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will call with will beat you, then you should not bet. An underfull is a hand you can bet for value, but if you get raised, be aware that the only hand you can beat is a bluff. A good Omaha player won’t raise with straights or flushes on the river when there’s a pair on board. If he thinks you’re bluffing, he might call with a straight or flush, but he won’t raise. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t bet an underfull. If a man bets on the turn with a straight or flush possibility on board, then he checks to you when the board pairs on the river, you’re probably going to bet your underfull. Just be cautious about calling a raise on the river. I have laid down many an underfull on the river against a raise. Playing Two Pair In general, the only two pairs that are any good in Omaha are the top two. Top and bottom pair, and bottom two pair are extremely vulnerable. It is very difficult to win a lot of money with them, but it’s easy to lose a lot. As a rule, they aren’t worth playing for two reasons: (1) You can easily be beat by top two pair or a set, in which case you have very few outs. (2) Even if you have the best hand, it may not look very good as soon as another card comes off. In Omaha, an important question to ask yourself when you are holding two pair or just about any hand, for that matter, is, “What card do I need to help my hand, and how much will it help somebody else?” For example, in a recent shorthanded game, the flop came 10-6-2. With sixes and deuces, I was 90 percent sure that my hand was good at the time, but as soon as one card comes off, what good would it be? Unless I caught a 6 or a 2, any card that came off the deck would have put me in jeopardy. So, I threw it away. In Omaha, playing even the top two pair can be less profitable than you think. Here’s an example from a game I played. I had tens and nines on a flop of 10-9-2. A player I’ll refer to as “Al” led at it, and another player called. I 283 wasn’t willing to raise with my top two pair because it would have put me in too much jeopardy against this type of board. I called, but I was still very leery because if any card from a 6 to a king came off, my hand would be vulnerable. The turn card was a 5, which probably helped no one. I checked, and Al bet $11,000. The third man called the bet with all the money he had left on the table. I still thought that I had the best hand, so I raised $30,000, thinking that Al was on some type of draw and I had the best of it. Al folded. When we

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? Can a poker hand be courageous? How does your ability to value bet future streets… Pot Geometry “Pot Geometry” refers to betting an equal fraction of the pot on each street, such… A Beginner’s Guide to Poker Combinatorics Combinatorics is a fancy term for evaluating the number of possible “combinations” (combos) of any… Stack-to-pot

betting just for its own sake doesn’t make much money. Value betting for the right reason does. TIP 20 Whenever you hold an unbeatable hand—or one close to it—you might consider checking and then raising if an opponent bets, also known as sandbagging. But when two or more opponents are involved in the pot with you, there’s an important factor you’ll need to consider before deciding whether to bet or to sandbag. Here it is: You should sandbag your strongest hands when the player immediately to your left is the one most likely to make the first bet, and usually not otherwise. Why is that? Because by sandbagging with a powerful hand, you’re trying to win more money. You’re declining to bet, risking direct money through calls, in the hopes that someone else will do your betting for you, and then you can raise and win extra. Well, suppose there are three players in the pot. If you check, the player to your left checks, and the other opponent checks, you win nothing. You gambled that someone else would bet, and you lost that gamble. If you check, the player to your left checks, and the other opponent bets, that’s not so good, either. You get to raise, but your seating position relative to your opponent’s greatly reduces the effectiveness. Your raise will make it very difficult for the player to your left to justify calling with anything but a nearly unbeatable hand. You’ll almost certainly chase that player away. You might get the bettor to your right to call your raise, but you might not. What you’d really like to see happen after you check is a bet from the player to your left. Then, if all goes well, the other opponent will call, and then you can raise and hope they both call the raise. This call and overcall often happens in a limit game, because the pot is so large, relative to the cost of the 83 call. That great outcome, where you win four bets—two from each opponent—is only likely to happen if the opponent to your left is the most likely bettor. So, because sandbagging a huge hand is often only marginally superior to betting, usually you should try it only when the player to your left is the one you think will bet. This happens a lot in hold’em when the player to your left got the last raise in before the flop and many players are still contesting the pot. Now, if the flop hits you perfectly and might be satisfactory to the player to your left, you often should check. If that first-round aggressor again bets, you might see a lot of other callers before the action returns for your raise. You should also consider the playing styles of the players you’re checking into. In particular, you should be more willing to sandbag your strongest hands when the player to your left is a liberal bettor. When you’re first to act, have a big hand, and are considering a sandbag against two or more

VALUE BETTING ON THE RIVER 62 thirty percent, and lose $500 twenty percent. As we calculated before (in a different way), that’s an expectation of $850. So in this case a $500 bet would be better than a check ($700 EV) or a $200 bet ($760 EV) or a $1,000 bet ($780 EV). Final Thoughts As you may have noticed, deciding when and how much to value bet on the river can be complicated. In our example, if you had the nuts, you bet one amount. If you might have been beaten, you bet another amount. And if you might have gotten bluff-raised, you didn’t bet at all — that is, if you were last to act. If you were first to act and might have gotten bluff-raised, you bet, and it was a different amount than either of the other two bets. Here are the main ideas to take from this section: • If you are last to act and might be beaten, your bets should tend to be smaller than they would be if you were fairly sure you had the best hand. • If you are last to act and are worried about being check-raised as a bluff, you should check some decent hands you might otherwise bet for value against a more straightforward player. • If you are first to act, you should tend to bet an amount large enough to discourage your opponent from bluff-raising you, . but not so large that you lose too much when you are beaten.

Jam in the spot not all of a sudden those Jack of clubs ten they continued uh on the turn are now going to Bluff catch Rivers so we really don't love having the Jack clubs in our hand uh on the river we're also blocking the King Nine fold so yeah this spot's tricky I would I over Bluff this spot for sure in game um but it's the same Concepts right we're just trying to solve this puzzle of how does my hand interact with the opponent's fold how does my hand interact with the opponent's cause Etc so I was a little bit off in the spot and I bluffed a little bit too much um which isn't the end of the world but I hope that this one was a good example of uh when to check back a lot on the Flop how to approach barreling turn we found the fun concept with the nine clubs um and in the same kind of river logic that we've been talking about all these previous hands one thing to use in game that I did that is super valuable even though it seems silly is that I left one big blind bag um so I figured I'd take a minute and just talk talk through that so obviously if your opponents in your games think that oh he or she left one big blind back they can't have the nuts so I'm gonna call more obviously you shouldn't uh you know you shouldn't use that strategy when you're bluffing but I know that this opponent is is not thinking that I'm doing that they're going to know that I'm properly balanced with the spot and I'm always going to leave one big blend back and the issue not not the issue the the benefit of doing that is that in a big blind any format you're gonna get the cut when you lose the spot you're getting the cut off with one big blind so instead of being out of the tournament you're still in the tournament and have profitable decisions to be made in future streets so um yeah I did that here and I spun this up I ended up losing a flip for like 25 BBS 20 minutes later so it's kind of a Fun Spot in game they actually tanked with uh I like this guy a lot too he uh but he did tank with the king 10-0 and and it's a tough spot I have a lot of flushes here and if especially if I'm betting too much on the Flop I end up having a lot of flushes and boats in the river so um yeah I'm over bluffing this spot but or I did over Bluff the spot in this one instance so I'll definitely improve that but hopefully you guys can use those three hands and a lot of Concepts that we talked about too uh just improve in a lot of spots that you find in your games I

Table of Contents Foreword by Ray Zee .............................. v About David Sklansky ............................. vii About Mason Malmuth ............................ ix Introduction ...................................... 1 Using This Book ................................... 5 Why Play Texas Hold 'em? .......................... 7 A Note on the English .............................. 9 Part One: The First Two Cards ..................... 11 Introduction .................................. 12 HandRankings ................................ 14 The First Two Cards: Early Position ............... 18 The First Two Cards: Middle Position .............. 27 The First Two Cards: Late Position ................ 32 The First Two Cards: Live Blinds 40 ................. The First Two Cards: Late-Position Blind 48 ........... Afterthought .................................. 49 Part Two: Strategic Concepts ....................... 51 Introduction .................................. 52 Semi-Bluffing ................................. 53 The Free Card ................................. 62 Slowplaying .................................. 73 Check-Raising ................................ 76 Odds and Implied Odds 80 ......................... ii Table of Contents Bluffing ..................................... 84 Inducing Bluffs ................................ 87 Folding When the Pot is Big ..................... 90 Heads-Up Versus Multiway ...................... 92 Raising ...................................... 95 Heads-Up on Fifth Street 101 ....................... Afterthought ................................. 108 Part Three: Miscellaneous Topics .................. 109 Introduction ................................. 110 Being Beat on the River ........................ 111 More on the Semi-Bluff .......................... 114 Getting a Free Card ........................... 116 Staying With a Draw 117 .......................... Playing When There Is No Raise Before the Flop .... 119 Playing When Two Suited Cards Flop ............. 121 Playing When a Pair Flops ...................... 123 Playing Pairs in the Hole ....................... 125 Playing Trash Hands .......................... 128 Playing Against a Maniac ...................... 130 Playing Good Hands When It Is Three Bets Before the Flop .................................... 133 Playing When the Flop Is All the Same Suit ........ 136 Important Fourth Street Concepts 139 ................ Other Fourth Street Concepts .................... 144 Desperation Bets 146 .............................. Waiting to Raise 147 .............................. Afterthought ................................. 149 Part Four: Playing in Loose Games ................. 151 Introduction ................................. 152 An Important Point ............................ 153 An Important Concept (Borrowed from Razz) ...... 157 Returning to Hold 'em ......................... 159 Two Examples ............................... 161 Looking at Some Odds ......................... 165 ' .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .... .- . . .- . . .... 'rn . . . .m. . .&. . a,. . .X. . cd . - 'a : ::. .- , 0 . 2 :a : a, .$. 0 :? : + + 'G ' C 'a,+ a gq$t so~, € .f: - XQ 5 cd :G kZQQ ....... ....... ....... ....... ....... ....... ....... ....... ....... ...... c...... a...... a,.. X...... 0.. .... a:::::: ....... ....... ....... ....... ....... ....... V)."." ...... G:::::: i:::::: ...... a,..... WWW - 0 0 WW4 Foreword by Ray Zee Texas hold 'em is hard. There is probably no other form of poker as difficult. Yet, the game appears deceptively simple. Many players, even after much experience at the poker tables, still play as though any two cards can win. Of course, those who play in this fashion quickly lose their money. The book you are holding, written by David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth, has had far-reaching effects on the poker world. Simply put, since the original edition

Figure 4 - Hand Ratings for Top 20% of Hands This table is merely the best 20% of hands Hero can be dealt in NLHE cash with 100BB stacks. The list could go on all the way down to 72o and a suitability score of 0. It's not my purpose here to provide an exhaustive ranking of hands, but the general picture should now be clear. These are the

somewhat polarized just with your best hands and some trash and as we see here lots of ax is betting a little bit of Queen X but not a lot and then some real junkers 65 suited 54 suited fives fours 108 suited 10 n suited Jack n suited right all these hands that are pretty bad are going for the bluff also King six and King five are bluffing a lot in the scenario so when you're check two you're usually be betting pretty polarized all right let's consider now flop comes Ace Queen 7 small blind bet 4.9 big blinds button calls turns to three a clubs now what when you bet somewhat frequently on the Flop as is the case for the small blind in this scenario you cannot bet every single time on the turn unless the turn's extremely good for your range but remember these ranges are kind of lined up on top of each other where the button should have a lot of ax so no turns going to be particularly amazing for the small blind so for that reason small blind's going to have to check somewhere between like 40% and 60% of the time give or take so now in this scenario the small blind is going to have two bat sizes at this point 7.3 big blinds or 17.6 big blinds about a third pot or two3 pots something like that when you do have two bet sizes you're usually going to have the big bet size being very polarized and the small bet size being a little bit more condensed and if we go through here we will see that now look for practical purposes maybe you just want to use only one big bet size and not bet hand so much like uh Jack 7 or queen Jack or king queen right these hands are often using the small bet size like pocket kings right that uses a small bet size almost every time and maybe you want to bet a little bit more polarized so bet a less often but more polarized with just good ax and some draws right notice um like 65 suit is loving it here just turned a gut shot oh yes we're going for it and that is going for a big bet it's going to put the opponent in a nasty spot right but also we're betting with lots of good hands take a look at the hands that mostly check lots of sevens check lots of Queens check some weak ax checks pocket pairs check that makes a whole lot of sense right once we bet the Flop very wide we have to bet the turn very polarized in general what does the button do when check two the button when check two now also has to bet polarized notice that they're actually going very polar in this scenario because if you take a look at this range it's actually still pretty decent they have Aces they have some ax they have a

incapable of adjusting to different structures. Therefore, you may sometimes decide to sit down in a game with them specifically because you know they are playing on unfamiliar turf. You take advantage of their weakness by playing more correctly, according to the structure, than they do. One of my favorite types of player is the one who never bluffs. You have a tremendous advantage over these players because you just about always know where you're at. Against most players you have to call with a marginal hand since you usually have two ways of winning — either by improving to the best hand or by having them beat when they're bluffing. However, you can assume that players who never bluff have hands when they bet, and you only call when your hand has a fair chance of beating theirs or when you're getting good enough pot odds to chase. You never need to consider calling on the chance that they may be bluffing. Even players who bluff much less frequently than they should offer you a big advantage, especially when you make plays to stop the few bluffs they might be tempted to try against you. Over a period of time, you can save a tremendous number of bets by not having to call such players. At the same time, you are likely to make money from them since you only play against them with a legitimate hand that has a reasonable chance of beating theirs. Ironically, though, against such players you face the psychologically upsetting fact that you only profit from their mistakes when you fold and lose the pot to them. Your profit Evaluating the Game 269 comes from having lost less to them than you would have lost to players whose legitimate hands you might have paid off. This is an example of the poker principle that any bet saved means more money earned at the end of the session and at the end of the year. Sometimes the only weakness I can discern in opponents is that they will never check-raise bluff. Even this relatively small flaw gives me an edge. Knowing that these opponents always have good hands allows me to fold hands I might otherwise have called with when I do get check-raised. Anytime I can do this I save money, and these savings add up in the long run. Other players will never make any kind of bluff raise; against them I can save even more money since I always know they have good hands when they raise. Occasionally you encounter players who never check-raise. You take advantage of this major mistake by betting more hands after they check than you would against other players who have checked. Since these players don't check-raise, you know they are checking because they have only fair hands at best. You are actually in a better position than you would be when a hand is checked to you in a non-check-raising game, because in these games a player will occasionally check a good hand to induce you to bet

zero bluffs because we'll lose a ton of ev on our value bets so unless you're playing a total scrub you should always have some bluffs in every spot and we can look to the solver for cues on finding the best bluffing candidates so for example on this potential turn barrel spot for the button if we isolate the unmade hands we see that the solver is heavily prioritizing bluffing withdraws which makes intuitive sense since these hands have the potential to suck out on the river in fact if we group all of the draws together we see that the ev regret for betting three quarters pot is less than one percent which means that if you wanted to simplify your strategy and bet 100 of all of these unmade hands the maximum amount you would lose in expectation against a gto opponent is less than 1 10 of a big blind similarly if you decided to just check and give up with all of your unmade hands without a draw the ev regret is zero this means that you can simply check all of the combos within this group without having to examine each one individually to try to figure out if any of them are bluffing some small percentage of the time so hopefully these three tips can help you guys get more out of your solver study and this method of analyzing sims can even be used with other solvers it's just 10 times more efficient when using gto check so that's the video for today thanks for watching and until next time stay balanced

steal here, just taking advantage of his position. But then again, maybe he’s got a hand. Here is where you’ll 122 need all of your poker skills to answer some important questions: If he held a high pair before the flop, would he have reraised you? Would this player call your raise with a marginal hand that hits this flop? Would he bet here with a hand like A-J or A-10? Is he a habitual bluffer, who always bets when checked to regardless of his hand? Or is this player a careful bettor, who only bets with strong hands? Once you’ve answered the important questions, you’ll have a much better idea about whether or not you should take one off, hoping to catch an ace or a king, or even whether or not you should call your opponent down all the way to the river. In general, if you’ve answered your questions about your opponent and still haven’t found very strong reasons to proceed, you should fold. So now that we are all warmed up, let’s look more closely at the play of specific hands on the flop. Playing Big Pairs As I mentioned previously, you should play big pairs aggressively before the flop in order to narrow down the field. Big pairs do extremely well against one or two players, but the more opponents you have, the more likely it is that your big pair will get cracked. If the flop doesn’t go your way, it’s important to avoid getting too attached to your hand and fold in the face of too much action. Imagine you have two black aces in a multiway pot and the flop comes 6-7-8 of diamonds. I don’t know about you, but I really don’t like this flop for two black aces. Now, you shouldn’t necessarily fold on the flop, but if the action gets hot and heavy, you can probably assume that you are dead or that your opponents at the very least have several outs against you. Again, even if you’re A-A is good at the moment, a 4, 5, 9, 10, any diamond, or an 8 could seal your fate. Another scary flop for aces is one that contains high straight cards like J-10-8. While aces are good here a high percentage of the time, there are several cards that could potentially kill you on the turn: 7, 9, 10, jack, queen, king. You shouldn’t muck those aces just yet, but you should consider taking your pedal off the gas until you see the turn card. If the turn card is safe—2, 3, 4, etc.—you might want to get aggressive and try to eliminate players. However, if a scare card comes on the turn—a 9 or a 123 queen would be the scariest—and the action gets heavy, you should consider folding. While Q-Q is still considered a big pair, there are even more trouble flops to that hand than to A-A. In addition to all the scary flops A-A faces, any ace or king on the flop might do you in, as well.

