Countering this?

[DMorgan]

Def agree that Stu needs to stop honking his mug

[Honeybadger]

Thanks for the comments Patrick.

Tbh I am playing live poker right now, and typing on my iPhone so can't write too much. But I can offer a few brief thoughts on turn and river play. Most will just be repeating what I have already said, but at least it will put it all in one place...

First, note that it costs approximately the same to flat flop and then check-call turn as it does to 3bet the flop. Think carefully about this fact, because it is really important when comparing the two options, and should help you visualise the postflop 'EV equation' more accurately.

Second, note that many robot regs at 100NL (and likely up into mid stakes too) will be one and done on this flop a lot. They'll make what they consider a cheap one time bluff and then completely give up. The fact that you have lots of Kx in your range once you call makes giving up with their air seem very reasonable. It also makes checking back the turn the times they have a FD seem very reasonable too. Against these guys it is very clear that calling the flop and then folding most turns is by far the best line. You find out exactly the same information through flatting as you would through calling, and it costs you a lot less.

There are more aggressive villains that are prepared to barrel the turn sometimes too. Against these types we need to read the board and consider how it interacts with their range. If a second flush draw turns, for example, we should often consider check-calling again since villain should be randomising the frequencies of his turn barrels through equity. If an Ace (and to a lesser extent a Q or J) turns we should also be inclined to call a reasonable chunk of the time. I have already given the reasoning for this. Basically it is that when these turn cards appear villain is actually very unlikely to bet when he hits them (e.g. he is bluffing the flop with AJ and hits an Ace on the turn) since your range is Kx heavy and he will want to get to SD without facing a c/r or suchlike. On other hand, when the turn comes an Ace and villain still has air he is likely to think "great scare card, I'll barrel cos that's a good thing to do on scare cards isn't it?" Finally, if the turn comes a complete blank, no overs and no turned draw... well you might choose to very often fold. This is based on the assumption that villain is NOT a complete maniac and will be randomising his bluffs through equity as well as betting scare cards. Thus villain is much less likely to grow a pair on complete blank turns.

Now I can see you thinking, "Ahhh, but if I am villain I can therefore barrel all the brick turns since this will look super strong and my opponent will therefore have to fold a lot." Well this is the levelling war of course. But the thing is... Villain cannot get too out of line with his reckless zero-equity barreling for the simple reason that you have a lot of Kx in your range. So if villain barrels a blank with complete air and you incorrectly fold... well good luck to him! He has simply been fortunate to run into a part of your range that you are folding. But he is playing vs your range, not just your hand, and he will lose a lot of money when he runs into the strong parts of your range (zero equity barrels are very expensive when they fail since you get no 'discount' on your bluff through having pot equity when called). Of course, if you have a strong read that villain is a maniac and is likely to be recklessly barrelling you here then go ahead and call the turn even on complete blanks.

On the river, you are going to have an even stronger range than you had on the flop and turn, both in perceived range terms and actual range terms. This is because you will have chosen to fold some parts of your range on the flop, and some more of it on the turn, leaving you with mostly very strong stuff left plus some medium stuff. So when you get to the river you can fold a large chunk of the bluff-catcher parts of your range without being 'exploitable'. Villain has had to put a LOT of money in with his air in order to get into a river situation in which he is still only HOPING (guessing) that you have a bluff catcher and will fold it. And considering you will often have a very strong hand by the river you can happily fold many of your bluff catchers without worrying that villain is somehow outplaying you (he isn't!).

Of course, you also use your reads and your understanding of board texture on the river too. If you think that villain is crazy and reckless then by all means adjust and call more often with your bluff catchers than vs more 'normal' opponents. Or if the river comes, for example, an Ace then you might also choose to call a bit more often if you feel your opponent will mindlessly bluff this scare card but would not often value bet thinly if he had actually hit the Ace.

In all this, keep in mind the point I made at the outset... that you can get to the river by calling for close to the same price as 3betting the flop.

What you are doing by playing this way is giving yourself the opportunity to use your poker skills through the streets to make the right decisions. You use your understanding of boards texture, ranges, equities and opponent tendencies to make good calls and good folds as the turn and river play out. And you also use any dynamics and history that you may have with villain to inform your decisions. You cannot be scared to 'play poker' through the streets without the initiative. And you cannot be fearful of having to make tough decisions and judgement calls. Finally, you can't be afraid to 'get it wrong' - especially when very often you have not really got it wrong, you have just been unlucky to run into a particular narrow segment of villain's range. Just as important, you must also realise that your opponent is also having to make difficult decisions and 'guesses', especially considering that you have plenty of strong hands in your range.

I'm going to stop typing now cos it is tough on an iPhone and whilst playing. I realise this is very incomplete. But I hope it has given you a few things to think about playing the turn and river.

