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February 8, 2017
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These are two hands that took place in today’s WCOOP events. The first is from a $109 PKO and the second is 200 players before the bubble (with 800 players cashing) in the morning $55 event.
I won’t go into my reasoning for these plays as I would like to hear opinions before potentially muddying the waters.
PokerStars – 700/1400 Ante 175 NL (8 max) – Holdem – 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4
SB: 85.48 BB
BB: 42.36 BB
UTG: 77.58 BB
UTG+1: 68.39 BB
MP: 28.59 BB
MP+1: 55.67 BB
Hero (CO): 57.15 BB
BTN: 100.13 BB
8 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB
Pre Flop: (pot: 2.5 BB) Hero has 6
6
fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 2.25 BB, fold, fold, BB calls 1.25 BB
Flop: (6 BB, 2 players) 7
3
K
BB checks, Hero bets 1.94 BB, BB calls 1.94 BB
Turn: (9.89 BB, 2 players) 6
BB checks, Hero bets 14.17 BB
PokerStars – 3000/6000 Ante 750 NL – Holdem – 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4
CO: 57.03 BB
BTN: 19.32 BB
SB: 29.97 BB
BB: 19.52 BB
UTG: 140.81 BB
UTG+1: 42.19 BB
MP: 67.37 BB
Hero (MP+1): 62.58 BB
MP+2: 36.74 BB
9 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB
Pre Flop: (pot: 2.62 BB) Hero has 6 6
fold, fold, MP raises to 2.24 BB, Hero calls 2.24 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold
Flop: (7.1 BB, 2 players) J 3 Q
MP checks, Hero bets 2.8 BB, MP calls 2.8 BB
Turn: (12.7 BB, 2 players) 9
MP checks, Hero checks
River: (12.7 BB, 2 players) 6
MP checks, Hero bets 24.37 BB
One of the hands is heavily influenced by reads/gameflow, anyone care to venture guesses as to which?
November 28, 2015
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First hand:
I like the flop bet, we can definitely bet for protection against Ax, Qx, Jx, Tx, 9x, 8x.
I like the sizing. a little less than 33%. I think that whatever is folding for a half pot is also folding for 1/3 pot. So yeah, I like the sizing.
The over bet on the turn. What do you expect to call you? basically Kx? What king that villain didn’t 3/bet pre with will actually call a turn over bet? KQ, sure. KJ, maybe. KT? Probably not. You have all of the best Kx hands in your range where villain is capped at KQ. Since you play at higher levels, I would assume the fields are much stronger across the boards. Having said that, do some villains still overvalue top pair in these stakes? If I were going to overbet a board, I would be doing it to target a villain who I felt like over valued top pair. Other wise, I think it’s best to go with the exploit bet, bet 1/2-60% on the turn, 7x might call, so will 88-QQ and Kx. I think we can target a wider portion of villains range that we have crushed with a smaller sizing than we can with the overbet. Honestly, with the overbet, I would only call you with two pair plus, and strong flushdraw/straight draw combo.
Second hand:
When you bet the flop, what are the reasons you’re betting for? What’s your plan, what’s your thought process?
When villain calls your 39% flop bet, how are you ranging him? What are you thinking about? This will help identify which turn cards we can maneuver around. Do you think you likely have the worst hand on the turn? If so, wouldn’t it make sense to keep betting? I doubt villain is checking the flop with Qx or KK-AA nor do I think we are going to bluff him off of those hands. He could have AJ, KJ, JT, 88-77, 55, 44,22 but you can’t get him to fold those hand with one bet. So I think we would have to keep betting. What kind of draws do you think he check/calls with on the flop? KT I think he bets because of the # of outs, same with 9T. He may check though because he’s OOP. AK, AT he probably check calls, and still has decent equity against your hand, so I think we could bet the turn. Although, we wouldn’t want to get blown off our equity.
When you check the turn, what are you thinking here?
When you over bet the turn, what do you expect villain to look you up with, and why do you think he will call you with that range?
****Are there any relevant stats on either of these players that would help us analyze these situations?
July 24, 2018
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The overbet on the turn is meant to polarize hero’s range. Since hero is probably betting most of his range on the flop, he has picked up a bunch of back door diamond draws, at least 3 OESDs, and 6 T9/T8 gutters. That is a fair amount of draws he can use as bluffs, for value he has all of the sets, and 4 turned straights, AA and AK. I am not sure how ‘balanced’ this is; it depends on his opening range.
