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(2 votes) 
April 15, 2014
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Hi everyone,
I think I'm pretty exploitable against good regs at the moment because I rarely 3-bet light with medium and deep stacks, and when I do it isn't really with much of a plan. What steps do I need to take to put together a balanced range?
Thanks to anyone who can help,
Pete
TPE Pro
December 6, 2012
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Good question. Start by asking yourself this: what do you think better players do to exploit the fact that you have a tight and predictable 3-betting range?
April 15, 2014
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(Apologies, this quickly became a longer post than planned)
So I think they're exploiting a couple of things:
1) My actions are going to be pretty polarized, as I'll probably either 4-bet or fold to avoid playing hands oop. The exceptions will be hands like AQ/KQ/AJ, which flop pretty well, and potentially some pairs depending on the size of the bet. It's quite conceivable that I'm folding upwards of 60% of my opens, so the play may well be immediately profitable for him (SPR dependent).
-this works even better if he does it with Ax, as it takes out about 15% of my 4-betting combos
2) If I 4-bet, my range is face up, so villain can easily 5-bet/fold.
3) If I flat and miss, I'll have to fold to a cbet the majority of the time. Check/raising becomes difficult and probably unprofitable with air, and floating OOP feels like spewing chips. If I hit, he is in position so can control the size of the pot, and take me for value when he actually has a strong hand.
4) Once I've been 3-bet a couple of times, I'll have to shut down, so I'm missing a lot of opening opportunities with hands that should be +ev.
The big theme seems to be a lack of balance. I get that I should probably balance my value 4-betting range with other hands. I should also probably flat certain monsters to protect weaker hands. The thing I struggle with is knowing which ones, and how often. I've read up a bit on polarized/non-polarized ranges, but I find it hard to apply the theory in a structured way.
At the moment, my logic is that it's better to be exploited than to counter without a plan. Better still would be to have a plan. The end point I'd like to reach is to have a rough set of principles which let me fold/call/raise in a balanced and non-exploitable way, before eventually devloping a counter-exploitable strategy.
If I do the following, is that roughly the right thought process?:
Example:
-Villain A 3-bets from the button 25% of the time when I raise in CO+1. We both have stacks of 40BB.
-I'm opening 30% of hands from CO+1. If I 4-bet 99+ AK, and flat AQ/AJs/KQs, I fold 81% of the time. Assuming a raise of 2.5bb and a 3-bet of 6bb, with 2.5bb in the pot, he shows an immediate profit of just under 3bb.
-Assuming he only ever 5-bet shoves/folds, and only does so with 77+AQo+AQs+A2s-A5s, he is folding to 30% of 4-bets. In this scenario I could raise/fold atc to 12bb and show a profit of 4.1bb each time.
I would then need to play around with the equity of all in scenarios, as well as different % figures/stack sizes to work out equilibruim levels for 3bets/4bets and 5bets? Am I on the right track here for a polarized range? I'm not really sure what I do when playing against a non-polarized range still
Thanks for helping, really appreciated,
Pete
TPE Pro
December 6, 2012
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NutflushPete said:
(Apologies, this quickly became a longer post than planned)
Not at all, you did a great job
So I think they're exploiting a couple of things:
1) My actions are going to be pretty polarized, as I'll probably either 4-bet or fold to avoid playing hands oop. The exceptions will be hands like AQ/KQ/AJ, which flop pretty well, and potentially some pairs depending on the size of the bet. It's quite conceivable that I'm folding upwards of 60% of my opens, so the play may well be immediately profitable for him (SPR dependent).
-this works even better if he does it with Ax, as it takes out about 15% of my 4-betting combos
Sounds like you need to call with some hands that aren't good 4-betting candidates. This becomes more true the smaller your opponent's raise, because you are getting better pot odds and he is risking less to 3-bet you, which means you need to defend more often to make it unprofitable. Be sure to take his position into consideration, though – it's a lot harder for him to 3bet you light in EP than on the button. For this job, you want hands that flop well but aren't strong enough to 4-bet, so big suited connectors (QJs, say) and small pairs may be appealing candidates. There are worse things in the world than playing OOP.
