TPGK with OESFD vs Complete Unknown

Poker Stars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.10 BB (6 handed) - Poker Stars Converter Tool from http://www.flopturnriver.com/

UTG ($37.06)
MP ($10.67)
CO ($12.72)
Button ($10)
SB ($13.88)
Hero (BB) ($14.73)

Preflop: Hero is BB with Q, K
2 folds, CO raises $0.30, 2 folds, Hero calls $0.20

Flop: ($0.65) 2, Q, 10 (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $0.45, Hero calls $0.45

Turn: ($1.55) J (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $0.90, Hero??


Folding seems bad, raising seems bad. How are y'all playin' it?

It's my personal opinion that you would get much more value out of this discussion If you said hero has XxYy on the flop versus a villain who plays optimally, what is the GTO way to play your entire range?

Should we ever lead? If so, how can we balance that range while still leaving our checking range strong enough that we can plausibly c/r with a good frequency? Etc.

From there, you can place your specific hand within that range and then make some very basic, very high-level adjustments to how an unknown player at 10nl who is up and opened the CO for 3bbs on the first hand differs from GTO, and play ever-so-slightly exploitatively from there.

As is, I think you're just getting a lot of advice on "tough" situations (which tend to be in the minority of poker hands and tend to be the lowest leverage ones, tbh), and all of these hands are relatively strong PF hands that are hitting good flops.

That's just my 2c. I know I've had conversations with some people offline about this sort of approach to HH study, and not everyone necessarily agrees, but I think this flop in particular is a fascinating situation and an extremely important one.

Now, as for advice on this specific HH, I think this approach will really help you make heads or tails of it:

http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...ts-191189.html

Like a good student of game theory, think through all of the potential scenarios 1-by-1. Let's say you call here, now think through each of the cards that help you (Q/K/9/A/club). For each of those rivers, how often are you getting more value out of worse? Now think through rivers that miss your hand entirely: how often are you making a mistake (either folding the best hand or committing more money when behind) versus how often he is making a mistake?

Also, which player has the advantage in the following areas: skill/reads/information, position, range strength/initiative?

Read up on all that, think through all that, then get back to me. I actually think there is a crystal clear answer here, so we get to play a game of guess-what's-in-my-pocket.

Without any reads I dunno if we should have a donking range or not.

This is my preflop range: QQ-77,AJs+,KQs,AQo-AJo,KQo

This is my proposed "balanced strategy" without a donking range.


Check raise value

QQ,TT

Check call

AQ, KQ, AKss

Check fold

77-99, AJ

Check raise bluff

AK, AJss

I have no clue about how to work out a GTO strategy with my range. I guess I should just fold on the turn since raising is going to be -EV, and so is calling.

I would say villain's turn betting range is: QQ+,TT,22,98s - along with some flushdraws.


I think we need a thread on how to review hands effectively. I've tried to do HH analyses before, I've spent like 40mins or so on the one hand trying to break down my range etc, but I've never gained any practical knowledge that I can apply at the table and turn into $ in my cashier. Seems like a waste of time if you're not doing it right. This could actually make for a good article by Spoon, if he wants to school us donks on how to get good.

Originally Posted by seven-deuce

Folding seems bad, raising seems bad. How are y'all playin' it?

well you nailed it so just call.. I also 3b pre vs non-nits

I don't mind the call pre. I probably 3b some and call some, as it's nice to have a hand as strong as this in our calling range sometimes.

As played, seems like an easy call down and see the river. No reason to raise the turn imo. If you're raising the turn are you bluffing? Doesn't make sense to bluff with your particular hand, so just call.

Originally Posted by seven-deuce

This is my preflop range: QQ-77,AJs+,KQs,AQo-AJo,KQo

This is an insanely strong flatting range to a CO open. If you're 3bing no worse than KK+/AKo for value, then you can hardly ever 3b while keeping a balanced range. That, combined with the fact that you're flatting no worse than KQo, means that your BBs are free money.

Now, massive caveat: it's rare that you'll find 10NL players who steal nearly as wide as they can, so you might not much get exploited with this overall strategy. My point is that the GTO strategy is the Horse: if you were to truly master it, you'd be able to play that style without a single adjustment at all stakes against all opponents and you'd be effectively guaranteed to profit.

The Cart is your exploitative adjustments that you make to certain players/player types/stakes. So playing like a nit in the blinds at 10NL is actually a "fancier" play than 3b'ing a garbage ace. Which certainly doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it, but I think understanding the standard is prime and making practical adjustments is secondary. Otherwise--if you don't know what the standard play is--how can you have any fucking clue what you're talking about when you say (hypothetically) "I'm making x departure from GTO because y villain has z exploitable playstyle"?

To tie this back to our current discussion: if you were to have a solid understanding of the process of making exploitative adjustments, I don't think you'd see any sense in flatting AKs while 3b'ing AKo. I understand the SSNL logic behind it (AKs plays better OOP in smaller pots than AKo does so you don't have to 3b, but you HAVE to 3b AKo, or else you're a dumbdumb). This is a minor example, but I thought it was the clearest one.

I agree with surviva, that your range is way too tight.

OP - what is your fold to steal from SB and BB?