The Elastic Range contracts considerably as bet size increases. Hero will want to increase his bet size when he desires fold equity and keep it more moderate when value betting unless it's more important to keep sizing balanced. The Inelastic Range responds in the same way to large and small sizing alike. Hero will want to increase his value sizing to maximise profit and decrease his bluff sizing to reduce his RFE, expecting just as much fold equity. Of course this graph shows the two absolute extremities on the elasticity scale. In reality most calling ranges will be somewhere in-between, but Fish ranges will often fall closer to the inelastic side. This illuminates why failure to build a big pot with a strong hand vs. weaker players can be so devastating to our EV : they're apt to call any way whether we add a few extra BBs to that turn bet or not. Avoid the exponential mistake. If they fold this one time, it's okay! We're going to print more money in the long run by building that big pot vs. their inelastic wide ranges. You can't stop people from refusing to put money into the pot with awful hands.

Hand Range 262: UTG+1 vs UTG 4-bet (25bb) • Call 59.7% / • Fold 40.3%

A Beginner’s Guide to Poker Combinatorics Combinatorics is a fancy term for evaluating the number of possible “combinations” (combos) of any given hand: the combination of 2 cards of certain ranks and suits. It allows us to answer questions like how many different versions of AK you can hold in a specific spot, what hands make for better bluff-catchers and many more. Combo Counting Basics The Hand Matrix There are 1326 possible combinations of starting hands in Texas Hold’Em. They are frequently represented by a grid that is commonly referred to as a hand matrix. Simply looking at the hand matrix, it would be easy to mistakenly assume that pocket pairs comprise 13/169 of possible hands and suited and offsuit hands each make up 78/169. By looking at the grid and summing the squares that correspond to each hand class we would arrive at the aforementioned answer. However, this relies on all squares being equal to each other. Despite this being the case geometrically, it is not the case combinatorically. There are in fact: 6 combos of each pocket pair A ♠ A ♥ , A ♠ A ♦ , A ♠ A ♣ , A ♥ A ♦ , A ♥ A ♣ , A ♦ A ♣ 4 combos of each suited hand A ♠ K ♠ , A ♥ K ♥ , A ♦ K ♦ , A ♣ K ♣ 12 combos of each unpaired, offsuit hand A ♠ K ♥ , A ♠ K ♦ , A ♠ K ♣ , A ♥ K ♠ , A ♥ K ♦ , A ♥ K ♣ , A ♦ K ♠ , A ♦ K ♥ , A ♦ K ♣ , A ♣ K ♠ , A ♣ K ♥ , A ♣ K ♦ This leads us to the conclusion that there are 78 pocket pairs ( 6 combos times 13 squares), 312 suited hands ( 4 combos times 78 squares) and 936 unpaired, offsuit hands ( 12 combos times 78 squares). The Card Matrix Dead Cards The above ratios are applicable preflop but falter when in the presence of “dead cards”. Dead cards refer to cards that are known to not be in a player’s hand. The most common example occurs when a flop is dealt. The flop cards are dead as it is impossible for any player to hold them. The simplest way to count combinations is to multiply the number of unseen cards . Let’s go over some examples to familiarize you: BTN opens, BB calls, flop is AK2: How many combinations of AQ does the BTN have? Note that 3/12 of those are AQ s, and 9/12 are AQ o. Suited: A ♦ Q ♦ A ♥ Q ♥ A ♣ Q ♣ A ♠ Q ♠ Offsuit: A ♦ Q ♥ A ♦ Q ♣ A ♦ Q ♠ A ♥ Q ♦ A ♥ Q ♣ A ♥ Q ♠ A ♣ Q ♦ A ♣ Q ♥ A ♣ Q ♠ A ♠ Q ♦ A ♠ Q ♣

as BB vs SB Open - Fold. With only one opponent, there's no multiplication necessary, this is on average how often Villain will fold as long as the stat has an accurate sample. The third (green) number on the HUD will represent this stat throughout the examples to come. Given that we are now out of position, we should err on the stricter side and look to be a little closer to RFE in order to open a hand than we were on the BU. I'm recommend shrinking the margin that we can be out by and replacing the 5-10% with a guideline of 3-7%, depending on the other factors. Beyond RFE Once again, the math is a guide and far from the full story. Hero must again make use of Figure 14 in order to determine if factors are positive or negative and therefore whether to open a hand or not. If there's any doubt as to what any of those factors are, please go back and review them. We'll now take a look at a few examples. Only after we've developed a feel for the dynamism of this spot will I be providing the final default opening range to complete our set.

Straight flush A made hand consisting of five consecutive (ranked) cards of the 'same suit'. The second strongest hand in community card poker, and very rare.

Hand Range 209: SB vs UTG (60bb) • 3-bet 5.6% / • Call 13.8% / • Fold 80.6%

♦ OOP Check vs C-bet (x/b/c/x/b/?) Turn Play After Flop Check Back (x/x) IP Range If IP is checking back a GTO strategy, then their range will have the right board coverage and be fairly balanced on most runouts. Still, IP’s checking back range will be somewhat capped and a lot more depolarized than their c-betting range as they would have c-bet most of their strong hands on the flop. OOP Range If OOP doesn’t have a donk betting range, then they have exactly the same range with which they called the pre-flop raise. This means two things. First, this range is very wide compared to IP’s range, and second, that this range is still uncapped. The way the ranges are constructed is somewhat reverse of the flop situation, making OOP’s range more polarized than IP’s and IP’s range more condensed than OOP’s. This range distribution generally results in OOP developing a turn betting strategy. If IP is checking back a non-GTO range, this range will lack the right board coverage and will be heavily capped on many different runouts while being overly represented on others. For example, let’s consider the flop strategy Example 3 of 9♥8♥4♥. If IP never checks back hands such as 99 and 88, then OOP’s turn strategy on a blank turn such as 2♣ drifts from betting 27% of the time to betting 77% of the time, and IP’s EV decreases from 54% of the pot on that specific turn card to 41%. The effect is even greater if IP never checks back a flush draw or any strong hand on the flop. Then if a flush card such as the 5♥ comes, IP’s EV decreases to 11%. You should also be aware when IP checks back a flop that should be c-bet at a high frequency. For example, on AQ3r, if IP checks back they almost always have some sort of made hand and not much air, because people intuitively understand they should c-bet that flop at a high frequency but still struggle to bet hands such as A with a low kicker, KK, Qx, JJ and TT. This strategy is terrible, as it results in IP’s range being pretty much face-up, allowing OOP to play accurately against it. Sometimes players will also check back a hand such as AA, trying balance the fact that they are checking back a weak capped range but this doesn’t help them as much as they might think. When OOP has an A, there is only one combo of AA left, and this allows OOP to play the Ax very aggressively without having to be too worried about IP having them beat.

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

into the pot before the flop. By doing so, you will eliminate the large implied odds that the drawing hands generally can get. (One way of accomplishing this is to bet the minimum in an early position with a premium hand such as AA or KK. Then, if someone else raises after other players have called, you should reraise the maximum.) The second major difference in a spread limit game is that if you limp in for the minimum before the flop and are raised the maximum, you should throw your hand away if you are not holding a hand that plays well in a short-handed pot. In this situation, the large implied odds that you were expecting to get are now no longer available. Those players who do not release hands in this spot are the consistent losers in spread limit games. 220 Part Six: Playing in Other Non-Standard Games For example, suppose you limp in with and a player behind you raises the maximum. Unless other players already have called the raise, you should muck your hand. Failure to do so will prove costly in the long run. Playing in Other Non-Standard Games Afterthought As you can see, information presented in this section is built upon ideas and concepts covered earlier in the book. For instance, when playing in a spread limit game you can play some weak drawing hands up front due to the large implied odds that you expect, as long as there is not much raising. In addition, there are countless variations of non-standard games that hold 'em has to offer. We have touched on only a small number of them. However, as just pointed out, the general ideas presented in this section, as well as the previous sections, should enable you to successfully attack almost any form of Texas hold 'em that you may encounter. 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 Other Skills Introduction There are two additional areas that play a major role in winning at hold 'em (as well as at all forms of poker). They are reading hands and psychology. Reading hands is both an art and a science. The same is true for correct applications of psychology at the poker table. In both instances, you must know your opponents. More specifically, the better you understand how your opponents think and thus how they play, the better you will be able to choose the correct strategies to use against them. Even when you are not in a pot, it is still important to pay attention to what is going on. By doing so, you will begin to understand how different opponents play their hands in different situations and what tactics they are most likely to try. Also, you can get a feel for how they think. You will see what they handle easily and what confuses them, and you will get an

better or worse than that in reality. We're investing 1BB into a pot that's already 2BB + 1.5BB = 3.5BB (BU's open + both blinds). Our pot odds are 3.5:1. We would break even here by winning this pot on the flop once for every 3.5 times we lose it. That's to say we need to win the pot as it would stand on the flop 1 / 4.5 = 22.2% of the time to break even. Our synthetic scenario then is that 77.8% we check the hand down to showdown and lose. The other 22.2% of the time we check the hand down to showdown and win. This scenario is clearly ridiculous as, in reality, Villain will be c-betting lots, we'll be folding frequently or calling when we connect in some reasonable way and sometimes even be winning big pots when we make our rare flushes, two pair or trips. We can accept that this scenario is absurd and simply ask: is reality better or worse than this? Part 2 - The Real Situation So can we do better than this on average? Well, we have 44% equity vs Villain's range (the 45% of hands shown by his BU RFI) and although we won't actually get to showdown and win 44% of the time, this equity should easily translate to a better situation than our miserable 22.2% winning frequency in the dummy scenario. Let's start with some negative combined probability to work out how often we'll see a K on the flop. The first card won't be a K 47/50 times = 94% If it's not, the second card won't be a K 46/49 times = 93.88% If it's not either, then the third card won't be a K 45/48 times = 93.75% No king will flop (0.94 x 0.9388 x 0.9375) = 83% of the time. We will flop a pair of kings 17% of the time. When we do there will be some reverse implied odds when we're dominated, but for the most part we'll be winning at least an extra c-bet on top of the pot as it stands the vast majority of the time. On a flop like Kc6d2h our equity jumps to 80% vs Villain's likely range! On top of this, we will sometimes win a bigger pot with two pair and better and we can pick up some pots unimproved if Villain gives up. Moreover we'll sometimes be able to play back profitably against c-bets by calling or raising when we connect in some way worse than a pair of kings, for example when we flop a draw of some kind or a pair of fours. Finally, there will be times when K high actually wins the pot at showdown. Much of our 44% equity comes from just having the best high card hand when both players miss the run out completely. Overall, we can estimate that reality is comfortably better than our break-even scenario.

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

Hand Range 126: LJ 40bb • Raise 2.3x 23.6% / • Fold 76.4%

best hands in your range. GTO Wizard the #1 App for Poker players Study any spot imaginable Practice by playing vs. GTO Analyze your hands with 1-click START CRUSHING NOW JOIN DISCORD Author Barry Carter Barry Carter has been a poker writer for 16 years. He is the co-author of six poker books, including The Mental Game of Poker , Endgame Poker Strategy: The ICM Book , and GTO Poker Simplified . Latest article Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first decade of my career. But after my first… Relationships and Poker In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve… Do Multiple Sizes Matter? Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results… The Science of Learning Applied to GTO Wizard The way we were taught to study in schools was flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN preflop raiser in a 100bb cash… When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody… Protect Equity and Prosper When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend… Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative poker thinking. When you’re value betting against… Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots 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 Practical Game To set out on the path of being a professional golfer with no idea how often to practice, who to get coached by, which competitions to enter, and which clubs to purchase would be ludicrous. Nevertheless, new students who come to me for poker coaching often arrive on my doorstep with some very bad practical game habits. Some are as unprepared that, in golfing terms, they're hitting a lemon around a car park with rake for practice. A healthy practical game involves healthy study habits. The reader should look to do plenty of hand history analysis, have dedicated focused study time, consider the worth of coaching and explore many forms of active poker learning to find out what works best (all students are different.) At the same time, he must also investigate which games on the internet best fulfill his current poker goals. Is he trying to improve his game and wishes to play on a tougher site with nicer software, or is it more prudent to play on a softer site to build a bankroll as fast as possible. Moreover, within his chosen site, Hero should attempt to table select properly, avoiding games full of competent Regulars and favouring tables with weaker players. The practical game of poker also demands that Hero puts in enough hands to make some progress over a meaningful timeframe, while at the same time not neglecting his study time. Getting this study:play ratio right is very important and for the beginner I recommend around 50% study, 50% play. A whole book could be written on the practical game of poker. It's not impossible that I'll take up the challenge some time in the future and make a sequel to this manual with a practical game focus. Until then, coaching, training sites, forums, peers and many other places on the internet can help in this respect. The reader should not neglect either the mental or practical game, lest all of his hard technical work amounts to no monetary reward. It sounds extreme, but I can tell you from years of working with aspiring poker players that it's entirely true for at least 95% of students.

Hand Range 6: SB Opening Jamming Range (10bb)

SIZING YOUR PREFLOP RAISES 82 ace-jack (and most other unpaired hands), but he’s not a 2-to-1 favorite, so he’d rather you fold. And of course he’d be delighted if he got you to fold pocket eights or nines. But when you raise all $2,400, he must now compare his pocket sevens to the hands that you might raise all-in with. Since he’s getting only $2,700-to-$2,400 (or 9-to-8) on his call, he must win at least 8/17 (47 percent) of the time to call profitably. With pocket sevens, he’ll fear that you have a bigger pair too often to allow him to win almost half the time. So he’ll fold. Obviously, he’ll call like lightening with pocket aces. So, and here’s the tricky part, if you raise all-in, you’ll be a much bigger underdog when called. While sometimes you got to play against pocket sevens before, now almost every time you get called you’ll see something like pocket kings or ace-king. Thus, it might seem that raising all-in is bad. But it’s not. Since, after your $700 raise and all-in reraise, you were indif- ferent to calling and folding, you might as well call. He’ll have pocket kings and ace-king just as often, so you are playing against those hands with exactly the same frequency. What’s different is that, while you played against pocket sevens at a slight disadvantage before, you now pick up the blinds instead. By raising all-in, you’ve turned a small loss into a small profit every time your opponent has a marginal reraising hand. The above analysis, however, does not mean that it is always better to move all-in with fairly good hands than to raise smaller. That is true only if the smaller raise can’t be easily gotten away from. And the size of the smaller raise is up to you. Suppose the blinds are $100–$200, and the stacks are $3,000. If you raise to only $500 you can easily fold ace-jack to a move in reraise. You’re getting only $3,800-to-$2,500 odds, and that’s not enough. (Even if he raised a bit less, you would still have to fold as you would have to put in the rest on the flop.) Final Thoughts Preflop raise sizing is important. Don’t listen to pundits that tell you to keep your raises a constant size. Don’t get lazy and just raise the “table standard.” Controlling your raise sizes intelligently will help you control your opponents, the pot sizes, and many other factors. Make smaller raises in early position, with “smallpot” hands, and against players who call too much postflop. Make larger raises in late position, with “big pot” hands, and against players who fold too much postflop. Plenty of other factors are worth considering as well — how your opponents will read your raise size, whether you want your opponents to call or fold (though be careful with this one), and more. And always mix up your play enough to stay unreadable. Seemingly random raise sizes are just as unreadable as constant ones, but they allow you more freedom, control, and

than has if I had Queen Jack I'm not going to raise the Flop and then about to turn that'll be way too thin um the absolute weakest hand I would do this with is is uh Ace Queen and and even then I wouldn't do that at a full frequency um so like I guess what he was hoping for is I had some type of draw and he's denying Equity but um yeah I just I think it's a really big mistake when when you're shoving a hand for Value that can't get called by worse and I mean it's really unlikely that I have a draw anyways because let's say I have King Jacker clubs and then I raise the Flop and then I get this brick turn I'm probably just going to check the turn I don't want to get jammed on like you did and have to call it off or have to fold with so much Equity so I think this is a pretty big error on his part and I remember like just the the ace coming on the river and I immediately thought of that I was like if he called and he probably would have just gotten away from it on the river so yeah just just be try to make sure to not uh make the easy decision by you know shoving and ending ending the hand when you can't really get called by worse I think that's going to wrap it up for today and in terms of the hands so I I hope this was helpful I hope that it's going to be applicable for you guys to to use some of these Concepts in game and um if you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask or any comments and I would greatly appreciate it and and thank you so much for spending the time to watch this video cheers

