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strategy… The Absurd Game Theory of Chopped Boards A “chopped board” in poker is one where the community cards make up the best… Playing Limped Pots as the SB in MTTs MTT confrontations between the small blind and big blind force no-limit players into uncomfortable situations,… The Art of Learning Poker In his book The Art of Learning, chess and Push Hands champion Josh Waitzkin describes… Is Donk Betting for Donkeys? “Donk betting”, or betting from out of position into the player who was the aggressor… Delayed C-Betting This is a companion piece to Probe Betting. It stands on its own, but understanding… Probe Betting As far as rules of thumb go in poker, “check to the raiser” is a… ICM and Blind Battles: The Big Blind This is a companion piece to this article on the SB’s strategy for blind vs… ICM and Blind Battles: The Small Blind ICM incentivizes more conservative play, which means that at stages of the tournament where risk… The Initial Bettor’s Advantage The mathematics of poker holds a little-known secret: the first bettor enjoys better bluffing odds… Mastering the Chiplead: The Scalpel and the Sledgehammer When you have a lot of chips at a final table or in another situation… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in Cash Games Our never-ending quest for money and fame leads us to the flop. We open the… How ICM Impacts Restealing From The Blinds When I first started working with preflop solves, one of the features I found most… The ICM Benefits of Late Registration in Poker Tournaments Why do so many professional poker players register late for tournaments when they clearly would… Flop Heuristics: OOP C-Betting in MTTs Playing against an in-position cold-caller is dramatically different–and dramatically more difficult–than playing against a caller… Counterintuitive Calls Solver outputs such as those provided by GTO Wizard are models of no-limit hold ‘em,… How To Negotiate Final Table Deals Most people’s first introduction to the Independent Chip Model (ICM) is not from studying bubble… How does ICM impact PKO strategy? If you have read The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments you already know why we… Understanding Blockers in Poker Often when looking through a solver’s meticulously crafted grid of deception, one of the following… Flop Heuristics: IP Cold-Caller in MTTs A Cold-call refers to the act of calling a preflop raise when you don’t close… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in MTTs In the world of poker, the flop is a crucial stage of the game that… Flop Heuristics for Defending the Blinds in MTTs The field of Game Theoretically Optimal poker is extensive, and thus, to simplify our strategy,… Multiway strategy in Progressive Knockout Tournaments Progressive Knockout (PKO) tournaments are much more complex than traditional MTTs. The fact that players… How To Calculate Raises In Poker One of the most frequently asked questions in poker is how to calculate the size… Principles of River Play The river offers the least complicated strategy of any betting street. With no further cards… Exploitative Dynamics GTO solutions are designed to be unexploitable, performing reasonably well no

AK-AT bet big sometimes to get value from weaker Ax. We see big bet bluffs from hands like QJ ♠ and K4 ♠ because there are no obvious draws out there, but these hands can make runner-runner straights or flushes. This is how the BTN responds when all the criteria are exactly the same, but we are at that final table with ICM pressure influencing the action: At first glance, nothing has changed, this is once again a range bet making the most of a significant range advantage in favor of the BTN. But on closer inspection, something significant has happened, the BTN no longer mixes their actions. They almost exclusively choose the smallest bet size . This is the ‘ Downward Drift ’ effect alluded to at the start of this article. Let’s compare the frequencies strategies side-by-side to visualize this effect: Downward Drift refers to how solver actions seem to drift downwards towards more passive lines when ICM is a factor. Big bets become small bets, small bets become calls, close calls become folds, etc. A lot of players observe that bet sizes go down in these spots and assume that it is because you are trying to make your opponent fold as cheaply as possible. The opposite is true, solvers are always trying to build a pot when they’re ahead, even when ICM is a factor. Betting bigger would mean the opponent folds too often. They also bet small as a defence against check/raising, the solver does not want to bet bigger, get check/raised by a larger amount and face a horrible decision for, potentially, their tournament life. Solvers are always trying to build pots when ahead, even when under ICM pressure, but they manage the pot by taking lower variance lines. Response to flop bet comparison Let’s move one step further and see how the Big Blind responds to the most common bet sizing of 25% pot in both instances. First, let’s examine the ChipEV example: We see BB calls 42% of the time with pretty much anything in the range that has flopped some sort of equity, and folding 48% of the time with the complete misses. The check-raises happen just over 10% of the time with strong top pair and sets for value. The XR bluffs are hands like 52 ♠ with a gutshot and backdoor flush draw. Now let’s compare that to the ICM example: At first glance, they look very similar, but on closer inspection there is less folding and more calling. This might confuse many of you who would assume there is more folding in the ICM range. The Big Blind covers the BTN, so they can afford to call more and will be able to exert more ICM pressure on later streets. The other notable difference is that this example has more check-raising. Over 12% compared to 10% of the time. This is a small difference in terms of the way the whole range is played, but a 20% increase in the amount of hands that can check/raise. There are slightly more

and that is because there are so many players left to act that uh you know hands like Ace Coin suited are going to lose value when flattened when you play them as a flat because other players can come in uh behind for a very cheap price and uh at the top of our value range is not playing well multi-way so this type of range when when an EP range opens and we three vet uh our the top 10 of our hands just really like the three bet uh and then we're folding everything else and then if we look at the three bets from light position it's polar so we're three betting the best hands and then we're also three betting uh some Bluffs that are significantly worse than our flatting range and this is because Flats can be so profitable for a late position player versus an early position razor hands like Jack 10 suited on the button hands like king queen off on the button six seven suited on the button all of these hands are printing uh by by just calling so they those types of hands want to do that and then we also want to have three bed Bluffs you know generally what you're going to see here is that when you're three betting you're almost always going to have half value half Bluffs and um you know that type of balance is very difficult to play against and maximizes the EV for the three better so 60 big blinds we're going to be sizing down 3x sizing we're still going to keep maintain the same ratio of value to Bluffs roughly 50 50. um ep3 bets once again are linear and we're going to look we're going to look at examples of all these uh and then lp3 bets are polar Bluffs are pulled from a sex suited King X suited off suit High cards with nice uh removal and then keep in mind that when we're three betting off of like a 60 big one stack or a 30 big line stack the spr sax pot ratio post slop is going to be uh very small meaning um that you don't our Bluffs don't need to be making flushes um you know and straights a lot Simply Having High cards in these types of pots will be sufficient hand like king queen off uh plays really nicely as a three bet with short SBR usually a king or a queen uh will will be good uh you know that that's things change a lot when you play 200 big blind poker you your your Bluffs are uh hands that can make us like massive hands rather than just pairs so in position 30 big blinds 3x sizing again we are doing less bluffing as the stack size decreases we can't Bluff as much uh if that opens the doors to just getting four bet shoved on a lot so we just have to have more value and you see this in

something that i know works for me i've seen what happens when i'm in the rushy needy um scarcity kind of mindset there's limited amounts of stuff versus when i'm in that calm collected grateful abundance mentality that as long as i'm at my best and i show up good things will happen if it means i miss an hour the value that i'll gain for the extra five hours of play because i got back to a good state of mind in that hours worth the hour that i gave up as opposed to you know six hours of b game is not worth five hours of a game might not even be worth three hours of a game um so that's kind of the the reasoning behind that clifton but your system your approach probably totally works for you right and if it ain't broke don't fix it it's that classic old saying um so but i i know that mindset because there was also a time when i was playing uh the sunday major on full tilt way way back in the day maybe 80 people left in tournament and i did not have a p-jar with me i went to the bathroom when i came back i had missed one hand and it was aces and i would have got it all in against two opponents who had kings and queens and i would have held so it can go both ways and uh back in that time i was not happy about missing that hand uh i was very upset about missing that hand i didn't think about well it could have just as easily been me with the queens or with the kings i just thought i can't believe i missed that that was my one chance i think it was the brawl back in the day so i i understand the uh don't want to miss the hand mindset clifton i totally i totally get it um any other questions that anyone has before we wrap happy to answer um and again if you want more talk on world series of poker planning the trip how to stay in the best uh state of mind and all that follow me on twitter gripspoker and i'll be posting a announcement about that whenever i lock in a date my unscheduled self okay looks like we don't have any more questions so i am going to end the webinar um thank you again to everyone who tuned in and for the replay aaron it will be uploaded to jonathan little's youtube channel as soon as possible probably within the next two days he's pretty on top of that um so if you're subscribed there you'll be set and we'll be tweeting the replays and all that stuff you will definitely be informed i really appreciate you all sharing your evening with me tonight glad you found this presentation educational and valuable it's a real honor to get to serve you and share my poker knowledge with you

say you need to vary your play this is one of the considerations. Your line of betting, I bet out the flop but check the Turn and then bet the River in the first hand. I bet out the flop and the Turn on the second hand. On the third hand, I checked the flop but bet out the Turn and River. How is an opponent going to get a read on what my hand is? When you do have to show down a hand, your better opponents will remember what the betting patterns occurred for the type of hand you showed. This is what you need to vary in your play. There is much more to write about the game inside the game. The best way to learn the meta-game is to play more poker and then analyze the hands by replaying your hand histories. Poker database programs such as Poker Tracker or Poker Office are essential programs if you want to advance your play fast. Another way you can advance your poker skills and help them become more intuitive is to read as much poker strategy as possible. One of the best places on the web for poker strategy discussions these days is the 2+2 forum. For poker news, you want to visit Recreation Gambling Poker. There are many poker books on the market but I will list the most important books at the end of this e-book. I suggest you include these into your library. Practice reading what level of thinking your opponent is using. Think in terms of lines of play. Finally, what your table image is and how you can best exploit that image. Finally, memorizing all the probabilities and numbers will only take your game so far. Many of the best players know how to play their opponent. They understand that categorizing an opponent is a big part of the game. They know when to lay back and not try to bluff a calling station. But, they know when to go over the top against a constant bluffer. These are the decisions that cannot be taught in a book but have to be learned by experience and discussion with other poker players. Online Tournament Strategy Tournaments are a fun and interesting way to play poker. For beginners, someone who has played less than 1000 to 5000 hands, I suggest playing smaller buy in tournaments. $1-10 buy-ins are small tournaments. This way you can observe how to play poker for a small amount of money for a long period of time. In the beginning of the tournament, there are many loose players who don't care if they lose the cheap buy in. Players who are playing K 7 off suite, Q 8 off suite under the gun or any Ace little out of position. These are sometimes high stake ring players who want to blow off steam, inexperienced players or just people who want to gamble. Unless you have the best hand or the experience to read these players stay away from them. First Stage There are

which is going to happen sometimes you know you're going to want to get in some games that are tougher because you want to push yourself test yourself improve your game in that case sometimes you want to sit to the left of the regulars and let them have position on the spot this is especially useful when some of the regulars get pretty maniacal or when you have an extremely loose player who wants to isolate the spot a lot because then the pots will always be very inflated before the action comes to you and you can just play a really solid style it doesn't mean you get to play as many hands doesn't mean you get to be involved in the action as much but it does mean that when you do get involved you're probably gonna have the best of it and the pot is going to be very inflated okay so the more familiar you are with the player pool the better decisions your your decisions will be about where to sit this is the most valuable thing the more time you invest getting to know the players picking up stats labeling players making reads you're gonna know who the spots are and if you know who the biggest donators are in a lineup or on the poker site or at the location that's going to Trump everything else because you know when that player is in the game you need to get in the game I used to play on a smaller site that had a couple of Players whose vpip were a hundred remember agents Jew was the best man he was VIP was 100. we had another player called Queen desert who had a v-pip of about 88 and would only Min raise and if you potted it they would Min raise you back and so you always knew you could see the flop for cheap and they typically would keep raising post flop and you could get a lot of action post Swap and have high implied odds so whenever that player was in the game needed to get on that game didn't matter what the players per flop was I knew those were the spots we'd always try to get in that game and the more you know your players the more you'll know when it's just a must get into game even if you can't get you know the Jesus seat or anywhere close to it sometimes a player is just splashy enough that having any seat on the table is good enough now without additional information when finding the best table online look for high players per flop percentage High average pot and sub 100 big blind Stacks nothing stopping you from opening the tables taking a look at them I like to open you know Six Tables tile them look for players label the obvious wrecks so that I have more information for next time always pays dividends uh when you are choosing your seat if you have a

Figure 39 - A Thought Process for End of Action Spots.

