value of tptk in relation to pot size

im sure this is posted somewhere else a million times on these forums but I was thinking about hand "values" today, specifically tptk and to a lesser extent overpairs, and how they relate to pot size.


this is prolly ldo to most people but it was a light bulb going off for me on how i play these hands.


the basic premise of my conclusion is:

The value of Tptk is inverse to Pot size i.e. pot size goes up -> tptk value goes down

i include overpairs here but this is true to a lesser extent because of the addition of lesser overpairs in villains range.


this seems like its common sense/really obvious(and can easily shown by putting our opponents on range and stoving it) but the way i play tptk is effected greatly as my goal is to get to showdown with mediumish size pots where before i played tptk like full throttle bet bet bet....then bet bet bet


flame away......

less spr more handreading

Originally Posted by Bbickes

less spr more handreading

This. Ranges etc >>>>>>>>> pot size/stack size

Oh, so you mean we should play our range in a way most +EV vs. their range like always?

yea its soooo villain dependent (and board texture dependent), sometimes your happy to stack off with top pair no kicker, sometimes i will fold it on the flop

I don't think you can give absolute value to many hands in a vacuum. TPTK is playable for stacks against a maniac fish, but is probably worthless against a super-weak-tight villain that suddenly starts firing bets/raises. Which is just a more complicated way of saying "less spr more handreading", I suppose.

Also, your theorem falls apart when considered in the light of actual SPR tactics. When you hit TPTK on the flop, you want the pot to be as big as possible before any flop betting begins.

1.lol @ gizmo calling this a theorem

2.agreed w/everything u guys said and i think i just didnt explain what i meant

i didnt mean for thinking about tptk in relation to pot size to replace hand reading/ranges, etc. I think of this more as an early warning system that helps remind me that something isnt kosher with the way a hand is playing out.

i should have mentioned before that overplaying tptk is/hopefully was a leak of mine that cost me alot of money because of the mentality "this fuckin micro-moron will call me down with a2-aq/middle pair/oesd/gssd/fd's, etc, etc 3 streets and i can value town his ass all the way to the bank" which inevitably led to me using skewed ranges for my opponents and therefore costing me money

anyway i meant for my little inverse relationship to assist me with hand reading/ranging as well because it is like an alarm bell that signals that either 1. my current range is off or 2. the hands that i am currently attempting to extract value from may make up less of villains ranges then i would like.

again like i said im not a doctor, def not a theorem of any sorts, but helps me to keep pdk from spewing off chips as a pot grows.

Originally Posted by pdk1010

1.lol @ gizmo calling this a theorem

2.agreed w/everything u guys said and i think i just didnt explain what i meant

Ha! Glad I could entertain you.

I get your concept, though. I get nervous on the river, too, when a reasonably solid player calls the first 2 streets and I have TPTK. I start to worry that I've either overestimated the player and they are a station (the optimistic view), or I've overestimated my hand's strength and I'm value-towning myself (probably the more realistic view).

But if I've already seen the player show down with garbage in the face of aggression? I'm going for 3 streets of value every time.