Thanks, gang. Unbeknownst to him, Carlos brought this thread to my attention after a particularly frustrating couple of days of poker, so this was really nice to see. I'm currently working on a new theory series to complement the hand reading and value betting ones, so hopefully I can keep upping the ante in terms of quality.

Carlos I answered your question in the forum for that video: …..ng-part-3/

loxxii said:

I cant think of many hands I would want in a calling range on this board besides draws and some monsters because marginal hands like this one are almost always gonna face tough decisions on future streets when overcards, straight cards, and flush cards come.

 

It may be a leak but I see a small 6x here as a bluff catcher that will almost always have to be folded by the river if he keeps bluffing. It's not good enough to call with on future streets, but too good to fold now, so I end up turning it into a bluff to protect it sort of like a merge/blocking bet hybrid.

 

Maybe it's not worth getting fancy to protect such a weak hand and it's better to just call once and hope he doesnt keep bluffing or catch up for free. If that's the case, maybe hands like A6,77,99 could be raised for protection/value instead because they may be ahead of his calling range on the flop.

Not every hand in your bluff-catching range has to be good enough to take to the river against a triple barrel. You are supposed to have a range for calling once and folding turn, a range for calling twice and folding river, etc. The only reason you wouldn't would be to exploit an overaggressive opponent who you know will just barrel-barrel-barrel. And against that player, I'd prefer just to check-call him all the way with this hand anyway.

Let me suggest an exercise to you that helped to crystallize this as well as other concepts in my mind. Ask yourself, if my opponent knew my strategy (meaning every hand you could have here and how you would play each), how could he exploit it?

If your opponent knew that, whenever you call the flop, you're never going to fold a blank turn, why would he ever bluff the turn? So then maybe you decide that since he'll never bluff blank turns, you'll never bluff-catch them. But then of course your opponent should always bluff them.

This is where balance comes in. If you have a range of hands that will continue on blank turns and a range that will fold blank turns, then you won't be exploited no matter what your opponent does. Of course you can do even better than that if you're able to predict whether your opponent will or won't bluff on a blank turn, but without that exploitable read, the best you can do is try to fold and not-fold in accordance with the pot odds you're offered on each street.

loxxii said:

 

2. Having different calling ranges for each street. This one kinda blew my mind. I understand changing my plan depending on how the board runs out but if you mean on the flop I need to have an idea of which hands are worth 1,2, or 3 calls before the other streets even come out, I am further behind than I thought in range vs range thinking.

 

peppergrinder said:

As usual I'm way out in left field but just wanted to add my heartfelt thanks to Andrew….I've spent the last couple of weeks immersed in the 3 theory series and my results graph for micro MTT's has changed from a plunging red line to a green mountain! I think it's more than just variance…..so exciting as I think I have only started to develop better skills. My whole way of thinking about hands is developing at an accelerated pace….

Thanks PG, that's awesome to hear! Hope things continue to go well for you.

huge said:

[I think from Carlos' comment above that this is the right place to post this, but if I'm wrong and I should put it in the Value-Targeting video comments or even in the general strategy forum, let me know]

 

Let's say you've watched all of Andrew's Hand Reading and Value Targeting vids, and you've mastered the concepts therein (half of those characteristics are true of me)…

 

You are last to act holding the nuts on the river, and you believe that the best hand to target in villain's range is strong enough to call a 2xPot overbet. Most of your opponents at the table, including villain, are very strong observant players, who have presumably noted that you are a thinking player who seems balance-aware. Would you ever consider betting a lesser amount because in a similar spot with a good bluffing hand you don't want to risk 2xPot on a bluff?  And then the obvious more general followup question: in a less crystal-clear example, do you ever/often give up some EV from a value-bet in order to balance (protect?) your *future* bluffs by making them less expensive/risky?  

 

My answer is no, I'm never going to leave significant immediate money on the table now just to possibly give me a more profitable or less risky opportunity later.  I might make my value-bet size bigger or smaller “to make it look more bluffy”, and that might or might not relate to hands villain has seen me play in the past, but it is still an attempt to maximize immediate EV.  

 

I think I'm grappling (awkwardly) with the concept of “protecting another part of my range”, which is not generally part of my thinking process at the table.  Maybe I've just cooked up an unlikely/unhelpful outlier case in which a desire to protect future hand ranges' balance has a clear-cut and immediate cost, whereas “you should 4-bet Aces to protect your light 4-bets” is more fuzzy because 4-betting AA has some pluses and some minuses and it's hard to quantify how much (if anything) you're giving up by not slowplaying them.