Both Player E and Player F have about $1,500. If they're willing to call a $600 bet with those stacks, would they really fold for a $1,200 bet? Probably not. They might just view this as a fine chance to go all-in and double up. You shouldn't be terrified of that result, but you also shouldn't yet want to risk that big a portion of your stack on T♥T♦. If you call, and they call, you'll know they've got something, but you've left yourself a way out of the hand. That's a good play. Action: You call for $610. Player E folds, but Player F puts in another $610 to call. The pot is now $1,940. Flop: Q♦Q♣6♥ Question: What do you do? Answer: First, note that the flop is a good one for you. It's much better that two queens came rather than, say, a king and a queen, because it's much less likely that your opponent holds a card that matches the board. (If king-queen flops, there are a total of six kings and queens outstanding. But there are now only two queens outstanding. Remember these little factoids - they matter!) You must bet here to protect your hand. To see why, imagine that you check instead. He may then check as well, and you may have given him a free card that beats you. That's a mortal sin in poker. How much should you bet? The standard rule for a continuation bet, half the pot, doesn't apply here. The main pot is capped, and the side pot between you and Player F currently has zero chips in it. Instead, look at your chips and Player F's chips. You've got $3,430 left, and F has $1,030. You want to bet enough so that he's not getting the right odds to call, but little enough so that he's enticed to call. A bet of $500 seems about right. Action: You bet $500, and Player F folds his hand. The button turns over 4♥4♦, and fourth and fifth street come the 8♥ and the 5♦ respectively. You win the pot. Hand 5-16 114 Situation: Early in a one-table satellite. Your hand: T♥T♦ Action to you: Players A and B fold. Question: Do you raise, and if so, how much? Answer: As we've discussed, you certainly want to raise, and you need to put in a good-sized raise, because you really don't want to see calls behind you. Three to five times the big blind is a good amount, varying the bet so it's not so obvious what you're doing. Action: You raise to $150. Players D, E, F, and the small blind all fold. The big blind puts in $240, making it $120 to you. The pot is now $435. What do you do now? Answer: The pot's offering you between 3-to-l and 4-to-l, and your T♥T♦ might be the best hand since he could be raising with something like ace-king or ace-queen. You're only a little more than a 4-to-l underdog if he actually has an overpair, so the price is

not gonna we don't have a huge portion of value of like middling equity hands we either kind of have air or we have a pretty strong hand so i'm sure we're showing it some that 25 with like weaker queen x or some low fours that want some protection but in general our sixes want to go for a really big size here so when we put a lot of money in the pot oop we need to have equity right uh and so we're going to see that in the solver especially with if we think about um like like proper runouts and proper high uv rivers we want to have a heart in our head when we're betting right if if we have five three oh no heart we have less high ev rivers that we need to buff on right whereas if we have five three oh with the heart we need to bluff on more runouts more and more rivers in the situation so having a heart can be really nice and spot plus uh so even though it's not added equity we're gonna have uh more high ev rivers so that's gonna turn this hand into a really high frequency turnpro so i go with the pot size bet the opponent calls let's look at that decision point in the server so we have check really heavy check board for position massive off suit six disadvantage and we get the four spades here's the offseason sixes i was talking about um and you see that our six is gonna put a lot of money in the pot now we're gonna have some stickers that don't want to put a lot of money in the pot and that's gonna be like queen six when we're blocking their top pairs right um and a6 the fun thing about a6 is one who gets cooler there he's highs when he goes check check and two when you have an ace in your hand um you're blocking your opponent's turn checkbox right so it weights them slightly to having more non-ace high hands which means they're going to bluff versus your check slightly more often than for example when you have 10 6 right so that's why the a6 finds tracks the queen 6 finds small bats and checks and then most years want to put a lot of money in the pot and then you're stripping some bet 25 that we talked about with like decent queen x some poor's the one protection uh et cetera and then if we think about where your bluff should come from well the rule is okay we need equity right so our first blocks are going to come from where they come from our flush drops they have the most equity so we look at our hearts and all of our non-shutdown value hearts are putting money in the pot like a huge portion of them right these have the pair of pores with them so they have shown on value a

Diagram 76 Diagram 77

Suppose, in a cash game with 100BB effective stacks, you open J ♥ 9 ♦ on the BTN and are called by BB. You continuation bet a Q ♦ 6 ♥ 5 ♠ flop and follow it up with a big bet on a K ♠ turn. Your opponent calls again, and the river is the 2 ♣ . Should you bluff or give up? 🤔💭 You might have an easy answer to this question if BB were one of your regular opponents. Karim never pays off big bets, so against him it’s an easy bluff. Linda hates the idea of being bluffed and loves seeing your cards, so you won’t try to bluff her. If you didn’t know your opponent, you might rely on a simple heuristic such as, “If they were going to fold, they would have folded the turn” or “If they were strong enough to call, they would have raised the turn.” These are all exploitative decision-making processes. They rely on guessing your opponent’s intentions and playing accordingly. If you guess correctly, you come out ahead. But if you guess wrong–if Karim is fed up with your bluffing or Linda is about to quit and doesn’t want to risk a big loss–then your opponents exploit you, even if they don’t realize it. The unexploitable or game theoretic approach is to avoid giving your opponents easy opportunities to exploit you. Instead of trying to predict what they will do, it focuses on making your own play unpredictable so that there is no single best play for your opponent . Unpredictable does not mean random. If you have 43 last to act on a Q ♦ 6 ♥ 5 ♠ K ♣ 2 ♣ board, you should bet. Checking the nuts would certainly be unpredictable, but it would not be profitable. Unpredictable does not mean random. Likewise, if you have K8, you should check. It’s too strong to bluff but not strong enough to bet for value. You don’t need to be unpredictable with this hand; just check and take your equity at showdown. Bluffing with the right hands, at the right frequency, is what makes you unpredictable and difficult to play against. Your opponent may be able to predict that you will always bet your strong hands, always check your medium hands, and sometimes bet carefully chosen bluffs, but this information does not give them obvious best plays. When you bet, they do not know which type of hand you have this time. Thus, when they hold hands that will beat your bluffs but lose to your value bets, there is no way for them to outplay you. Your strategy offers them no obviously correct best play. Here is the GTO Wizard solution for the BTN in this scenario: Do you see how some hands clearly prefer betting or checking, but others, like your J ♥ 9 ♦ , sometimes bet and sometimes check? This is a result of making no assumptions about your opponent . Unlike with K8, there is no “right” play with J9. The best you

read it thoroughly. It's a good treatment of a difficult subject. Rather than try to duplicate the material in Caro's book, I'm instead going to pass on some of my insights into spotting and using tells. I group physical tells into three categories: 1. Facial expressions 2. General body language 3. Hand motions Of the three, I've found that hand motions are the most reliable and revealing. Although most players are keenly aware of the need to control their facial expressions, they don't pay as much attention to what they do with their hands, particularly as they move chips into the pot. While other players are looking at faces, I like to watch hands. Basically, I'm looking to see if players handle their chips and move chips into the pot any differently with strong or weak hands. If I see something, I assign it a high degree of reliability until I get evidence to the contrary. In my 39 experience, facial expressions and body language are more treacherous. I do watch for them, and you should too, but I need a bit more evidence before I'm willing to say I've spotted a true tell than with the hand motions. I do have two useful rules in this area, however. Here they are: 1. If a player seems weak, I'll give more credence to a suspected tell. This is just common sense. A good player will naturally have spent more time thinking about tells and concealing them than a weak player. So if I pick up what seems to be a tell, but the player is otherwise playing a strong game, I'm suspicious. If I get the same tell from someone who seems to be an obvious fishcake, I'll act on it more quickly. 2. Weak means strong, and strong means weak. This insight is straight from Caro's book, and it's the single best guide to evaluating the tells of a relatively unknown player. When humans want to conceal their true intentions, they tend to act the opposite of what they really mean. Dissembling is such a powerful innate drive that it can overcome a strong conscious desire to act in some randomly mysterious fashion. Just watch any televised tournament final, and you'll see that in almost every case where the players seem to be acting, they're acting in the opposite fashion from the real strength of their hand. The skill of spotting physical tells is most important if you're a participant in a money game that meets on a regular schedule with the same players each time, or if you frequent a card club with a clientele that doesn't change much. In that case, you'll meet the same players over and over again, and you'll have plenty of opportunities to create a notebook on each player. If you mostly play tournament poker the situation is a little different. Now you're going to see individual players much less frequently. With the explosion in the number of players showing up at tournaments, you might easily play in a tournament and not meet a single

an essential tournament skill. It is extremely rare to… When To Ladder in Tournaments In my last two articles, I wrote about the effect field size and payout structure… How Payout Structures Impact ICM Last time we discussed the ICM considerations in game selection, we looked at field size,… C-Betting IP in 3-Bet Pots When you three-bet before the flop and the original raiser calls from out of position,… C-Betting OOP in 3-Bet Pots Continuation betting from out of position can be a dicey proposition in single-raised pots. Cold… Dynamic Sizing: A GTO Breakthrough Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Dynamic Sizing Benchmarks Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Understanding The Impact Of Field Size On ICM In Poker When people talk about game selection in multi-table tournaments (MTTs), they invariably talk about the… Defending vs BB Check-Raise on Paired Flops This is a companion piece to Attacking Paired Flops from the BB; you will get… Mastering PKO Final Tables Final tables can be the most exciting and rewarding phase of a tournament, and being… Attacking Paired Flops From the BB Paired flops present unique challenges to both a preflop raiser and a BB caller. The… KK vs QQ vs JJ at WSOP Main Event With only fourteen players remaining in the 2023 WSOP Main Event and blinds of 400K/800K/800K,… Responding to BB Squeezes You open raise, someone calls, and the BB squeezes. How should you construct your strategy?… Crushing a Top HUNL Poker Bot In 2022, Philippe Beardsell and Marc-Antoine Provost, a team of Canadian programmers from Quebec, developed… GTO Wizard AI Explained We are excited to introduce GTO Wizard AI, formerly known as Ruse, the world’s best… GTO Wizard AI Benchmarks GTO Wizard has combined the power of artificial intelligence with traditional solving methods to bring… Table Management in PKOs Perhaps the most important strategic consideration in Progressive Knockout Tournaments (PKOs) is making sure you… Overcalling From the BB In poker, overcalling refers to calling a bet or raise after another player has also… Understanding Which Mistakes Cost You the Most Money I am fortunate enough to have worked for many years with the mental game coach… Overbetting The Flop in Cash Games Although most commonly analyzed on turns and rivers, flop overbetting can be a devastating weapon… Using New Skills at the Poker Table How many times has it happened to you that you make a mistake only to… Flatting Ace-X Hands Shortstacked Playing out of position is tricky, but it’s an essential part of tournament play. With… Playing Limped Pots as the BB in MTTs Success as the BB in limped pots begins before the flop. The BB’s equilibrium strategy… The Absurd Game Theory of Chopped Boards A “chopped board” in poker is one where the community cards make up the best… Playing Limped Pots as the SB in MTTs MTT confrontations between the small blind and big blind force no-limit players into uncomfortable situations,… The Art of Learning Poker

The best cards for OOP to donk bet the turn are 9, 8 and 4 that pair the board, 7, 6, 5 that complete straights, and blank low offsuit cards. The worst cards to donk bet are the ones that connect well with IP’s range, which are aces, high cards, and diamonds that would give the IP player a BDFD (Diagrams 121-122). Table 138: OOP EQ Heatmap by turn card on 9♥8♥4♦ (x/b/c) Table 139: OOP EV Heatmap by turn card on 9♥8♥4♦ (x/b/c) Table 140: IP EQ Heatmap by turn card on 9♥8♥4♦ (x/b/c)

C-Betting Against ICM Preflop Ranges ICM , MTT You raise from early position (EP) in a multi-table tournament and the BB calls. Both of you… 19/12/2023 8 min. / 1 sec.