[pleno1]

Cinema but will reply quickly lols

The pice of 3betting the flop is generally wayyyyyyyyy smaller than calli a turn bet.

[Honeybadger]

Cinema but will reply quickly lols

The pice of 3betting the flop is generally wayyyyyyyyy smaller than calli a turn bet.

This may be partly true, but not 'wayyyyyy smaller'... although of course it depends on his sizing. Doesn't really change the overall points though. Pretend I said "not too far from the same price" or something like that. My bad for being a little sloppy with my points.

[Honeybadger]

I think what this thread has shown us is that you should not try to run a Dubai bluff* on Stu Barnett.

*A Dubai bluff: "Don't be a sheep; think outside the box like me. Think about the other guy's range properly and you'll see why I'm right"

Def agree that Stu needs to stop honking his mug

Lol at both of these posts :-)

Love the 'Dubai bluff' thing. Also, when you get old like me the only pleasure you can regularly depend on is honking your mug.

[SuuPRlim]

Honks his mug like no-ones business that Stuart.

Lots of Hero's ITT loving the discussion (finally had enough time to actually read Stu's posts!) I have a lot of respect for both Stu's fantastic grasp of poker theory and Pads' relentless quest to "re-shape the wheel" I think both are excellent and whereas it's not possible ever to really "combine" the two being able to read the two contrasting views in the same thread has made great reading for level 2 players like myself

WP for posting the Hand muck!

[cambridgealex]

Honks his mug like no-ones business that Stuart.

Lots of Hero's ITT loving the discussion (finally had enough time to actually read Stu's posts!) I have a lot of respect for both Stu's fantastic grasp of poker theory and Pads' relentless quest to "re-shape the wheel" I think both are excellent and whereas it's not possible ever to really "combine" the two being able to read the two contrasting views in the same thread has made great reading for level 2 players like myself

WP for posting the Hand muck!

Agree! Great thread.

[muckthenuts]

+1, some sick responses in the thread. I folded the bet/folded the flop in the op purely because i didn't know wtf else to do but seriously, picked up a ton from the discussion here. Ty guys

[George2Loose]

Great thread.

[pleno1]

As you mention a few posts ago, the spot is very close, you also said that right now it is clear that 3betting the flop shows a clear +ev decision therefore a profit decision, i.e everytime we 3bet the flop we profit from the decision. I really think that you have udnerestimated initative vs pot size here and thus underestimated how difficult a lot of turn and rivers will be.

When we 3bet the flop, we have established that, as a fact basically, we are showing a profit and thus NOT MAKING A MISTAKE. Whilst calling the flop theoretically sounds nicer and perhaps from a GTO perspective makes a lot mroe sense, I'm very unconvinced that you or I will be able to play every turn and river comfortably and profit from making 2 more good decisions that will essentially be for alot more money than our initial +ev decision and thus potentially will be burning money once or maybe even twice. Without formulating a gameplan for the turn and river here, which is extremely difficult as there are so many varying factors and things that don't make our decisions easily justified, combined with the potential outlay that we are risking I think its pretty clear that 3betting the flop > calling the flop.

Here is the hand again:

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players -
The DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $255.61
Hero (SB): $200
BB: $100.00
UTG: $192.84
MP: $104.58
CO: $96.50

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is SB with
3 folds, BTN raises to $3, Hero raises to $10, 1 fold, BTN calls $7

Flop: ($21.00) (2 players)
Hero bets $12, BTN raises to $24, Hero

Lets say we make it $58 otf with a clear +ev flop 3bet.

Now lets say we call the flop, on the turn there is going to be $75ish in the pot, lets say villain bets $42 this means there is now $84+$75 = $159 with a stacksize behind of $120ish thus an spr of 1.325 which is a super vulnerable stack size to play and one we are never coincident or in control of and thus making decisions that we simply don't know are +ev as a result of giving up initiative.

Simply, playing against good players and giving up initiative is trouble, I understand you will say yes but if we are x about his y range and GTO it makes sense to call, simply keeping initiative, exposing weaknesses in villains game such a c/r these kind of boards and future adjustments that would take pages and pages of writing to really go as deep as it deserves (most important thing in poker )

If in 3 years we are super super confident about our turn and river play (I doubt we will be) then fine lets call turns and play like wizards down the street, in a game where edges are factually very small and most struggle to actually beat the game, giving up an initial profit in a very clear spot is going to be a mistake when we don't have a really solid game plan for the future streets that is not exploitable and easy to play against without punting massively huge exposure with such a weak hand (relatively)

Wrote on phone so apologies if any spelling probs or if I missed something you wrote etc..

[pleno1]

just saw reply ^^ there too which i missed some out of.