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…

With SPR 1 and below, P1 will check back middle strength hands (TT-77) and will go all-in with a polarized range of AA-JJ for value and 55-66 as bluffs (Table 167). P1 is OOP and P2 is IP Table 168: P1’s Strategy (OOP First Action) with SPR Above 2 With SPR 2 or more, P1 likes to develop two different bet-sizes, all-in, which will be used with the nut hands P2 cannot have in their range (AA-KK), and a smaller 25%-pot bet-size with the top of their range that overlaps with P2’s range (QQ-TT). 66-55 are used as bluffs and 99-77 are checked alongside a very small fraction of AA-KK and most of QQ to protect P1’s checking range (Table 168). With SPR 1 and below, P1 will also develop the use of two different bet-sizes, all-in and a smaller 10%-pot size. The all-in bet-size will be used with a polarized range of JJ+ and 66-55, and the smaller bet-size will be used with TT-99, a sliver of AA-JJ and some 66 as bluffs. The checking range will be 88-77 plus a small frequency of TT+ for protection. As the SPR gets shallower, P1 gets to jam more hands and starts to move TT-99 into the all-in range (Table 169). Table 169: P1’s Strategy (OOP First Action) with SPR Below 2

get more money in against Jack-x and 5-x before a scary river kills your action. When you block those hands, then slowplaying makes sense. The 3 ♥ is a badugi Badugi Badugi is a Lowball poker variant where the goal is to have the lowest hand. turn, but surprisingly little changes if it’s the 3 ♠ instead. UTG never folds a flush draw, of course, and mixes raise and call with most combos. When raising offsuit hands, they have some preference for holding a big spade so they can leverage that blocker for bluffs on spade rivers. Responding to Donk Bets on Flush Card Turns For this scenario, we will take a 40bb UTG vs. BB single-raised pot as our example. After checking and calling a 33% pot continuation bet on a K ♠ Q ♥ 5 ♥ flop, the BB bets 20% pot on an 8 ♥ turn. What heuristics can you discern from UTG’s response , shown below? UTG’s value-raising threshold is KQ for top two pair. KQ mixes calls and raises, raising more frequently when it includes the K ♥ . UTG never raises K8 . They can raise AK and AA if they have the A ♥ , but they don’t shove blank rivers unless they improve. Sets are high-frequency raises, especially when they unblock King-x and Queen-x. Hitting MDF is more intuitive on this board than on J53 , as UTG’s opening range has a lot of natural coordination with the broadway cards on the board. A pair of Queens or Kings is an easy call, and AT , AJ , and JT can call or raise. The lower gutshots, J9 and T9 , are pure folds. Underpairs to the 55 make great bluff raises if they contain a heart. If not, they mix raise and fold but never call. 77 and 66 actually make better calls than JJ and TT because they unblock bluffs. The latter only call when they have a heart, whereas the former mix even without a heart. The best bluffing hands are 8x . These don’t have much value as calls, but they have great blocking effects. BB’s strongest donk bets are hands that were improved by the turn card. That includes flushes but also turned sets and two pairs, which UTG’s 8-x blocks. Most flushes mix call and raise , but A ♥ K ♥ is a pure call. With the two biggest hearts in their hand, UTG blocks too much of BB’s continuing range to a raise. UTG’s raises are smaller than on the J533 board, 33% pot rather than 55%. Bet sizes in general tend to be smaller on three flush boards, where hand values are more static, and it’s hard to block strong hands without having a strong hand yourself. If you have the A ♥ in your hand, you have a pretty good hand no matter what your other card is. If you don’t, it’s hard to run a big bluff because your opponent could easily have it. Responding from Late Position UTG is the easy case.

situations Mike actually float the turn as a really good app on shoving and if you want to win more tournaments heads up just play your big pots in position Mike says hey Alex I just want to say a huge thanks for answering all my emails happy to be of service Mikey this is my day job and I have a pretty awesome job playing poker and teaching about poker so it's really honestly my pleasure somebody wrote in Enzo care haha Ralph will says master tournament poker in one class is really refined my opening ranges in overall game in a downswing but feel like I'm not giving my tourney away like I did in the past which is a huge step thanks about you're welcome well so if you guys are unfamiliar with my coaching I do do quite a bit of the hand quizzes the interactive quizzes that you would get by accessing poker coaching comm slash lucky the way I teach people how to play poker is attacking poker and it's attacking poker with some analytics some comm unit or X so a lot of the fundamentals I find the way we teach poker be really silly I was really lucky in that I learned poker like everybody else in the States from like the training sites and everything back in 2006 and in 2007 to this day I don't know how this happened but a bunch of Germans took me in in Malta and just getting to be around how they thought about poker I learned a new set of fundamentals and my life has pretty much been awesome ever since and the way they teach are the the stuff we were studying at that time I I don't even know they're very modest guys if how much they would claim is their own idea but it was very much attacking poker and it came from the chess world I think which is if you watch an intermediate chess hustler he's just a very attacking guy right and then you'll see people just get worked over in any game and be a boxing or chess when they're just waiting for something to happen right where is if you go on the attack a lot of good things can happen and if you can skillfully go on the attack you're not going to be giving away your tournaments as we'll just discuss there you're going to be putting yourself in situations to win I just got a tweet actually I've been getting a number of tweets from guys just talking about I can feel that I'm the actor now I'm the one changing the tournament I'm the one putting myself in position to win that's great that's awesome Jonathan says how would you adjust your strategy for live cash games I would well honestly poker is pretty much poker if people are reacting the same way now and a lot of cash games you raise from a knee position you're not getting in the big blind it's

Oh dear. Hero has messed this hand up badly. One thing we always want to avoid in our poker

Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first decade of my career. But after my first… Relationships and Poker In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve… Do Multiple Sizes Matter? Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results… The Science of Learning Applied to GTO Wizard The way we were taught to study in schools was flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN preflop raiser in a 100bb cash… When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody… Protect Equity and Prosper When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend… Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative poker thinking. When you’re value betting against… Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots When the BTN open-limps off a short stack, the postflop play against the BB should… I’d Rather Be Drawing Which is the better hand on a K♥8♦5♦ flop: K♠T♣ or 7♥6♥? OK, I’ll admit… The Curious Case of Open-Limping Buttons Before the advent of solvers, open-limping was considered the province of passive, gambley recreational players… Cleaning Out Sticky IP Callers A “sticky” player on your left, one who calls your preflop raises too often and… Defending Against Tiny 3-Bets Tournament poker is about precision. Cash games, where stacks typically run into the hundreds of… Heads up! Exploiting SB’s Preflop Mistakes Heads up (HU) tournament play presents unique challenges to the average player. Many tournament players,… C-Betting As the OOP Preflop Raiser Position is an extremely valuable advantage in poker. Most players would describe the comfort zone… Overchoice: Making Sense of Multiple Sizings Solver solutions with multiple bet sizes often involve a lot of mixing between those sizes,… River Refinements: When Your Opponent Won’t Check-Raise One of the biggest strategic differences between playing in versus out of position involves betting… Turn Barreling in 3-Bet Pots There are two articles on the GTO Wizard blog that make good prerequisites to this… The Right Way To Think About Protection Suppose Paul the Protector is in a 200bb cash game and opens A♠A♣ in the… The Importance of Board Coverage The first public version of the GTO Wizard announced AI upgrade already 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

Table 70: BN Action Frequencies (60bb) With 60bb the BN VPIP frequency maintains the same pattern as seen before, increasing as the opener range weakens. The calling frequency remains more or less constant, but the 3-betting frequency lowers as the opener’s range gets stronger. The BN 3-betting range is very polarized, but given stacks allow for post-flop play you still don’t want to be 3-betting a lot of trash and having to play post-flop deep-stacked with very low equity hands against a strong range. The BN 60bb calling range will maintain a similar shape to the 40bb range, flatting a lot of pocket pairs, suited connectors and suited broadways (Hand Ranges 226-231).

The difference between these two situations is that in Hand 135, Hero has called the flop and turn with what is pretty far from the top of his range. His hand is low enough down on the river that he should have a comfortable fold to the river shove. Villain's RFE on this shove comes out at 59 / (59 + 82) = 42%. Hero should call the most suitable 58% of his range. He has plenty of combos of QT, QJ, KQ and AQ that have greater SDV and these hands also do a better job of blocking Villain's value range. AJ is not going to qualify as a call. Hero can work this out roughly in-game and come to this conclusion without calculating the exact percentages. In Hand 136, Hero is very near the top of his range on the flop and the turn and much closer to the top of his range on the river than he was in the hand before. The combos of QT, KQ and AQ no longer exist in his range by the river as Hero has no incentive to get to the river with these hands. This means that AJ is very likely to be in the top 58% of his hands suitability wise since he has few combos of better and the A does a nice job of blocking AQ and AA - two of Villain's likely value combos. Hero folds in Hand 135. Hero calls in Hand 136. In the final hand of the chapter below, there are two questions to consider: Q1. Is Hero's hand suitable enough to warrant a call from a balanced perspective? Q2. Does Hero have a reason to adopt some exploitative strategy instead and does this change his decision? The HUD reverts back to its usual form for when we are not the pre-flop aggressor. The red number is 3Bet Preflop and the following three brown numbers are CBet Flop, CBet Turn and CBet River respectively.

drop calls with the Knight of diamonds um so does waiting towards heaven some high diamond Queen of Diamonds I've came together with Jacob diamonds King of Diamonds uh and then we size up turn don't expect them to fold those diamonds uh do expect them to fold so like definitely 2X and some 6X with a diamond wooden uh okay so over here with the eight nine we've limped and bet yeah so we limped in and sized up the Flop that we turned our got shot straight and then so I think just going half pot our opponent's got more of this in his range he's going to have more two pair combos in his range he's going to have like the the three four which we just don't have in our range he's going to have somebody he's definitely going to have eight nine in his range but we have 89 obviously but we as our general range is going to be played he's going to have the seven five he's going to have the six five six seven and uh he's gonna have even some King seven so um yeah I think this is a mistake here over here I I ran it in in the silver often we can actually look at that quickly in a second we can run it we can look at a second um I end up calling because I don't block the higher Diamond I think there's a good run out for him to Bluff especially when I check and so if he's got like a queen of diamonds jacket diamonds I do expect him to take his breath he had obviously very good combo to play the way he did because he had the six of diamonds so it kind of like it shows like that he's a good player and the way he played it and win the six mini six pairs I go for a check given that I feel I feel that six is a big part of his range but having said that I think we should just still bit half pot because we can induce more Bluffs when we bit half pot something like something like uh seven eight or or five eight type hands would probably Bluff over over a bit but they'll just check back so I think I think a bit of a mistake I just thought the six was such a big part of his range that I mean we're getting that anyway but I would hate for him just to cool like my half pot but I think even against half bought it's gonna Gem and I think this probably would be a candidate that he would Bluff with if we had bet half pot so I think we we definitely missed one though uh here great combo for checking back and great combo for hero calling on numerous runouts obviously this is a uh this is not a size I'd expect them to be bluffing so many bets that size

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 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

all right we've gotten through some of the nuts and bolts of how to play and think about poker now it's time to discuss pre-flop poker strategy this is strategy before the flop so let's first discuss some starting hands so which starting hands are generally thought to be the best well it turns out the best starting hands are hands that can make strong big pairs or that have the potential to make an incredibly premium hand like a flush or a straight or three of a kind so the best hands you can have are big pocket pairs this can be pocket aces pocket kings pocket queens pocket jacks these are very very strong hands you can be happy investing a decent amount of money with next strong big cards like ace king ace queen ace jack king queen whenever these hands do make a pair it's usually the best pair with a very strong kicker the side card right so these hands are quite strong next medium pairs are pretty good sometimes a medium pair by itself is just good enough to end or to win at the river but also medium pairs will make three of a kind sometimes and when you make three of a kind that's usually a pretty good hand next suited aces like acetate or diamonds ace five of clubs ace queen of spades these hands are particularly good because when they do make top pair you know top pair top kicker like say it does come 873 a s8 is pretty good on 873 becomes ace three two you know ace eight's pretty good there too but it also makes the best flush referred to as the nut flush that hand is really good and is almost always the best so sudaneses are pretty strong suited connectors are pretty strong as well hands like eight seven suited jack ten suited ten nine suited um even hands like nine seven suited or jack nine suited no hands with a gap in between as long as they're suited they're pretty strong too because they will make some flushes they'll make some straights they'll make some decent middle pairs and those are all pretty reasonable hands and then finally weak pocket pairs um these are pocket two threes fours five sixes they are not like incredibly premium but when they do make three of a kind you're usually pretty happy so these are generally the best starting hands and you're not going to want to play all of these all the time like for example in terms of strong big cards a hand like ace 10 is pretty good but if there's a lot of betting before you it may become significantly weaker also suited connectors like 4 3 of diamonds aren't actually all that good because they usually make low flushes and low strains so these hands are pretty strong you should play them in most scenarios but there certainly will be situations where you should not play them and we'll be discussing that in

here um let's see what else let's jump to 60 big blinds so when we're at 60 big lines we are four betting much less we're going to be playing our hands with a lot of traps I think at this stack depth Aces is going to be played as a pure call um this why do we format so infrequently it helps out our overall range at this specific stack depth to have strength in our calling range when we call when we just call hands like Aces kings queens Jacks Ace King Ace Queen Ace Jack king queen suited um the the small blind can't just Barrel off as much as he would uh be able to if our range was very very capped so the calculator just tells us the best strategy is actually to leave a lot of strength in our calling range so um very infrequent four bets calling the majority of the time and look at how low these folding frequencies are so at this specific stack depth um with the spr the way it is and the ranges you know the way we have our RFI set up uh this is a very nice just call and I have notes on what hands we're using here so only ace King and King King are four bet all in here got this stacked up everything else is called from MP only queen queen king king and Ace King are four bet all in everything is how every other value hand is is uh is just called and then from LP only ace King Jack Jack through 9 9 and 12 Bluffs so we're doing basically to sum it up we're doing a lot of just peeling in position uh we're playing very well against small blind it's very hard to play out of position that's why small blind is sizing up it's a disadvantage to be playing out of position and we can you know push our EV the highest by just flatting by just flatting heaps now this is a solver answer you know that we want to be slow playing all these types of hands uh I think in reality you probably want to four bet Aces and queens and Jacks a very high frequency because I think it's hard for a lot of the low segment sticks opponents to just be bomb bomb bombing off um when they're already starting with such a tight range pre-flop I think they're just gonna not find all of the Bluffs that they should you know I think that they're gonna just try to show down with nines a lot when they should be bluffing or Ace King a lot when they should be bluffing um so I think it's probably better to just fast play the top of your range as an exploit but this is what the solver says uh off of 30 big blinds now we're starting to really format heaps in position uh short spr were not calling uh very frequently at all

Table 155: All of P1’s Range Beats P2’s Range At equilibrium, position doesn’t matter in this set-up, but P1 has the option to exploitatively always bet when IP and check or bet when OOP, depending on what P1 thinks will get P2 to put more money in the pot. P1’s Range is Polarized but Has More Nuts Than Air Table 156: P1 Has the Nuts 90% of the Time and Air 10%