like to be in the lead, and if I make something with it, I can take charge. So with players behind me, I usually call with it. In this situation, I don’t have to maintain my table image by betting on the flop when I’m the raiser. If I just called before the flop and somebody else raised, I very seldom try to pick up the pot or bluff into the raiser. The raiser commands respect. So when I miss that hand completely and somebody else raised it, well, it’s his pot. That’s why I generally like to be the raiser. I don’t like to raise with small connecting cards because when somebody has the hand I want him to have, such as a big pair, he’s going to raise me back. That’s one more reason I usually limp-in with them. When I limp in with this hand in an early position, I’m actually playing it like I would two aces or two kings, so there’s also a bit of deception there. And if somebody raises in a middle or late position, I can pretty well put them on a hand—big cards like A-K, K-Q, or a big pair. That’s what I’m looking to do. I want to be able to put somebody on a hand so I know what I’m trying to beat. If you play in the style I recommend, very aggressively, you’ll have to adjust your play in a small game. You’ll probably discover that you get reraised 393 more often when you raise in a small game than you will in a big game. That’s been my experience. Here’s why: if I’m in a game where there’s not much money on the table— say, everybody has $5,000 or $6,000—and I raise it $1,000, well, a guy with big cards is going to move in on me. It happens all the time in a small game. And when I’ve got a 7-6 or a 9-8 and someone bets the rest of his money at me, I can’t call it. When I can’t win anything if I get a flop, I’m not going to take two small connecting cards and try to beat two kings, A-K, and so forth. In a case like that, I throw my hand away. And because of that, I have trouble winning in a game where there’s not much money on the table. But it’s a totally different story in a big game. If I raise it $3,000 or $4,000 and the other guy and I have a lot of chips on the table, he’ll be a little more hesitant about raising me now because he knows there’s a very good chance I’ll play back. The guys I play with know that when I put my children out there, I don’t like to let them drown. But even if I do get reraised in this situation, it’s all right. In fact, it’s what I want. If he raises me $7,000 or $8,000 and I’ve got small connecting cards, I’ll call now. If we’ve both got

Hand Range 38: CO RFI • Raise 2.5x: 27.8% / • Fold 72.2% When facing 3-bets, if you have position, your strategy involves mostly calling, leaving your 4-betting range very polarized (Diagram 8). However, vs the BN, you are much more incentivized to 4-bet and try to either take the pot pre-flop or force a low post-flop SPR to reduce the BN’s positional advantage (Hand Range 39). Playing out of position post-flop makes realizing your hand’s equity much more difficult, so you are forced to call less and fold more against the BN than against the blinds (Hand Ranges 40 and 41).

the astuteness of his opponents. For example, an arrant simpleton is his opponent, and, holding up his closed hand, asks, 'Are they even or odd?' Our schoolboy replies, odd, and loses; but upon the second trial he wins, for he then says to himself, the simpleton had them even upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is just sufficient to make him have them odd upon the second; I will therefore guess odd; - he guesses odd, and wins. Now with a simpleton a degree above the first [Monty continued reading] he would have reasoned thus: This fellow finds that in the first instance I guess odd, and in the second, he will propose to himself upon the first impulse, a simple variation from even to odd, as did the first simpleton; but then a second thought will suggest that this is too simple a variation, and finally he will decide upon putting it even as before. I will therefore guess even; - he guesses even, and wins. Now this mode of reasoning by the schoolboy, whom his fellows termed lucky - what, in its last analysis is it? Poe is asked this question,' said Monty looking up from the page. 'Poe replies: It is merely an identification of the reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent. 'Do you grasp what I have read in its relation to poker?' Monty asked, sipping his drink. 'I think so,' I said. 'If you overvalue or undervalue another's intellect you will guess wrong. If you want to know when to call and when to bluff, identify yourself with your opponent's cunning.' 'Exactly,' said Monty. 'And that's what I failed to do with you.' He smiled ruefully. For practice you should carry a pocketful of pennies around and entice others to play odd or even. Poe calls it even or odd. If you win consistently you have proof you can judge another's acumen. How do you think our town football team won against those bruising Linton Miners last Sunday?' 'By playing odd or even?' I laughed. 'By playing odd or even. As in Poe's The Purloined Letter, Linton's quarterback's intelligence is just once removed from the arrant simpleton described by Dupin. For example, their quarterback lines up his team and, while giving signals, glances to the right as if looking over the defence. Next he turns his head and looks over the left defence. Then a split second later he turns his head to the right.' Monty paused. 'Where is the ball going?' he asked suddenly. 'It's going to the left if his last glance was to the right -that is, if his cunning is just once removed from the simpleton,' I said. 'Exactly. And I flash the signal to our captain in time for the defence to meet the threat either to the left or to the right.' 'You mean Linton's quarterback always looks in the wrong direction ?' 'Yes. His intelligence is so low that he would not dare to look in the direction of the ball for fear our team would

the whole branch of the game tree where they get x/r, P2 will be perfectly polarized against P1, and P2 can increase their EV by x/r bigger. The deeper the stacks, the bigger P2’s raise size can be and the more EV will be captured. There is a trade off between going all-in and using a non-all-in bet-size. To find the exact bet- size B that maximizes P1’s EV (which may or may not be all-in), we will borrow the next formula from Will Tipton’s Book Expert Heads-up No-Limit Hold’em. (The calculation of this formula requires the use of Calculus and we won’t be showing the proof in this text.) Where: S = Stack size B = Bet-size T = traps % When P2 can have traps in their range, P1’s bet-size actually decreases and the more traps P2 can have, the smaller P1’s bet-size becomes to the point where this bet-size approaches 0 and they can no longer bet. At that point, P1 is forced to check their entire range. In this set-up, position is irrelevant for the small portion of traps in P2’s range. P2 will never lead and P1 will always bet nut hands alongside enough air while giving up with the rest of the air. However, if P2 has too many traps, the nature of the game changes and position becomes relevant.

Hand Range 237: CO vs UTG 4-bet (25bb) • Call 57.2% / • Fold 42.8% Defending the CO (40bb)

for the opponent to have a shoving hand or a calling hand okay it's very very important your Bluffs are going to become off-suit junk hands as you get a little bit shallower let's take a look at from the hijack we're going to re-raise wider for Value again lots of asex and King X Bluffs almost no suited connected Bluffs at this point as well now we start to have a few shoves all in we see 1.3 percent of hands go all in we see King Nine suited Jack 10 suited pocket nines and Ace Queen offsuit shoving sometimes look anytime some of your range makes a play 1.3 percent of the time I don't think it's that necessary that you actually do that but I just want to show it to you right notice you are still three betting not all in a decent amount of the time though and when you do three bet not all n with your non-premium hands like King Jack Ace Jack Queen nine suited 10 8 suited and your opponent shoves all in for 48 blinds you fold typically in the spot someone will min Rays you'll make it something like seven and a half big blinds they'll go all in and then you will let go of everything except for your Pearson better and Ace Queen and better those are gonna be the hands that call it off facing a button raise now you're gonna start shoving wider right because their range is wider so you're gonna start shoving wider and now we see a very common Trend start to develop where a lot of small pairs go all in even 40 big lines they make it two you make it 40 big lines all in with pocket nines and worse a large chunk at a time also you're going to find the ace Queen Ace track and more of these ASX off suit hams that are pretty good start shoving as well as we get shallower and shallower and as your opponent's ranges are somewhat wide king queen also it also shoves Ace two off suit feels dirty but it's a shove King seven offsuit sometimes shoves and a few suited hands but what I wanted to show here it's very important as your sack gets shallower and shallower your Bluffs start to come more from the offsuit hands and you're re-raising not all in with these hands right if you're short to the point you have to just rip it all in or fold well then you're not going to be shoving it all in stuff like 10 7 off suit or Jack seven off suit or queen eight offsuit but with a stack that you can still re-raise and fold to a shove these are by far the preferred Bluffs what a lot of people do wrong in this situation is they re-raise hands like Ace five suited or King five suited or eight seven suited and then they have to fold it when they get shoved on but

that off my mind. We consulted a cancer specialist in Fort Worth. He took one look at me and scheduled me for surgery the following Monday. He didn’t think the tumor was malignant, but 18 said it would have to come out. Something Awfully Wrong I went into the operating room at 6:30 a.m. When I woke up in the recovery room, it was dark. Even though I was very groggy, I could tell things weren’t going too well for me. Not only were my head and back in bandages, but my entire chest was wrapped in gauze and completely covered with tape. I remember thinking, “Doyle, there’s something awfully wrong.” Louise was there at my side telling me everything was going to be all right, but I knew she was trying to hide something. I was in a lot of pain, and the drugs they kept feeding me kept me fairly stupified for the next few days. I remained in the hospital for quite a while. My relatives and friends were always coming by to see how I was doing. That was a comfort. Still, nobody had the courage to tell me what the real situation was. The only thing I knew was that I was going to be taken for further study to the Cancer Center at M. D. Anderson Hospital in Houston. What I had not been told was that when the doctors opened me up, they found massive cancer spread throughout my body. It had reached close to the base of my brain, and my chest and stomach area were riddled with it. Four surgeons had been called in and they all agreed that it was useless to proceed. The cancer had attacked so much of my body that it was only a matter time before I died. I was a big dog to live longer than four months. They Came to Say Goodbye While I suspected the worst, it wasn’t until I was taken home for one day, prior to flying to Houston, that I really knew I was going to die. Over two hundred people from all over the country came to our house that day. I was really surprised. I didn’t think I had that many close friends. From the way everybody was acting it was obvious they’d come to say goodbye. My friend Dwayne Hamilton just broke down and cried. Louise was pregnant at the time, and I thought to myself how sad it was that I’d probably never get to see my baby. By all rights, I’d be dead and gone before it arrived. Louise was thinking the same thing and had made the arrangements for further surgery at M. D. Anderson. Though the doctors had told her there was 19 no hope of my living, they said there might be a slight chance of prolonging my life a few more months through radical neck surgery. With that operation, there was a possibility that I’d be able to live long enough to see my baby before the cancer reached my brain. We flew

the opponent calls so let's look at this in the solver so we see that we're using a good amount of pot sized bets and then we're using a good amount of bet 25. once again I wouldn't worry about the small frequency Fringe sizes I would just break it up into two sizes and then checks and then let's think about what hands want to be putting a lot of money in the pot right away uh the first tenant comes to mind is like pocket Queens Pike Queens is a great hand that we don't get to Barrel on every turn in river right it's not like it's uh pocket Jacks where it's just gonna it's very likely to stay the knots we need protection with our hand and we want to get a lot of value right away other hands that seem and we're on blocking top pair other hands that seem reasonable for this it's going to be the ace track King Jack so this is gonna be really common Jack High Queen High boards they're connected like this your over pair to the top pair in your best top pair when you're using multiple bet sizes are going to very frequently fall into your big bet size and and that's due to protection right so we see ACE check off suit really really heavy just potted and then Ace Jack suited what we're going to see is that when we have clubs we're potting but we have the other ones it's more likely to use a smaller bet size and that's because we have the back door flush draw with the diamonds and the Spades and so that hand gets to Barrel more turns and rivers than the clubs and so clubs want to put more money in the pot right away other hands that make sense to to be using a big bet size when we're splitting our range if we keep thinking about that uh the idea that okay these are gonna be hands that want to get a lot of protection and value right away that don't get to Bear a lot of turns and rivers well A6 Falls perfectly into that right it's a hand knit we want to get a lot of value out of way we're not going to get to Barrel um a ton of turns and rivers and we don't really mind protection we don't mind them having to fold the eight nine off suit type stuff and then just getting a lot of value from their sixes and their fives another hand that's going to fall into that is like pocket sevens right it's our pocket pair between the top and the middle pair that needs the most protection and it wants the most value right away so when we're splitting our range that's that's kind of how I would approach it those are those are the first hand types that come to mind um and then the ones that fall into the small BET right it's like

small initial bet in comparison to future bets, it pays to play looser than the small ante would dictate for the initial bet only. The reason is that the big bets in later rounds give you good implied odds. For instance, the $l-$3 and $l-$4 seven-card stud games which you find in every card room in Las Vegas start off with a 50-cent bet. It is not correct to play very tight for this initial bet, especially against the weaker players you tend to find in these games. When you can see fourth street for only 50 cents, you should, for example, call for one card with any pair, so long as your cards are live — that is, so long as few of the cards you need have appeared among your opponents' exposed cards. This is because your implied odds are enormous. Should you make two pair or, even better, three-of-a-kind, you figure to get a lot of action from lesser hands, especially when your initial pair is hidden. Implied odds were operating in the example in Chapter Six on effective odds which advocated calling to see one card only if the immediate pot odds justify a call though your effective odds indicate a fold. The suggestion was that when your card hits, you'll probably make more money on future bets. To take this point a step further, you might call even when the immediate pot odds do not quite justify a call if there is a large increase in the bet from one round to the next. Your possible future profits when your card hits — that is, your implied odds — will make up for the short odds you are getting at the moment. For example, if in a $10-$20 game an opponent bets $10 into a $20 pot, your pot odds are 3-to-1, which would dictate throwing away, say, an open-ended straight. However, if your hand (or your opponent) is such that should the hand improve on the next round, you figure to beat your opponent for another $40 on future betting rounds, then your implied odds are $70-to-$10 or 7-to-l, which would make a call worthwhile with an open-ender. If you miss Implied Odds and Reverse Implied Odds 57 and your opponent bets $20 on the next round, you would once again be getting 3-to-1 odds ($60-to-$20), but your implied odds would have diminished. Implied Odds in Pot-Limit and No-Limit Games In general, the larger the difference between future bets and the present bet you have to call, the greater your implied odds. Hence, implied odds become most significant in pot-limit games and in no-limit games, where a future bet can be as large as the amount of money a player has in front of him. In fact, in these games one is almost always considering not how much is in the pot right now, but rather how much can be won on a future round of betting. A classic illustration of such a situation occurred in the final hand of the 1980 no-limit hold 'em championship