I'm on the laptop right now but I'll get that stat later. This is my donk logic for how my range is set up. Brace yourselves...

Ok, so I like to have a stronger range than my opponents OOP, because of my positional disadvantage. Vs unknowns I only 3bet KK+ for value with a 3bet bluff range of like A2-A6s and 22-55 OOP, when I see somebody flatting 3bets with AJ KT or 98s etc I instantly adjust and 3bet somwhere in the region of TT+ AQ+ for value.

Is there not more value in calling a hand such as KQs rather than 3betting it, unless the person is continuing a serious amount to 3bets. Since when we both flop a the same pair he can value town himself and KQs has great playability for semi-bluffs.

I remember stoving QQ vs JJ+ AK before and it isn't a profitable stack off preflop, and very few people are stacking off that wide preflop at 10nl anyway. That's why I don't 3bet them until I see they have a 3bet calling range and I know I can raise for value.

Originally Posted by griffey24

No reason to raise the turn imo. If you're raising the turn are you bluffing? Doesn't make sense to bluff with your particular hand, so just call.

Bluffing / vbetting doesn't seem like a terribly useful dichotomy when we're in a spot where we're either behind 40/60 or ahead 60/40. It seems like other concepts, while generally more secondary, become the prime focus: protecting our equity, reducing our mistake potential, maximizing our opponent's mistake potential, etc.

I think there are a lot of very similar spots where you are so likely to make so many bad folds/calls on the river that you're better off raising because that just gives you the best path to playing the hand well (again, since you're hovering so close to 50% equity against most any hand, it doesn't so much matter how it affects villain's range as it matters how it affects our own range).

I just happen to think in this particular spot that the cards villain is likely to fire on the river overlap enough with our outs that we won't get in too much trouble too often. We'll make mistakes for sure on K/8/spade rivers, but other than that, we can comfortably continue on 9/A/club rivers and comfortably fold on any blank or paired board rivers. Q river feels pretty gross, but he's rarely betting the turn with worse Qs, and it's a terrible card to bluff, so we're probably not often making a mistake by folding.

Anyway, I think villains turn betting range is very strong here, he has all of the position and initiative advantages, he has a million nuts in his range while it's tough for us to have anything better than top two, and there are 3 bets still left behind. So we probably shouldn't even have a c/r range and just focus on having a very strong bluff catching range. Our outs, then, are probably best seen in this case not as chances to hit huge hands that you can use to roll him over the barrel, but are just outs to a very strong bluff catching hand. This hand works perfectly well for that range because the rivers we call/fold on are the exact inverse of the cards we call/fold on with the rest of our range, especially two pair.

On a side note, I'm not sure how to reduce our fold rate on 8 rivers. I suppose we'll just have to cry call a lot with two pair. Should we even be calling down with KQcc?

Originally Posted by seven-deuce

I remember stoving QQ vs JJ+ AK before and it isn't a profitable stack off preflop, and very few people are stacking off that wide preflop at 10nl anyway. That's why I don't 3bet them until I see they have a 3bet calling range and I know I can raise for value.

Well, when you come across opponents whose CO open% is double their UTG open%, you're going to want to be able to defend your blinds with as many hands as you can sustain. A big part of that strategy will be 3b'ing a wide range. If you're 3b'ing a wide range, there will be a lot of hands that you're going to auto-fold to a 4b. If you're defending your blinds a lot, then villain might very well adjust by 4b'ing a lot. If you have so few value 3bs that your range consists almost entirely of 3b/f's, then there is nothing you can do then sit back and watch you get manhandled.

Conclusion: if you're defending your BB wide, then villain might very well start 4b'ing. We can't say for sure whether he will or won't, and we can't say whether he will be 4b'ing garbage that will fold to a 5b or if he'll suddenly start thinking 88 is the nuts, but we can say that in general, when you defend more, you'll see more 4bs (though it's tough to pick and choose which opponents will do what exactly). When opponents start 4b'ing more, you'll see profits with QQ, either because it's getting a lot of 4b/f's or because villain is calling lighter or because it is often winning when stacks get in.

The idea isn't so much to frustrate them with so many 3bs that by the time they play back, you have QQ, and you can say "LOLtrappedU"; the idea is to be able to play a wide range of hands while remaining *indifferent* to how he plays back.

It's nice that you want to be an adaptive player and make quick adjustments to your opponents' playstyles, but when you're playing 500+ hands/hour, you have to be realistic about how much you can *really* keep with the game dynamics between each and every opponent. And at 10NL, you're generally not getting the 1k+ hand histories that justify doing the off-table study of your opponents necessary to make nuanced exploitative plans.

I mean, obviously don't 3b nits with a wide value range; don't stress too much about defending your blinds against players whose Steal% is identical to their PFR; iso 50/10 fish with a wide range IP; etc. Those high-level understandings are important. But don't go thinking that you'll be able to effectively change your 3b'ing strategy 4 times over the first 500 hands against an opponent based on whether or not he folded the last two times, and *definitely* don't rely on seeing too many showdowns, especially with the bottom of his range, so you can never really know exactly how any opponent is playing.

All of that being said, I want to reemphasize that if villain doesn't open the CO a whole lot, then none of this matters.