2) If I 4-bet, my range is face up, so villain can easily 5-bet/fold.
Sorry but I don't follow this. To take an extreme example, if you only 4-bet AA, your range is face up, but Villain can't easily 5-bet-fold.
3) If I flat and miss, I'll have to fold to a cbet the majority of the time. Check/raising becomes difficult and probably unprofitable with air, and floating OOP feels like spewing chips. If I hit, he is in position so can control the size of the pot, and take me for value when he actually has a strong hand.
It's OK to fold the majority of the time if you're getting 3:1 to see the flop. Why is check-raising necessarily unprofitable with air?
4) Once I've been 3-bet a couple of times, I'll have to shut down, so I'm missing a lot of opening opportunities with hands that should be +ev.
I don't see why this is necessarily true either. Plus if the reason you're shutting down is that your opponent is 3-betting a too-high frequency, then although you'll win fewer pots with steals, you should be winning more with your strong hands because you are frequently 3-bet by weak ranges.
The big theme seems to be a lack of balance. I get that I should probably balance my value 4-betting range with other hands. I should also probably flat certain monsters to protect weaker hands. The thing I struggle with is knowing which ones, and how often. I've read up a bit on polarized/non-polarized ranges, but I find it hard to apply the theory in a structured way.
At the moment, my logic is that it's better to be exploited than to counter without a plan. Better still would be to have a plan. The end point I'd like to reach is to have a rough set of principles which let me fold/call/raise in a balanced and non-exploitable way, before eventually devloping a counter-exploitable strategy.
If I do the following, is that roughly the right thought process?:
Example:
-Villain A 3-bets from the button 25% of the time when I raise in CO+1. We both have stacks of 40BB.
-I'm opening 30% of hands from CO+1. If I 4-bet 99+ AK, and flat AQ/AJs/KQs, I fold 81% of the time. Assuming a raise of 2.5bb and a 3-bet of 6bb, with 2.5bb in the pot, he shows an immediate profit of just under 3bb.
-Assuming he only ever 5-bet shoves/folds, and only does so with 77+AQo+AQs+A2s-A5s, he is folding to 30% of 4-bets. In this scenario I could raise/fold atc to 12bb and show a profit of 4.1bb each time.
I would then need to play around with the equity of all in scenarios, as well as different % figures/stack sizes to work out equilibruim levels for 3bets/4bets and 5bets? Am I on the right track here for a polarized range? I'm not really sure what I do when playing against a non-polarized range still
Thanks for helping, really appreciated,
Pete
Yes, it does sound like you're on the right track, although I think it's a pretty generous assumption that Villain will never flat a 4-bet in position getting 3.5:1. I'll also emphasize the importance of opening fewer hands with someone who is 3-betting so aggressively behind you. He's making a theoretical mistake by 3-betting so often, and instead of looking at as an impediment to what I assume is your preferred strategy of raising a lot of pots and playing a lot postflop in position against the blinds or just stealing the blinds, look at it as an opportunity. He is putting money into the pot with a weak range. You can counter that in two not mutually exclusive ways:
1. Get value from your strong hands. Tighten your opening range so that you are consistently ahead of his range when he 3-bets. Then don't fold very often, either pre- or post-flop. If you have the stronger range preflop, you'll still generally have the stronger range on any given flop, even if that means getting stubborn with some seemingly weak hands. When your hand is ahead of his betting range, he only has two choices: bluff a lot, or let you win at showdown. The only tricky thing for you is figuring out which he'll do in a given spot.
2. Rebluff him. This is where 4-betting, flatting and checkraising flops, etc comes into play. If your range is generally stronger than his, than these should be relatively “safe” plays for you in the sense that he basically has to fold to them a lot. If he doesn't, then don't bluff and just get a lot of value from the top of your range when he spews to you by 5-betting an absurd range or never folding to checkraises or whatever.