But if we're flatting 10's here I assume we're flatting pretty wide so I disagree with your comment about us having a lot of Kx in our range, I think combotronically we really don't and if he gets a price of us folding everything but Kx on the river then I'm sure he's happy with the amount of combos he needs to fold out to show a profit and its a pretty clear turn/river bet/jam for him and thus makes our flop call bad.

[pleno1]

btw generally I'd never argue theoretically with Stu as he probably crushes anybody in the world theoretically as alot of it is just GTO which I assume he is peerfect with.

I think simply in 2012 playing GTO is not enough and actually there are lots of spots where we have to pass up potentially future +ev lines and tough +ev decisions to show immediate profit and sidereal our immediate equity and not put un-needed stress on a pretty weak range and thus forcing massive exposure (200bs) with a relatively weak holding that if played perfectly by villain will be folding alot (losing money)

Remember jsut because your flop call may make you money long term if your turn and river calls are losing money then your initial decision doesn't matter as you will be losing more money throughout the whole hand than you will be making with the initial decision. If we were playing vs somebody with clear reads (op wasn't) that took this line as a bluff then ofc there immediately becomes a lot of value from taking the higher initial profit with the intention of seeking further and larger value for the rest of the hand.

My last comments on the hand btw.

[discomonkey]

havent read through everything you have written yet, but this part "When we 3bet the flop, we have established that, as a fact basically, we are showing a profit and thus NOT MAKING A MISTAKE" is very illogical and in itself is a leak.

you can be making a mistake in that you are not maximising your profit, even if you are winning a little bit.... extreme example, sb limps in 10,000bb deep you shove aces from the bb and he folds...... by the logic you suggested this would not be a mistake because you are making a profit despite effectively minimising your profit in all but a minute amount of circumstances.

anyways... onto reading the rest

[Honeybadger]

Patrick, I am in process of putting the kids to bed so really can't respond to your detailed posts properly yet. And they deserve a PROPER analysis since you have spent loads of time and thought on them. I will look at them properly and give my views later tonight (or maybe tomorrow).

Just quickly though, I'd like to point out something. You start off by saying:

As you mention a few posts ago, the spot is very close

I said the opposite of this actually, and I don't think the spot is very close:

I agree that when you don't have much info on an opponent's frequencies it is  sometimes good to play a hand in such a way that you don't make any mistakes on future streets. But this applies mostly to spots where:

A) There is an information asymmetry - i.e. your opponent has more info on your tendencies than you have on his. Thus he is likely to make fewer mistakes than you are on later streets. And,

B) The spot is very close anyway, so you might as well take the option that likely leads to fewer mistakes.

Neither of these is the case here.

Last point:

btw generally I'd never argue theoretically with Stu as he probably crushes anybody in the world theoretically as alot of it is just GTO which I assume he is peerfect with.

This is so far from true it is a joke! I am only starting out on GTO stuff, and am very very very far from being expert in it - and deffo don't crush anybody in the world!! I have had plenty of NLHE coaching from a guy who IS an expert in theory though, which is why I likely think about poker (well NLHE anyway) in a rather different way to most players. In other ways I am more old school than a lot of you guys though. I am an old git and started playing before people talked about things like polarised ranges, equity or floats. Even the term cbet was not invented yet!

Thing is... the vast majority of the stuff I have written in this thread has been nothing to do with theory and everything to do with practical poker play. Obviously there is an element of theory behind any post that anyone makes, but I haven't really been thinking in GTO terms at all, I have just been thinking logically.

[skolsuper]

btw generally I'd never argue theoretically with Stu as he probably crushes anybody in the world theoretically as alot of it is just GTO which I assume he is peerfect with.

I think simply in 2012 playing GTO is not enough and actually there are lots of spots where we have to pass up potentially future +ev lines and tough +ev decisions to show immediate profit and sidereal our immediate equity and not put un-needed stress on a pretty weak range and thus forcing massive exposure (200bs) with a relatively weak holding that if played perfectly by villain will be folding alot (losing money)

This line also suggests you don't really grasp what GTO means. If you're suggesting the game is evolving past GTO then you're wrong, as the game gets tougher the correct play will tend more and more often towards the GTO line as people have fewer leaks to exploit. When you deviate from GTO you have to be doing it to exploit a leak in your opponent, if you don't know what that leak is then you're essentially just guessing and likely to be exploited yourself.

In this example, you say in general people have a leak where they raise this board too often, you think the exploitative line with TT is to 3bet them, Stu thinks the exploitative line is to call. The argument isn't about theory vs flair or art vs science etc, it's just that you disagree which line is most exploitative. It should be easily settled within a couple of pages of maths. At the minute I happen to agree with Stu but would like to be persuaded otherwise as I would definitely have learnt something new if you could.