider how many players are in the pot. The more players, the better your pot odds are. In multiway pots, some hands fare better than others. You should try to defend more with hands that have the potential to improve to better than one pair, since one pair frequently won't get the money when several players are vying for the pot. These include any pocket pair and medium to large suited connectors (7-8 or better). Simply having big cards in your hand doesn't justify a call in a multiway pot. The reason for this is that it is too easy to flop a pair and still lose, either to a bigger kicker or to two pair or a better hand. For example, suppose you call a raise in a five- way pot with K-J offsuit. (If suited, you should call.) Now, the flop comes J-9-6. If the preflop raiser had a legitimate hand, you may be beat already. Also, there are three other players to contend with here, one of whom may have A-J, 9-9, or 6-6. Another hand that may be out is Q-T, a hand that poses a serious threat to drawing out on your holding. All in all, a hand like K-J is highly likely to finish in second place in a multiway race, an expensive proposition in hold'em. Contrast this to calling a raise with a pair of deuces. Although the flop is much more likely to bring improvement if you are holding K-J, the problem is that the improvement may either not be enough, or may help your opponents even more. With the deuces, though, you should have a pretty good idea of where you stand. If a deuce flops (which happens slightly more than 1 time in 9), you are in the driver's seat. This should be all the improvement you need to win the pot, regardless of how many players are in. As a result, you can play the hand very aggressively. Any player with top pair will likely call you down, and the more players in the hand, the more likely it is that someone will have flopped top pair. Tip # 16 of 52 You can occasionally reraise from the big blind against a late position "blind thief." Although it is generally advisable to just call a raise on the big blind (since reraising is unlikely to eliminate any opponents, and just calling provides some deception about the strength of your hand), in some situations reraising is proper strategy. Remember, though, that the small and large blinds are different animals altogether. When you are in the small blind, one

anyway this is what we're going to check against this guy because this guy is gonna be inclined to over Bluff he bets turn do I want to raise probably not seems like a pretty bad spot to race if I raise now what I'm gonna what am I gonna get action from well flushes which I lose to sets which I lose to two pair which I lose to and maybe like Ace Queen of Hearts Ace I'm sorry Ace queen with the queen of hearts or Ace Jack with the Jack of Hearts that's about it so I definitely do not want to raise in the scenario definitely want to call and keep my opponent in with all their Bluffs and I mean there's some world where say they have Ace King the river brings another heart I don't lose right because I'll just check check so this is a great spot just to call and give them every chance to Bluff the river River's a pretty sweet card a check gonna rips it in 1.5 x pot how do you feel about this one I will say in most small and medium-sized games when people take this line of blast flop blast turn bet flop that turn and then over James River they almost always have a very good hand and the high stakes games though I can guarantee this guy's gonna show up with some Bluffs like just random Queen of Hearts random Jack of Hearts random ten of hearts pocket fours with a four of hearts um and there are plenty of bluffing hands in this scenario right I don't think the opponent is going to overvalue hey like Ace with the queen of hearts that seems optimistic but it's just a pretty pretty reasonable call s me the pocket threes with the three of hearts aggressive line I would not expect most small medium sex players to take this line I think a lot of small medium six players just bet flopping and give up Jake Fleming says are you ready to go home though that does not matter the fact like you got to get all these thoughts out of your mind if you're thinking at the table oh man I should fold because I don't want to leave you're gonna have a tough time winning at poker honestly because you have to think how do I fare against my opponent's range in this scenario and if this guy is over bluffing if anything you cannot go around over folding absolutely not absolutely not so this is a spot where you just have to find a call some of you saying in the chat this guy's Bluff is ridiculous I'm sure I'm sure uh from a GTO point of view this should get bluffed off some portion of the time these small pairs with a flush blocker a baby flush blocker turns out these are reasonable bluffing hands because you think about your range you don't have all that many very very logical blocks because

Hand Range 241: CO vs UTG 4-bet (40bb) • Call 49.9% / • Fold 50.8% Defending the CO (60bb)

hand that you haven't played a thousand times before-or thought about a lot. You are going to constantly be in debatable situations. It is those debatable situations where you are most likely to give your hand away by how you act. However, there will be times when you do want to think about a hand. So how do you keep from giving anything away? You do this by at least sometimes thinking on hands that you don't really need to think about. This idea is very important in short-handed play. You are going to have more obvious thinking situations, and if your opponents see you thinking only in borderline spots, they will have a big advantage. Here's a simple example. Suppose your opponent bets on the flop and you are having difficulty deciding whether to call. Finally, after much thought you throw your chips into the pot. An astute player will immediately realize what probably happened. He will re ognize that there is a good chance that you won't put in a double siz bet on the turn. Thus, even if he was out of line, you have "4 encouraged him to steal the pot from you, and he will be correct to do so. Playing Short-Handed Afterthought Most successful hold 'em players learn to play in a style that can be characterized as tight and aggressive. This is sometimes referred to as solid poker. In fact, it is the way that we usually recommend to play, and in most games it is the way that we play. IBut short-handed poker is very different. The tight players don't stand a chance against the live ones who seem to bet and call with anything. Unless you are able to make the adjustments that we described, you will be another loser in the short-handed games, and will be forced to avoid some of the most lucrative situations in all of poker. The great advantage of short-handed hold 'em, assuming you play it well, is that you get to play many more hands. Thus, if your decisions are better than your opponents, since you will be making many more of these decisions than normal, you can expect to produce a higher win rate in the short-handed games than you would in a regular ring game. This is particularly true if you are against one or more players who only understands how to play at a full table. Most of the best hold 'em players will tell you that they would rather play short-handed. This is the reason why. They find it far more profitable and actually enjoy it more than play at a full table. Hold’em Poker For Advanced Players By David Skalinsky and Mason Malmuth Check our site www.pokerpiraten.com to find more books on poker. Please support pokerpiraten to bring you more books by clicking on our sponsors: www.partypoker.com www.pacificpoker.com www.interpoker.com Playing in Other Non-Standard Games Introduction In the last two sections we have covered what can be termed as two non-standard games - loose games and short-handed games. There are also other non-standard