Relationships and Poker Soft Skills In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve their check-raising,… 05/03/2024 14 min. / 8 sec.

being more prevalent I thought it was like Ace two through ACE four were close to Pure which is not the case okay and I was not gonna [ __ ] around with the top of the chart the Ace queeno Ace Jacko king queen I thought that that was garbage because I thought um I was going to get under called by the hands that I want there nice um so that was kind of thing and then I said you know what we're gonna Pump It Up to some even uh to some bigger depths and especially like if we have a 10 or the low Queen students because I didn't think you're gonna hit like a queen 10 suited call um so or um that type of hand class so I thought um that would be a good spot to just really stretch and um and just bang away yeah yeah man I mean like like even just looking at the spot I mean my immediate reaction is call but like it just is uncomfortable looking at a 40 big blind jam and I'm just like okay at this point you hadn't done this before and I'm like man okay so what's going to be the first hand that becomes easy to find this Jam exactly my mind just went two through fives Ace 9-0 you know that was just like at least nine interesting like I thought ace and I know in my mind was like just gonna be one of these hands that gets in there I was like I don't know if he's gonna find like you know the nine six suited to just rip here and stuff and so yeah this was a spot where I adjust in One Direction You adjusted the other and you were all of a sudden gaining quite a bit of EV sure and then it would have been really interesting if I wasn't showing my hands you know like what does this look like the rest of the way where you're just like what the [ __ ] how many low pocket pairs is Jeffy getting dealt yeah I don't know and so I think that this is like I mean if you think which is corrected I'm over folding in these spots now there's obviously some Merit to the fact like okay 40 BB big plan Annie against a weaker player maybe you don't want to up the variants but you're finding a spot where you're able to gain a lot of EV by just shoving a lot of hands pre-flop here so so I think that's definitely something that I'm going to try to utilize in big blend any formats moving forward because like it might look a little bit silly and you're gonna get called and look silly but who cares I mean you're just gaining a lot of the EV pre so I remember maybe like seven or eight years ago I'm on break of some tournament at um WSOP and Taylor Parr is talking

Hand Range 329: LJ 60bb (2.3x vs SB 3-bet) • All-in 0% / • 4-bet 8% / • Call 64.1% / • Fold 27.9%

all in we're betting with all of our best hands which is going to be attended better here right every 10 bets the threes bet even the threes bet that's kind of cool all the pairs met I guess and then our lowest Bluffs are usually some of the first ones to block not always but usually so we see a lot of these nine High eight or yeah nine High eight High seven High hands doing a lot of bluffing but not so much bluffing with the ace high and the King High and the queen high right ACI King High and queen High actually win some some small portion of the time when it checks down so you don't want to Bluff those you want to Bluff with the lowest Showdown value ones for the most part that's usually going to be the ideal strategy say we do check and the opponent goes all in look at that fan all in with the nines huh foreign now we do a whole lot of folding though despite this because you know like a state can win at The Showdown but probably not notice our checking range here is really trash and we only call off with ace high everything else Folds again I realize there's a lot to take in here but a big takeaway is is the range good or is the board good for my range if the Rangers if the board is good for my range put money in the pot if the board is not good for your range don't put so much money in the pods all right we're gonna take a look now at a spot that is particularly bad for the initials discuss a situation where the pre-flop razor is not favored much at all this is going to be when the board does not connect with the pre-flop razors range very well and instead it connects very well with the pre-flop collar this is usually going to be when the board is all three low generally connected cards so on the Flop the pre-flop caller is going to lead a decent amount of the time with a polarized range they check the pre-flop razor is going to bet very infrequently because they're not favored and they're gonna be very polarized right the pre-flop caller after they check they're gonna fold pretty infrequently against the bat and they're going to do a lot of raising because again they're the ones who are favored right on the turn after it goes Check bet call bet call The Flop better is usually be betting pretty polarized but with a lot of their range because whatever range they bet with should be quite strong right and you're gonna find the Flop caller sticks around decent amount on the river if someone bet the turn they're usually betting very polarized and the turn caller is going to fold some portion of the time so we're gonna look at 765 which is one of the absolute best boards for

necessarily mean he is out to win pots. Of course, you can't win money without winning pots, but attempting to win every pot or too many pots is a losing proposition. If you win $100 in one pot but lose $ 120 trying to win four others, you have a net loss of $20. You may occasionally be in a game where the best strategy is to win as many pots as possible, but such games are exceptions. In most games the bets you save are as important as the bets you win, because your real goal is to maximize your wins and minimize your losses. Ideally you want the pots you win to be as big as possible and the pots you lose to contain nothing more than your ante. You must remember that reducing losses — by not making the calls, for example, that a weaker player would make — adds that much more to your win when the game is over. Many players don't follow this precept, however obvious it may seem. They play as though they want to win the pot, an individual pot, at all costs. The worst of them, to put it bluntly, are the suckers in the game. On the other hand, a good player develops the patience to wait for the right situations to play a pot and develops the discipline to release a hand he judges to be second-best. Just as it is important not to think in terms of individual pots — not to chase money you have contributed to an individual pot — so it is important to realize you are not playing in individual games. Each individual game is part of one big poker game. You cannot win every game orsession you play, anymore than a golfer or bowler can win every match he or she plays. If you are a serious poker player, you must think in terms of your win at the end of the year or the end of the month — or, as sometimes happens, of your loss at the end of the year or the end of the month, which, of course, you want to keep as small as possible. Thus, whether you are winning or losing on a given night is not in itself important, and above all it must not affect your play. It's easy to get steamed, or disgruntled or discouraged, when you're losing. However, you must be disciplined enough to play every hand correctly, regardless of how you are doing. Beyond Beginning Poker 7 Similarly, you should not allow the fact that you are winning or losing to affect your decision to stay in or quit a game. From a money making point of view the only criterion for playing is whether you're a favorite in the game or an underdog. If you're a significant favorite, then it's a good game, and you should stay in it; if you're an underdog, then it's a bad game which you should quit. Never quit a good game as a small winner just to

up your goal for the night, so you’ll play scared. And if you slip back below your win goal, you’ll feel disappointed, affecting you both now and the next time you play. Win goals have no upside. Play Zen. Play in the moment. Only worry about your overall result as it applies to stop loss. Moving Up and Moving Down Another thing you have to think about long term is how to go about moving up in the game. But as we contemplate this issue, a certain Catch-22appears. In the name of good bankroll hygiene, we can’t move up until we can afford higher games; however, as a practical matter, we might not be able to build a bankroll for those higher games until we move up. What’s a chicken and egg to do? The answer is twofold: Be prepared to step up and be prepared to step back. Say you’re used to playing $2/$5 no-limit, but you look over at the $5/$10 game and think it looks pretty good today. You see several players in the game you’ve played with before in your regular $2/$5 game and know to be bad. In absolute terms, you don’t have the bankroll for the game, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take a shot. You just buy in light is all, at the 100 BB end of your buy-in range. That way, if the game goes wrong and you lose, you haven’t lost more than you could reasonably expect to win in your smaller regular game: 100 blinds at $5/$10 is $1,000 and 200blinds at $2/$5 is $1,000. So you haven’t played outside your bankroll. By setting your loss limit at the lower range in the higher game, you make sure you don’t fade a lossthat negatively impacts future sessions. You can also sell off some of your action to a friend or two. By keeping your risk in the higher game low, you minimize the risk of digging yourself one of those deep ugly holes. The important thing about stepping up is to pick your spots and take your shots. Just because you play high one day doesn’t mean you now haveto make that your regular game. A normal losing day at a higher level could equal a whole losing month at much lower stakes. And for a lot of people, losing big in a big game leads not to their dropping back down, but to their staying in the game. They think they need to get even quick andfigure the fastest way to do that is in the bigger game. Thus, for reasons both psychological and mathematical, it makes sense to buy in light and minimize your exposure in a game above your normal comfort zone. If you lose, just step back down and win the money back. If you win, you can keep an eye on the big game and take other shots when the gamelooks good. When you’re a consistent winner, you can stay at that level. And that’s how you move up. Three steps forward, two steps back, until

35 percent of the time), you’ll often split the pot with a low hand. Also, since each player is dealt four cards, it is very likely that you will lose to a straight or a flush if you don’t fill up. As a result, sets are at best marginal holdings, and at worst, a significant drain on your bankroll and enthusiasm. The following guidelines should help you recognize when sets can be played profitably and when they should be folded. In the Advanced Flop Play section to follow, some of these topics are covered in greater detail. (1) Playing for half the pot with a hand that is likely to be outdrawn is not a good strategy. When the board contains three low cards, it is difficult if not 190 impossible for you to scoop the pot with a set. As a result, it is generally correct to fold, unless you can play for one bet without the pot being raised behind you. (2) Since you often have to make a full house to win half the pot, the size of your set matters as well. It is not uncommon for more than one player to fill up when the board pairs. Continuing with a hand like A-3-3-K and a board of 3-5-6 against several players is suicidal. It is possible that either a higher set or two pair is out there, so even if you do improve there is no guarantee you will win. If you held top set in this instance, folding would still be correct much of the time, especially when it costs you multiple bets to stay in the hand. (3) When is the best time to play a set when the board contains three low cards? For example: The flop comes 7-3-2 of three different suits and you are holding 7-7-Q-K. Hopefully, you’ve found yourself in this pot because you received a free look in the big blind. While you have no shot at scooping against a few players, you do have the current nuts for high. Since three different suits are represented on the board, it is unlikely that a flush will beat you. However, the fact that you’re only playing for half the pot means that you want to see the hand through as cheaply as possible, unless the board pairs. If a straight card comes on the turn, especially a 4 or 5, you will have to fold if you are faced with calling more than one bet, as the pot won’t give you enough of a price to draw at just the high end. Since you will often be forced to fold on the turn, it is not in your best interest to play this hand aggressively on the flop. (4) Cards like 3-6-J with two clubs can be a problem flop in Omaha eight-orbetter. There are two low cards with a flush draw present, providing a number of draws. If you hold a hand such as J-J-Q-K with this board, your prospects are uncertain. Although you hold the current nuts, you are

of how ranges change based on the actions that are taken and realize that poker is a puzzle and you have to ask yourself what do the actions my opponents take mean for their range at this point in time and also what do my actions mean right and if you can put this puzzle together better than your opponents you will win in the long run and every time you play a hand consistently put your opponents on ranges that's going to go a long way to helping you become a much stronger poker player now that we made it through the flop and the turn let's discuss the river it's important to realize that the river is unique it is different than the flop and the term because now you either have the best hand or you don't because all of your draws will no longer have the chance to improve right so either you have the best hand every time or you don't and when this is the case it should lead you to bedding with mostly hands that are best when you bet and get called at the showdown which are going to be mostly your very strong made hands plus some amount of bluffs and we could go deep in terms of the math on how frequently you should be bluffing but we discussed that thoroughly in both my tournament master class and cash game masterclass so check that out for now though just realize that whenever you bet small with your strong but still kind of marginal hands it's going to be stuff like top pair medium kicker and whatnot you want to use relatively few bluffs and when you're betting large which is what you want to do with your premium made hands you want to use a larger portion of bluffs when you do happen to find yourself multi-way on the river you definitely want to consider who has the range and the nut advantage because some players will have a lot of nut hands in their range and some players will have almost none so definitely consider that when a lot of draw is complete definitely check your non-nut made hands and when the draws do complete and you have a busted draw you should strongly consider bluffing it with your bluffing it yourself on the river whenever there is a bet and a call in a multi-way pot you want to overcall which is when you are the third caller you want to overcall very tightly because whenever the first player bets they could still have a decent amount of blocks but when the second player calls they must have something pretty good because well they're not calling with like the nut low right and also they have to worry about you and the pot right because you as the player you had to act could still have a good hand so when it goes bet and call on the river if someone in that scenario you need to call behind very