 

[Andrew if you read this, “huge” @ TPE is one and the same as “Luckbox Larry”, recent TP podcast correspondent. Knowing that I'm sure you'll see the sideways connection between this post and our email exchange – though I don't think it's the same question]

The very straightforward answer to this specific question is no, I wouldn't worry about that exactly. But in future spots against opponents where you are concerned with being balance, the best way to play a nut hand vs a capped range on the river is to shove and to balance with an appropriately wide bluffing range. This doesn't have to preclude having a smaller value bet size for your weaker hands, as long as you have enough bluff candidates to balance both. The thing to see, though, is that it's not about what you risk with your bluffs, it's about what you make with your entire range. In a bluff-catching game where you are going to bet a balanced mix of value bets and bluffs, your EV is a function of the size of your bet, so you'd want to make the largest bet that you can with that range.

In a situation where you're concerned with balance, you'd want to 4bet AA. If you think they are going to fold way too much to 4bs and therefore you choose not to 4bet AA, then you are into exploitive territory and you don't need to worry about 4betting weak hands. Basically, you have to decide whether you're confident in your ability to make a good prediction about whether your opponents will respond to a bet and exploit it or not. When you aren't, then the balanced play IS the best way to play the hand. When you are, then you don't need to worry about being balanced.

derSchwartz said:

Getting Paid is an excellent series.  Thanks Andrew.

I have a question about something you touched on in the first video, but didn't really get into.  It was when you have TT on a K8X board and you want to get value out of 99 or 8X, etc.  You did mention that we have to be careful not to put too much money in the pot because somebody might be value betting us.

Well, I was wondering if this subject warrants a longer discussion?  It doesn't seem that the K8X board holding TT is a lone situation in that there are many other possible value hands that can want value from worse but can get destroyed by better. (AJ on an ATX board, KJ on a KQJ board .. there are probably better examples that I'm not thinking of).

Has there been a video on this matter – balancing value targeting with avoiding being value targeted?  Or is the answer: don't worry about it because by identifying proper value hands and hand reading you avoid getting value targeted?

Good question. I suppose I could have talked more about this when it comes to recognizing whether you have a value hand at all. I mean, when you have 33 on AKQJ8 you'd like to get value from 22 but probably you can't because even if your super-loose opponent will call with it he'll call with too many hands you're behind. Value betting requires being ahead of the whole range of hands that will call a bet, not just a specific target. The target only comes into play once you've decided you have a value hand.

Sometimes you have to aim lower than the most immediate choice to insure that you will be ahead. Your on AJ on ATx is a good example. If you are up against a range that contains AK/AQ/AT, it's not good enough to set A9 as your value target. You need to draw in a lot of weaker Aces and maybe even KK or Tx in order to be ahead of your opponent's range. That may require playing the hand differently than if you knew for a fact that Villain had A9.

That said, if you know your opponent will call with any pair when you have AJ on ATx, then there's no avoiding paying off AK. All you can do is keep his range wide enough that you are on-balance ahead when money goes in and suck it up that you are going to pay off better hands sometimes. You can write it off as a cooler as long as you haven't played your hand in a way that allows enough worse hands to fold.

Good questions, dS.

1. I have trouble thinking of opponents agaisnt whom betting the flop would be better than checking. I guess the type who try to win every pot and just contest way too many c-bets with very weak hands. But in general it's good to beef up your checking range (think how great it is for you to get a free card here if you have AK – checking hands like this makes it harder for people to bet you off of your checking range), and I think most people are just going to fold the flop really really often if you bet and also will bet at least some of the hands that would have called a bet.

2. The most significant thing about the Th on the turn is that it turns AK into a strong hand, and that was a big part of my checking range. However, it also creates a lot of draws, so I think a large bet is in order and will be called often. I'd expect to be raised very rarely and for Villain to have an extremly strong hand if he did raise, so I'd plan to call and check-fold the river unless I boated up or V bet very small. Check-calling the turn would be a big mistake mostly because I think V will check back very often with many hands that would call a bet, and not a lot of good things can happen for you on the river.

The main thing is to recognize that your choice is between bet-folding or check-folding. Because Villain isn’t likely to bluff, we can rule out check-call is an option. If you’re not clear on why that is, rewatch the video and perhaps Part 1 as well.

I don’t think the question of whether Hero could hold KK has much bearing on whether he can value bet AK.

As for whether you’d call a raise with AA or KK, if you think that AK is an easy fold to a raise, what makes AA or KK different? Which hands do you think Villain will raise that beat AK but not KK?

I see. You’re right that it’s not impossible for Villain to have KK, but I don’t think it’s going to affect your play here much one way or the other (and when Hero has AK, of course, it’s even less likely). If your opponents are really going to fold QQ and JJ to a 3-bet, then sure, you should flat KK. I’d question that part of your analysis, though. After you finish the Hand Reading series, watch my Getting Paid series, I think it will help you think through this better.

I think it’s unlikely that 44 gets to the river at all. Even 22 and 33 probably raise before the river, though they’re more likely than 44. Still, even if you can shoehorn a few worse hands into his raising range, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should call. You need to consider the pot odds and the likelihood that you are beat, as well.

“It is highly unlikely that Andrew has errors in his calculations”

I wish that were true. I’m tied up with WSOP stuff at the moment but I’ll double-check these when I get a chance, thanks for bringing to my attention.