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THE CONCEPTS 171 — have all been preflop examples. And that’s not without good reason; chances to apply this concept occur most frequently in tournaments before the flop. But this isn’t just a preflop concept. It applies on every street. Concept No. 14: Raise less often than you would in limit, because raising reopens the betting, and that’s riskier to do in no limit. In limit hold ’em, the punishment for getting caught raising with a second-best hand that has outs is a reraise that costs you at most a fraction of a bet. In no limit, the punishment can be a reraise that forces you offyour hand, costing you all of your pot equity (and possibly a chance to win future bets as well) or costing you expectation when you decide to call. Raising in no limit is riskier, so you must be more judicious with your raises. Concept No. 15: Bet more than usual when your opponent likely has a hand that he thinks might be good. Earlier we discussed how to size your bets given the likely number of “outs” your opponent has to beat you. But this assumes that he knows he is drawing. The formula goes out the window if he thinks he may not have to improve to win. In that case, you can bet much more than what the “outs” formula would indicate and still expect to get called. Concept No. 16: Occasionally overbet with moderate hands to dis- guise your overbets with excellent hands. When you have an excellent hand, and you suspect your opponent has a good, but second-best hand, you want to make big overbets to win the maximum from the situation. But if you make big overbets only in that situation, astute players will realize what you are doing. So disguise these big bets with overbets early in the hand with moderate hands like top pair. For instance, say you have K♡Q♡on a K♠9♠7♣flop in a $100 pot. In situations you’d normally make a bet of $80 or so, occasionally make a big bet of $150 to $200. If everyone folds, you can show the hand. As long as you don’t do it too often, these overbets won’t cost you too much, and they will support you those times you make big bets with excellent hands. In no limit, there is a multiplier effect on all actions that take place early in the hand. Since bets tend to be sized in proportion to the size of the pot, an extra $100 in flop action could translate into turn bets that are $200 bigger and river bets that are $600 bigger (or more). So your big hands could become far more profitable overall if you can successfully make $150 flop bets with them rather than $100 bets. Concept No. 17: If your preflop raise is called behind you, check a lot of flops. Unlike limit hold ’em where you usually bet the flop after your raise is called, in no limit you should often check to those callers. That’s true even if

More likely than connecting to one pair is flopping absolutely nothing. Good luck trying to successfully bluff now in a multi-way pot from early position. You can’t bluff; you’ve got too much company in the pot. But what if you’re heads-up and flop a complete nothing? Well, now you could actually win the pot anyway, because one player is much easier to bluff against. Your 8-high actually has a chance to win the pot despite missing the board. Need to bluff? You’ll be much better off against one player. Even if you flop a hand as good as two pair, you’re still better off heads-up than multi-way. If you flop two pair with low suited connectors, your two pair will almost always be bottom two pair. In a multi-way pot, that is a very dangerous hand to hold. If the board is something like A67 and you hold 67s, you have to worry about someone making aces-up on the turn or the river and you have to worry about all the straight cards that could hit aswell (by definition, if you make two pair while holding suited connectors, straight draws are always going to be a possibility). If you’re heads-up, then you don’t have to worry as much about your opponent making a straight or a bigger two pair, because there are only two cards out against you. How are you going to get heads-up? Not by limping in the pot from early position encouraging lots of play behind you. You are going to get heads-up with these hands by reserving playing them for the later positions when everyone has already folded around to you. That’s how you get up against one opponent. Now, if you’re happier with a hand as strong as two pair against just one opponent, that should be a big clue that maybe suited connectors don’t actually play well in multi-way pots. From the standpoint of flopping nothing or one pair or even two pair, there really is no difference between 87o and 87s: They both stink in a multi-way pot (particularly out of position) and are both fine in a heads-up pot with position. But I know what you’rethinking: “I’m not playing the 87s to make a pair or to try to bluff the pot. I’m playing it because of all the money I’ll win when I make a flush.” That’swhy they call it implied odds, right? I can take a bad bet now, because when I make that juicy flush I’m going for, I’ll win so much money from my unsuspecting opponents. But here’s a hard truth: Suited cards are functionally no better than unsuited cards. And I intend to convince you of this, first through math, then byshowing you how implied odds in these situations are largely a myth. Gasp! I know this flies in the face of conventional wisdom, but let’s fly on just the same. Let’s say you take 87s to the flop and, miracle of miracles, flop a flush. Well, you’ve just bucked a 118-to-1 shot, so lucky you. Now you start

of this book, hold 'em has become, on average, a much tougher game to beat. If you have aspirations of being a serious player you will have to study the strategies and techniques in this text or you will be left behind. If you are new to the game, but are willing to put in the requisite time and effort, you soon will be more proficient at this form of poker than many of today's professional players. However, don't expect to become an expert overnight. In Hold 'em Poker For Advanced Players, the authors provide not only numerous sophisticated concepts, but lots of examples as well. Many of these advanced strategies never appeared correctly in print until the first edition was originally released in 1988. With the twenty-first century edition, they have done it again. Much ofthe material that follows will be brand new to even successful pr~fessional players. Put another way, I stated in 1988 that "Numerous concepts contained in this book are wellunderstood only by a very small group of players - extremely successful players, I might add." Again, this statement is true today. This brings up another point. This is one of the very few poker books actually written by winning players, and the authors thoroughly explain the techniques that have made them so successful at the tables. In addition, I know both authors quite well, and I know that no winning information was held back. vi Foreword by Ray Zee I have mixed feelings about seeing this book published, as I did when the original edition came out. As a professional poker player I'm not in favor of anything that will make the poker games tougher to beat. On the other hand, this new and expanded version of Hold 'em Poker for Advanced Players should help to spread this extremely interesting game just as the original edition did, and to make it even more popular. Thus there will be more games to choose from and there will still be plenty ofgood games. Consequently, I guess it is for the best that this twenty-first century edition is now available. Finally, let me repeat that the techniques and ideas offered in this text should make any disciplined and studious player a significant winner. However, as already stated, it won't happen overnight. Most players will have to reread the book and study the concepts many times. In fact, I suspect that some of you will literally wear the covers off your copies of Hold 'em Poker for Advanced Players. But I know that those of you who do will be very happy with your results. Special note: The authors would like to thank world class poker player Ray Zee for sharing many of his concepts and ideas with us. Because of Ray, this text is a better work. About David Sklansky David Sklansky is generally considered the number one authority on gambling in the world today. Besides his nine books on the subject, David also has produced two videos and numerous writings for various gaming publications. His occasional poker seminars always

Straight A made hand consisting of five consecutive (ranked) cards of which not all have the same suit.

more often than not you would be happy to win it on the flop with a bet. HEADS-UP PLAY To some degree, you can throw the rulebooks out the window when playing heads-up. Now, anything goes; it is psychological warfare in its purest form. Your goal is to seek out your opponent’s weaknesses and figure out a way to exploit them. How you do that depends on what those weaknesses are. Pre-Flop Play When playing heads-up, the button acts first before the flop but last on the remaining betting rounds. The button has the small blind, while the other player has the big blind. As we’ve stressed throughout this chapter, position is of paramount importance in Texas hold’em but especially when playing heads-up. This makes virtually any hand playable on the button. In fact, if you were to watch two world-class players play heads-up, you’d soon notice that both players see a large percentage of the flops! The flop is usually raised by the button and either called or reraised by the big blind. The button raises because of his powerful position, and the big blind usually calls or reraises based on the merit of his holecards—unless he is holding one of the rare hands he folds. If you decide to play on the button, which I suggest you do with over 75 percent of the hands dealt, you should come in for a raise. Limping in to mix it up is fine, but you can’t go wrong with a raise. As the big blind, it’s important that you respect your positional disadvantage. You should still 161 defend your blind most of the time, but you don’t want to get too carried away and end up overplaying your hand before the flop. When the button raises, you will be getting 3 to 1 on your money to call a bet. The button is two bets, plus the one you already have in the big blind. That’s simply too good a price to pass up with most any hand you are dealt. Even J-6 offsuit is worth a call here. Post-Flop Play One thing we know for sure is that you will miss the flop more often than you will hit it. When you do hit a piece of the flop, it’s usually correct to take the hand all the way to the river, depending on the action and the cards that come off on the turn and river. For example, say the button raises and you call the raise with K-6. The flop comes Q-8-6, giving you bottom pair and an overcard. You should never throw this hand away on the flop. It’s very probable that you have the best hand, and even if you don’t, you have five outs to win the pot, namely three kings and two sixes. In fact, if you flop this hand you should probably bet right out or go for the check-raise on the flop. Depending on your opponent, you may even decide to simply check and call on the flop, but that could potentially give

Hand Range 99: SB vs BB (25bb) • All-in 1.8% / • Raise 3.3x 30% / • Limp 50.3% / • Fold 17.9% Small Blind Strategy at 25bb At 25bb, the SB open pushing range starts to disappear. The only hands that want to open push are baby pairs (44-22) and some offsuit mid Ax (A9o, A8o). The strategy becomes raise/limp/fold (Hand Range 99). The limping range is made of some traps with the strongest Ax (AKo-A9o), mid pocket pairs

Shorthanded A poker table with less than six players.

and you hit a 6♥ on the turn and a Q♥ on the river to make a flush, you hit runner-runner flush. On the flop you can say you have a “runner-runner flush draw.” Running Good—When you’re winning more than your fair share of hands. When your results are well above your statistical expectation. Rush—When you get better than average cards and win more than your fair share of hands for a period of time in sequence. When your results areabove your statistical expectation, you can say, “Iwas on a rush.” Satellite—A tournament played to win entry into another tournament. Set—Making 3-of-a-kind with a pair in your hand and another card of that rank on the board. For example, if you have JJ in your hand and another jack flops, you have a set of jacks: three jacks, with two in your hand and one on the board. Ship, Ship It—Slang meaning to win a tournament or a hand; e.g., “I shipped the tournament.” Also used as an exclamation as in “Ship it!” meaning send the pot to me. Shootout—A multi-table tournament in which you must win all the chips at your table in order to advance to the next round. In each round, you must win your table to advance. Short Handed—In tournament or cash-game play, when a table has fewer than the maximum players, usually six or fewer. Shove—To move all your chips into the pot. Showdown—When the last card is dealt, all the betting is finished, and the cards go face up to determine which hand wins. Sick—Describes something statistically far out of the ordinary; unexpected, unusual. Used as emphasis to describe an event; e.g., “I took a sickbeat,” “Iwon a sick hand,” or “That is so sick.” Side Card—See “kicker.” Side Pot—When one or more players is all-in, the remaining players with chips can still bet. The bets they put in the pot after they’ve matched theall-in bet go into a side pot that only those players can win. The all-in player can only vie for the center pot to which he has contributed chips; he can’t win the side pot, as none of his chips are in it. Sit-n-Go—A tournament that has no preset starting time. Players register at any time and as soon as the tournament is full, it starts. Can be singleor multi-table. Slow Play—To play a very strong hand as if it were a very weak one. To bet in a way that makes your hand seem bad when it’s good. For example, checking a big hand on the flop. Slow roll—At showdown, when it’s a player’s turn to show his cards, to delay in a way that causes the other player to think he has the best hand, then turning over a huge hand that was sure to be the winner. Generally, very bad etiquette. Smooth Call—To just call with a hand, usually referring to calling with a very strong hand that could raise in order to trick or trap an opponent. Snap Call—Calling instantly. A very quick call. Snowmen—Slang for two eights.

thinks he has High hand but calls. The Deal Two Down Four Up One Down 1st player is dealt a 10, making S A Flush for Hi and A 2 3 4 7 for Lo. He may win both. 2 3 c c 7 A 7 4 c c S c 10 S 2nd player is dealt an 8, making 4 5 K 7 A 3 8 A 3 4 5 7 for Lo. 7th player is dealt a 10, making 8 9 10 J Q 9 10 Queen-High Straight. The Betting 1st player is High with Two Sevens. He bets on a Flush for Hi and A 2 3 4 7 for Lo. 2nd just calls on A 3 4 5 7 for Lo. 7th player calls. Winning Hand A 2 3 4 7 for Lo. A Flush for Hi, both held by 1st player. 2ND DEAL The Deal Two Down One Up 1st player is dealt A A 5 Two Aces for Hi and Two in Winning Zone for Lo. See (1) and example 2, page 74. 2nd player is dealt 4 5 7 Three in Winning Zone for Lo. See Example 1. Page 74. 3rd player is dealt 7 8 10 One in Winning Zone, Two in Losing Zone for Lo. This hand should be folded. See Example 3, page 74. 4th player is dealt Q Q 8 Two Queens for Hi. This player has a good chance for making Queens Up but it is a losing hand. See (2), page 74. In the 1st Deal, 6th player rightly folded Two Kings. This player will stay on a worse hand – Two Queens. 5th player is dealt 2 2 7 The Deuces for Hi and Two in Winning Zone for Lo. See latter part of (2) page 74. 6th player is dealt 9 9 9 Three Nines for Hi. A good hand. See (3) page 74. 7th player is dealt J Q K Three in the same sequence for Hi. See (4) page 74. The Betting 7th hand is Hi with the King. He bets on a 3-Card Straight 1st player raises on Two Aces and Two in Winning Zone. 2nd stays on Three in Winning Zone. 3rd hand folds. 4th makes a bad call on Two Queens. 5th calls on Two Deuces and Two in Winning Zone. 6th hand raises on Three Nines. 7th calls on a 3-Card Straight, 1st calls on Two Aces and Two in Winning Zone. 2nd calls on Three in Winning Zone. 4th makes another bad call on Two Queens. 5th calls on Two Deuces and Two in Winning Zone. The Deal Two Two Down Up 1st player is dealt a 10, making A A 5 10 Two Aces for Hi and a bare possibility of Lo with Two in Winning Zone and Two in Losing Zone. 2nd player is dealt a J, making 4 5 7 J Three in Winning Zone and One in Losing Zone for Lo. 4th player is dealt a K, making Q Q 8 K Still Two Queens for

to throw your opponents a curve ball and tighten up a little bit. Stealing blinds is only possible if your opponents have some respect for your raises. If they think you are steaming, they won’t let you get away with anything! Of course, the opposite is true as well. If you have been winning every chip in sight, your opponents may fear you. They may decide to simply get out of your way. If they do that—pound ‘em! THE FLOP This is the street where you have to be aggressive. If you play too passively on the flop, you risk being run over and giving away pots you should win. I don’t advocate betting with reckless abandon, but when you have the lead and flop something, think about protecting your hand more than worrying about whether or not your opponents have the nuts. If you miss the flop entirely, there may be situations where it would be correct to take one off, hoping to pick up a draw or make a pair. Otherwise, it might be a good time to muck your hand. This is why aggression is so important. If you had the pre-flop lead, meaning you were the raiser, you can usually keep the lead on the flop. So if both you and your opponent miss the flop, which often happens, your aggression might 120 just win you the pot. If you use good judgment and play your hands aggressively, you’ll be one step ahead of the game. You’ll find that the best way to go in limit hold’em is playing in a straightforward manner, that is, betting and raising when you actually have some kind of a hand. Fancy Play When I say that you should play straightforward, that isn’t to be confused with predictable. You still need to think about playing deceptively, but you want to avoid what Mike Caro terms Fancy Play Syndrome (FPS). FPS leads to missed bets, giving away free cards, or even playing a hand in such an unorthodox fashion that it actually costs you a pot! More often than not, fancy plays will minimize your profit on a hand. Sure, when these plays work you feel like a genius, but you’re better off playing a more fundamentally sound game. Before we go any further, I want to help you with a common scenario that arises when you are playing fundamentally well. Let’s look at an example and go from there. You are holding A? K? in early position. You are the initial pre-flop raiser and get two callers behind you, as well as the big blind. Now the perfect flop comes down: A? 4? 9?. So here you are with top pair and top kicker. The big blind checks, so it’s your turn. Since you were the pre-flop raiser, it’s natural for you to bet here. The fancy play, the check, might work, but it won’t necessarily win you any more money than a bet would. You have a strong hand, and a check-raise would only give away information. The right move here

that you can’t derive useful information from the other players’ folds. In practice, if seven or eight players fold, they will each have been slightly less likely than random chance would suggest to have been dealt an ace. This means that your opponent in the big blind will be somewhat more likely than 3/1,225 to have pocket aces.