(FGS) which will reflect in the outputs. This is an enhanced version of an ICM calculation which considers what will happen several hands ahead of the current one. For example, this is a Holdem Resources Calculator (HRC) range for UTG on the bubble of a 9-person SNG. UTG has 800 chips, everyone else has 1,000 chips, and the blinds are 50/100 with a 25 ante. This is using the traditional Mason-Harville ICM model that assumes the tournament is over after this hand : What this range does not factor in is the cost of inaction. UTG is the short stack and will have to post 1/8th of their stack the next hand. However, when we use an FGS ICM Model instead, which considers the next three hands too, this is the range: The range has gone a bit wider to account for the fact that posting the BB is relatively more costly for this player on the next hand. There is another factor to consider with Future Game Simulation. Not only do we have to take into account the fact that we will post blinds after the current hand , we also have to take into account the fact that blinds can increase after the current hand . The following range is a Future Game Simulation range that also takes into account the fact that the blinds are increasing to 100/200 with a 50 ante the next hand: Now the range has become significantly wider, to account for the fact that UTG is going to be posting 25% (instead of 12.5%) of their stack the next hand. The cost of inaction has doubled, so UTG takes more risks. I would go one step further and say that it’s not just that ICM does not look into the future, it doesn’t realize it is in a multi-table tournament . Sometimes the stacks and action happening on another table, even during hand-for-hand Hand-for-hand Hand-for-hand is a poker tournament phase when all tables pause and wait for every other table to finish their ongoing hand before starting a new one. This helps organizers track player finishes and stops players from deliberately slowing down to get a better payout. Typically used during or near in-the-money phases of tournaments. , have a significant bearing on your decisions. If, for example, there is a micro stack on the adjacent table and/or you have seen an all-in and a call, then that should dramatically put more ICM pressure on your current hand. Some ICM calculators do take the chip distributions on other tables into account, but they cannot account for somebody being all-in on another table mid-hand. Conclusion ICM doesn’t take blinds and blind levels into account and this can be particularly important to understand in very shallow and/or fast structures. ICM assumes that all the players are of equal skill . When this is not the case a talented player can make demands in final table deals of the other players. Strategically it means that good players should pass up barely profitable spots and wait for better ones,

was invented in 1987 by M. Malmuth and is one… How to Study GTO Solutions Tools like GTO Wizard and other solvers should not be used to memorize specific strategies.… Principles of GTO Game theory, or GTO (for Game Theoretically Optimal), is best understood not as a rigid… Interpreting Equity Distributions GTO Wizard’s range vs range equity distribution graphs are an excellent tool for visualizing which… What is Leverage in poker? Leverage refers to the risk of future betting. When you call a bet on the… Reasons for value betting in poker You’re probably accustomed to thinking of bets as either value or bluff. In this taxonomy,… The Science of Poker Performance Poker is a game of small edges and big swings. Every hand is an investment… What is Valor in poker? Can a poker hand be courageous? How does your ability to value bet future streets… Pot Geometry “Pot Geometry” refers to betting an equal fraction of the pot on each street, such… A Beginner’s Guide to Poker Combinatorics Combinatorics is a fancy term for evaluating the number of possible “combinations” (combos) of any… Stack-to-pot ratio Stack-to-pot ratio, or SPR, is a way of measuring how deep the effective stack is… Equity Realization In poker jargon, equity expresses how much of the pot a hand will win, on… Variance and Bankroll Management Variance and Bankroll Management. Vital Soft Skills for Every Poker Player. How to Become a GTO Wizard Welcome to the wonderful world of game theory optimal poker! This article will serve as… The Three Laws of Indifference Indifference in poker is one of the most misunderstood concepts. The word “indifference” means that… Poker subsets and abstractions An “abstraction” is a way to simplify the game of poker. This game is so… Mathematical Misconceptions in Poker Pot Odds and MDF are foundational mathematical formulas in poker. How to solve toy games Poker is a complicated game. It’s impossible to calculate GTO strategies on the fly. By… The Value of Fold Equity – Experiment The term “fold equity” is ambiguous in the poker community. Firstly, it’s an EV equation,… MDF & Alpha MDF & Alpha. Minimum Defence Frequency and Alpha are metrics on poker that determine how… What are Pot Odds in poker? Pot odds are a fundamental calculation in poker. In the simplest terms, pot odds tell… Does your range affect your strategy? Advanced players will often tell you that your range affects your strategy. Visualizing implied odds Implied odds are the value you expect to gain over and above your raw equity.… ICM Basics As a tournament player, you may have heard about the concept of “ICM”, but what… What is Equity in Poker? The term “Equity” is ubiquitous throughout poker theory. Equity refers to your chances of winning… Range Morphology “Morphology” is the study of form or structure. You’ve probably heard terms thrown around such… What is Expected Value in Poker? Expected value (EV) is the most fundamental metric in poker. Every decision you make is… Why doesn’t my solution match GTO Wizard? So, you’ve got your own

Table 42: Probabilities of Winning Coin Flipping Game With identical skill levels, Hero’s probability of winning increases linearly with their chip stack. If Hero has 2 chips, the probability of winning is 10%, if they double their stack to 4 chips, the probability of winning doubles to 20%. If they have 10 chips (half the chips in play) the probability of winning is 50%. When Hero has a skill edge, their probability of winning no longer increases linearly with the chip stack. If Hero has 2 chips the probability of winning is 19% and if they double their stack to 4 chips, the probability of winning increases to 34% (it does not double). If they have 10 chips

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Pre-flop: Nothing to say here Flop: we meet a bizarre and actually pretty common Fish phenomenon: the min- donk. My note box on these kinds of passive Fish is often filled with the good old 'MDF QQ5r', or in semi-English, 'Min- Donk/Fold QQ5 rainbow'. The point is that when you see a player make this min-donk-bet on the flop, and you decide to raise them, it's worth noting their response. One school of passive Fish just habitually does this with air usually folding when raised, while another school does it to try to induce action or find out where they're at with some made-hand. A third school does it for both reasons or even with every hand in their range. In this spot we don't know which school this passive Fish belongs to, but we do know that the flop is incredibly dry and that Villain's wide range just has air an enormous portion of the time on it. Folding is clearly out of the question as these pot odds make any two cards +EV to call without the extremely rare read that Villain only does this with Qx. There are a couple of reasons why it's important to raise this spot though:

hello and welcome to tonight's webinar my first webinar for poker coaching com entitled a deeper dive into position this is a really really exciting presentation and I really want to thank you for coming out and joining me tonight I'm really excited about doing this teaching is one of my favorite things in the world and playing poker is probably my other favorite thing in the world so when you put the two together teaching people how to play better pokers pretty much the best thing in the world for me today we're gonna be talking about positions which is one of the fundamentals one of the foundations for profitable poker and yeah let's get into the action and let's get stacking so first why talk about position well for those of you who know me through Jonathan littles material you know that I was one of the co-authors for excelling at No Limit Hold'em and I wrote chapter one in that book my chapter was entitled the six ingredients for a winning poker game and that included a heavy emphasis on what I first popularized back in 2008 when I first started teaching on YouTube the triple threat now the triple threat consists of three components the first one is position which we are going to be diving deep into tonight the second one is aggression which we will be diving deep into April 30th and the third component is selection which we will be diving deep into May 28th so if you're interested in learning everything you can about the triple threat and three of the key ingredients for a winning poker game save-the-dates write those down for your calendar now my approach to poker is about getting every advantage you can and the triple threat accounts for three of those five advantages the so for the information advantage that is a core that is achieved through the use of position this skill and betting advantage is achieved through the use of aggression and the card and hand range advantage is achieved through the use of selection psychological advantage is a whole thing on the metagame and the stamina game or physical or mental advantage depending on what you want to call it is its own thing - tonight we're gonna focus on position how we can get the information advantage and this is going to be one of the core principles that we're gonna combine with the other pillars to just make an extremely powerful poker game yeah so let's get into it poker coaching calm I'm joining the team I'm joining team poker coaching it's been a long time in the making and I'm really excited about this honestly when Jonathan reached out about excelling at No Limit hold him in the first place I was kind of flattered and I was I was pretty just like honored for the opportunity and I just I just jumped on it and then a couple years later you know I saw he was building up poker coaching calm the

in a ring game. You play your position more than your cards in a shorthanded game. For example, when your game gets down to four-handed play, you need a better hand in the first two positions than you need in the last two. When you raise on the button, the other man has to act first, and that puts him at a big disadvantage. When the other man has to act on his hand first, it’s a great equalizer. So in a shorthanded game you’d play your position using the same theories you would in a full game, but keep in mind that the values of the hands go up a few notches. The trouble hands become better hands because you don’t figure to be up against A-A, K-K, or A-K nearly as often as you might in a ring game. You play more like you would with big cards. In a shorthanded game, the bigger your cards are, the better hand you’ll have. For instance, in a ring game, you might play two aces or two kings a lot slower after the flop because there could be a lot of people taking a flop to beat those big pairs. Whereas in a shorthanded game, two aces or two kings is a mountain of a hand and you can play them real fast after the flop. Consequently, these big 409 pairs are much more valuable hands than they are in a ring game. What you’re trying to catch in a shorthanded game is big cards in position. INSURANCE The practice of taking insurance is not as common today as when I wrote the original Super/System, however you still see it sometimes, and you should have a general idea of what deals are profitable. Many times when you’re playing no-limit hold’em a player will have all his money in the pot before the flop, on the flop, or even on fourth street. Since there are still cards to come and since no more betting can take place (if it’s a head-up situation), both players will generally turn their hands over so that insurance can be considered. I say generally, because there is no rule that says you must turn your hand over, but such a request is rarely, if ever, refused. Insurance is a side bet that’s usually made between the two players involved in the pot or between one of the players involved and an insurance man who may or may not be an active player. The player with the hand that has the best potential to win the pot is offered or asks for some insurance as a way to protect his investment in the pot. But unless a mistake is made, it’s always a bad bet. As it is in life away from the poker table, the insurance man won’t be giving away anything. When he lays you a price on your hand, he’ll be getting the best of it. The price you’ll be getting will always be considerably less than the true price your hand is worth. The difference

could be betting without a flush here? Obviously, the more likely your opponent has the flush, the more you should call and feel out the river. If you believe your opponent lacks imagination, then if another diamond doesn’t hit the river, you have an easy fold to his river bet. Therefore, lean toward calling on the turn against unimaginative opponents. Note that by calling instead of raising, you close the action and get to see the river 100% of the time, which means that you’ll hit every flush youare meant to hit. If you raise the turn and get re-raised to a wrong price to chase the flush draw, you’ll have to fold. You can’t count on implied odds, because once the fourth spade hits, you don’t get paid. So unless you’re getting 4-to-1 on calling the re-raise, you’ll have to fold. You have a similar decision matrix when you are holding the A♦ in your hand on an A♠-8♦-2♦-6♦ as you would if the board were completely uncoordinated and you held top-pair good-kicker on the turn. Either call or raise when your opponent bets into you, with a lean toward raisingaggressive opponents and checking to pedestrian ones. Check if they check. Treat the texture as invisible; it’s working for you. But what if the texture is working against you? What if the board is A♠-8♦-2♦-6♦ and you hold the A♥Q♣? Well, now you’re no longer blind to the texture. You can see it and you have to deal with it. So your opponent checked to you on the flop, you bet, and he called. Now the board completes to the possible flush and he checks to you. Without the ace of suit in your hand, you bet, because you can no longer afford to give a free draw to an opponent holding a lone diamond in hishand. A bet of half the pot or slightly more gives a hand with a lone diamond in it the wrong price and probably drives it into the muck. And since the board now has super-scary texture, you probably won’t get check-raised byAK orAJ, unless those hands specifically have the A♦ in them, in which case your hand isn’t in great shape anyway. A naked bluff is also unlikely to check-raise you here. Bluffers are more likely to represent the flush by leading out on the turn, because checkraise bluffs are so damn expensive and risky on boards that are highly textured. Therefore, if you bet and get check-raised on the turn, you’reprobably folding. Most likely, you’re not folding the better hand. But even if you sometimes do, you pay the price to protect against the free card, a priority here. To repeat, because it’s so crucial, you can only check the turn when it’s checked to you on a three-flushing board when you have a high card in suit in your hand and can let a free card come off. When you have no suit and the texture hits, you bet to protect your AQ. In this situation, you absolutely don’t care if a