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cannot be run over that all being said this particular situation is so unique with a massive donk over bed that only makes sense with one specific combo that dramatically overfolding here probably isn't a bad idea although as we mentioned in the last video you generally want a strategic framework that causes you to call with some Bluff catchers to avoid overfolding in the aggregate this situation is a bit of a one-of-one scenario that is very different from the hand we reviewed last time in that hand Nick was facing a check raise with the nut straight and a draw to the absolute nuts that would have beat 100 of villain's value also it was plausible to think of plenty more Bluffs that villain potentially could have had there such as a flush draw or perhaps a pair plus a straight draw and on top of all that villain was someone who called himself a dark knight and was dressed like an 80s rapper so although from a conceptual GTO standpoint whenever you face a bet you generally want to Bluff catch some of the time there are exceptions to every Rule and I think it would be reasonable to significantly overfold in this specific spot due to its absolute absurdity while at the same time ensuring that you are Bluff catching in more common scenarios over the long run to avoid being run over so that is the video for today thanks for watching and until next time stay balanced happy field I can grasp what is not real so I'll get my get memories [Music] and I remember in the in the museum daydreaming is it all that it seems or am I all the things [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] surprise [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

see is that you check-raise big with sets and draws alike, and they won’t ever know where they’re at against you. Small Draws, Heads-Up Now let’s turn our attention to small draws. For this example, I’m giving you 8♠7♠, that middle suited connector that people love so much. The first thing I have to ask you is why are you playing this hand? If you’re in early position and your answer is anything other than, “Because it’ssuited,” you’re kind of lying, because you know that if you held 8♠7♥, you’d fold it like an origami swan, so that’s that. Okay, maybe everyone folded to you in the cutoff and you raised. I’m down with that, totally. You could have also been forced into the hand in the blinds. I get that, too. But anything other than those, especially from early position, and you’re playing the hand because it’s suited! Stop that! Now! Anyway, somehow you got involved with that 8♠7♠ and the flop came good for this bad hand: A♠-4♠-3♥. Well, you think it’s good, so far. Note that up till this point, we’ve been talking about big hands and big draws played for value. Now we’re talking about cards where you know at the outset that you don’t have the best hand. All you have is nine outs. You hope. That’s not a big hand. You’ll definitely have to improve to win. Your odds of improving are about 2-to-1 against with two cards to come and 4-to-1 against with one card to come, depending on what’s out there; your live outs are the spades and the spades alone. You can’t assume that hitting an 8 or a 7 would be good. Looking for hope from the runner-runner straight? That’s a little daft. Okay, this is a mess, so let’s try to clean it up. We’ll start as always, by defining our goal. We don’t have the best hand, so our goal is to winwithout the best hand. Notice that you can’t think about winning with the flush you were so happy to flop a draw to, because as soon as that thirdspade hits, everyone will know it and there go your implied odds. Worse, as we’ve already discussed, you have to fade a higher flush or a higher flush draw or both. If you’re in the hand at all, you’ve already rejected the best goal: to lose no money with this hand. In any case, if you try to win thishand, you need to know what you’re doing. You’re bluffing, that’s what. This is, of course, not all that uncommon in hold ’em. Suppose you raise with 8♠7♠ in the cutoff position, out to steal the blinds and empiricallybraced to believe the button will fold, only this time he doesn’t. Well, you’re out of position with what can’t possibly be the best hand. If you’rebluffing, this is good time to point out that you should treat a hand like this as taboo in early position, where bluffs are so hard to execute, especiallyin multi-way pots. With a hand that will almost