Player Two: K-J K In this example, the action comes down the same way and again you fear you have the worst low. But once again, you are in good shape. While Player One is also going low, he isn’t raising on the power of his low draw but on his two-way draw. You have the best low draw along with some pretty good potential for high. Example Three You: 5-6 7 Player One: A-2 3 Player Two: K-J K While in the first two examples you were in good shape, in Example Three you are up against it. But even though you have the worst high and low draws, you can still draw out in either, or both, directions. Part of the beauty of poker is that the best hand at the outset doesn’t always win. If it did, I would be sitting by myself up in the Bellagio poker room instead of being swamped with customers. Try not to make having the worst low hand or draw a habit. On the contrary, try to be drawing better than your opponents the majority of the time. Just keep in mind that this is not always possible, and remember that you can’t play poker scared. Aggressive usually, cautious sometimes, scared never! 246 Let’s look at one more example: Example Four You: 2-4 7-5 Player One: x-x K-Q Player Two: x-x 2-3 In this situation, you may think you are drawing to the second-best low, and you probably are. Although you might be tempted to fold, you shouldn’t. You should take a card here. Your hand still has straight potential and you may out-draw him for low anyway. An ace will give you a very good low and a 3 or a 6 will give you a decent low with a gutshot straight draw for dessert. Player Two may also have an 8 or a worse 7 (7-6) in the hole, so keep the faith. CONCEPT 11: PLAYING LOW HANDS In eight-or-better, how low hands are played is much of what separates the experts from the merely good players. Much of eight-or-better is fairly obvious to an experienced player, and many of the situations that call for the expert plays I’ve covered, and will cover later, rarely arise. Conversely, low hands will be a constant part of your game, forcing you into decision after decision. Let’s start off by addressing how to play these hands as they develop. Don’t make a habit of jamming it or putting extra money in the pot with mere low hands on third street. Complete the bet or just call if someone has already done so in front of you. Hands such as A-2-6 or 2-3-4 are fine starting hands and can develop into monsters, but much of the time you will simply catch bad and have to fold. If you do catch bad on fourth, should you call and see fifth street? This depends on your opponents’ boards, your position, and how many bets went in on third street. The following examples illustrate the importance of position

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

to Houston the next day. For the next two-and-a-half weeks, I rested in the hospital to build myself up for the surgery to come. I went into the operating room at 10:30 a.m. I spent eight hours under the knife and at 6:30 p.m., they gave Louise the news. I was going to make it. It had been touch and go. The Impossible Had Happened At one point during the operation, my blood pressure dropped to zero, but they pulled me through. What was truly incredible was that there was no longer any trace of cancer in my system. The doctors couldn’t believe it. The impossible had happened. The odds against merely surviving the operation itself were very high. A month earlier the black corruption of melanoma had been visible to the naked eye. That the cancer had disappeared was incomprehensible to the staff at the hospital. Five doctors had unanimously agreed that it was a medical impossibility for me to live longer than a few more months, with or without the operation. For the next two weeks, Louise and Sailor took turns watching me twentyfour hours a day, since we couldn’t afford a private nurse. I had to be observed closely. The tubes that led to my body had to be checked constantly, and my vital signs had to be monitored continuously. I don’t know when Louise and Sailor got any sleep. After leaving the hospital, I recuperated at my sister’s. When my strength returned, I reported back to the hospital in Fort Worth for a checkup. The doctor who had first operated on me was at a complete loss for an explanation. The only thing he could say was that occasionally, spontaneous remissions occur, but in my case he could only believe a miracle had happened. Later we found out that during the operation several friends had spoken to their church pastors about my case and entire congregations were praying for 20 my recovery. Those prayers surely must have been answered. A Higher Power Louise had always been a religious woman, but this experience and two others in our lives reinforced her conviction that there’s a higher power that watches over us. Shortly after my recovery, Louise developed a uterine tumor. That normally requires extensive surgery and removal of the female organs. She was scheduled for surgery, but before the procedure, it was discovered that her tumor had disappeared. Another miracle. In 1975, when my daughter Doyla was twelve years old she was found to have idiopathic scoliosis, a debilitating spinal disorder. That affliction causes extensive curvature of the spine or permanent crippling. Specialists were consulted and radical procedures were recommended, including implantation of a steel rod in her spine or a full body brace. None of that was necessary. Louise organized a marathon prayer session for Doyla that included radio broadcasts and correspondence with the late Katherine Kuhlman, the famous faith healer. Within three months, Doyla’s spine had straightened completely. The doctors acknowledged that hers was one of only three known cases where the curvature was corrected without surgical

lot of Queens they have a lot of peirs and again they're going to be using a polarized size when they bet either a two3 pot or something like 25% pot or 30% pot bet we just good ASX a few Bluffs a few absolute junkers notice fives and fours going for a bluff sometimes or actually every time this is something a lot of people do not do but you need to do it because in this scenario you don't really want to be bet folding a hand like King Jack King Jack's a pretty good hand in this spot you don't want to bet it and have to fold it so you need to find weaker draws to Bluff and the nice thing about fives is that well you may spike a five and then you get to win a nice spot all right what about a different turn small blind bets 4.9 be blinds we call well we call the button calls now the turns a king this turns actually way better for the initial razor I'm sorry for the three better in the small blind than for the button because they were just they had more big cards to begin with right so now we're going to see them continuing to bet but again very polarized and interestingly enough now they're on a whole lot of draws in the small blinds range that make logical sense because notice they only have like Jack n suited jack8 suited 109 suited 108 suited there are really no other draws here so when that's the case you're often going to look for other hand that have additional equity and what are those well that's going to be a lot of sevens it may seem a little bit counterintuitive to just blast a 107 and the 97 and the 76 here but they're essentially a five out draw and if your opponent is sitting here with a queen they're going to be in miserable shape and even if they have an ace they're not going to love it so in this scenario when we bet 17 big blinds on the turn 2/3 pot the button has to call with all the acex all the king X and the queen X that has some additional Equity like a gut shot and then if we push the river you have to call off with ax but notice a lot of the king X well at least the queen X is going to be folding every time and some of the king X is going to fold to the river shove so this is a spot where I I definitely think if anything should perhaps over Bluff because I think a lot of people if you give them Ace two here they're going to call the turn B and then they're going to fold to a river betat and that would be a big big big mistake what about what about what should the button do on the turn when check Tu again they're going

practice doing this head over to pokercoaching.com in the challenge section there i have many many many many many challenges that will force you to do this to ensure you know how to do this well at the table i've had a lot of students who've come to me and not even under like knew about this concept and now they are applying this when they're playing and they are crushing the game so go there and study all right so your premium made hands these are just your absolute best hands so this is going to be usually something like the nuts all the way down to strong top pair hands these hands you're pretty much always going to want to be betting with betting in all scenarios and that's because you just want to win a big pot you have the best hand and you want to get money in the pot when you have the best hand don't get fancy and do what's called slow playing where you check a lot of your best hands hoping your opponent's bet because you know they're not always going to bet and even when they do if you check and they bet and then you raise them well you just announced haha gotcha and then they get to fold right so this is a situation where you want to be betting with your best mate hands when you're betting with your best mate hands so you also want to make sure that you're betting with some bluffs and the best bluffs to bet with are your draws and that's because you're betting your draws essentially as a semi bluff it is not the best hand at the moment but it's very likely the best hand if you improve to whatever draw you have so let's say you raise big blind calls flop comes 983 this is a board you should not be betting every single time because the range advantage is going to be kind of close right it's going to be closer to 50 50. so in this spot the when your opponent checks in the big blind you should be betting with your hands like your over pairs like aces kings queens jax tens your three of a kinds your pocket knights pocket eights pocket threes your nine eights for two pairs but then also a bunch of draws like jack 10 queen jack 10 7 suited if you have it so you'll be betting with your best mate hands and your draws that way your opponent will not know if you have one of your best made hands or a draw and that puts them in a difficult spot they're in a guessing game right and you're going to find that draws is a difficult category to really nail down because on a very uncoordinated board a draw may be a backdoor straight draw with a backdoor flush draw meaning you need uh you need to come runner runner you need to turn in the river to be perfect

Figure 58 - In-Game 3-Betting Flowchart This flowchart is really nothing more than the thought process we've already been using in this chapter adapted for thinking about one hand specifically instead of a complete range. Let's put it to use.

second column to determine how often you need to win. Pot Odds Calculator You can also simply use a pot odds calculator for off-table analysis. Many of these exist online, but we’ve made our own here using a simple Google Sheets application. Make a copy for yourself and play around with it! Pod Odds Calculator Preflop shove example CO vs SB shove 100BB Cash Game. 50NL Rake structure. CO (Hero) opens to 2.3BB, SB 3bets to 11.5BB, CO 4bets to 25BB, SB shoves for 100BB total. Check this spot out in GTO Wizard. Action on CO with this range: CO range facing SB 5bet shove What hands should call? Well, in order to find the correct calls, all we need to do is calculate our pot odds and call with any hand that has at least that much equity. Amount to call: 75BB more Total pot after we call: 201BB – rake (4BB) = 197BB Required equity to call: 75/197 = 38% minimum Next, we need to look at the SB’s shoving range to calculate our equity against it. SB 5bet shoving range vs CO 4bet I’ll copy SB’s range (Using the Ranges Tab) in GTO Wizard and paste it into an equity calculation tool like Flopzilla. Here we can see our equity against this shove: CO Equity facing SB shove Now, remember, we need at least 38% equity to call. So we should call any hand with at least that much equity. In other words, we call (TT+, AK). Let’s check our assumptions against the GTO Solution. Hands in green are calls, and blue are folds. CO strategy facing SB shove As you can see, it only calls hands that have the correct equity to do so, according to our pot odds. But my opponents are nits! That’s fine! The beauty of understanding Pot Odds is that you can adjust to their strategy. For example, let’s imagine SB only shoves QQ+, AKs. Nit SB shove What is our equity against that range? Again, we need 38% to call. Only KK and AA are profitable to call facing this nitty shove. AKs is close to breakeven but just below the line. Hands like QQ are significant losers facing this nitty shove. Pot odds when future bets are possible Pot odds are not always so clean when future bets are possible. The percentage of the pot we’ll win is not necessarily equivalent to our equity when future betting rounds exist. However, if you measured equity as your actual expected value divided by the pot, Pot Odds would always hold true. We call this metric your “Pot Share”. We cover this topic in more depth in our Equity article. Remember the fundamentals. If your opponent bets $5, you need to recoup at least $5 (in the long run) to justify calling. However, because there are future betting rounds, we may over or under-realize our equity. A naive pot odds calculation would have BB calling a 2.5BB BTN open with any two cards. For example, 72o has about 30% equity against a standard BTN opening

giving a free card or whether it's worth trying to induce a bluff on the end. Opponent You have the best possible first four cards. Yet you should frequently check and call if your opponent bets. Besides disguising your hand, you are inducing a bluff on a future betting round. When you are inducing opponents to bluff, it isn't necessary to lure them so far away from correct bluffing strategy that they are favorites to be bluffing when they bet. All you want to do is lead them to bluff significantly more than the correct frequency. Clearly you should never stop bluffs by people who bluff way too much. However, it may be correct to induce bluffs from people who rarely bluff if you can induce them to bluff more often than their chances of making the hand. Summary Players who bluff with approximately the correct frequency are dangerous opponents because they often force you into the Sometimes inducing a bluff is nearly the same as slowplaying. Take this hand from seven-card razz: You 198 Chapter Twenty position of making an incorrect play. Therefore, it is important to try to stop or induce bluffs to lead opponents away from correct bluffing strategy. You should normally induce a bluff against players who already bluff too much and stop bluffs against players who already bluff too little. In the first case, you are in a situation where you would have to call if your opponent bets. By inducing a bluff, you increase your chances of winning that last bet since your opponent will bet more hands — including his bluffs — that you can beat than he otherwise would. In the second case, against someone who bluffs too little, you feel you would have to fold if that opponent bets, even though there is some chance he might be bluffing. By stopping his bluffs, you reduce the opponent's chances of winning since he will bet only when he has made his hand, and you can comfortably fold. Besides artificial means, you try to induce a bluff by showing weakness on an earlier round; you stop a bluff by showing strength on an earlier round. Thus, inducing a bluff is something akin to slowplaying, and stopping a bluff is something akin to semi-bluffing. When you induce a bluff, you plan to call if your opponent bets since you have increased the chances he is bluffing. When you stop a bluff, you plan to fold if your opponent bets since you have reduced or even completely eliminated the chances he is bluffing. Chapter Twenty-one Heads-Up On The End Most of the concepts we have discussed up to now apply to situations in which there are more cards to come and in which there may be more than two players in the pot. However, if the war that is a poker hand continues from the struggle for the antes to the final showdown, it eventually reaches a last round of betting, most often between two players. And in this last round, after all the cards are out,

Hand Range 282: LJ 25bb (2x vs SB All-in) • Call All-in 33.9% / • Fold 66.1%

you need to make sure you're really focusing on because you want to make sure that your hand has very good post flop playability especially when you know we're going to face aggression and you really don't be sitting there with a really bad made hand that has little potential to improve like say you raise pocket twos and then a maniac tree raises and you call flop comes nine seven six if they bet I mean yeah the best hand a lot of the time but you're having a really difficult time on the turn in the river if you face additional aggression and you will against amania right so few more ideas usually you're late position raises will face more resistance okay so whenever you do raise you should expect to get re raised more often when you're raising from later positions because your opponents realize you're opening with a wider range right also don't consult fall into habit of bolding too often it's so easy especially when you move from small stakes the medium stakes live like from one to two to five or from two five two five ten to think the players are only raising with the best hand so if they're only three betting with the nuts you should be pulling a lot but as you play against tougher and tougher opponents they're gonna be using this polarized strategy that we are discussing and well you can't just fold all that often because that allows their Bluffs to immediately profit so do not fall too often against competent and especially overly aggressive players and you also want to consider your pot odds and post-flop playability for example if you make it three big blinds and your opponent makes it six big blinds well now you should continue with pretty much everything because II have to put in three big blinds to win at twelve big blind pot how hard is it to realize 25-person equity with a decently strong range right it's not so hard now of course if your opponent re-raises to six big blind resulting aces then that changes things again and if you raise to 3 B blinds and your opponent makes it 100 big blinds or 40 big blinds nice just folded time because getting very poor pots let's take a look at a few examples let's say you race with a LoJack to three big blinds with ace Jack offsuit and the button free bets to ten big blinds alright now if you vomit some maniac in this scenario you should pretty much always call or perhaps poor bet if you can be happy to get it all in for 100 big blinds or however deep applying with the ACE Jack offsuit usually not going to be the case though so against the maniac you should call every time because these jacks gonna flop strong top pairs which are pretty great and if he plays tightly if they're only be raising aces kings queens jacks tens nines Ace King ace Queen

Peel To call a bet on the flop or turn in hopes of hitting their hand or draw.

and folded. So the specific read was off. He had flopped trips instead of top pair. But my general read was right on target. He was going to fold when the big bets came out unless he had a virtual lock. By all rights, he should have beaten me

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

blind we go all in or raise with everything we go all in or erase with literally every single hand in our range besides the absolute trash now why are we getting to play every single hand in our range with us mostly jamming the majority of the time well we are doing that because notice there's a 10 big blind stack in this situation and the 15 big blind sack really really wants to Outlast the 10 big blind stack so we get to shove incredibly wide you're going to find that when you are the big stack you get the shove very aggressively when it folds to you in the small blind let's take a look at another spot here where we're not necessarily the big stack notice Stacks are 60 30 15 20 or 45 and 20. if it goes under the gun fold cut off fold button fold well now we see the small blind again gets to be super aggressive now in this scenario they do have to fold a little bit more often why they have to fold more often well now the short stack only has 15 big lines instead of 10 and the big blind has 20 instead of 15. but you do see they still get to shove a lot 53 of the time they get to shove very very very very very aggressively with some small raising phone in there too let's take a look at one more scenario where it's 20 big blinds 30 big blinds 60 big blinds 15 and then 44. this is an interesting spot because the button does have a lot of chips but so does the big blind despite that though we see the button gets to raise 63 of hands with no pound implications the most the button gets to raise is something like 50. and here we see them raising substantially wider than that because of the payout implications this is a spot where they are going to be raising super duper wide if they do raise let's say small blind folds notice they're shover fold only for the most part this is the big blinds strategy with 44 big blinds notice they basically never three bed unless it's Aces kings ace king or just a smattering of nonsense most people do not find any of the nonsense and they three bet Aces and Kings but one thing worth noting is when it is Big sack against big stack and there are a bunch of relatively shallow Stacks at the table hands like Queen Jacks tens nines they do not three bets I think a lot of people automatically over value hands like Queen Shacks tens Nines in the scenario because they're normally pretty good but when two big Stacks are battling it out they are not so much here's another example where it's 10 20 40 15 40. okay so let's take a look at 10 15 I'm sorry 10 20 40 15 40. so we get to see 53 raises you don't

a pair and your hand is best at that moment, virtually any card that comes can beat you. In addition, if you flop nothing and your opponent flops a pair, you frequently find yourself bluffing or calling with only three 0~t.s.'~ This doesn't mean that you can't play a hand if it contains a deuce or a trey. But beware that it has some additional problems and these hands may not be as good as they appear.) 10 This little known concept is something that you should consider whether you are first in or not. It also applies to some situations in full games. Another Problem Now we come to a secondary problem. Suppose in our example, you call his raise before the flop, bringing the pot to $400. Furthermore, suppose that on the flop you check and he bets every time. Notice that he is now betting $100 to win $400. So even if you decide to thwart his before the flop plans by frequently calling, it doesn't help you if you screw up from this point on. In fact, (and this is very important), it could backfire on you if you don't carry through properly since he only has to succeed 20 percent of the time to show an automatic profit on his flop bet. That means that if you fold more than 20 percent of the time he again makes money. So what can you do to prevent this? If you call 40 percent of the time before the flop as we recommend but now try to play "normally," on the flop he's got a giant profitable play of betting every single time. Before analyzing the situation let us look at a similar one. Let's say that you're on the button, you raise before the flop (as you will with a lot of hands), and your opponent calls. Now on the flop he comes out betting every time. What are you going to do? Notice that if his strategy is to always bet the flop if he calls your raise, and you only call that bet 60 percent of the time he will again be making a very profitable bet. He will be risking $100 to win $400. In both these situations the proper counter strategy therefore must be to at least call on the flop anytime you have something reasonable, as well as with some other hands that don't appear reasonable. We will address this shortly. Calling or Reraising Before the Flop Before getting into heads-up or short-handed play on the flop, let us get back to other before the flop questions. One is whether to call or reraise out of the big blind when you have decided to play. To answer this you must understand why you reraise in shorthanded hold 'em. That is, you do it for future hands, not necessarily for that current hand. For example, suppose you are in the big blind, you hold and the player on the button raises, and it is just the two of you. If this was the only

