1/3NL: Gameplan against mostly unknown LAG

This is sorta a HH thread, but mostly just a chance to talk in a general sense about exploiting players that we've yet to get a good feel for.

Villain is mid-20s, wearing a North Carolina hoodie, has two different kinds of chip-protectors, seems kind of OCD about his chip stacks in general (hard to explain, so you'll just have to trust me on this). He came to the table with 4 blacks, 3 greens, 4 reds and 5 whites, and has quickly been coloring down.

I am fairly new to the table myself, and it was a bunch of old nits before I sat down, and I have already significantly changed the dynamic of the table as I lucked into the CO on my first hand and got in a lot of good situations early to play aggressively (with mixed results; yet to showdown a hand). I started trading poker war stories just about the second my butt hit the seat, and we are all chatting it up pretty good, so I don't think they quite yet hate my guts, but I imagine I will quickly wear them thin if I keep up my poker style.

Villain has now come and completely blown up the table, raising preflop, raising postflop, barrelling turns, etc. He has been playing far too many hands far too aggressively for it to be very likely that he's a standard TAG. I'm trying my very best to give him credit, thinking through the 10-15 combos in each hand where it makes sense for him to play them the way he does/tank in the face of aggression the way he does/etc, but it is quickly becoming improbable. I think he plays button poker for sure, but he hasn't exactly been a nit in EP either.

Hero is dealt As6d OTB. One standard live reg limps, villain limps in EP, folds to hero. This is villain's first limp. Again, we're early in, but I have a strong inkling he's raising ATo, and that he's raise or folding most other offsuit aces.


What's our overall plan here? I could wait for strong hands that can withstand aggression and kinda wait for the notes to come to me, but I also expect him to play fairly differently against me than he does anyone else at the table, so it's going to be hard to get a good feel for how he reacts to me iso -> Cbets, 3bs, etc unless I get in the fray a bit.

Should we just play farily vanilla GTO, and let him more "naturally" spew into us, and slowly adjust our game as If so, I surely assume that we just fold A6o here, but what do the following ranges look like:

- Iso'ing his limps IP (I know this depends on a bunch of factors, but just generally speaking, how strong do we need to be)
- Overlimp behind him
- 3b IP
- 3b OOP

I'll make this thread a little bit like a PAHWM. Even if the answer is to fold this particular hand pre, I'd like to discuss how to play our range overall, and postflop gets a bit interesting.

Don't toss around the GTO term lightly. I wouldn't recommend it as a default strategy against someone who likely has terrible fundamentals. I think, generally speaking, vs this guy you should not fold the river if your hand beats a bluff, and you should make somewhat tight folds on early streets with hands that can't easily improve. You should probably bluff significantly less than balance would dictate in most spots.

Just play fundamentally straight forward but aggressive poker. And with this specific hand you have an easy limp, possibly a fold if the rake is really bad. Isolation with hands like A6o is inferior to limping and folding in most live lineups. You don't have enough fold equity pre without betting more than 2x what is in the pot, and you have a hand that is very poor at putting in bets while ahead or winning the pot when behind.

Excellent feedback, thank you. I think ABC poker might have been more accurate than GTO to get across the idea of playing "fundamentally straightforward but aggressive poker," but based on your plan to call rivers with anything that beats a bluff, etc, I guess we should not at all aim for balance (or even a slightly adapted form of a balanced range). I should not, in other words, be thinking, "I'm near the bottom of my range here, so I can happily fold," so much as I should be thinking, "I'm ahead of all of his bluffs, and my hand plays well against future expected actions (or, obviously, we close the action of the hand altogether), so I should continue."

Anyway, what's your iso'ing range look like here, and how does it change if LAG and I are both in EP/MP? What kind of hands are we looking to limp behind here? Surely limping any old whatever that can make a good pair is bad, even OTB, when we expect to have to put up with a lot of shit postflop and we're limited on reads? Not even sure I like limping A6o.


As I said, my particular hand combo isn't great for a HH, so I want to talk more generally about my range and overall strategy.

Hero isos for $15, and both limpers call.

Flop ($45) comes 7s 7c 4d. V1 (standard live player: loose/passive preflop, corpse postflop) checked in the dark. Unknown LAG checks without much thought.

How does hero play the following hands (Does he bet? If so, how does he respond to a raise? If not, how does he respond to a turn lead from unknown LAG?):

A6o / 66 / AJo / KQo / 98ss/dd/cc


My thoughts (and please give harsh critiques of each of these):

A6o is the one I'm least sure about. Since LAG is so unknown, and since his range is so weak, I don't really know how much I expect him to go nuts on this board, so I feel like there might be some immediate EV in making a ~$24 stab. Our hand obviously has some SDV, but I expect to very rarely get to SD on the cheap. There are some good turns for me to barrel, but it is very very difficult for me to know how the LAG will react to bets on a K / 5 / etc. (And I REALLY don't know how to play those cards when we check back.) I also think that we're near the bottom of our range (we shouldn't have even iso'ed in the first place), and so we can just check/give up with the plan to bet the majority of our air, since all of our air is better than this hand.