150 Chapter Sixteen Loose Games Semi-Bluffs in Loose Games Remember that in a normal game, semi-bluffs have three ways of winning — by making the best hand later, by catching a scare card to make opponents fold later, or by making opponents fold immediately. It is these three possible ways of winning that make semi-bluffs profitable plays. But what is likely to happen in a loose game? First, loose players don't fold easily, so your semi-bluffs will rarely win immediately. Second, when you catch a scare card that doesn't really help your hand, loose players are more likely to want to "keep you honest" with a call than are average and tight players. Consequently, one of the ways a semi-bluff can win — when opponents fold immediately — has been all but completely eliminated; and a second way — when you catch scare cards — becomes doubtful. Without these two extra ways of winning, semi-bluffs no longer have positive expectation. Therefore, you must abandon most semi-bluffs when there's a high probability that the only way they can win is by improving to the best hand. With respect to semi-bluffing, then, it's true that you must play much tighter in a loose game. Legitimate Hands in Loose Games What about legitimate hands? In a loose game people are willing to play a hand that is relatively lower in value than the average. Therefore, your own legitimate hands don't need to be quite as good as in a normal game since your opponents are likely to be staying with you with even worse hands. This becomes especially true when you get heads-up against one opponent. However, because of the action and the participants' style of play, loose games frequently tend to have multi-way pots. With many players staying in, you would be wrong to loosen up with hands like two small pair or one medium pair. Even though these Loose and Tight Play 151 marginal hands might be favorites to hold up against each of several loose opponents individually, chances are they will lose when there are several opponents in the pot. By the same token, if you bet with these hands, you are much less likely to get two, three, or four opponents to fold, particularly when they are loose players, than you are to get one opponent to fold. 7 Come Hands in Loose Games In contrast to other semi-bluff hands and small pairs, come hands increase in value with many players in the pot because you are usually getting excellent pot odds to draw to them. Furthermore, when the game is loose, you figure to get paid off well once you've made a straight or a flush. Therefore, in a loose game with several players in the pot, you should play more drawing hands, such as big three-flushes on fourth street in seven-card stud, than you would usually play. In loose games, then, you should tighten up considerably on semi-bluffs but loosen up with legitimate hands. However, you would not play loose with marginal hands like two small pair or one

I saw Jonathan post a poll on this that a lot of people got wrong so if your opponent is folding over 50 of the time when you race from the small blind you can raise with any two cards two three times the big blind so it folds you in the small blind you have to put in two and a half big blinds to make it three times the big blind arrays and you're risking two and a half to win the two and a half big blinds in the pot so when you put in two and a half to win two and a half has to work fifty percent of the time and if your opponent doesn't defend the top 50 of their hands you instantly make money and you're making money because even when they call say they call exactly fifty percent of the time you're still going to win the pot with your jack five off suit you know 20 of the time when they do call so paying attention against these really tight opponents you can even expand this red range even way more and start raising a ton of hands in the small blind if they're playing way too tight you can and in some cases you might even want to be raising a hundred percent of hands because your opponent is not going You're Gonna Be instantly making money because they fold too much um and one more exploit I want to talk about that I see from a lot of players that is not correct is people love to limp like aces in the small blind as like their hand to trap with and it's actually I don't think that is correct you don't want to be trap limping with aces in the small blind because the most common hands that your opponents are going to be raising and trying to steal your blind with is your hands like your suited Aces and their Ace X if your opponent's too tight those are the first hands they're going to go to to isolate you when you limp and so by limping Aces when you have two Aces they're automatically not going to be raising enough because you have two of the aces in your hands so it'd be better to trap with a hand like pocket kings or pocket Queens because then you don't have an a it's more likely the big blind has an ace in their hand and they're going to raise more often and you're going to be able to um get that limp raise in more so two things to note here one if your opponents are folding way too much it can be profitable to even raise with any two cards from the small blind and two don't limp trap with Aces because you block the range that you want them to be raising you with and so here we're making it like 4X on the small blind with this wide linear range and then we have

High roller A player who plays for very high stakes.

49 Reducing Your Pot Odds With More than One Card to Come..................................................................... 49 Situations When Effective Odds Need Not Apply......... 51 Calculating Effective Odds ......................................... 53 Chapter Seven: Implied Odds and Reverse Implied Odds 55 Implied Odds ............................................................... 55 Implied Odds in Pot-Limit and No-Limit Games ......... 57 Factors in Determining Implied Odds ........................... 58 Reverse Implied Odds ................................................. 59 Summary .................................................................... 60 Chapter Eight: The Value of Deception............................. 63 The Cost of Giving Your Hand Away........................... 63 Deception and the Ability of Your Opponents............... 65 Deception and the Size of the Pot ................................ 66 Deception and Bet Size ............................................... 66 Deception and the Number of Opponents in the Pot . . . 67 Summary .................................................................... 68 Chapter Nine: Win the Big Pots Right Away ................... 71 Betting When Your Opponent is Correct to Call............ 71 Betting (or Raising) to Drive Opponents Out ............. 73 Betting (or Raising) With the Second-Best Hand ........ 74 Table of Contents Hi Delaying One Round to Drive Opponents Out ............76 Summary ....................................................................77 Chapter Ten: The Free Card ............................................ 79 Giving a Free Card........................................................ 79 Giving or Not Giving a Free Card in Practice............... 81 Getting a Free Card ..................................................... 85 Position and the Free Card............................................. 86 Giving or Not Giving a Free Card With a Marginal Hand .................................................................... 87 Summary .................................................................... 89 Chapter Eleven: The Semi-Bluff ...................................... 91 Types of Semi-Bluffs.................................................... 92 Advantages of the Semi-Bluff.......................................95 Semi-Bluffs and Pure Bluffs .......................................98 When Not to Semi-Bluff ............................................ 102 Summary .................................................................. 102 Chapter Twelve: Defense Against the Semi-Bluff............ 105 The Power of the Semi-Bluff...................................... 105 The Difficulty of Defending Against the Semi-Bluff . 106 The Semi-Bluff Raise as a Defense Against the SemiBluff .......................................................................... 109 When to Fold and When to Raise................................ 112 Exceptions When Calling is Correct............................ 113 Calling a Possible Semi-Bluff When the Pot is Large............................................................ 114 Calling a Possible Bet On the Come..................... 114 The Delayed Semi-Bluff Raise............................. 115 Summary .................................................................. 116 iv Table of Contents Chapter Thirteen: Raising ............................................. 121 Raising to Get More Money in the Pot ...................... 121 Getting More Money In the Pot By Not Raising.......... 123 Raising to Drive Out Opponents ................................ 125 Raising as a Means of Cutting Down Opponents' Odds ........................................................................................... 125 Raising to Bluff or Semi-Bluff.................................... 128 Raising to Get a Free Card........................................... 130 Raising to Gain Information........................................ 131 Raising to Drive Out Worse Hands When Your Own May Be Second-Best ......................................... 132 Raising to Drive Out Better Hands When a Come Hand Bets...................................................................... 133 Raising Versus Folding or Calling............................... 133 Summary .................................................................. 136 Chapter Fourteen: Check-Raising................................... 137 The Ethics of Check-Raising....................................... 137 Necessary Conditions for Check-Raising ................. 138 Check-Raising and Position......................................... 139 Check-Raising With a Second-Best Hand ................. 141 Summary .................................................................. 141 Chapter Fifteen: Slowplaying.......................................... 143 Slowplaying Versus Check-Raising............................ 143 Requirements for Slowplaying.................................... 144 Summary .................................................................. 146 Chapter Sixteen: Loose and Tight Play........................... 149 Loose Games ............................................................. 150 Semi-Bluffs in Loose Games .............................. 150 Legitimate Hands in Loose Games....................... 150 Come Hands in Loose Games.............................. 151 Tight Games................................................................ 151 Summary .................................................................. 152 Table of Contents v Chapter Seventeen: Position............................................ 155 Advantages of Last Position........................................ 156 Advantages

have a flush, if there are still four players to act behind you, it’s a pretty safe bet that one of them has you beat and will also call. Paying attention to the players to your left before you act will sometimes allow you to use their tells to save a bet or make a big call. If you can see that your opponents are preparing to fold, it makes it easier for you to call. Also, say an opponent grabs raising chips before it is his turn to act. Often this is an act, but it is sometimes a reliable indicator of the strength of his hand. It is nice to play against opponents who consistently give away their hands before it is their turn to act, particularly if they are sitting to your left. Getting Counterfeited Although you can play your made nut low hands more aggressively when you have a backup card, you sometimes will find yourself in the pot with just the bare nut low. In these cases, there are six cards that will counterfeit you, 209 which means your hand could be killed on the river nearly one time out of seven (six out of forty-four unseen cards). Since this is such a common occurrence, it is good to have a game plan for dealing with it effectively. Getting counterfeited won’t always cost you the pot, and it is important to recognize when your hand is still good. If you are holding the nut low with a wheel draw, and you get counterfeited, then a player who has not been aggressive now bets, you are almost certainly beat. For example, say you are holding A-2-K-Q, the board is 4-5-8-Q, and the river is a deuce. If a player who has been calling to that point, bets—you are in trouble. There isn’t much else this player can be betting other than a straight, so it is almost always safe to fold. The exception is when you are playing against a tricky, sophisticated opponent, who is capable of betting an A-6 here, hoping your A-2 got counterfeited and that you will fold a better high hand than his. In a larger field, say more than three opponents, someone will often produce a better two card low hand when you get counterfeited. But in pots with only two or three players you might still win the low, so it is important not to fold too quickly. Rather, gauge the chances that your opponent’s bet signifies a high hand. If you think this is the case, you might be able to play your live ace or deuce to win the low. Also, it’s possible that your new high hand will be good. If you already had one pair, you now have two pair, which might win the high against a small field. Omaha eight-or-better players are notorious for moaning all the way to the bank in situations like this, complaining even as they catch the very card that wins them the pot. Playing Three-Way Pots on the End It is very

on the flop, but then frequently check-raising with them on the turn. In fact, this should be routine strategy since you will be giving up on many hands on fourth street. That is, you won't follow through on most of your semi-bluffs andlor the other weak hands that you routinely bet on the flop. Therefore, to avoid giving your hand away, you also must check a lot of good hands. Specifically, when first to act, you probably should check on fourth street as much as 60 percent of the time with your good and bad hands alike, as long as free cards are not a major problem and your opponents are aggressive. What you are doing is balancing your strategy. Because you are such a threat to check-raise, your more observant opponents 142 Part Three: Miscellaneous Topics will be afraid to bet on the turn after you have checked, thus giving you a free card when you don't have much. Meanwhile, your less observant opponents will be frequently check-raised when you have checked a good hand. By playing this way, you have the best of both worlds. Here's an example. Suppose you start with and the flop is You have bet on the flop, been called, and have every reason to believe that you have the best hand. If a blank hits on fourth street, which means it is still likely that you have the best hand, you frequently should check and be prepared to check-raise if someone else bets. Another time when you can make this play is when you make a semi-bluff bet into several players when you flop bottom pair with an overcard kicker and the turn gives you three-of-a-kind. You should usually go for a check-raise. On the other hand, if you hit your kicker, especially if it is an ace, you should be more inclined to bet since the ace may scare an opponent who had you beat on the flop, out of betting. Another advantage to checking a lot of good hands in early position on fourth street is that when you don't have a good hand, depending on the board and what hits on the river, you may be able Important Fourth Street Concepts 143 to steal on the end if both you and your opponent check on the turn. (A word of caution though: Many players are more prone to call your bet if you check on fourth street, as they become suspicious and want to keep you honest.) There is an exception to the above advice, and that is when the game is very loose. In this situation you won't be making many semi-bluff type bets on the flop, so it won't be as necessary to balance your strategy. But you will still be doing a lot of checkraising anyway, both on the flop and the turn in order to thin out the field. (See "Part Four: Playing in Loose games" which begins on page 15 1 .) Other Fourth Street Concepts Other fourth street concepts worth discussing are detailed below. In the

um not much so just very little hands uh for the most part you just want to be playing um a thet or F strategy uh people don't really call from 15 B bles all that much uh so I think I use for the simulation the 20 b blames or the 17 maybe that will be you know um will have will make a little more sense for hands that villance can call in this sort of situation from the bottom okay now into the simulation is this yeah this hand number five uh in this flop the hero wants to bet his entire range and mostly use a small bet size now why is that uh let's look at the equities uh Equity Advantage 54 against 45% oh 50 yeah 46 rounding and then um looking at the ranges okay so actually let's put them here probably it's probably better yeah so the king queen connects really really well with all of these hands right that are being mean raised uh while the villain here will be reaming or tting a lot of these um king and queen type of hands so his range will include yeah wicker queens and wicker King X and then a bunch of like um Pairs and S stuff and a a few a bunch of AIS and G shots so um let's go here I think I I clicked something here and change the the let's just open this again it won't affect the simulation but just for the sake of um having it right here with the right ranges so looking at the range Explorer and let's look at sets and out position has six combinations against 4.5 uh two pairs so a bunch more of two pair king queen uh type of combinations here then over pairs um both players have uh the same number of or pairs top pairs here IP only has eight combinations against 37 combinations and this is what makes the difference so so so many hands that could benefit from just um putting money here and of course the beted size is um small uh we have an advantage but it's not as massive um it's just that um we don't have that many like ult super strong hands that will benefit by just putting in a ton of money right away uh but we still have an advantage enough to make us want to bet our entire range and just uh capitalize in our F equity in the Flop going back to the Flop actually let's play out the hand so oh yeah I think already it goes check check yeah that's small okay um so hero definitely makes a mistake here um by checking his King six he's not realizing correctly that his range just uh connects so well here that he gets to R his entire range he has the the equ advantage has stopper Advantage he doesn't have a massive Advantage ultr strong hands but uh he can bet small and he can