Figure 15 - Default BU Opening

Crushing a Top HUNL Poker Bot In 2022, Philippe Beardsell and Marc-Antoine Provost, a team of Canadian programmers from Quebec, developed the most advanced poker solver, Ruse AI . This technology combines the speed of predictive AI with the power of traditional solvers. Ruse beat Slumbot – a superhuman poker bot and winner of the most recent Annual Computer Poker Competition – for the highest win rate ever recorded, a massive 19.4 BB/100 . In 2023, GTO Wizard acquired Ruse AI. Their revolutionary technology now powers GTO Wizard’s AI! Evaluating AI poker bots To grasp the significance of this achievement, let’s delve into the realm of AI poker agents and the methods employed to evaluate their efficacy. Game theory optimal (GTO) Game theory optimal (GTO) The least exploitable fixed strategy, resulting in the highest possible expected value against an opponent(s) that can perfectly exploit you. A strategy is considered to be GTO if it conforms to the principles Nash Equilibrium. A set of strategies are considered to be in Nash Equilibrium if 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. solvers attempt to approximate a Nash equilibrium Nash equilibrium A stable set of adversarial strategies where no player can gain by unilaterally changing their own strategy. strategy. Following a Nash equilibrium strategy guarantees you will not lose in expectation regardless of your opponent’s strategy. Nash distance Nash distance Sometimes called delta EV, this metric describes the accuracy of a GTO solution. It’s measured as the maximum EV that the solution can be exploited for. , often referred to as “exploitability”, measures how close a given strategy is to the Nash equilibrium strategy. Without constraints, the game of Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em consists of 10 160 decision points, more than the number of atoms in the universe (10 82 ). The immense size of the game makes it impossible to compute the Nash distance while starting from preflop and considering all bet sizes. Rather than attempting to simplify this calculation, poker bots can measure their performance head-to-head, competing against each other in a real poker match. Slumbot Slumbot, developed by the independent researcher Eric Jackson, is the most recent champion of the Annual Computer Poker Competition ( ACPC ). Originally founded by the University of Alberta and Carnegie Mellon and held annually from 2006 to 2018, the ACPC provided an open and international venue for benchmarking computer poker bots. Much like a solver, Slumbot attempts to play according to an approximate Nash equilibrium. It does not adapt its strategy nor attempt to exploit the errors of its opponents . At its core, the poker bot uses a variant of the approximate equilibrium finding algorithm, Counterfactual Regret Minimization (CFR), the same algorithm used in commercial solvers such as PioSolver. Expert in the 200BB Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em format, Slumbot considers similar combinations of cards as strategically equivalent and uses a betting abstraction, i.e. a restricted number of bet sizes when solving. It

Hand Range 122: HJ 40bb • Raise 2.3x 28.6% / • Fold 71.4%

is not as dangerous. Now suppose that when the third suited card hits on fourth street, you make two pair. In this case you have outs. That is, you can make a full house, which will beat a flush, so this situation is much different. If you bet and are raised you can be fairly sure that you are up against a flush, and you'll wish that you hadn't bet. Consequently, the best play is usually to check and call. Here's an example. Suppose you start with and on fourth street the board is If you are first to act, you generally should check and call. However, you should not always check two pair on the turn when a third suited card hits. Suppose your opponent checks to you, and you think it is unlikely that he would check a flush because he is afraid that you would fail to bet. In this second case, you should put your chips in the pot. So, if you are against three or more opponents and are first to act, a check is probably the correct play. But if the pot is short-handed, and you are not fearful of the flush, you should strongly consider betting unless you have other reasons to check, especially if the action is checked to you. Important Fourth Street Concepts 141 You also need to consider, as usual, who you are against. If you are against someone who plays as instructed in this text, it may be wrong to bet and fold when it appears that you have no outs. They may now be raising with a pair and a four-flush so that now you are throwing the best hand away too often. Plus, two aces will frequently make two pair which can beat two smaller pair that you may be up against. A related strategy occurs when you have two pair or a set on the turn, a third suited card hits, and your opponent bets into you. The correct play usually is to raise. Unless your opponent has the nut flush, the typical player almost always will just call, even ifhe has a flush. (If he has the nut flush, your opponent might wait until all the cards are out and then try to check-raise.) Now, on the river, if the board pairs and gives you a full house, you should bet after your opponent checks. However, ifyou do not improve, you should usually check behind him. Notice that if you hold the worse hand, playing in this fashion will cause you to lose the same amount of money. However, if you improve to a full house, you often gain an extra bet. Another benefit of this play (when you hold two pair) is that your opponent may fold top pair or an overpair and thus cannot draw out on you. (Also, you should play your hand similarly if you hold two aces and one of your aces is of the appropriate suit.) The second important concept concerning fourth-street play is that you should be betting good hands

hands so when it limps if we limp into the small blind and it goes if we check now we don't have as many of the Broadway hands in our range because we raise those hands pre-flop and so the actually the lower boards become a little bit better for us because we have a lot of the lower hands in our range Now versus when we raise we want to see the Broadway cards on the board those are going to be our best boards to continuation bet um and in general in in these situations blind verse blind um these ranges are super wide for both the small blind and the big blind um you can be playing doing a lot of checking out a position and Don't Be Afraid don't be feel committed to like have to continuation bet every single pot would be my biggest advice when you're playing from the small blind and you raise um don't feel that you have the continuation of that every pot um you have a lot of really poor hands in your range and you can be doing a decent amount of checking check calling check raising there's other ways that you can get around playing post swap without just blindly continuation betting every flop and that comes back to our you know who is the big blind the first question we ask and how they react to the the how do they react to continuation bets how do they react to you know pre-flop ranges and just learning looking at these boards it's you know if you look at these ranges you start to learn what kind of flops are good for me to bet what kind of flops should I be checking and just figuring out how your range interacts with the board is the most important part