66 we maybe should have just limped PF, but I think it's worth a discussion because we'll be in similar spots (let's say, instead, that we have 77, and the flop came 885r). B/c'ing seems bad when this is the exact sort of hand he's going to put us on (and try to barrel us off of) when we flat a c/r, and b/f'ing seems like an utter waste. We can just check back with the plan to call bets from unknown LAG on most turns, though I'm not thrilled by our relative position on the live reg who will show up with trips or x (where x is the turn card) a lot, but I think all that's fine and worth the risk.

AJo seems like a straightforward b/c against unknown LAG. His barrelling cards overlap with our pair outs brilliantly (and our hand crushes his broadway l/c'ing range), and we have great SDV unimproved for when no 3/5/6/8s hit the turn or river.

KQo is more of a question-mark for me. I like it for many of the reasons that I like AJo, but I don't like that we're losing to a lot of his bluffs unimproved, so we'll have to have a plan to rebluff some here. Maybe we should just check back KQo and b/c KQss/cc/dd with the plan to rebluff turned FDs? Or maybe we should just check back all KQ combos and only go nuts on the turn when our hand improves?

98ss/dd/cc can be one of our better b/c with the plan to rebluff combos. I don't like that 8/6/5 all overlap with outs in his best draw combos, and I'm not sure how much his overcard combos will feel like barrelling each of those cards, but I guess we can just plan to play poker.

With these particular hands, I was leery of creating too large of a b/f'ing range, but there are plenty of combos of hands like A8ss that are plenty good enough to bet, but aren't quite seeing enough good turn cards to call a raise.

Thoughts?

Pre:

Limped pots are the most severely raked pots so you actually need to realize significantly more than your equity in the pot to justify limping. At 2/5 or 5/10 against a lot of donks limping, I would probably limp the button with A2-A5o A8o+ K8o+ Q9o J8o T7o T2s 95s 85s 74s 52s. Basically offsuit hands which can make a nut straight and suited hands that can make almost any straight, along with suited Tx or better. At 1/3 I would expect that the rake is significantly higher, so I would fold the worst 10% of those. And I would fold probably the bottom 20-25% of these if I were on cutoff instead of button. It's a big difference.

And I would limp a lot more hands vs mp or lp limps rather than EP limps which are likely to include good hands like AJ KQ etc. Against two EP limps one of whom is a good player, you should probably fold a big chunk of those speculative hands unless you're very deep or the donk is very very bad. As played your iso raise is certainly minus EV, probably more than a little bit. I would limp 66 and raise KQ and AJ, occasionally even limping with those if I feel like ranges are strong. 98s doesn't really matter. Limping is probably best with short stacks, raising with deeper than 200bb.

My laptop is about to die so I'll revisit this later.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Renton

My laptop is about to die

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Happens to me a lot (airplanes, airports and sometimes while just watching tv)

Thanks, Renton, as always.

Thoughts on flop?

I don't think you need to concern yourself much with balancing your betting range in this spot. The reg simply cannot value check raise hands other than 7x and there are few enough combos of that. I don't think you need to bet call AJ without some sort of read that he gets way out of line with check raising on paired board, and certainly with that read you need to consider checking hands which would ordinarily be bets. The donk is just a donk and you should bet nearly every single hand against him. With the given information, I would bet 87/A6/KQ as bluffs, bet 66 for protection and value, and check AJ. And my bet size would be small, probably no more than 20 dollars. 16-20 seems best. My theory for bet sizing on the flop is that you should size based on the most frequent hand value that the opponent can have, in this case it is anything from a total miss with overcards to about AT high strength, notably omitting hands such as AJ/AQ/AK (would usually raise pre) and then small pocket pairs up to 88. I think a small bet exploits this region of their ranges to the largest extent, getting maximum fold equity per dollar invested when they have a hand like QT and enticing -EV calls from heavy reverse implied odds hands such as 22 and weaker ace highs.

It should be noted that the value of protection on the flop is often really great in live poker. Huge preflop pots are created because its standard to raise to 5-10 big blinds, and the pot is usually multiway, with multiple players with poor unplayable equity who combine to have a great chance to improve to the best hand over a marginal pair (such as 66 in your example). In this hand if each of them has AT and J9, 66 loses the pot on 12 cards, while risking being bluffed out of the pot on 12 more (K, Q, J). It is a must-bet.

I feel like this is the type of texture that low-limit LAG wannabes will attack quite frequently with a pretty weak range, and typically slowplay monsters.

Renton crushed this thread as usual, so I'm mostly interested in what hands you guys think we should be bet-calling against the LAG.

I think you're definitely right about not going so crazy with worrying about our b/f'ing range that we don't bet 66. It should take a few more flop raises before I start getting all MUBSY about it, and even if we gain some certainty that he does bluff raise a lot of flops, b/f'ing 66 is still probably superior to any line that involves checking the flop.