3.2 Frequent Strength The most foundational factor in determining whether or not to ISO a limper is how often our hand flops well. The frequent strength of a hand can be divided into two potential qualities: ability to flop good pairs and ability to flop good draws. The former is more important as Hero can expect to flop considerably more good pairs than good draws mathematically, and, in general, pairs are preferable hands to flop in these situations. To put it another way, Hero should prefer to isolate with hands that score reasonably well in Good Pair Potential (GPP) and V ersatility (V) from chapter two. The idea is that provided Hero's hole cards regularly give him strong holdings on the flop, fold equity and good position are less crucial, where as, if Hero's hole cards usually flop poor hands then, for his ISO to be +EV , he'll need the fold equity to frequently win the pot unimproved and will have more need for the benefits of being in position. Excellent frequent strength is an absolute factor that can justify an ISO without any help from the others at all and this is represented in the triangle by it being the only rectangular shape. The other two factors might make the situation even better, but they do not need to be scrutinised where Hero has very good frequent strength. AA has the most frequent strength possible as it will flop, at the minimum, an overpair on every texture. This hand is so good that it will simply never require any help from the other points of the triangle. In this case, we can consider the triangle automatically full, solely of red frequent strength. Let's compare the frequent strength of some less obviously amazing pre-flop holdings. This hand has excellent frequent strength and will rarely need any help from the other factors to make an ISO the best play. Even where pre-flop and post-flop fold equity is limited and Hero is out of position, this hand's brute force ability to flop dominating top pair hands will render it a fine ISO. We want to build a pot and get the hand HU where possible where its top pair great kicker hands will be even stronger.

be outdone I replied, 'Tell the General I am happy to be in China to work under his distinguished direction. I am regaining the sight of my eye, and my quarters and food are all that can be desired. Tell him that food means nothing to me and that my only wish is to be of service to China.' The Hatchet Man smiled faintly at this and looked at his wristwatch. 'He says,' Ling translated, 'that we have an appointment with our Leader.' * Most of the Headquarters buildings were downtown, but the Hatchet Man's car headed for the suburbs, we following in another car. At the end of the city we turned up a hill and stopped before a two-storey grey brick house behind a high brick wall. Along the wall were lookouts with a few armed sentries. We were admitted at once. The house itself, of perhaps ten rooms, was unpretentious. The floor was covered with small, cheap native rugs. The walls were painted white and the windows shaded with blackout cloth. There were no flowers, pictures, or scrolls. Finally, a Chinese opened a door, bowed, and Ling and the General motioned me to precede them. We followed the Chinese down the hall a few steps and into a large, simply furnished room. At the far end in front of a cushioned chair stood a thin man in yellow khaki wearing black cloth Chinese slippers. He wore no military belt, decorations, or insignia of any kind. I paused in the doorway awaiting some signal. He bowed his head slightly and motioned with his hand indicating a couch. There was no word spoken, no introduction. I stood momentarily to his right. He motioned for me to be seated, then to Ling and the Hatchet Man. I was seated within three feet of the Generalissimo and so was able to observe him closely. His hair was cropped at the sides and was perhaps no longer than half an inch on top of his head. His greying moustache was closely cut. I felt that I was in the presence of a scholar or a sage rather than a military leader. He looked directly into my eyes and spoke, Ling translating. "The Generalissimo asks if this is your first visit to China.' I told him yes, but that I had read a great deal about China. After this was translated he looked at me again and spoke. Ling translated, 'The Generalissimo says he has heard about you for many years.' I thought to myself, he's read the Chinese version of my book, The American Black Chamber, for which I had received not a penny in Chinese royalties. However, this seemed neither the time nor the place to mention that, and so I said to Ling, 'Even the school children in America know about the Generalissimo and Madame Chiang.' As Ling translated, a pleased smile spread over the Generalissimo's face. Evidently a definite routine of polite palaver introduces the conversations of Chinese officials with foreigners, for this followed a pattern to which I was accustomed.

value six recent poker books from D&B poker my publisher a two hundred dollar value so of course I'm biased I think they're awesome and everyone who enters will get a free ebook Jonathan littles poker workbook Val vol 1 just for entering the deadline to enter this giveaway is Sunday May 26 that's at poker coaching com / WSOP and the previous one your free trial can just be had at poker coaching com alright guys I'm going to be answering your questions in just a second thank you for attending I really appreciate your time I know you could be anywhere tonight but you chose to be with me watching one of my powerpoints with me discussing poker so I just very appreciative thank you for tuning in it's been a pleasure have a great night

SOME NOTES ABOUT THE EXAMPLES 7 You can learn how to think about no limit correctly without them. You’ll be a lot better offif you read the book without the equations than if you give up entirely.

of getting more money in a pot you think you are the favorite to win. 130 Chapter Thirteen Raising to Get a Free Card As we just noted, when your semi-bluff raise is called, it may have allowed you the opportunity to get a free card on the next round. However, when you're thinking of raising specifically to get a free card, you should keep in mind two considerations — your position and the cost of the raise. To get a free card, you must be last to act; if you are not last and you check, you will have shown weakness. A player behind you with a better hand than yours will probably bet, denying you the chance for a free card. In hold 'em, you can always be sure of your position since it's fixed throughout a hand, but in games like seven-card stud and razz, you often have no guarantee you will be last to act from one round to the next. In seven stud, for instance, the player to your left may have a king high to start the betting, but on the next card the player to your right or you yourself catch an ace. Now you must lead off, which you certainly do not want to do if you're still banking on a free card. So if you have some doubt about securing last position on the next round, raising to get a free card can just cost you money needlessly when it turns out you're not last after all. Which brings up the second consideration when you're thinking of raising to get a free card — namely, that that free card is not free at all. It costs you the price of your raise. So unless you have other reasons for raising, you would make the play only when the cost of the raise now is cheaper than what you'd have to pay for a call on the next round. In a $10-$20 hold 'em game, for example, in which the bet doubles on fourth street, you might raise $10 after the flop to avoid paying $20 to call a bet on the next round. Of course, you need not take advantage of the free card option. You certainly wouldn't when you catch the card that makes your hand. Nor would you when you catch a card that looks as if it makes your hand. For example, the holder of the pair of black 7s with showing, a hand we discussed in the preceding two chapters, probably knew he had the worst hand and Raising 131 might have taken a free card in the hope of making a flush, but he found it much more profitable to continue the semi-bluff and bet after the hit, since only an opponent with a very strong hand could risk a call. Raising to Gain Information Raising simply to gain information is a tricky play and shouldn't be done often. Generally you should consider any information gained as an extra benefit of a raise you are making for other

your long-range profit is sitting to the left of loose opponents, particularly non-aggressive ones. Loose but non-aggressive players supply most of the money you win, because they enter too many pots and don’t always take full advantage of profitable opportunities by betting or raising when they have you beat. They’re likely to lose, and you’ll have a better shot at their money if they act first. When you hold your most profitable hands, you’ll frequently see them calling a bet with weak hands before you raise. Then, when you do raise, they’re trapped for more money. If the situation were reversed and you acted before them with an opportunity to raise another opponent, your raise would likely scare away those weak players to your left (along with their weak hands). The two types of players you want to sit to the left of are almost opposite in nature. One type is loose and timid; the other is selective and aggressive. You’ll often have to choose between having your biggest money supplier or your biggest threat on your right. But try to make sure one or the other is 78 there—and sometimes you’ll be fortunate enough to accomplish both when your loosest opponent and, also, your most threatening one sit in the two seats to your right. Now let’s talk about the seat on the other side of you. What type of player can you sit to the right of, thereby surrendering your positional advantage? Here’s the secret: Ideally you should have very conservative but unimaginative players acting after you. These players don’t enter enough pots to interfere with your strategy very often and don’t play aggressively enough to exploit their superior position, even when they do get involved. Given all these considerations, my first priority is usually to sit to the left of my loosest opponents. I want to act after them, because they’re the most likely to build my bankroll. TIP 14 I’ll admit I spent a lot of my energy in my younger days playing against the toughest opponents. This was valuable as a way to hone my skills, but I overdid it. Although, I played professionally for fourteen years, I think I would have made even more money had I concentrated more on finding weaker games, rather than gaining respect by beating world-class opponents. TIP 15 The full name of MCU is Mike Caro University of Poker, Gaming, and Life Strategy. I take the life strategy part of that seriously, and in my teachings there are many overlapping themes between poker and everyday endeavors. Few concepts have resonated with students more than Caro’s Threshold of Misery. I continually receive letters, e-mails, and face to face thanks from both poker players and people in the “real world,” telling me how much this simple truth has meant to them. Here’s how it goes: Suppose you’re a small- to medium-limit player, and you can envision yourself comfortably losing a maximum of $1,500 today. I’m not suggesting that you’ll be happy about losing that much, just that you can comfortably handle it and

you took a look on the flop when it went bet out of position is starting to fold a lot of these aces right he's folding a lot of his suited ace is anything that doesn't have a backdoor flush draw but in position bets every single suited ace in every ace 10 off or better so top pair seven and a half percent this is an ace now as top pair for the out of position top pair for the in position player 27% in position now has 27% a pair of aces are better and then he still has two pair sets and flushes so even though the out of position has more flushes and we talked about that we talked about that last time and out of position has a 13% flushes versus 5% for imposition it's just not enough to you overcome this 27% aces for imposition so imposition picks up a ton of aces huge range advantage and what is this strategy going to be I'll let you guys pick that what do you think the strategy is gonna be for the imposition player now given that he has a 56% range advantage what do you think the Reta strategy gonna be for imposition player on this ace of clubs after the big blind checks so we got check that call ace of clubs yeah in position double barrel is the only 100% still bets bet 60% pot okay so let's take a look at this so in position out of position does a little bit of leading on this ace of clubs we're not gonna really look into this too much but he has some flushes he's gonna do some reading so he checks and we are gonna be checking still a decent amount so some people were saying we do have a large equity advantage so you would think with a large equity advantage on this card we just get a bet you know 100 percent of the time or 80 percent of very high percentage of time and we do take one of the properties we are gonna be using the smaller sizing now because we have a large equity advantage our equity remember is 58% here so we don't really we don't want a polarizer range because we have a large equity advantage and we want to bet small the problem is though is this flush advantage is that out of position still has a really big net advantage on us he still has a 13% flush advantage on us and compared to our f5 yeah our 5% of flushes because most of our flushes are the ace high flush --is this is the key part here all our flushes are mostly the ace of clubs so that's why we're at a flush disadvantage here on this card and we just don't get a bet if we start betting 80% then big blind gets to start check raising a lot because he has a lot of flushes he has and he has a

SWAPPING MISTAKES 121 maestros and their mistakes. Since the maestros were oblivious to their own mistakes, they lost. And they kept losing, wondering louder with each bad session how they could possibly run so badly against these “unimaginative” players. Their big wins disappeared, and, broke, they slumped out of the poker world none the wiser. Don’t be a sucker. There’s a perfect, unbeatable strategy, and it’s deter- mined by math, not by talent. Great players don’t stick to that strategy; they intentionally deviate from it to take advantage of their opponents. But truly great players also know full well what weaknesses those deviations expose, and if they see someone going after them, they shut down quickly. They’re willing to make mistakes, but only when they can swap those mistakes to their opponents for bigger ones. When their mistakes become the big ones, they stop making them. Learn the fundamental principles of no limit and stay perpetually aware that your goal is to trade small mistakes for big ones.

Hero is facing a CO or BU open, but there is a Fish in the BB with whom Hero really wants to play. Hero faces a CO or BU open and there is a tight passive player, a Nit, or a Reg with a very low 3-bet stat in the BB. I recommend playing 3-bet or fold from the SB against CO and BU opens when there is anyone likely to squeeze or flat and play competently in position to Hero, or when that player in the BB is unknown. We'll come to building some effective 3-bet or fold ranges for these spots in Chapter 10, but for now let's outline what hands are going to be callable in the three above situations where we do want a calling range. Figure 33 - SB Calling Spot 1: vs. UTG-HJ 3x

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

your raise gives you the lead in the pot. For example, suppose you have Q-Q in a three-way pot, and choose not to raise. Now, the flop is K-9-7. If you check, the next player is likely to bet regardless of whether he has a king, as he is attempting to win the pot based on the weakness indicated by your check. You are now in a position of uncertainty, which could have been avoided had you raised preflop and then bet on the flop. The same goes for raising with A-K in a three-way pot. Had you just passed your big blind option and seen a flop of 2-7-8, your first inclination would likely be to check. By raising before the flop, though, you have built a pot worth taking a stab at with a bet. If your opponents don’t flop a pair, they will be hard-pressed to call you. Recommending not to raise with Q-Q from the big blind when several players have limped in may seem to contradict the advice given in Tip 13 about getting money into the pot with the best hand whenever possible, but this is not necessarily so. All you are doing is delaying the moment at which you choose to increase your involvement. With four or five limpers, it is fairly safe to assume that one opponent holds an ace, and another is likely to hold a king. Why not wait to see the flop before deciding if you wish to make a major commitment to this pot? After all, you are not in a position to protect your hand, as all the A-x and K-T hands are already in, and they will see the flop. Now, if the flop brings overcards, you can check and try to determine if your hand is beaten based on the action behind you. However, if you catch a nice flop such as 2-4-T, you are in a position to take your opponents by surprise. You can either bet out or go for a check-raise, but either way you may win additional bets because your opponents have misjudged the strength of your hand due to your failure to raise preflop. So, you should be able to recoup those bets that would have been in the pot had you raised, and you can save money those times your pair is outdrawn by overcards on the flop. When you have an opportunity to play a hand in a manner that limits your losses but not your wins, you should capitalize on it. Tip # 15 of 52 You can call more raises on the big blind than any other position, because you are halfway in. To call a single raise, you always get a price of at least 3-to-1 on the big blind. The slimmest scenario is when everyone folds to the small blind, and he raises. More typically, however, you get a price of 7-to-1 or better to call. As a result, many more hands become playable. When deciding if your big blind hand is worth defending, you must