Risk Advantage Risk Advantage is the difference between two players' risk premiums. When one player experiences less ICM pressure than another, they can take on more risk and capitalize on the opponent's higher risk premium.

decide to look at the flop from a blind position), you act before your middle and late position opponents for the remainder of the hand. This will cost you, in terms of both bets and pots. Because you must act first, you will at times be unsure as to whether a card helped your opponents’ hands. For example, you may check, when in fact had you bet your hand one or more opponents might have called with inferior hands. Your poor position has cost you one or more bets in this case. Worse yet, your apprehension about whether the development of the board has helped your opponents may cause you to check, when betting would have induced everyone else to fold. Now, suppose everyone checks behind you, and the next card comes. An opponent who would have folded for a bet on the previous betting round now improves his hand and wins the pot. For example, suppose you are first to act with 8-8, and the flop is K-9-7. If you are first, with three or four players behind you, you would probably choose (correctly) to check, as this flop is likely to have helped one or more of your opponents. However, suppose nobody can beat your pair of eights, and the hand gets checked around. Now, an ace comes, giving one of your opponents holding A-5 a better hand. Since this player would probably have folded on the flop had you bet, your check has cost you the pot. If you had the same hand in last position, however, it would have been correct for you to bet the flop once it was checked around to you, likely making you the winner of the pot. Playing Position Clearly, it is to your benefit to try to play most of your hands from late position. As a result, you should enter the pot only with premium hands when you are one of the first players to act. When you play only big pairs and big cards such as A-K from early position, your postflop positional disadvantage is partially offset by your hand being fairly easy to play after the flop. If you have a big pair, you stay aggressive on the flop in nearly all cases (the main exception being when your pair is smaller than aces, an ace flops, and several players are in the pot). If you have big cards, such as A-K, you tend to bet when you flop a pair, and check when you don’t (tempered by certain factors to be discussed later). These hands don’t require as much guesswork; thus, their postflop performance does not suffer as much from poor position as do more marginal holdings like small and middle pairs. Because you have the benefit of observing the actions of all your opponents, you can be much more liberal with your starting requirements when you are in late position. Don’t misinterpret “liberal” as “loose” or “sloppy,” though. Some hands are not profitable to play in any situation. Nevertheless, acting last allows you, first, to see how

hello everyone can someone type in chat if they can hear me I want to check to make sure my audio is working perfect seems like our audio is working I'll give this another 30 seconds or so we'll get started I want to encourage everyone ask questions throughout the webinar I'll help lead the discussion I have my stuff to talk about and then answering questions will also help and then at the end we'll also have a question and answer segment but today we're gonna be just talking about tournaments tax and adjustments unity making on your stack sizes in tournaments I think it's one of the easier fixes people can make but it's also one of the bigger mistakes that I think weaker players are making in tournaments right now not making these adjustments to their ranges based off of stack sizes so it's one o'clock now let's go ahead and get started this question stemmed from you know I had a student ask that made a to of a 300 dollar buying tournament he had a big stack of a hundred big blinds but there was a lot of short stacks it was a three dollar buy and so it's you know a more terrible instructor structure and he's asking you know what adjustments do you be making as stack sizes shrink or more importantly for him how stocks vary from Player to Player so when I have 100 big blinds but other players have 25 big blinds what adjustments should I be making and I think the most important question is how are my range is affected by these stack sizes and that's what we're going to be looking at today so to start off we're gonna kind of get into the basics hand values and stacked ups and this is kind of the meat and potatoes of this webinar and kind of the most important part to take out of it and this is kind of the easy quick adjustments that you need to make with stock sizes so first two Bowl points are they're kind of the most important generalizations so as stock sizes D the value of big offsuit cards increase and a stack sizes increase the value of suited connectors also small pocket pairs increase so there's kind of a inverse a relationship between the two and it's really important which types of hands you should be playing based off what your stock size is so at 150 big blinds deep so this would be you know the first couple hours of a tournament first few levels of a tournament you want what hands like make better than one pair now that's a little misleading comment because any two unpaired cards have the same exact chance of making two pair for example Ace King has the same exact chance of making two pairs deuce three without taking into consideration like card removal and stuff but the benefit of Ace King is Ace King can make they're not straight let's look at even another

Hero is 5% short of RFE here and there are some noticeably bad factors in play. The BB seems to be active, aware and is 3-betting fairly frequently; Hero doesn't have heaps of post-flop fold equity as Villain seems to continue relatively often vs continuation bets, and Hero is out of position. The saving grace here is that Hero's hand simply has enough brute strength to compensate for these negatives and push us into opening territory. Given that Villain's flatting range is fairly wide, having a hand that can flop good pairs quite often is even more useful than normal. Recall that we'd fold such a hand UTG through fear of being crushed on too many flops where we hit a pair. Against the BB's wide flatting range, we can expect to be ahead very frequently with top pair and even extract a fair bit of value. This hand has enough fold equity + good pair potential to open despite the less than ideal situation. What we can learn here though is that with weaker hand strength, we'd have to be very careful about opening given these conditions. KTo is not too far from the bottom of our opening range in this spot. Hero raises to 2.5BB.

choose some hands and let's say let's take Ace King for an example and I would enter it there and then take the next hand say I had a hand like pocket nines and I would run the equities just to give me an an idea of My Equity versus people's hands or people's ranges and it's just a good way to it seems tedious but it's a good uh way to practice knowing your equity in certain situations so let's take nine ten of diamonds uh put it up again six five Suited let's evaluate that so 99 diamonds has 62 percent equity roughly verse um six five suited so play around with this you can also do this verse ranges so let's take um say you have a hand like uh pocket tens right say you open uh in the cut off and the small blind um goes all in for 20 big blinds right so let's uh so we're entering our hand pocket tens and then we're gonna do um hand range selection and we're gonna think about what hands our opponent is going to be shoving in the small blind when we open versus um uh when when they have a 20 big blind stack so let's say this is roughly the range that they're going to be shoving when we open I'm doing this fast I might be missing some stuff so maybe every pair um maybe not Deuces uh so roughly this seems about right maybe shoving king queen this seems a little bit loose um but close so you want to hit apply and then evaluate and then you can see that pocket tens has roughly 60 Equity versus the range that we think the small blind is shoving right with 20 big blinds so play around with this if I know you know like I said solvers solvers are intimidating but if you can at least get a poker Equity calculator and start playing around with this this is a really good way to study and get better at poker so I guess I just want to say poker is an extremely complicated game the pros are getting better every single day and you really if you want to be a successful in poker you have to study and have to work on your game consistently Um poker is also about volume so the more volume you you put in the better off you're going to be um you know you it helps balance out the variants the more you play and if you are studying and putting a lot of work in your game it will pay off so just keep it up and um yeah just enjoy the ride too you know don't look at studying as uh something annoying that you have to do but an exciting oh I get to learn new methods and strategies and you know test them out at the table always and that's another thing when whatever you learn it's really hard to when you're in

Hand Range 168: BB vs BN 4-bet (40bb) • Call 47.5% / • Fold 52.5%

it means you are playing your best poker. Shorthanded Play Playing shorthanded is a skill but also one of the times when you have to go on feel or instinct more often. You need to decide on your play from aggressive to trapping for different opponents. Many times when you play shorthanded, heads up or against two players, it is about knowing how to play your opponent correctly then how to take advantage of hitting the flop or having a good hand pre-flop. The difference between being shorthanded and at a full table is the range of hands possible. At a full table, you are playing against nine other random hands. The possibility that someone has a better starting hand than you is nine to one. Three handed the odds drop to two to one. A good to great starting hand is worth more in shorthanded play because there is less of a chance an opponent has a better one. If your opponent raises more than 1x the Big Blind into you pre-flop, folding weak to marginal hands is recommended. Let them take the hand, you have not invested any money into the pot other than the blinds. Watch to see if they always raise in a certain position, then you can discount the raise in future hands. For instance, some players will always raise when they are on the button shorthanded. If you have an excellent starting hand then you want to either raise/re-raise or trap on the flop (depending on the type of opponent). I like to mix it up and limp with some big hands after creating an image of always betting the flop regardless of my hand. If I win the hand by surprising my opponent then he will be really confused as to what type of cards I am limping with or raising with. The same goes when you have a good hand, you can raise or decide to trap on the flop and subsequent streets. You want to keep your opponent off balance and always guessing what you really hold. You do this by applying pressure on the flop and being able to let a hand go if your opponent fights back. You must determine if they fight back as a bluff more often then when they have a decent hand. Against weak opponents, you always want to apply pressure by being aggressive. Against aggressive opponents, you want to play a trapping strategy more often. The better your opponent the more ability they will have to adjust to your play. You must then always be aware of any adjustments they make so you can also adjust your strategy. The best place to practice poker is in Sit n Go heads up tournaments. This is a good time to also practice chip management, reading your opponent and employing different strategies. If they are down and they raise, fold, why give them any more chips. You want to be dictating when to raise and when to call. If you are able to steal a majority of the hands

the queen jack and if your opponent bets the turn you can just fold unless you improve and if they check the turn you can bluff and if they well if you improve to a queen or jack on the turn you have top pair and you're very happy right so two of our cards can sometimes be pretty good sometimes not also backdoor straight draws again these are a little bit weaker unless they have over cards included backdoor straight draw with no over cards is pretty terrible backdoor straight draw with two of our cards is pretty reasonable and you should usually not float with hands much weaker than these you should not be calling with stuff like king high very often unless there's an ace on the board right king hai is way better with an ace on the board than when there's not you should not be floating with stuff like just random random two under cards or one over card and a backdoor straight draw you should not be calling with garbage um it is worth noting like ace high sometimes counts as marginal made hand right so don't think that like i'm assuming all of these hands here have no showdown value all of it that's presumed here right all of these hands cannot win on their own merit if it checks down that is presumed if you have ace high that's not really a um it's not really like a float because ace high could very often be good um but yeah you don't want to be floating stuff like queen high or jack hi with just like stone nothing like say it comes ace king three and you have jack 8 suited right for a backdoor straight draw back door flush draw if your opponent bets you should probably just fold the jacket suited because it's a pretty terrible hand and it's very easy for you to be against an ace or a king right so so don't think you have to float with just like total garbage hands essentially anything that is in the bottom of any of these categories like gut shot straight draws the weakest ones are probably not very good weakest backdoor flush draws not very good weakest do-over cards and maybe this should be upgraded a little bit um weakest backwards straight draw is not very good so keep that in mind as essentially as your hand can improve in more ways you get to stick around a little bit wider but when you have total junk just fold it's okay to fold your junk you're supposed to fold your junk all right next let's go through some examples reasonable hands to float this is when someone raises you call in position doesn't really matter which position you're in but you're going to find usually you're calling on the button or the cutoff more often than the other scenarios ace seven six two spades jack ten of spades obviously straight draw or obviously flush draw king ten of hearts