Finding an equalibrium doesn't require any assumption about Villain's 3-betting range. If you open to 2BB (by the way, smaller open raises are also good when you're getting 3betting a lot because presumably it means you aren't getting flatted as much) and he makes it 5BB, then he is presumably risking 5BB to win something like 4.5 BB (because of blinds and antes). If he's on the button he only has two other players behind him, but he does have to fade them as well, so let's just say that he needs to succeed 60% of the time to show an immediate profit with two Uno cards. However, he doesn't have Uno cards, and even with 72o he has some chance of winning at showdown. So a good rule of thumb would be to fold no more than 50% of your opening range to this raise.
Whether you 4-bet or call is IMO somewhat less important than the not-folding part. The more you 4-bet, the more you nullify his showdown value, and so you can get away with maybe defending a bit less. But basically just pick half of your range to not-fold. Generally any hand good enough to withstand a 5-bet is a good 4-betting candidate, as are weak hands that have blocker value and/or play badly postflop (A7o, for instance).
Hands that flop well but aren't strong enough to 4-bet make good calling candidates. This may mean suited connectors (size matters here, because the pair value is worth a lot as well with small SPR, so QJs is much better than 76s for this purpose), small pairs, suited Aces you choose not to 4-bet, or broadway cards. Flatting some big hands is a nice idea as well, but it's actually not absolutely essential as long as you are willing to get stubborn with whatever is the top of your actual range on a given flop.
You did a great job with your most recent post, so now try this. What exactly are you afraid your opponent will do postflop to make it unprofitable for you to call with these hands?
December 24, 2013
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I've been away for a while and just wanted to say this entire post is brilliant. I miss seeing discussion of this magnitude!
April 15, 2014
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That's a great reply Andrew, thanks for taking the time to put it together.
After your comments on equilibrium and not folding to more than 50%, I put together a quick spreadsheet to look at the 'break even' points at which each of a 3bet/4bet/5bet needs to work to be immediately profitable. It falls at about 50% of the time for 3 and 4 betting, and slightly lower than that for 5 betting, assuming that a 5bet will be less than double the size of the 4bet. (Obviously this was just a simple question of odds, but it helped to work through it anyway).
To put this into practice, say I was opening around 25% from MP at a really nitty table, with one aggro button who was 3-betting fairly regularly. If I add A7o and A6o to a 4-betting range of JJ+Ak my % increases from 3-5%, and if I flat ATs+/A2s-A5s/T9s+/77+/KQo/AQo+ that would give me a 12.7% non-folding range against someone 3betting me opening 25%. I would be 4-betting 20% of my opens and calling about another 30%. As long as he only 5-bets JJ+AK then I only fold to 50% of those (folding A7o/A6o and JJ), so my 4-bet shouldn't be exploitable either? I don't want rigid guidelines, but does this seem like a sensible approach in this situation?
Onto your responses:
2) If I 4-bet, my range is face up, so villain can easily 5-bet/fold.
Sorry but I don't follow this. To take an extreme example, if you only 4-bet AA, your range is face up, but Villain can't easily 5-bet-fold.
I think this is just badly written on my part – I mean 5-bet OR fold, not 5-bet THEN fold. So if you know I'm only 4-betting JJ+ for example, then you can 5-bet KK+ and fold everything else.
3) If I flat and miss, I'll have to fold to a cbet the majority of the time. Check/raising becomes difficult and probably unprofitable with air, and floating OOP feels like spewing chips. If I hit, he is in position so can control the size of the pot, and take me for value when he actually has a strong hand.
It's OK to fold the majority of the time if you're getting 3:1 to see the flop. Why is check-raising necessarily unprofitable with air?
I think that this (and point 4) both show that I need to spend more time thinking about post-flop lines and playing with Flopzilla to look at responses to different board textures. Logically it must be profitable to check-raise a certain range, so if I ensure this is balanced I can start to use it as a counter-measure to regular 3bet/cbetting.