Hand Range 346: BN vs CO 20bb • All-in 12.3% / • Call 8.4% / • Fold 79.2%

is indifferent between those two actions. We see many indifferent actions. A5s (EV 0) is indifferent between folding, calling, and 4betting. QQ (EV 42.7) is indifferent between shoving, 4betting, and calling. 88 (EV 0) is indifferent between folding and calling. Very few hands are taking pure actions. The strategy is mixed in this way to remain unexploitable against all possible counterstrategies. This law applies regardless of what strategies are in place . This applies to GTO strategies, exploitative strategies, and every strategy in between. If you plug in your opponent’s imperfect and exploitable strategy, then some hands will inevitably still face indifferent decisions. Although exploitative simulations tend to result in more pure actions, as fewer decisions are perfectly indifferent against imperfect strategies. Indifference does not rely on GTO, it only relies on your opponent’s strategy. Sometimes solvers suggest -EV actions. This is a result of noise! If you solve to high enough accuracy, that noise goes away. True equilibrium would never intentionally choose a lower EV action. You can learn more about solver noise in this article . The consequence of Law 2 is Law 3: The Law of Indifference implies the Law of Fixed Strategies . The Law of Fixed Strategies Changing mixtures between indifferent actions cannot lose value against a fixed strategy. Mixing mistakes can only be exploited if the opposition adapts their strategy . Okay, but what is a mixing mistake, and what is a fixed strategy? A mixing mistake means moving hands between indifferent decisions. A fixed strategy (like GTO) doesn’t change or adapt to its opponent. Okay, but if my range on later streets changes, wouldn’t my EV change? Expected value is zero-sum. For one player to gain, the other has to lose. So, if you’re mixing incorrectly between two decisions with the same EV, how would one player gain anything without changing their strategy? The EV of your hand encompasses decisions on later streets. One major exception to this rule is when EV is not zero-sum. Rake cuts into your EV, so mixing mistakes can increase or decrease the total sum of rake paid by both players. Think about it this way. All you’ve done is moved a hand between two actions that have the same EV. You’ve simply moved a hand between two indifferent decisions. Since both those actions have the same value against your opponent’s strategy, they cannot gain unless villain changes their strategy! For example, let’s assume KK is supposed to call 30% of the time and raise 70% of the time to be unexploitable. But instead, you split 50% / 50% – that is a mixing mistake. However, both actions have the same EV (Law 2). Therefore, if the opponent doesn’t change their strategy, then any mixture between calling and raising will result in the same payoff! However, this doesn’t give you a licence to do whatever you want. Your new strategy is exploitable. If the opponent adjusts, they can punish your mixing mistake . Think about it this way. All you’ve done is moved a hand between two actions that have

is so good for the position player and really bad for the big blind so people tend to over Bluff that card rather than thinking about oh it's hard to over Bluff because the Queen's so good at YouTube at range but um and then the when the Jack pairs it's like oh man like that's not a good bluffing card but that doesn't mean you don't Bluff right you still need to find Bluffs so on the jack of diamonds it's so good for the opponent that I mean they just have way more jackets they do get to lead for about 10 every once in a while nobody really does it but we still need to find Bluffs in the spot because we do still have good jackass so if we think about where we want to pull our Bluffs from having the diamond is really nice um if we look at King and I know when we have the nine of diamonds we're pure betting 60 pot on the turn and that's because we're blocking continues one continually comes to my eyes like the six nine of diamonds when we bet 180 they're going to have the six nine of diamonds um at a high frequency and so I think like blocking that continue is relevant we also have an overcard to two over cards the 6X which is nice uh whereas like King four on the turn the four is not so good anymore because when we go for check check we just lose way more often than we go nine check check so we're drawing a lot of our Bluffs from blocking some of their jackets Jack nine off suit is is a good one here and then also having reasonable blockers the diamonds and more showed on value when it goes when we pair up and it goes track check so in this spot I do choose the BET 60 size and the player calls and then we get the ace of diamonds on the river and it's a pretty tricky spot now um I'll just give it away a little bit I end up checking I think hopefully by now after going through you know part one and and the hands you've covered already we realized that like the nine of diamonds is a good card to have when we're approaching River bluffing we want to unblock Auto folds and block potential calls this hand does an okay job about it I don't love our King I think our King doesn't really block any value their King Jack will likely raise flop and we're blocking the King with the pair like the off suit King six off suit King five which will almost certainly fold so I remember thinking that like I didn't love having a king but my nine of diamonds is so good obviously so we don't need to spend too much time on it I had some like mix and game that I don't remember if I was doing it 50 50

Bluff A bet made with a weak hand that is unlikely to win at showdown, with the intention of getting the opponent to fold better hands.