them away as well. You can start playing these hands in fifth position. When you do play, you mostly want to raise, to cut down on the chance that you'll actually have to see a flop. Use a mixture of 70 percent raises and 30 percent calls. In late position you are again mostly raising with these hands. Use 90 percent raises and 10 percent calls, because now you are very happy just to get the pot. A7 and lower, suited and unsuited: At a tough table, I would throw all these hands away unless I was on the button or one off the button. On the button I would raise with any ace. One off the button, I would raise with ace-seven and ace-six only. The remaining advice applies only to weak tables, or when the blinds have been unwilling to defend their position. Ace-seven suited I would play from fifth position on, with a mixture of 50 percent raises and 50 percent calls. Ace-seven unsuited I would play from sixth position on, with the same mixture of raises and calls. The hands between ace-six and ace-deuce I would only play in late position, raising in all cases to steal the blinds. If the blinds have shown some toughness, however, I would just throw these hands away. KQ, KJ, QJ, suited or unsuited: These hands are very treacherous for beginners, who see two face cards and think they have a fine hand. While the hands are playable in certain positions, they must be handled very carefully. In early position, just throw away king-jack and queen-jack, suited or unsuited. With king-queen, suited or unsuited, fold in a tough game. In a weaker game with king-queen suited, raise 50 percent of the time and call 50 percent of the time. With king-queen offsuit, call 50 percent of the 85 time and fold 50 percent of the time. In middle position these hands do a bit better. With king-queen I would play in all middle positions, with a mix of 60 percent raises and 40 percent folds. In third or fourth position I would play king-jack with a mixture of 50 percent raises and 50 percent calls. In fifth position I would bump the raises up to 60 percent and call with the rest. I would play both these hands the same way whether suited or unsuited. For queen-jack, I would fold the hand in third position, play it suited in fourth position with equal chances of raising or calling, and mostly raise with it in fifth position. In late position I would be raising with all three of these hands to win the blinds. All percentages in this section, are, of course, just general guidelines based on my experience. Remember too that the quality of the table (tight or loose, weak or strong) will affect whether you play these hands. Suited connectors: I have one unusual play I like to make with any suited connectors. If I'm in first or second position, I'll raise with them about 15 percent of the time, representing

there we go so like the only thing that the three change was that out of position picked up some King three suited and some four three suit of two pairs that's the only thing that changed really on the like three it's kind of it's a brick but it just completes a lot of these flushes so yeah in general the imposition loses the range advantage in position now has a top power advantage and a flush advantage in terms of stronger flushes stronger top pairs and position just has a ton of a sigh flushes and the big blind check ray most of us a side flushes on the flop so we have two more to go through really quick and we're at 50 minutes so let's go through this again we'll go a little longer today that's fine straight completer on the seven of hearts so how do equities change on this seven hearts turn card from the flop Fred no it's not a break if it completes the flush but I was just referring to instead of the three of clubs it was the three of hearts I was referring to is it a brick in terms of does it change any two pair combinations or sets etc it's not like an ace that changes what top pair is or what straits you know come in it's it's it's obviously not a brick with the flush so seven hearts we have some benefits out of position out of position out of position has a range of manager because he has more load cards to make it straight so this is this seven hearts is gonna play a little bit like the the brick the out of position is should have a range advantage now but it's not because he has a lot of streets it's just because of the top pair advantage so straightening board card now the seven hearts out of position has gone to fifty five percent equity in position forty five percent but the key thing is here a couple people said it's the benefits the out of position player because he has straits but it really didn't because a street he has nine combos of streets it's only four percent of his range so it's not a large percentage of his range now a street it's this top pair that we've gone through on every on every example this has been the case he is top pair of twenty one percent of the time and second pair fourteen percent in under per seven percent so he is twenty one forty two percent top pair under pair second pair and that's not even including his sets and straights and out of position now has picked up some two pairs with the seven so those the main things that's changed here on the seven of hearts nothing's really changed for the imposition player seven of hearts I want to look at those two pairs so 13 combos with two pair now so now out of position

so what I mean by that is if you open in somebody three betsu and you've opened too many hands oftentimes your best case scenario is just saving a couple of the big lines you put out there are just half of the big lines he put out there are something along those lines trying to turn a profit is actually immensely difficult if they did catch you with so many hands out of position and they did just three bet you unless you have a very good check racing game dock leading game uh just bluffing game floating game you have great out of position work there it's going to be very difficult to turn any kind of profit so you just don't want to get taught in that situation if you don't have to the best way to neutralize your opponent's positional Advantage is to catch them with solid hands if you open Ace Queen Plus or 8A Plus for example and they three bet you then you will still be able to make money these hands flop well and allow you to win more pots that is one way you can make money if somebody three bets you is just having very good hands obviously that sounds really basic but if you're opening really garbage suited gappers and getting caught getting three back consistently and everybody knows you're opening too wide from early position it's going to be really hard to make money but yes if you did have a solid range if you just went wow everybody's three betting me quite a bit here let me revert to a more solid range it doesn't have to be this solid this is very solid Ace Queen plus eight eights plus but if you were to revert to a more solid range then you could be in a much better shape should you get through that if no one is three betting at your table then you can open up your game however if people at your table are constantly re-raising you then find another table or tighten up your ranges let's say say you do get a pre-flop race through and the big blind calls you this is the moment you've been waiting for now someone has called you out of position with a wide range they're going to be guessing on most flops if they check to you in position which they are likely to do 90 plus percent of the time then you can take a free card whenever you want one or start betting when you like the Flop this is a huge Edge if you if you flop a top pair or even a solid second pair you need to start thinking about value betting versus the big one flatter the big line flatter has called you out of position with a wide range they've hit the Flop poorly almost always they have high cards and mediocre pairs the vast majority of the time the last thing this player wants to see is you betting

players remain I raised with something like Ace 10 he ripped it all in for the first time at the final table I called it the ace 10 because I thought you know now he's free rolling I think he had like Jack seven or something like that and the commentators were like oh my gosh how can he call this guy who hasn't played a hand with the A10 offit but had a little bit of inside information here right that player was playing really really tightly because they really wanted the to move up the payouts once they did they're going to go nuts so understand that your opponent's strategy is vitally important you always always want to be aware of what your opponents are doing incorrectly and adjust accordingly you're going to find also that many players not just bad players but many players overvalue strong hands hands that are typically very good when you're playing normal poker with no PO implications or relatively small P implications but the a lot of these hands go down in value when you're playing with substantial P implications and especially as a big stack or medium stack when you can make a lot of money by folding because you're going to fold this hand in a lot of future hands when you're facing a substantial bet for all of your money or most of your money you need to call off really tightly there's this idea of risk premium that we discussed thoroughly in my tournament master class that we're not going to discuss here today but essentially as the amount of money you are risking is more and more valuable because your stack is worth a large chunk of money you don't want to just put it in in a roughly neutral spot you need to call off Tighter and Tighter and Tighter to the point that sometimes if you have two big Stacks against each other at a final table battling they should perhaps call off like Aces and Kings only which again sounds super nitty but it is very often the ideal play you may ask well shouldn't the opponent just try to run the other big stack over and the answer is no because sometimes they're goingon to have Aces and kings and whenever you run some nonsense into Aces or Kings and you bust it's an absolute disaster this concept's going to be even more magnified as multiple short stacks are at the final team table I mean consider what happens when there are two 30 big blind stacks and four five big blind Stacks all those five big blind Stacks are kind of likely to outlast two or three of the other short stacks if they just hang out so the 30 big blind Stacks can run these players over what if one of the 30 big blind Stacks has 50 instead well now the 50 big blind stack can run everybody over because the 30 big blind stack is close to guaranteed to take second

pot. bad beat-an improbable loss, such as losing with a very strong hand or losing to someone's long-shot draw. bet-to place money in the pot that other players must match to remain in the hand. big blind-the player two seats to the left of the button, who must make a pre-flop bet before receiving pocket cards. bluffing-betting on a weak hand in order to convince others the hand is strong. board-the face-up cards on the table (see community cards). boat-alternate term for full house. button-a small plastic disk used in casino games to mark the player in the "dealer's position." After each hand, the button rotates to the next player on the left. Because a non-playing casino employee deals the cards, the button is moved after each hand, allowing players to takes turns having the advantageous dealer position of acting last. call-to match another player's bet. 173 174 THE INTELLIGENT GUIDE TO TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER cards speak-a rule that players do not have to correctly state the contents of their hand. The dealer will award the pot to the player showing the best cards, regardless of what statements the player made. Casino games are usually played with the curds speak rule. check-to pass on betting. check-raise-to raise another player's bet after initially checking (see ruise). chips-tokens purchased by players foruse for placing bets. community cards-the five cards placed face-up in the center of the table, and used by all the players to form their hands (see board). dealer-the person who deals the cards and manages the money going into the pot. In a casino, the dealer is an employee, not a player in the game. drawing dead-drawing in a situation where even if the draw is made, the player still loses. For example, if you draw for a flush when someone already has a full-house. drawing hand-a hand that will not win unless it is improved. Having four cards to a straight or four cards to a flush are examples of drawing hands. flop-the first three community cards in Hold'em, which are shown all at once. fold-to drop out of a hand and forfeit all interest in the pot. free card-seeing a fourth or fifth community card without having to call a bet. GLOSSARY 175 freeroll tournament-a poker tournament with no cash entry fee, but cash prizes for the winners at the end (see poker tournament). high-low split-a poker game where the pot is split by the players holding the highest and lowest hands. In many high-low games, the low hand must qualify to claim half the pot. A common qualification is that the low hand must not have a card higher than an eight. If no low hand qualifies, the high hind takes the entire pot. implied collusion-a situation where many players are on an improbable draw to beat the best hand. implied pot odds-the ratio of the total amount of money a player expects to win to the amount of money that a player must contribute to the pot. For example, the pot may contain $50, but you expect five

example of this type of play. Suppose you hold and raise from a late position. You are reraised by the player in the big blind, and the flop comes Your opponent bets and you call. On fourth street, a blank hits and your opponent checks. You also should check with the intention of betting or calling on the river. Notice that if your opponent has a better hand than you have, you avoid being check-raised. Consequently, if your opponent cannot beat an ace, there is a good chance that he will either bet or call on the river when he might have folded on fourth street if you had bet your hand. A third example is somewhat different, because it requires a multiway pot. Suppose you are in a late position, against several opponents. A fourth suited card hits on the turn, you have the king of that suit making you a flush, and everyone has checked to you. The correct play may be for you to also check. If you bet, you may not get any calls, plus if the ace of the appropriate suit is in one of your opponents' hands, you save money. However, by checking, you may induce a bluff, and if you don't induce a bluff, someone who would not have called on the turn may now call on the river. For example, suppose you hold Inducing Bluffs 89 in a multiway pot, and you are on the button. The flop comes and the turn card is the Ifno one bets, strongly consider checking. (If someone bets on fifth street, call.) If it is checked to you on fifth street, always bet; and if you now get checked-raised, always call unless you are sure your opponent wouldn't raise without the nuts. Remember, your check on fourth street may encourage someone to take a shot at you when you bet on the river. Finally, we want to remind you once again that a fuller treatment of both bluffing and inducing bluffs can be found in The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky. Folding When the Pot is Big In hold 'em, situations sometimes develop where it is virtually impossible for your opponent to be bluffing. Consequently, even though the pot may be quite large, it is frequently correct to throw away your hand. As an example, suppose the pot is many-handed and you get a free play in the big blind. You hold and the flop comes You check, planning to check-raise, but no one bets. The fourthstreet card is the Again you check, planning to check-raise. And this time one player does bet, another calls, and you check-raise, limiting the pot to just Folding When the Pot is Big 91 the three of you. On fifth street, another queen hits. Even though the pot is large, the correct play now is to check and fold, since at least one of your opponents will almost always have you beaten - probably by three queens. Heads-Up Versus Multiway Keep in mind that many of the fancy plays we have

because they won’t improve often enough. These bluffs have poor visibility. Furthermore, extremely polar ranges are often susceptible to very small probing bets or min-clicks. These kinds of attacks are not a problem so long as you have natural calling hands in your range, but they can be hard to defend against if you’re too polar, as they force you to split your strong value from some of your bluffs. Lastly, merging gives your opponent worse equity compared to polarized ranges, which means you can barrel more and they can’t call as wide. It’s a more efficient construction under the right circumstances , which allows you to raise wider. In short, merging takes the best of both worlds from polarized and linear ranges. Let’s take a look at how BTN continues against the check-raise: BTN vs BB range comparison after check-raise BTN needs to float with hands that our medium-strength hands beat, such as overcards, Ace-X, and double-backdoor type hands. We can outdraw their value, continue bluffing on later streets and fold out a significant chunk of their equity that can outdraw our non-nutted hands. Visualizing the linear-polar spectrum with preflop ranges A merged range can be thought of as something between a linear and polarized strategy. We can see this change by observing patterns in BB vs BTN 3betting ranges. Typically, smaller 3bet sizes and lower rake result in a strategy that’s closer to linear , whereas larger 3bet sizes and higher rake structures tilt more polarized . This has to do with the proportion of BTN’s calls:4bets facing our 3bet. If BTN calls more and raises less often, we want to use a more linear range that can outdraw their calls. This is exactly what happens when there’s less rake or we use a smaller 3bet size. Conversely, if they often raise and don’t call much, we’re better off using a polar range of value that’s happy to face a raise, and snap-fold bluffs, rather than getting blasted off our medium hands with high call EV. Since everyone has different subjective ideas of what constitutes a “value” or “bluff” raise, we’ll simply look at the expected value of the 3betting range. Merged-Linear 3betting range: (11BB raise @ 500NL rake) Merged 3betting range: (11BB raise @ 50NL rake) Merged-polar 3betting range (13BB raise @ 50z rake) All three of these ranges are “merged” however they can lean linear or polar as we change the variables. Recap Let’s summarize: Capped – Does not have the best hands in range (e.g. a BB preflop calling range does not have AA). Uncapped – Has the best hands in range (e.g. a BTN opening range has AA). Linear – Top-down value to medium hands (Used when deciding between a fold and a continue without a third action, or as an exploit against calling stations, uncapped). Polarized – Strong and weak hands (Used when representing the nuts or nothing, often with very large sizes). Condensed – A range consisting of medium hands without many weak or nutted hands, (e.g. a BTN flatting range vs EP open).

MDF & Alpha Minimum Defence Frequency and Alpha are metrics in poker that determine how wide someone needs to defend facing a certain bet size. If you defend too wide, then your opponent can own you with value bets. If you defend too tight, then they can run you over with bluffs. So a good strategy will call just enough to make bluffs indifferent. This metric has some problems in practice, but it’s a staple in poker theory. What is the Minimum Defence Frequency? Minimum Defence Frequency is a measurement that tells you how often you need to call to make your opponent’s 0% equity hands indifferent between bluffing and giving up. MDF simply ensures that your opponent cannot profitably bluff any two cards. You need to defend the minimum frequency to prevent getting run over by bluffs. MDF is a risk/reward calculation designed to make your opponent’s bluffs 0EV. What counts as “Defending”? Defending means to continue. You can defend through a raise, or through a call. Both would count towards defence. Warning about MDF MDF should be considered a shield to prevent your opponent from over-bluffing! First and foremost, we need to get this out of the way. DO NOT USE MDF IF YOUR OPPONENT ISN’T BLUFFING ENOUGH. There’s no point trying to make their bluffs 0EV if they are clearly under-bluffing. Put down your shield and embrace overfolding against value-heavy opponents. MDF should be solely used as a shield to prevent them from running you over with bluffs. What is Alpha? If Minimum Defence Frequency (MDF) is your shield, Alpha (α) is your sword! Alpha is the inverse calculation. It tells you how often your opponent needs to fold for your 0% equity bluffs to at least break even. Alpha is a risk/reward calculation designed to calculate how often your opponent would need to defend for your bluffs to break even. If you think they defend less often – great! If they defend more often, perhaps reconsider your bluffs. Alpha = 1 – MDF MDF = 1 – Alpha Calculation The Formula This risk/reward calculation looks at the size of the bet relative to the pot to calculate the overall defending frequency needed to make bluffs indifferent. The formula for calculating MDF/α is very straightforward. Alpha (α) = risk/(risk+reward) where: Risk = Amount you risk on a bluff Reward = Amount you gain if they fold Another formula you can use looks at bet and pot sizes. I don’t like this formula because it doesn’t work with a raise , it only works for an initial bet. But I’ll leave it here anyway for your reference. MDF = pot / (bet+pot) Alpha = bet / (bet + pot) Example 1 You bet $60 into a $100 pot. Find alpha and MDF: Risk = $60 (You risk $60 on a bluff) Reward = $100 (The amount you gain if they fold) Alpha (α) = risk/(risk+reward) Alpha (α) = $60/($100 + $60) Alpha (α) = 37.5% Your opponent needs to fold at least 37.5% of the time for your bluff to