This will put Villain’s top pair hands in a tough spot.
November 28, 2015
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The problem I see with this hand is that AA and AK are such a small part of villains opening range, that we really can’t expect him to look Hero up with much worse on the turn. Unless we have a very specific read that villain is likely to overvalue top pair, I think we are leaving some value on the table by over-betting.
We don’t necessarily want to put villain’s top pair hands in a tough spot here, we want to get max-value from them, so instead, I think if we bet like 60-75% pot on the turn, we can over-bet any brick river to induce villain to bluff catch.
February 8, 2017
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Maniac, I want to thank you for the time you took to write out your reasoning. It’s very helpful to see alternative ways of thinking about hands and be forced to re-evaluate and/or develop a more robust rationale for making plays. I think it’s often hard for people to express opinions about hands if they’re not sure they are ‘right.’ I was really afraid of writing in forums for a long time as I was learning the game, and I can still hesitate out of fear of embarrassment/looking stupid and losing respect from fellow players. However, I can’t remember a time when posting has led to more than friendly ridicule, and I think many leaps forward in my understanding resulted from putting my thoughts out there and having people respond. Not to say that anything you’re saying is foolish or deserving of ridicule, just wanted to thank you for regularly diving into things while readily admitting less than perfect understanding, and also encourage others who might be hesitant to do the same.
I’ll focus on the first hand for now. The second hand was the one motivated by exploiting my opponent, and I look forward to explaining that reasoning soon (and exposing myself to criticism/ridicule
).
I think part of your objection to this play comes from focusing on the absolute value of hands that might call us rather than the frequencies of how often villain should be looking to call. Precisely because villain shouldn’t have many (if any) combos of AA/KK/AK, they MUST call with some weaker kings unless they’re willing to let us run them over. That said, I’d be much less likely to use this play against nits, non-crazy recreationals, and low-stake regs. I expect mid to high stake regs (whether or not they are winning players) to usually be valuing their hand in terms of its place within their entire range rather than basing their strategy around the absolute strength of their hand.
Although overbetting may seem like an exploitative adjustment vs. better players (which is usually illogical), I think not overbetting is the exploitative strategy whereas overbetting at some frequency is much closer to GTO play. I’m extremely confident that PIO would want an overbetting range on this turn card, although much less certain that 66 would be a part of that range.
I think we often want to be pessimistic about villain’s calling frequency (ie. underestimate when value betting, overestimate when bluffing) but we can still anchor it to Minimum Defense Frequency. In order to auto-profit with ATC, a 1.43x pot bet only needs folds 59% of the time. I’d want to include some risk premium, so using an auto-profit folding frequency of 65% is probably better. This creates an MDF of 35%, meaning the villain must defend that much of their range to make me indifferent to bluffing. However, MDF is inherently less relevant in BB defense situations because of the reduced preflop price. Even after calling a flop bet, BB can fold slightly tighter than MDF without meaningfully opening themselves up to exploitation. I think we can give villain 10% leeway and operate as if the MDF were 31.5%.
This will take a while to properly analyze so I’ll continue sometime soon.
November 28, 2015
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The MDF or 1-Alpha: Pot+bet/bet= 9.89 + 14.17/14.17=24.06/14.17=~.59 or 59%. 100-59=41% So the villain has to defend 41% of his range here in order to prevent you from auto profiting. The problem I see is that villain looks super weak, he has now checked twice to you. He could have some weak top pair hands that he should defend with. I’d probably defend Top Pair or better, and draws, and I’d fold everything else. We can discount TpTk given the preflop action (or lack there of), and you’re blocking some of villians likely two pair range (67 and K6). His range is more like 7x or bottom pair.
I think if some of the variables were a little different, such as positions(where villains pre-flop flatting range has more suited broadways), the over-bet might work because he should be defending with top pair and his flop check/calling range would have more top pairs in it. Villains bb defending range is wide, so it might be best to size differently so his MDF is wider, therefore, getting more value out of villain.
What are your thoughts on that>
**Also, a straight got there on the turn (54). Another reason for sizing smaller.
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