how playing in position is a lot easier, but what they are not told is why having position is so important. When you are in position, you have the advantage of acting last on every street for the rest of the hand, which means you get to see what you opponent does and can react accordingly. Most importantly, if your opponent checks to you, you can check behind and are guaranteed a free card, which makes a huge difference in terms of realizing equity IP compared to OOP. After checking OOP, you will often face a bet and be forced to fold, denying your equity in the pot. Hand Strength If a hand has a lot of raw equity, equity realization becomes less of an issue because high equity hands are happy, in most circumstances, to play big pots. They also provide a lot of flexibility because you can either call or raise with them. Very low equity hands are also easy to play because, most of the time, the correct play is to just fold. Medium strength hands are the truly difficult ones to play, because they desperately want to get to showdown or see free cards but struggle to continue if the opponent applies a lot of pressure. Hand Suitedness On average, suited hands realize 16% more equity than offsuit hands due to having access to both front and backdoor flush draws. This gives them a lot of flexibility to either semi-bluff more effectively or call bets with higher implied odds. Hand Connectedness Offsuit hands with no connectivity, such as Q2o, are among the lowest EqR hands. They are incredibly difficult to play because they flop either high pairs with no kicker or low pairs and their drawing capabilities are limited. Therefore, realizing equity with them is quite difficult. Range Advantage Having the range vs range equity advantage can help the weaker hands in your range realize their equity because, if your range is strong compared to your opponent’s, they simply cannot bet too aggressively. This allows the weaker hands in your range, that would struggle to withstand a bet, to see more free cards.

Tournaments In my last two articles, I wrote about the effect field size and payout structure… How Payout Structures Impact ICM Last time we discussed the ICM considerations in game selection, we looked at field size,… C-Betting IP in 3-Bet Pots When you three-bet before the flop and the original raiser calls from out of position,… C-Betting OOP in 3-Bet Pots Continuation betting from out of position can be a dicey proposition in single-raised pots. Cold… Dynamic Sizing: A GTO Breakthrough Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Dynamic Sizing Benchmarks Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Understanding The Impact Of Field Size On ICM In Poker When people talk about game selection in multi-table tournaments (MTTs), they invariably talk about the… Defending vs BB Check-Raise on Paired Flops This is a companion piece to Attacking Paired Flops from the BB; you will get… Mastering PKO Final Tables Final tables can be the most exciting and rewarding phase of a tournament, and being… Attacking Paired Flops From the BB Paired flops present unique challenges to both a preflop raiser and a BB caller. The… KK vs QQ vs JJ at WSOP Main Event With only fourteen players remaining in the 2023 WSOP Main Event and blinds of 400K/800K/800K,… Responding to BB Squeezes You open raise, someone calls, and the BB squeezes. How should you construct your strategy?… Crushing a Top HUNL Poker Bot In 2022, Philippe Beardsell and Marc-Antoine Provost, a team of Canadian programmers from Quebec, developed… GTO Wizard AI Explained We are excited to introduce GTO Wizard AI, formerly known as Ruse, the world’s best… GTO Wizard AI Benchmarks GTO Wizard has combined the power of artificial intelligence with traditional solving methods to bring… Table Management in PKOs Perhaps the most important strategic consideration in Progressive Knockout Tournaments (PKOs) is making sure you… Overcalling From the BB In poker, overcalling refers to calling a bet or raise after another player has also… Understanding Which Mistakes Cost You the Most Money I am fortunate enough to have worked for many years with the mental game coach… Overbetting The Flop in Cash Games Although most commonly analyzed on turns and rivers, flop overbetting can be a devastating weapon… Using New Skills at the Poker Table How many times has it happened to you that you make a mistake only to… Flatting Ace-X Hands Shortstacked Playing out of position is tricky, but it’s an essential part of tournament play. With… Playing Limped Pots as the BB in MTTs Success as the BB in limped pots begins before the flop. The BB’s equilibrium strategy… The Absurd Game Theory of Chopped Boards A “chopped board” in poker is one where the community cards make up the best… Playing Limped Pots as the SB in MTTs MTT confrontations between the small blind and big blind force no-limit players into uncomfortable situations,… The Art of Learning Poker In his book The Art of Learning, chess and Push Hands champion Josh

Hand Range 292: UTG 25bb (2x vs BN All-in) • Call All-in 33.9% / • Fold 66.1%

River The fifth and last community card dealt in a poker hand, dealt as a single card after the turn if at least two players remain in the hand.

