View Plans & Pricing

If you are signed in and are seeing this message, please be sure you have selected a user name in My Profile. The forum requires it.
A A A
Search

— Forum Scope —




— Match —





— Forum Options —





Minimum search word length is 3 characters - maximum search word length is 84 characters

Topic Rating: 1 Topic Rating: 1 Topic Rating: 1 Topic Rating: 1 Topic Rating: 1 Topic Rating: 1 (1 votes) 
sp_TopicIcon
Super Math Nerd Theory on Balanced Ranges
Avatar
FloppedBackdoorTrips
Wooster, OH
Small Stakes Grinder
Forum Posts: 81
Member Since:
June 5, 2012
sp_UserOfflineSmall Offline
1
June 22, 2012 - 4:47 pm
sp_Permalink sp_Print
0

So I've been doing a lot of game deconstruction lately as I try to move up the buy-in ladder, and obviously balanced ranges become exponentially more important the higher stakes you're playing.

 

While I understand the general idea of balanced ranges, I don't know what kind of frequencies we need for balance (i.e. how much of our range is value, how much is bluffs).  I'm sure it depends on a number of different variables, but I'm not quite sure what those are.

 

Simple example.  Suppose we're in the early stages of a tournament, opened in EP and are now facing a 3B from a strong player from the CO (or BU or whatever, doesn't matter).  We want to be able to 4B KK+ for value.  But we need to balance our 4B range.

 

Obviously 12 combos of KK+.

So how many combos of bluff hands should we put in our 4B range?

6? 8? 12?

 

Something about 60% value/40% bluff feels kind of right to me, but its really a wild guess without any basis in objective analysis.

 

tl;dr How do we determine frequencies for a balanced range?

bennymacca
Adelaide Australia
Road Gambling with Doyle
Members
Forum Posts: 2616
Member Since:
October 6, 2010
sp_UserOfflineSmall Offline
2
June 22, 2012 - 10:37 pm
sp_Permalink sp_Print
0

Thats a pretty interesting question

 

firstly, when you say balanced range, i think we are actually talking about a polarised range. I think that is a big more instructive. do you agree? The reason i say this is because sometimes it is great to have a polarised range, and sometimes you want a de-polarised range (or strong range as balugawhale calls it)

 

my guess is it would have to do more with their fold to 4bet percentages than anything. If they never ever fold, even something like AJ or 99, then you shouldnt have a polarised range at all, but you should widen your value range to include hands that have good equity against that range.

 

if he is the type of player to be 5betting only his strong hands and folding everything else, then your range should be weighted to his frequencies. 

 

for example, lets say he 3bets top 5.4% of hands, which is AJs+, AQo+, 99+.

 

Now, if he only 5bets AA, KK, QQ, AKs for instance, then we have

 

16 combos in his 5bet range

44 combos in his 4bet fold range

 

therefore we should balance our range so that we have 26% value and 74% bluffs in our range

 

if he only 3bets QQ+, AKs+, and then 5bets that whole range then we shouldn't have a balanced range at all because we are never getting villain to fold. 

 

am i making sense here?

Avatar
FloppedBackdoorTrips
Wooster, OH
Small Stakes Grinder
Forum Posts: 81
Member Since:
June 5, 2012
sp_UserOfflineSmall Offline
3
June 23, 2012 - 3:56 am
sp_Permalink sp_Print
0

Yeah, definitely made sense.  And yes, I'm talking about polarized ranges, since from a game theory perspective, that's pretty much what n-bets should be.  My goal here is to get a rough idea as to what a GTO range would be, and use that as a baseline for making adjustments in-game…I feel like that can't be TOO terrible of an approach.

 

I could be wrong about this, but I think 'balanced' and 'exploitative' are pretty much mutually exclusive strategies, and I *think* what you're talking about is more an exploitative strategy: a wide 4B bluff range against a villain that folds too much to 4Bs.

 

My understanding of 'balance' is that we assume villain will always continue with the strongest part of his range (say X), and always fold with the weakest (say Z), but he has a middle range (Y) with a decision.  In our polarized range we have our value range that crushes Y, and our bluff range that is way behind Y.  In game theory they'd say villain would be 'indifferent' with his Y range, but in the poker world we'd just say that he' in a tough spot with his Y range.

 

So in the original example, we're assuming both players are super nitty because it makes it easier, but villain's X range would be KK+, his Z range would be like AJ, random 3B bluffs, etc.  But we're balancing to attack his Y range of QQ and AK.  If we don't bluff enough he can just fold them, and if we bluff to much he can just go with them.  The goal, I think, is to make either decision with those hands equally gross.

 

Am *I* making sense?  I felt a little rambly.

FkCoolers
Cambridge, Ma (Central Square)
Member Moderator
Forum Posts: 1610
Member Since:
July 3, 2010
sp_UserOfflineSmall Offline
4
June 23, 2012 - 8:44 am
sp_Permalink sp_Print
0

Usually you start off with a polarized 3 betting range and as the dynamic takes shape you then consider if you need to turn it into a merged range or not … 

TiltedEV
Guest
Guests
5
June 24, 2012 - 3:26 am
sp_Permalink sp_Print
1

Dear TPE pros,

 Please post in this thread, so i can read what you have to say.

Thanks 🙂

Love,

TiltedEV

Forum Timezone: America/New_York

Most Users Ever Online: 2780

Currently Online:
8 Guest(s)

Currently Browsing this Page:
1 Guest(s)

Top Posters:

bennymacca: 2616

Foucault: 2067

folding_aces_pre_yo: 1133

praetor: 1033

theginger45: 924

P-aire 146: 832

Turbulence: 768

The Riceman: 731

duggs: 591

florianm1: 588

Newest Members:

sdmathis89

ne0x00

adrianvaida2525

Anteeater

Laggro

Philbro

Forum Stats:

Groups: 4

Forums: 24

Topics: 12705

Posts: 75003

 

Member Stats:

Guest Posters: 1063

Members: 12007

Moderators: 2

Admins: 5

Administrators: RonFezBuddy, Killingbird, Tournament Poker Edge Staff, ttwist, Carlos

Moderators: sitelock, sitelock_1