What exactly are you afraid your opponent will do postflop to make it unprofitable for you to call with these hands?
I'm afraid that:
a) villains can c-bet a really high percentage of the time, and it'll be hard for me to float/play back without a made hand. I mean, if they're raising 20% OTB and I flat with QJs, they only have a 55:45 advantage on the flop, yet I'll have no pair, flush or straight draw 65% of the time. So I'll could end up folding a lot of equity on top of the cost of calling the 3-bet.
b) I'll end up making a marginal hand, like QJo on an AQ5 board, or even on a Q73 board facing two barrells. I play mostly low stakes at the moment, so I don't have reads on the majority of people I play with, so it's very hard to know where I stand in these spots, and I don't want to get ridden for value.
Next question is: how can I counter this so that I'm not exploitable and that I'm making money from the villain being unbalanced in these spots? I think you've already answered that for me:
1. Get value from your strong hands. Tighten your opening range so that you are consistently ahead of his range when he 3-bets. Then don't fold very often, either pre- or post-flop. If you have the stronger range preflop, you'll still generally have the stronger range on any given flop, even if that means getting stubborn with some seemingly weak hands. When your hand is ahead of his betting range, he only has two choices: bluff a lot, or let you win at showdown. The only tricky thing for you is figuring out which he'll do in a given spot.
2. Rebluff him. This is where 4-betting, flatting and checkraising flops, etc comes into play. If your range is generally stronger than his, than these should be relatively “safe” plays for you in the sense that he basically has to fold to them a lot. If he doesn't, then don't bluff and just get a lot of value from the top of your range when he spews to you by 5-betting an absurd range or never folding to checkraises or whatever.
One overarching theme I get from your post is that if someone is doing something that exploits you, or others at the table, they're probably doing something too often in a GTO sense. So the best counter is to identify what is unbalanced about what they're doing, and work out a strategy versus that. So where I'm concerned about players c-betting me too often when I'm OOP, Villain is unbalanced because they are betting too many hands with little equity. Clearly the best counter to this is to call stubbornly or c/r with a bluff-heavy range so that he pays off your good hands and folds to your air, while probably opening a bit less.
On the subject of balance, I'm curious about how you and other top players go about it. Have you honed your ranges over years through intuition, or have you sat with spreadsheets for hours playing with Stove and Slice and building decision trees? If someone was to ask you “you open from MP and a Villain with a 15% button 3bet raises you to 5bb, what is your range for 4betting?” would do you know your exact range, or just have rough guidelines?
TPE Pro
December 6, 2012
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NutflushPete said:
That's a great reply Andrew, thanks for taking the time to put it together.
Thanks! It's good motivation to see putting so much effort into your responses as well.
After your comments on equilibrium and not folding to more than 50%, I put together a quick spreadsheet to look at the 'break even' points at which each of a 3bet/4bet/5bet needs to work to be immediately profitable. It falls at about 50% of the time for 3 and 4 betting, and slightly lower than that for 5 betting, assuming that a 5bet will be less than double the size of the 4bet. (Obviously this was just a simple question of odds, but it helped to work through it anyway).
To put this into practice, say I was opening around 25% from MP at a really nitty table, with one aggro button who was 3-betting fairly regularly. If I add A7o and A6o to a 4-betting range of JJ+Ak my % increases from 3-5%, and if I flat ATs+/A2s-A5s/T9s+/77+/KQo/AQo+ that would give me a 12.7% non-folding range against someone 3betting me opening 25%. I would be 4-betting 20% of my opens and calling about another 30%. As long as he only 5-bets JJ+AK then I only fold to 50% of those (folding A7o/A6o and JJ), so my 4-bet shouldn't be exploitable either? I don't want rigid guidelines, but does this seem like a sensible approach in this situation?