One: K? J? Player Two: 7? 4? Similarly, in this example, Player One will bet out and Player Two will raise unless he paired—and there’s a good chance he will raise even if he did pair. Once again, if you just call, Player One has an easy decision to raise, and you’re looking at a capped pot. And once again, the solution is the same. A raise will freeze Player One and cause him to just call. If Player Two did not pair, you’ll still have to call another raise from him, but four bets are better than five. Not only do you save these extra bets, the beauty of the play is the deception it provides you. Both players will put you on a high hand, and the opponent that’s going high will be scared to put a bet in the pot throughout the hand. Meanwhile, since you’ve put in so many bets, your opponent going low will never give you credit when you make your low, often putting too many big bets in on the end. I’ve often used this play and had both players so confused that they checked all the way to the river. With these free cards you can backdoor all kinds of hands, such as straights, flushes, lows, and even two pairs or trips. Before we move on, I want to once again emphasize that this play should not be used on a regular basis. It should only be used after a lot of bets have gone in on third street, adding the equity required to make this successful. CONCEPT 18: PARTING THOUGHTS In conclusion, I want to tell a short anecdote. This final story has to do with all forms of poker, not just eight-or-better—even all of life for that matter. Although it doesn’t pertain only to the game that I covered in this chapter, I wanted to include it in a book as great as Super/System 2 for posterity’s sake. Let’s say you went to a pet store and saw a dog you fell in love with because of its bark. Would you then take the dog home and yell at it and tell it that it 260 was stupid for barking? Would you try to teach the dog how to meow or moo instead? No, of course not. Doing so would be unreasonable and ridiculous. You would probably say a person who did this was irrational or even crazy. However, if you look for games with bad players, then get in the game and yell at them and tell them that they’re stupid when they play badly and beat you, isn’t that the same thing? Isn’t that crazy? Dogs bark. That’s what they do. This is tantamount to what bad players do—they lay bad beats on people. You wanted to play with them because they play bad. So, you have no right to get mad or make speeches when they do play bad and wind up beating you. Don’t try to teach a dog to meow and don’t try to teach bad players

if you think he might be betting a better hand and won’t fold to your raise, or raise if you think he’s semi-bluffing or otherwise willing to fold a better hand. Either way, you have a live draw to the nut flush. If the texture hits and your opponent checks the turn to you, you can check if you have the ace in suit; you’re now blind to the texture and canproceed as if the board were dry. Check with the intention of calling the river if the fourth diamond doesn’t hit and raising if it does. When you don’t have the high diamond in your hand on the A♠-8♦-2♦-6♦ board and your opponent checks to you on the turn, you have to deny the free card, either to someone holding the draw or someone inclined to bluff at a completion of the texture on the river. If you get called and the river comes a fourth diamond, fold if your opponent bets and bet if he checks, leveraging that fourth diamond to get hands better than yours to muck. If ablank hits, check behind a check unless you have a strong reason to believe that the only way for you to win is to bluff. Then bet and represent theflush a second time. If he bets when the board blanks, you will have to take a read and decide if he really hit the flush on the turn or not. Remember that a hand like AK will tend to check the river there, hoping to check it down. So his check-call on the turn and bet into a river blank is either a made flush or absolutely nothing and not a whole lot in between. Make sure you factor that in to your decision on the river. What if the board hits a blank on the turn? Something like a 4♣ making the board A♠-8♦-2♦-4♣ on the turn and now your opponent bets into you? As before, this is a great time to raise with a hand like AQ. If you’re likely to call the river no matter what, you might as well raise the turn. And by the way, how does AK feel now? You raised pre-flop, flat-called in position on a textured board, and now you’re raising on the turn when the texture didn’t hit. “Holy smokes!” thinks AK. “What have I just stepped in?” Now he fears that he’s up against two pair or better, and while he might not fold to your raise, he’s sure as hell checking to you on the river. Then you get to check, losing exactly the same amount to AK that you would have lost if you’d called on the turn and crying-called on the river—without any of the nasty decision-making! Can I get an amen? Meanwhile, what about little AJ in this situation? How will your raise on the turn do against that hand? Well, let’s say he leads 1,000 into you onthe turn. If you raise and he folds, that’s 1,000 in your stack. If you call and the texture

called more often. Versus SB 3-bet You have position against the SB so you don’t need to 4-bet as often as you do against the other positions. Now the only hands that really want to get all-in pre-flop are AA, KK and AKs. High equity hands such as suited broadways mostly want to call. So, pick the suited broadways and next-tier suited hands as your 4-bet bluffs. Premium pairs such as QQ and JJ like seeing flops, so they are 4-bet less often. Versus BB 3-bet The BB 3-betting range is polar and you have position, so your main defense will be to call and play post-flop in position with a solid range. You can start to slow play AA a small percentage of the time when you are in the HJ. Your 4-betting range against the BB is polarized and some of your frequent bluffs are A5s-A3s, AQo-ATo, some suited Kx. Suited broadways, suited connectors and big pairs make great calls because they play well in 3-bet pots and will realize a lot of their equity. General Guidelines Playing Versus Open Raises In this section we will discuss GTO 3-betting and exploitative 3-betting. GTO 3-betting When playing against tough players who you know have sound RFI strategies and will defend correctly against 3-bets, you should try to stick to equilibrium 3-betting strategies and, if possible, use some sort of randomization to help stay balanced. Furthermore, you must be careful not to get exploited, meaning you must defend your 3-bets correctly against 4-bets. When considering 3-betting, you need to assess the strength of Villain’s range. The stronger their range, the stronger hands you should pick as bluffs (you must pick stronger hands to use as a bluff vs the LJ than vs the BN). If you have a flat calling range (mostly from BN or when IP), then your 3-bet range has to be polarized because you are flatting high equity hands that don’t want to get 4-bet. Therefore, your

and it comes 873 okay they check i'm sorry they bet you float turn is a card like a three or a two eight seven three two right that's the spot where a lot of players will check call ace high on the turn and if the river is a blank there's always check calling ace high on the river and they probably don't have a whole lot of draws because they raise from early position so on that setup in that scenario you probably don't want to be bluffing the call happy players on the river because they're gonna have a lot of ace highs that just aren't folding or a lot of fans like pocket fives on eight seven three that bet the flop check call turn check call river other players though will just always fold a hand like pocket fives or ace high on the river there because they think when you bet the turn of the river you just must have the nuts and they think all right i'm gonna call the turn bet and then fold if they keep betting that's what their thought process is and against those players obviously you want to continue betting because they're going to fold out almost everything by the river so that's floating i realize there's there's a lot to it um but hopefully this gives you a good framework for how to approach these scenarios

get a lot of folds from hands that might have bluffed if checked to, and this is less true when they bet 73 . Trips are actually not the bulk of BB’s betting range, although it may appear that way on the grid. Remember there are only two possible combos of Q3 s and nine of J9 o, so betting J9 o at 50% frequency amounts to more combos than betting Q3 s even at full frequency. Second pair is a huge part of BB’s donk betting range. These hands are often ahead, can get called by worse (BTN never folds Ace-high and folds only their worst King-high), and benefit from denying equity to hands like T7 s. This is why 52 s is a higher frequency bet than T5 s: T5 sometimes induces bluffs from hands it dominates, while 52 has a better chance of folding out two live overcards . BB’s nuts advantage prevents their opponent from raising too often. Modest one-pair hands are the less polar portion of BB’s betting range. They are in the toughest spot when raised (weaker hands have trivial folds, and trips can happily continue), but BB’s nuts advantage prevents their opponent from raising too often. Deeper Stacks Donk betting strategies on the turn do not vary much with stack size. Generally, deeper stacks tend to make donk betting slightly less desirable, as the risk of growing the pot from out of position is greater. Conversely, very shallow stacks reduce the risk of donk betting modest pairs, so frequencies tend to go up a bit. But in both cases, the heuristics about which turns to donk bet still apply. Donk betting strategies do not vary much with stack size. The composition of ranges changes a bit with deeper stacks as well, with BB typically having more incentive to check-raise strong draws on the flop and less incentive to check-raise one-pair hands. Thus, their overall donk betting frequency goes down slightly with 100bb stacks on J53 r , but it goes up on J turns, as they do not check-raise as much Jack-x on the flop (or three-bet as much preflop) and so have more of that hand class in their check-calling range. The drop in betting frequency is more apparent on K75 r , where BB donks ~16% with 40bb stacks and ~11% with 100bb stacks: Deeper stacks incentivize check-raising flop more with nutty draws and fewer with one-pair hands. BB donk bets the straight-completing turns less often deepstacked because they would’ve raised more straight draws on the flop, and therefore don’t have these draws in their check-calling range. Conclusion Donk betting turns is easier and more profitable than donk betting flops and so more worthy of consideration in your study repertoire. The key points to keep in mind are: Look for turns that introduce a lot of new nutty hands into your range. Usually, these are turns that complete draws or pair the second or third card on the flop. Donk bets should be small , often 20% of the pot or so. This

I thought it likely that each had an Ace and possibly one of them had an Ace, 8, giving them Aces-over. My three Kings had to be the top hand so I re-raised. She called, a first for her that day; he called. The turn card came, a 3 of the only suit not yet on the board (There would be no flush possible). I bet, she called, and he called. Her sudden respect for my bets and his refusal to go away convinced me they both had Aces-over. The river card was an Ace. Had I been going against one player, I would have checked. But I knew I would not be raised since each of them had to fear the other. I bet my Kings-full (since I knew I had to call with it). If you know you are going to call, and do not fear a raise, take the initiative and bet. Your opponents might not have hit their draw and could fold. In this case, they had hit. Both of them called and each turned over an Ace, 8. As the dealer stacked the chips into two piles in order to split the pot between them, he shook his head in disbelief and said to me: "That was the only card that could beat you." But how improbable was that last card being the one remaining Ace? My two opponents each have four cards and I "know" they each have an Ace. That means there is only one remaining Ace among the 36 cards that are not part of our three hands or the board. The odds appear to be 1 in 36 or 2.7%. the fact that shocked the dealer. MATHEMATICAL CONSIDERATIONS However, given the behavior of the players at the table, this assessment is not accurate. Think about the table dynamics. Every single person called this woman's pre-flop raise. When an Ace showed on the flop, no one holding an Ace would have dropped. Her raise preflop scared no one; neither would her raise after the flop have scared anyone holding an Ace. The man to her left didn't scare, and with I I pre-flop raises ($1 10) in the pot, anyone with a chance to win would have stayed. When the other eight people at the table folded a total of 32 cards after the flop, it meant none of those cards was an Ace. When the dealer reached for the river card, only four cards remained in the deck and one of them had to be an Ace. The odds of me being beaten were 1 in 4. As the favorite, my bets and raises were correct, but my loss was not a great improbability. In the previous section, I explained that the distribution of cards to players and the board are completely random events with no memory of the past. However, once the cards are dealt and players have seen them and acted, events cannot be considered random. The probability of a four falling on the board may be the same as an

always hit a draw. It generally took trips or better to win, and with the pots large, there was always a showdown, so there was no point in trying to bluff. The big pots also covered my mistakes. Pd hour (lunch time): The game was frequently short-handed because players kept leaving for 20-30 minute intervals to eat. Sometimes only 5 to 6 players were present which lead to confusion on blinds, since people kept missing their blind. My cost to play went up because I stayed at the table, so my blind position came up more 114 THE INTELLIGENT GUIDE TO TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER frequently. Players remained passive. I played aggressively, especially with big pairs and premium starting cards. Drawing hands became unplayable from any position since there were so few players to contribute to the pot. Two pair, especially if one was large, often won. Fewer showdowns occurred, so I stole some pots with aggressive raising. I needed to steal pots or the frequent blinds would eat up my chip pile. 3'* hour (early afternoon): The table filled with aggressive players. Almost always a pre-flop raise occurred. Playing cards appropriate for my position became critical. I could-not limp in with weak starting cards because I would be raised. I needed to have premium starting cards and be prepared to raise or call a raise to stay in a hand. Mistakes became costly since the aggressive play meant I paid dearly to chase. 4th hour (mid-afternoon): The action dried up and the game tightened considerably. Most players folded their starting cards. Whether my hand was mediocre or a monster didn't matter much since I couldn't attract bettors either way. With little money in play, my earnings potential dropped to near nothing. While keeping my seat, I started scouting other tables, considering a switch. Sth hour (late afternoon): Frustration with the lack of action set in. Someone raised pre-flop, there was a re-raise, and then someone yelled "cap it." Everyone put in three bets to.see a flop. Suddenly, the entire table was on a tilt. Chips flew everywhere, even when players held the flimsiest of cards. Wild swings occurred in everyone's bankroll. To play profitably, I needed a lot of money and the very best cards. Playing with anything less than premium cards from any position wasn't worth it, because the pre-flop expenses became too high. I needed to be a heavy favorite pre-flop to justify putting up so much money. PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS 115 Notice that as the day progressed, strategy that was correct one hour became incorrect later on. This is hardly ever true at chess, where a strong move is always a strong move. Poker players must constantly adjust to the changing social dynamic. Computers are very poor at adjusting. The great British mathematician, Alan Turing, argued in a famous article entitled "Computer Machinery and Intelligence" published in 1950 in the philosophical jouihal, Mind, that a computer could be said to "think if interacting with the computer proved indistinguishable from interacting with a human. Put a human and the computer in

A Reg on the other hand, if he's competent, will realise that just because the turn card doesn't affect the board texture doesn't mean that Hero's betting range does not contract. In fact, should Hero barrel a meaningless turn like this one, it's likely that his range has strengthened considerably from the flop. To summarise, when readless against Regs, Hero's betting range should contract from the flop to the turn regardless of the turn card. On turns that improve his range however, there is less need to shrink the betting range by such a great margin. If the turn card makes Hero's range stronger, then he naturally has more value hands available and can add more bluffs as a direct result. If the turn card does not create extra value combos within Hero's range, then he cannot bluff so much, but that is not to say he should give up all the time without a made-hand. Bluff this turn with a close to balanced range against standard or unknown Regs and favour higher equity hands when you do, but be inclined to adopt an exclusively value based strategy against Fish until you learn that they're of the rarer breed that can actually fold some weak pair or draw here. Factor 2: Equity As we know, equity when bluffing is immensely important. The greater the chances of improving to the best hand when called, the lower true RFE will be and the higher EV the bluff becomes. Bluffing selectively with equity on the turn achieves a few things: Hero can win not just the pot should he get there on the river but an additional bet into a pot that's now a healthy size. This implied pay-off improves turn RFE further. By betting the turn with some pot equity, Hero gets to see the river and realise his full equity with hands that he'd have to check/fold out of position if he'd checked due to insufficient pot odds and SDV . Hero uses the amount of equity he has as a way of controlling his turn barrel bluffing frequency, ensuring that his range remains somewhat balanced where this is desirable. Let's take a look at an example of using equity to bluff turns. The third (red) number is 3Bet Preflop. The fourth (purple) number is Fold to F CBet.

ABOUT THIS BOOK 5 aren’t instinctively talented and can’t learn to be, this book will still help you enough so that you can beat games not populated by experts, as well as all games with mainly short stacks. A theoretical understanding of no limit may not, by itself, allow you to beat every game or opponent. But it’s almost guaranteed to make you a better player. Hopefully this book will accomplish that goal.

in front of you. If you act after a maniac, the situation has changed somewhat. This is because when he raises, his standard raising hand is Playing Against a Maniac 131 generally much weaker than the average raising hand of a typical opponent. Consequently, if you are going to play against the maniac, be prepared to reraise to punish him for his extra aggressive tendencies. A second benefit of reraising is that you increase your chance of getting the pot heads-up against him. You usually want to sit to the left of the maniac unless there are some wise players in the game who will not tolerate your strategy and will play or even make it four bets with many hands behind you. But if the other players are going to allow you to reraise him with hands like and they still won't try to interfere unless they have a legitimate three bet hand, then you definitely want to be on his left. If there are other players who will interfere, then it might be best to be on the maniac's right so that you first get a chance to see what they do. Being on his right gives you the opportunity to limp in before the flop or check to him on the later streets. It puts everyone in the middle and then you will have the option to raise. This has many advantages. The only reason to be on his left is to try to isolate him. Again, if you have a maniac in the game you want to be on his left if the rest of the table will allow you to constantly get him heads-up. If you can't isolate him, you prefer to be on his right because you want to check, and after he bets you can put them in the middle. (If you are heads-up it really doesn't matter since you will almost always check to the maniac if you are first to act.) So let's assume that a maniac is in your game, he's raising almost every hand, and you are seated to his left. What hands do you play? The answer is that you should play those hands that can win showdowns without improving. This includes hands like A9 132 Part Three: Miscellaneous Topics and KT, and you'll reraise with them providing that your reraise will almost always get you heads-up. If you do, you should see most of these hands to the end unless it "comes down real bad." Now you may say that it will be obvious to some of the other players at the table what you are doing. But it still puts them in a bad position when you make it three bets. Unless they are comfortable with trying to interfere with what you are doing - and very few players are - you may be able to play as much as 25 percent of your hands in this fashion provided that you are in a late position and there is no one else (except the maniac) in the pot.

nan

Heater When a poker player has a period of very good results, above expectation, they are said to be on a heater.