Hand Range 200: SB vs LJ 4-bet (40bb) • Call 50.8% / • Fold 49.2%

you suspect correctly that they have nothing themselves. Most of the time, though, when your opponent bets and you have nothing, your best play is to fold. Let us now consider betting strategy heads-up on the end when you have a legitimate hand. You are going to be either first or last to act, and as we have noted, strategy changes according to your position. We'll begin by looking at strategy in last position, which is not quite so tricky as in first position. Heads-Up On The End 201 Last Position Play Last Position Play After Your Opponent Has Checked When you are in last position, your opponent will have either checked or bet. First, what should you do when your opponent checks? Some might reply that you should bet if you think you have the best hand. But this is not at all the case. Your chances of having the best hand might be as high as 90 percent or better, but still you should not necessarily bet. Take the following hand from seven-card stud: 9 Opponent With four jacks your chances of having the best hand are enormous, but in either first or second position you cannot Though you are not in last position in this example, I use it becouse it illustrates the principle so succinctly. You 202 Chapter Twenty-one possibly bet the hand on the end for the simple reason that your bet has absolutely no positive expectation. Since your four jacks are exposed for the world to see, your opponent will fold every hand he can have except four queens or a straight flush in hearts. With either of those hands, he will raise. So your bet has nothing to gain and everything to lose. This very obvious situation points toward the key distinction between play in the final round of betting and in earlier rounds. With one card to come, you would most certainly bet the four jacks to avoid giving your opponent a free card to outdraw you. Your bet forces him either to fold and thus give up any chance to outdraw you or to call and pay for that slim chance. However, when all the cards are out, betting to avoid giving a free card no longer applies. So if you now still decide to bet your hand, you no longer ask what your chances are of having the best hand but rather what the chances are of winning the last bet when you are called. This distinction may seem like hair-splitting, but it is most assuredly not. In fact, it is crucial to successful play — that is, to winning or saving extra bets — when you are heads-up on the end. To take a very common situation, let's say you have threeof-a-kind in seven-card stud, and you know your opponent is drawing to a flush and has nothing else. The odds against that opponent's making the flush on the last card are, we'll assume, 4- to-1, which means you are an 80 percent favorite to have the best hand. However, if

your opponent does wrong it's it's very very important to figure out what your opponent does wrong because if they limp too often you can shove a lot if they shove a lot you can call a lot whatever this is a GTO strategy though here big blind versus small blind limp you raise small with all the nuts and some junk this is actually very similar to the 25 big blind range for the same scenario and that's good it makes your life easy big blind versus small blind all in you now have to call off quite wide wider than you may like and that's because in this situation the small blind's not going to be open shoving with a wider range right as sexy a shallower they can shove wider therefore you have to defend wider small blind versus a big blind raise so small blind limps big blind raises this is an interesting chart where we shove all of our most of our good hands we do still slow play a little bit but now we see our Bluffs coming from this portion of our range this is definitely non-intuitive you would not know this unless you studied but we see low King X Queen X and Jack X suited so I can shove in the scenario which is interesting interesting to say the least when we do lump though and the big line raises to two and a half or three big blinds we do still call a decent amount of the time that's because again we're going to realize our Equity very well we make a hand we don't fold and we just be happy jamming our money in you got to realize when you get down to 15 big lines hey you're probably gonna go broke and you got to get your money in there kind of wide because you're always getting decent pot odds and you're always going to have some equity strategy facing an all-in free bets so we raise someone jams again call off tighter due to the payout implications also adjust to your opponent's Tendencies even at the stack def some players may have a non-all in three best strategy or not an all-in-3 bet range which you definitely want to account for some players some players I mean the players could do all sorts of stuff is what it amounts to right some people are gonna go all into all often some players are going to never go all in they're just going to call everything like look people are going to make all sorts of mistakes they're going to play all sorts of strategies they need to use a little bit of logic to figure out what they're going to do but against the GTO strategy here is how you call off and you're going to find that these calling ranges are much wider compared to when you were facing a 25 big blind all in because now we're getting better pot odds right now I have to put

opened up in pennsylvania and we talked about it a little bit like yeah i'm just going to go and grind the local games i don't really want to move overseas and he was a good poker player i actually met him at a breakfast something i do for all of my poker coaching members whenever i go to play live poker i'll usually try to schedule breakfast where i'll buy anybody breakfast who wants to come out then we'll go play the poker tournament um we were at borgata when i met chris and he was there he's like yeah i'm gonna go play the thousand dollar six-handed tournament today it's kind of big for me i've never played a thousand dollar tournament but seemed like a good competent poker player we went we played i busted he i believe won the whole thing since then he has been grinding it out as you see he's played about 1200 games on poker stars new jersey these are all relatively small field tournaments that have between you know 30 and 300 people and well he won the thousand dollar buy-in six max scoop high roller and uh well you can see he's up about a hundred thousand dollars just grinding it out to be fair it's really nothing fancy he's showing up playing in games where he has a solid edge he's playing a lot again volume cures variance and uh this is about the most beautiful tournament graph you're ever gonna see good job good work to be fair back whenever i first started playing poker i was playing sit and go's which are nine-handed tournaments and there if you were a good player your graph would look well very much like this as well and i was fortunate enough to have a beautiful graph just like this and it is still possible today a lot of people think that oh poker's difficult or the sights are rigged and to be fair poker is tough the sights are not rigged but if you do show up play with an edge put in a lot of volume it's very difficult to not win so far to make all of the content at poker coaching premium i have spent over 400 000 it's a lot of money i do it for all of you because i know that you need want and deserve the highest level of poker training imaginable so we spent a bunch of money hiring a lot of the best players in the world people who i respect people who i would hire if i wanted to learn poker not just whenever i was a new poker player but today i went out and hired some of the players that i want to learn from so we have content for players of all skill levels including the number one online poker player in the world as of march 12 2021 i think he's since dropped to number two or three they jump up and down every once in a while