Sounds reasonable. The one thing I'll say though is that if Villain is 3-betting way too much, one potential exploitation to that is just not to have a range for folding to a 3-bet at all. In other words, if you think he's going to 3-bet really often, then don't open in the first place with hands that are going to fold to a 3-bet. Not saying that's necessarily applicable here, and it's certainly a strategy that will cost you money (in the form of missed steals) if you're wrong about the likelihood of a 3bet.
Onto your responses:
2) If I 4-bet, my range is face up, so villain can easily 5-bet/fold.
Sorry but I don't follow this. To take an extreme example, if you only 4-bet AA, your range is face up, but Villain can't easily 5-bet-fold.
I think this is just badly written on my part – I mean 5-bet OR fold, not 5-bet THEN fold. So if you know I'm only 4-betting JJ+ for example, then you can 5-bet KK+ and fold everything else.
Maybe I'm nit picking, but the problem isnt that your range is face-up, it's that it's unbalanced and that enables Villain to exploit you by folding a lot to your 4-bets and also by 3-betting a lot since he doesn't have to worry about getting 4-bet very often. If your range is truly balanced, it can be face up and your opponent still can't exploit it, that's what GTO means.
What exactly are you afraid your opponent will do postflop to make it unprofitable for you to call with these hands?
I'm afraid that:
a) villains can c-bet a really high percentage of the time, and it'll be hard for me to float/play back without a made hand. I mean, if they're raising 20% OTB and I flat with QJs, they only have a 55:45 advantage on the flop, yet I'll have no pair, flush or straight draw 65% of the time. So I'll could end up folding a lot of equity on top of the cost of calling the 3-bet.
b) I'll end up making a marginal hand, like QJo on an AQ5 board, or even on a Q73 board facing two barrells. I play mostly low stakes at the moment, so I don't have reads on the majority of people I play with, so it's very hard to know where I stand in these spots, and I don't want to get ridden for value.
Yep, you're going to have to play poker! Again, if you get 3:1 on a pre-flop call, and fold to 65% of continuation bets but continue profitably 35% of the time, that's better than folding pre-flop. If your continuing range is relatively balanced, you don't need reads on your opponent. When he bets half-pot on the flop, he is risking 1 unit to win 2 units, so you need continue at least 2/3 of the time. As long as you don't fold to that bet more often than 33% of the time, he can't exploit you.
One of two things will happen: either he won't bluff very often and you'll lose money to his value bets but will win often at showdown with marginal hands you would have folded, or he will bluff often and you'll sometimes fold a hand that was good and sometimes pay off his value bets but overall show a profit by winning at showdown against (or raising him off of) his bluffs.
Now if you can actually make exploitable reads/predictions about your opponent, then all the better. But it's not necessary, and continuing postflop in an unexploitable way is better than folding preflop in an exploitable way.
Next question is: how can I counter this so that I'm not exploitable and that I'm making money from the villain being unbalanced in these spots? I think you've already answered that for me:
1. Get value from your strong hands. Tighten your opening range so that you are consistently ahead of his range when he 3-bets. Then don't fold very often, either pre- or post-flop. If you have the stronger range preflop, you'll still generally have the stronger range on any given flop, even if that means getting stubborn with some seemingly weak hands. When your hand is ahead of his betting range, he only has two choices: bluff a lot, or let you win at showdown. The only tricky thing for you is figuring out which he'll do in a given spot.
2. Rebluff him. This is where 4-betting, flatting and checkraising flops, etc comes into play. If your range is generally stronger than his, than these should be relatively “safe” plays for you in the sense that he basically has to fold to them a lot. If he doesn't, then don't bluff and just get a lot of value from the top of your range when he spews to you by 5-betting an absurd range or never folding to checkraises or whatever.
One overarching theme I get from your post is that if someone is doing something that exploits you, or others at the table, they're probably doing something too often in a GTO sense. So the best counter is to identify what is unbalanced about what they're doing, and work out a strategy versus that. So where I'm concerned about players c-betting me too often when I'm OOP, Villain is unbalanced because they are betting too many hands with little equity. Clearly the best counter to this is to call stubbornly or c/r with a bluff-heavy range so that he pays off your good hands and folds to your air, while probably opening a bit less.