I am surprised you don't think we should b/c strong broadways here, though. I think I would definitely b/c AQ+ without a thought, and only thought AJ was on the brink because we'll be forced to fold on half the broadways, which I think is a terrible plan against this sort of player. With AQ, a K is really the only obvious barrel card that blows us off the hand, since I expect him to play a J really unbalanced since a lot of players won't bet Jx, since their hand isn't worth vbetting now that they've made TPMK (or he'll bet it some obvious thin valuey amount like $55 -> $200 or something).

Then again, AK / TT+ / 98 BDFDs / 7x is already ~50 combos, so it's already getting to be pretty unprofitable for villain to c/r as a bluff. So maybe I only need to sprinkle in some 88-99, overs with BDFDs (especially AJ/AQ/KQss/dd/cc) and a few AJo/AQo when some kind of tell pushes me in that direction (though this doesn't seem likely, since we'd just check it back if we're not going to b/c) for this to turn into a abusively exploitative strategy.

Yeah you can float with ace+broadway card + backdoor flush draw and stuff if you want, but IMO you'd be better off having some evidence that he c/r bluffs a lot before you get too out of line trying to balance your betting range. It's simply a spot where you should be bluffing, betting for protection, and betting for thin value quite a bit, and probably be folding well over 75% of the time to a raise. Against live reg ranges an absolute strength hand like 99 will likely outperform a hand like AJ because people c/r shit like 54, bet 1/4 pot on the turn with it, and then pat themselves on their back when they end up showing down the best hand against your balanced range.

Also, a really problematic thing about consulting GT for hands like this is that GT as we've discussed assumes optimal play versus a nemesis. Not only is there no one even vaguely resembling a nemesis in live poker, we need to understand that a nemesis plays a tighter preflop strategy than virtually ANY live player. In other words, it's perfectly fine to bet an exploitable range on the flop here because villains have invested so much dead preflop money that they have virtually no claim to. There's no sound strategy that villain can exercise to exploit your highly profitable cbet without being so absurdly out of line that you'll certainly know whether AJ will be a call versus him after you've played with him for a couple of hundred hands. The best he can hope to do is to c/r a somewhat balanced frequency that reduces your profitability by some amount. Again, as his pre range is probably severely loose and weak (nearly all live players, even good ones fall prey to this), this will be a very low frequency (less than 8-10% probably).

He was both playing tighter preflop (still not tight enough) and *much* more loose/aggressive postflop than your standard live reg. In other words, I got the sense that any hand he felt was worth committing money to preflop, he felt was worth playing hard postflop.

This doesn't change your advice to wait until we have good reason before we go nuts planning around his c/r range. It just potentially suggests that we can start to adjust our strat a bit.

RE: " ... villains have invested so much dead preflop money that they have virtually no claim to. There's no sound strategy that villain can exercise to exploit your highly profitable cbet ... "

I absolutely agree with this, and in fact think this is the bread and butter of the profitability of playing poker (especially live). I've used the example of players l/c'ing 30%+ of their hands to build very simple models to show how poker is a game of skill and that there is money to be made in the game. (Basically: our range is stronger, we have position, we're playing our hand more deceptively [since we might have the nuts], so even if we have no skill/strat advantage postflop, we will win money; add in the postflop skill advantage, and cha-ching).

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Originally Posted by Renton

Also, a really problematic thing about consulting GT for hands like this is that GT as we've discussed assumes optimal play versus a nemesis.

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This may be why I'm a fish but I don't understand this.

Isn't the point of playing GTO to be unexploitable/indifferent to the actions of an unknown range?

if you're saying we should just play to exploit the leaks in live 1/3 players, then sure. but what about when we don't yet have a handle on how they play?

You can safely assume a lot of things about an unknown live poker player. He's probably far too loose and passive in every spot preflop and postflop. He's probably utterly unaware of his range in most spots, especially uncommon turn and river spots, and you can infer based on the situation that he's likely to be bluffing far too often or not nearly enough.

GTO isn't necessarily all about defensive/unexploitable play. GTO is the natural endpoint of two perfect players adjusting to one another ad infinitum. So they are each exploiting each other to the maximum extent, in a way.

I believe "equilibrium" is the 5-dollar game theory word.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Renton

You can safely assume a lot of things about an unknown live poker player. He's probably far too loose and passive in every spot preflop and postflop. He's probably utterly unaware of his range in most spots, especially uncommon turn and river spots, and you can infer based on the situation that he's likely to be bluffing far too often or not nearly enough.

GTO isn't necessarily all about defensive/unexploitable play. GTO is the natural endpoint of two perfect players adjusting to one another ad infinitum. So they are each exploiting each other to the maximum extent, in a way.

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yeah this is a good post again.

The way I've tried to implement my limited game theory knowledge is mostly in understanding my own range:

In this position, given previous action, my range looks like X; how many value hands do I have here, how much of his range do I extract value from, how much will he call with the weaker parts of his range, how many better hands do I fold out, how often do I need to call given he is bluffing XX% of the time.