each get $5,000. Depending on your skill level, you may be able to negotiate a better deal, perhaps 55/45 or even 60/40 in your favor. Some backers offer backing for live tournaments that are 40/60, but the backer covers all traveling expenses. Finally, if you play live tournaments, you can keep a smaller bankroll because you will have a higher ROI and there are usually fewer players in live tournaments compared to online. This will result in you having smaller swings. Just be sure to account for travel expenses. If you are not diligent, they can quickly pile up, making even large winners into losers. Game Selection The topic of game selection has already been discussed when analysing win rates for cash game players. Similar to cash games, in tournaments you need to consider your edge in each event you could play. Of course, if you are the best player in the world and have an infinite bankroll you simply want to play the highest stake games you can find. However, for us mere humans, quite often playing smaller games where our ROI and variance will be lower is a better idea than playing bigger games with higher variance and lower ROI. A major issue for tournament game selection is that there are only so many tournaments available with a specific buy-in, so you have to choose a range of buy-ins. You then average your buy-ins to determine your average buy-in (ABI) and consider it for bankroll management. For example, if you play three tournaments with buy-ins of $100, $200 and $500, then your ABI is $267. Playing a very wide spread of buy-ins presents an additional problem. As the spread becomes wider, you will experience more variance. Table 32 shows the effects that having a wide spread in buy-ins can produce in a player’s results. In simulation #1, the player plays a schedule of 1,800 $109 MTTs, 149 $1,050 buy-in MTTs, 49 $2,100 MTTs, one $5,200 MTT, and one $10,300 MTT for a total of 2,000 games. In simulation #2 the player also plays a total of 2,000 games, but instead all buy-ins are exactly $235.

Vulnerable SDV Notice that while Hero's hand is hardly monstrous, he does have a pair. As we know in NLHE, most hands miss most flops and this semi-wet one is no great exception. This means that Hero will have the best hand a good amount at showdown even if the turn and river bring no more help. So Hero has SDV , but there's a problem: almost any turn card is going to make Hero's hand weaker. Third pair will become fourth pair; another diamond can improve our opponent's equity by giving him a flush draw if not a flush. This hand has vulnerable showdown value. C-betting this board with sufficient fold equity is usually a good idea, provided Hero has reason to believe his hand is often best. There are two advantages to such a bet: Hero protects his hand from being outdrawn by hands that are folding. If called and behind Hero usually has five outs to improve to two pair or Trips. It is worth stressing that betting for protection is only desirable where there is a significant quantity of hands in Villain's range that have reasonable equity against Hero's hand. Moreover, the bet is only for protection where these hands are actually folding. If Villain wants to call us with low equity hands like two overcards and then just go to showdown, then Hero's bet is more of a value bet. In our flop example above, there are usually going to be an array of hands that are just two overcards to this flop

three 9s appear on the board and you hold the remaining 9. If two pairs are on the board, it is possible for two players to have four of a kind. In this case, the rank of the cards forming the hand determines the rank of the hand (four 9s beat four 8s). If all four 9s appear on the board, then all players have four 9s as their hand. To win the hand in this circumstance, one of your pocket cards must be higher than anyone else's pocket card and higher than the fifth card on the board. This illustrates an important concept in Hold'em-the kicker. A kicker is a pocket card that is not part of the combination, but decides ties. If the fifth card on the board is higher than anyone's kicker, all players have the exactly the same hand and the pot is split. FULL HOUSE-A full house (also referred to as a boat) is three of one kind and two of another. For someone to have a full house, at least a pair must appear on the board. There are several card combinations that allow you to have a full house. One 8 THE INTELLIGENT GUIDE TO TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER is to have a pair of pocket cards that match one card on the board and an unrelated pair also appears. A full house also occurs with two unmatched pocket cards when one matches a pair on the board and the other matches one of the other board cards. For example, you have two 4s as pocket cards and the board has 10, 10, 4, J, A (you have 4s full with 10s). Notice that in this case, you could lose to someone holding 10, A. They would have 10s full with Aces. That person could lose to someone with a pair of Jacks who would have Jacks full with 10s. When multiple players have full houses, the person with the highest three of a kind wins. The pair only comes into play when players have the same three of a kind. Given this board, a person holding A, 10 beats a player hold 10, J. Each player has 10s full, so the pairs play and the Aces beat the Jacks. A less common way to have a full house is when three of kind appears on the board and you hold a pair in the pocket. Again, if two or more people hold a pair in the pocket, the highest pair wins. 16 ] FLUSH-five cards of the same suit. In Hold'em, 1 V 1 I A 1 at least three suited cards must appear on the board 1 $1 A for someone to have a flush. Note that since only five cards appear on the board, it is not possible for two players in the same hand to have flushes in different suits. All flushes will be of the same suit and the highest card wins. For example: if three Hearts appear on the board, a person holding A, 2 of Hearts beats someone holding