Not “probably”, definitely. Working out an exploitive counter-strategy is the best response, but again it's not essential. As long as you are balanced you'll benefit from their unbalance even if you aren't actively trying to do so or can't identify what exactly it is they are doing.
On the subject of balance, I'm curious about how you and other top players go about it. Have you honed your ranges over years through intuition, or have you sat with spreadsheets for hours playing with Stove and Slice and building decision trees? If someone was to ask you “you open from MP and a Villain with a 15% button 3bet raises you to 5bb, what is your range for 4betting?” would do you know your exact range, or just have rough guidelines?
I've done some of this and at least have a general sense of what ranges “should” like. Often I find it sufficient simply to have a rough idea of my own range and ask myself questions like “What is the top of my range here? What is the bottom? What are the best bluffing candidates?” There definitely are some players who do what you're talking about, though. Olivier Busquet talks about this in an interview on my podcast: …..et-part-1/
Anyway, in terms of working out the best hands to flat, you're right to be thinking ahead to the continuation bet and the possibility of multiple barrels. So you are going to want to have a range that is capable of withstanding multiple barrels on a variety of boards. Never flatting preflop with an Ace in your hand would make you vulnerable to barrels on an A-high board, for instance, but only flatting with Ax would make you vulnerable whenever there wasn't an Ace. Flatting KQ and KJ gives you good coverage on broadway boards, because you'll have either a good pair or a good draw. Suited connectors and medium pairs give you good bluffing and bluff-catching hands when lower cards flop, etc. You dont' want to be too weighted towards any one of these categories.
It's also important on really dry flops to recognize the top of your range and not fold. So when the board falls 932, you probably shouldn't be check-folding AQ. If nothing else, hands like this protect you from barreling when big cards fall on the turn or river. If you only ever call this flop with pocket pairs or 9x, you're very vulnerable when an A turns. Not to mention that AQ may well have better equity against Villain's betting range than 66 anyway.
April 15, 2014
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Sorry for the slow response – jobs and a long weekend got in the way.
So I listened to the two Olivier podcasts last week. Mind…blown… It's incredibly inspirational to hear how someone gets to the top of a certain format, and that ultimately what it's taken is a lot of hard, carefully applied work. I'm not sure how possible it would be to replicate in multi-way pots for MTTs, but it certainly makes sense to spend time creating strategies for the spots discussed ITT.
I've been playing some turbo 180s today to try and rebuild my bankroll (post travelling) after a pretty rough month playing bigger tournaments. They're rarely deep enough for more than a 3bet all in, but I think I'm going to apply the Olivier technique to my entire <20bb pre flop game (and possibly post flop, if I get to grips with it all). Over the past few years micro/low stake tournaments have gone from being incredibly passive to pretty aggro with short stacks, so to be playing an equilibrium strategy makes a lot of sense as a way to take advantage of both aggro restealers and the remaining passive fish. It's no longer as exploitable to open as wide as it was (God I miss those atc days!), and this is probably a very good basis for creating a 3/4/5 bet equilibrium strategy at a later date which I can take up to higher stakes in the future.
In your evaluating bluffs series, you say it's important to pick one thing when doing HH analysis and really focus on that. It's funny how this thread has worked in the opposite way – looking at one specific area has now impacted way more parts of my game than I ever expected. I've made a real effort to make 'what's my value target? what's my bluff target' part of my automatic thought process last year, but now I'm going to add 'how can I exploit this guy?'. I think a danger of growing up on STTs and then turbo MTTs is that you can become too ABC, even when you know you shouldn't. It probably explains why I've always sucked at cash games.
Anyway, enough of my rambling. I've got lots of ideas for work to do away from the tables now, and hopefully I'll update this at some point in the future with some new thoughts and results.
Cheers,
Pete
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