side. They also make it relatively easy for the BB to flop very strong hands, which increases the risk of a check-raise . Similarly, boards offering fewer open-ended straight draws are better for betting than those offering more . Boards where a straight is already possible present both more open-ended straight draw possibilities (on a 987 flop, for instance, a player needs only a single T or 6 to make an eight-out draw) and an increased risk of a check-raise and so are least good for betting. When the pre-flop raiser does bet these flops, they are more polar and so tend to use larger sizing . Medium card flops tend to be the worst for continuation betting: The BB plays more medium cards . A preflop raiser’s range, even from the BTN, is concentrated around big cards. The BB, with their incentive to three-bet big cards pre-flop and call with more medium cards, is relatively more likely to connect with medium cards. Neither player plays terribly many small cards, so those flops preserve the pre-flop raiser’s range advantage. Medium card boards are more connected . We have already seen that flops offering straights and straight draws help the BB. The bigger the high card on the flop, the more room there is for the board to be disconnected. Low card boards are more likely to be paired . The only 2-high flop is 222. A 3-high flop must be paired or tripled. Continuation Betting From Earlier Position The major difference from the BTN vs BB scenario is the stronger ranges of the earlier position raisers. This mostly leads to more betting from earlier position raisers, though there are a few specific boards where they are less likely to hold nut hands than a BTN raiser and so must be more cautious. The following charts compare the strategy of a BTN raiser to those of a HJ and an UTG raiser when heads up with a BB caller at 40bb. The other interesting case is on tripled flops, where the BTN does substantially more big betting than the other positions. This is actually a case where the UTG raiser’s range is so strong that small bets suffice to leverage their nuts advantage. Even facing a small bet, the BB struggles to defend unpaired hands that could be drawing dead already and will often face more bets on later streets. The BTN’s range, however, is far more diluted with weaker hands, incentivizing them to use larger bets to garner folds from those same hands. The earlier the pre-flop raiser’s position, the stronger their range. Consequently, we see a higher betting frequency and larger bet sizing when an early position raiser goes heads up to the flop with a big blind caller. The major exceptions to this trend are monotone and connected boards, where a straight is already possible. An UTG raiser’s narrow range is less likely to contain straights and flushes, denying them the nuts advantage that facilitates larger bets. The big pairs which are usually their biggest advantage over a BB caller

Figure 8 - Hunting from the HJ 2. Facing Light 3-Bettors Unfortunately, as well as times when we get to loosen up and enjoy the fruits of playing a wider range in a +EV way, there are times when the tendencies of the players behind us actually render the weakest parts of our default range -EV to open. The most prevalent example that you'll encounter these days, even from the lowest stakes, is of light 3-bettors especially in position. If one or more of these more aggressive Regs is causing us to fold pre-flop having invested 3BBs on a Regular basis, then a strategy of opening wide is just not going to be feasible. We'll be exploring these spots fully later on in the manual and will delve deeper into the theory of

Hero folds It should be noted that to perform such rigorous analysis in-game is completely impossible even for a very strong player. Consequently, Hero will be best placed to practice estimating these factors more roughly to improve his in-game thought process. We will practice this kind of shortened in-game reasoning more and more as the manual goes on. It's important to understand how to perform this analysis out of game before taking shortcuts to apply the knowledge at the tables. The analysis of this hand has been dense. Take your time and work through it multiple times to make sure you're prepared for the less clear-cut examples to follow. Now look at Hand 62 below and try to decide which factors differ from the last hand and whether or not Hero's decision should be different. Always think for yourself about each hand before reading my analysis. If you're reading this section passively on autopilot mode and the words are barely going in, then stop, go back, and actively assess the spot above. The difficulty of the manual is starting to accelerate and being focused and involved is key to proper understanding. Over the next 50 pages, this chapter is about to jump up a few notches in complexity, but this is a complicated game and if you've been reading thoroughly and actively so far, then I think you're ready for it!

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SIZING YOUR PREFLOP RAISES 80 Short Stack Raise Sizing When sizing raises with deep stacks, it is crucial to think about how big you want the eventual pot to be. That’s not so important when you have a short stack. With a short stack, you generally raise preflop with one of two outcomes in mind: • Stealing the blinds and antes • Finding someone willing to gamble with you for all your chips In other words, there’s little subtlety to short stack raising. By putting any raise in, essentially you’re saying, “Anyone want to play with me for every- thing?” You might be bluffing, and you might abandon ship with a decent hand if someone comes over the top, but you aren’t looking to “see the flop and go from there.” So raise sizing is generally simpler too. There are only a few important concepts. If You Want Action If you have an excellent hand like a big pocket pair or ace- king, you will usually want action. (There are some exceptions in atypical tournament situa- tions.) If you want action, raise as much as you can get away with and still get called. That amount will vary from game to game (and with your image), but with a big hand, the bigger the raise and call, the better. In cash games you will want action on most of your raises with a short stack. The best strategy with a short stack in cash games is a tight one. You can’t get away with playing for implied odds without money behind, so you have to avoid the small cards and play high percentage hands. Most of the time, you’ll raise preflop and push all-in on the flop. The bigger the preflop raise, and the less you leave for the flop, by and large, the better you’ll perform. Just make sure you don’t raise so much that you never get called. If You Don’t Want Action When everyone folds to you on the button or in the small blind, often moving all-in is better than folding, especially with very small stacks like ten times the big blind or smaller. This fact can have you moving in with some weak-looking hands such as K♠8♢. Usually with those hands, you’d prefer not to get called. 22 22Though you aren’t relying on not being called to profit. Many times, these all-in raises are correct even if your opponent plays perfectly against you. That is, you would show a profit even if you turned your cards face up after raising. We will expound on this concept later in the book.

knowing when to get away from your hand will allow you to make smaller bets. Keep reading.