are unblocking some of the weaker made hands that dylan is likely to fold such as 9x and some over pairs and unfortunately in this case after a long tank our opponent did end up folding so we'll never know what he had so now that we have a general idea of what range advantage is let's go back to revisit our pop quiz from the start of this video where the lojack had a c betting decision on two ostensibly similar looking boards one thing to note is that on both boards the lojack actually has a very significant advantage at the top of the range but on the ace jack 5 2-tone board the solver is doing a lot more checking so why is this well if we examine the lower equity tiers although the in-position player does have an advantage throughout the advantage is not as significant and this is why you'll often see people break down range advantage into two categories a nut advantage and a general equity advantage a player has a nut advantage when he has the higher percentage of the very strongest hands that will often want to get stacks in by the river and a player has an equity advantage when he has a stronger range overall usually including among lower tiered hands on the flop when the in-position player has both the nut and equity advantage the solver will often bet nearly its entire range with a small sizing as we can see in this aggregated report showing the c betting frequency for the lojack against the big blind across all possible flops this small bet leverages the in position player's advantage throughout the range which will often be on very dry boards to obtain a greater percentage of folds for its bluffs and protection bets since the big blind will typically have fewer hands that can continue on these boards even against a small bet and since the aggressor's stronger hands do not want folds they also have an incentive to bet small to induce calls thus on these types of boards most of the in-position players weak medium and strong hands will often have the incentive to merge towards one small sizing in contrast when the in-position player has a nut advantage but not necessarily an equity advantage throughout the range the solver may not range bet small because such a bet will not be as effective to fold out villains plentiful moderate equity hands so instead the solver will often use relatively larger sizings in a more polarized manner additionally on low connected boards a greater proportion of the big blind range will have decent equity which means more calling and this in turn means the in position players range advantage and fold leverage is diminished resulting in more checking so going back to our hand the five instead of the six and the two tone board instead of the rainbow board provide the big blind with a number of decent equity hands that will not likely fold to a

Protection A bet made with a made hand that is vulnerable to being drawn out on, for the purposes of protecting the hand by pricing out some draws of other players or force them to overpay if they want to chase their draws even when not getting the right odds.

5.1 Introducing the Value Bet Before we look at some value betting scenarios, let's be clear about what we're talking about. Hero shouldn't necessarily bet just because he's ahead of Villains whole range on any one street. In order to bet for value, he must be ahead of the sub-range that Villain does not fold vs that bet. In other words, just because we often have the best hand does not entail that we often have the best hand when called. Deciding Whether to Value Bet Some value bets are clear as we have the best hand very often when called; some are less clear as we have the best hand somewhere closer to 50% when called. Sometimes there's a strong need to get the pot growing as quickly as possible by injecting money into it; other times the pot is already sufficiently big and we can afford to check a street. Sometimes our opponents are passive and so we'll need to be the ones doing the betting and other times they are maniacal and will pour money into the pot for us. In such situations it can be lucrative to check and give these players the rope with which to hang themselves. The flowchart below should become Hero's decision-making guide in spots where he's weighing up a potential value bet. The blue rectangular boxes represent the questions used to determine which of the aforementioned types of situation we're in. Our yes or no answers to those questions direct us in the right direction from there. Study the chart for now and have a think about what the questions mean. We're about to go through them one by one in detail. We'll then wrap up the chapter by thinking about our sizing.

because the value of the chips is not directly proportional to their dollar value. We will discuss tournaments later in the Tournament Theory chapter. That said, win rates can still be quite useful for tournament players as they say a lot about the player’s skills and can be used to find leaks when win rates are lower than expected. Table 18: Example of Players’ Profitability in Cash Games After 1,000,000 Hands Played at Different Stakes Although the differences in win rates can seem small, they quickly add up as the stakes and sample size increase. If higher win rates translate to higher winnings, your aim, as a poker player, should be to increase your win rate as much as possible by consistently taking +EV spots and avoiding -EV spots. In the long run, the players who make the best decisions on average will end up with all of the money and the players who make the most mistakes will inevitably lose. Complex Strategies Why do players employ complex strategies? Why don’t they just implement a simple push/fold strategy, getting it in with the good hands and folding the bad ones? This section will compare two of the simplest pre-flop situations in order to understand the value of having different strategic options and playing complex strategies. Situation 1: Hero is in the SB playing OOP vs the BB Game: 3-max SNG Stack depths: 8bb, 10bb, 12bb, 15bb, 17bb, 20bb & 25bb Blinds: 0.5bb/1bb Players: 3 (no ante)

Navigating Nasty Rivers Out of Position Playing out of position (OOP) is hard. It’s fundamentally disadvantageous to act on each street… Crack the Shell of Nut Draw Strategy Nut draws hold obvious appeal as betting and raising candidates. They benefit from fold equity,… Preflop Raise Sizing: Examining 2 Key Factors It amazes me that, after nearly twenty years of playing no-limit hold ‘em professionally, I… How to Handle Loose-Passive Limpers Solver charts and presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first decade of my career. But after my first… Relationships and Poker In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve… Do Multiple Sizes Matter? Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results… The Science of Learning Applied to GTO Wizard The way we were taught to study in schools was flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN preflop raiser in a 100bb cash… When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody… Protect Equity and Prosper When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend… Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative poker thinking. When you’re value betting against… Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots When the BTN open-limps off a short stack, the postflop play against the BB should… I’d Rather Be Drawing Which is the better hand on a K♥8♦5♦ flop: K♠T♣ or 7♥6♥? OK, I’ll admit… The Curious Case of Open-Limping Buttons Before the advent of solvers, open-limping was considered the province of passive, gambley recreational players… Cleaning Out Sticky IP Callers A “sticky” player on your left, one who calls your preflop raises too often and… Defending Against Tiny 3-Bets Tournament poker is about precision. Cash games, where stacks typically run into the hundreds of… Heads up! Exploiting SB’s Preflop Mistakes Heads up (HU) tournament play presents unique challenges to the average player. Many tournament players,… C-Betting As the OOP Preflop Raiser Position is an extremely valuable advantage in poker. Most players would describe the comfort zone… Overchoice: Making Sense of Multiple Sizings Solver solutions with multiple bet sizes often involve a lot of mixing between those sizes,… River Refinements: When Your Opponent Won’t Check-Raise One of the biggest strategic differences between playing in versus out of position involves betting… Turn Barreling in 3-Bet Pots There are two articles on the GTO Wizard blog that make good prerequisites to this… The Right Way To Think About Protection Suppose Paul the Protector is in a 200bb cash game and opens A♠A♣ in

deeper understanding of the game, which will produce a more flexible strategy. Then you will have what it takes to make accurate decisions at the table. Over time, accurate decisions will translate into profits. This section highlights some of the key factors you should consider when deciding how to proceed with a hand before the flop. Loose Games vs. Tight Games It is important that you have a good grasp of the style of the game you’re playing. Whether the game is mostly loose (with five or more players typically seeing the flop), or tight (three or fewer), should have a significant impact on your hand selection. In loose games, hands going high-only or low-only increase in value. With low hands such as A-2-3-8, scooping against any number of opponents will be a difficult task, although getting half the pot is very likely when a low comes. Since winning half is the most likely positive outcome, it stands to reason that the more players in the pot, the more money you should win with this hand. If your ace is suited, there is real potential for making the best high hand, too. Again, this is not dependent on the number of opponents in the pot. If you make the nut flush with this hand, you will almost always win the high whether you have one or seven opponents, providing the board is not paired. 178 Therefore, it is best to play this type of hand in a manner that won’t shut out other players before the flop. When you are playing in a tight game, hands including two aces and virtually any other two cards become hands to push pre-flop, since raising with them will likely narrow the field to one or two opponents. By definition, tight games are those in which opponents are playing only very good starting hands, namely those with an ace. Since you are holding two of the aces, it is unlikely that many opponents will call your raise. Passive Games vs. Aggressive Games Another important distinction to make is whether the game is primarily passive or aggressive. Passive games are those in which there is very little raising before the flop, and not much later in the hand either. An advantage of playing hands in late position is that you generally have a better idea of how much it will cost to see the flop, but this particular benefit becomes relatively unimportant in passive games. As a result, more decent hands are playable from early position in these games. The reverse is true in extremely aggressive games, as the price of seeing a flop is often two, three, or more bets. Since the pots will be large, it is best to play hands that are highly likely to develop some sort of draw on the flop, allowing you to remain in the hand. In these games the value of onedimensional hands decreases, as they generally miss the flop. Although hands that can swing both high and low are always desirable, the importance of holding versatile cards is

Figure 36 - Calling SB vs. BB Look how wildly this range has expanded from the out of position approaches. Being in position makes it easier for Hero to both extract value with his good hands post-flop, call c-bets lighter and have extra possibilities of winning the hand unimproved. Hero will find that many SB openers give up too much post-flop in this spot because being out of position makes c-betting less desirable. There are other factors involved here. Most Villains even up to 50NL and 100NL play poorly out of position having opened and either c-bet far too much or far too little. If Villain tends to give up and play fit-or-fold when called out of position, then Hero should feel free to go even wilder with his flatting range than this model suggests. If Villain plays very well and exerts balanced pressure over multiple streets, then Hero might want to consider ditching some of the hands that flop the poorest from each range.

tightly they blind out because they really care about getting in the money and moving up the payouts realize that your specific opponent's strategy is vitally important if your opponent will defend loosely tighten up because remember you really don't want to get action on the bubble if your opponent will defend too tightly though you want to loosen up did I say it backwards if they will defend Loosely you want to tighten up because you don't want action correct okay got it and if your opponent will defend tightly you instead want to loosen up and sometimes you can take this to the extreme I had a situation one time at a final table one of those that I won back there for a million bucks actually where somehow I learned that one of the players at the final table really needed to take fourth place to pay off this house so I pushed this guy around so much until we got down to four players you know what I did then as soon as he went all in on the very next hand with a short stack I snapped him off I think I think Eight's ten and the commentator said wow I can't believe he called everybody said this guy's been the tightest player at the table but I knew he got his house paid off now he's gambling trying to get rich snapped him off busted him Phase 10 was way ahead I don't remember what he had remember I busted him though and that's good well good for me in general some loose ideas here rough ideas the largest stack can apply pressure to everyone at the table on the bubble they should be men raising a lot assuming sacks are medium to Deep if a medium stack raises and they are not accounting for the fact that they are pay on applications you should be three batting them a lot in position you should be calling a lot and seeing a lot of flops you should be defending the big blind a lot you should be leading the Flop a lot when the board is good for your range again we discussed lots of scenarios like this at pokercoaching.com We're not gonna have time to go through all these scenarios but as the big sack you get to get in there and battle as a medium stack you can apply pressure to the other medium sacks who don't really want to go broke and also to the shorter Stacks who are pretty likely to get in the money however you kind of want to avoid the big Stacks if you have a big stack on your direct left you need to tighten up because well they should be playing a lot of pots with you now if the large stack will not play a lot of pause for you because perhaps they think they're supposed to get in the money maybe the medium stat can actually act like it's the big stack which is great

The blinds are folding an average of 0.80 x 0.64 = 51.2%. So on paper, Hero lacks the required fold equity to open and automatically make EV , if that is, his strategy is to fold every flop when called. Hero's true strategy will be much better than this hopeless one. Recall that our rule that states that as long as we're less than a 5-10% margin away from RFE, then an open is likely to be +EV . We're 6% short here so we should look to assess our steal factors. It won't take much at all for this to become a +EV open. What other information do we have available here? Crucially, neither player is 3-betting very much. This means that Hero will very often realise his equity by seeing the flop when at least one of the blinds elects not to fold. Add this to the fact that we're only working with a 6% deficit in RFE and we can confirm that this spot is a profitable open. Hero raises to 2BB. In this example, both blinds are folding a mere 0.82 x 0.32 = 26% Clearly we are nowhere near RFE, thus, if pre-flop fold equity is the be all and end all, then we should definitely pass this spot. Fortunately for Hero, the weak player in the BB is going to be very easy to outplay post-flop and will be calling and then most likely making mistakes with a very weak range of his own. Consequently, even with minimal fold equity pre-flop, Hero will have an easy open. Thus hand illustrates that if the other factors are good enough, we may need very little to no pre-flop fold equity at all! It's only with neutral factors that we're bound to our 5-10% margin.

larger than the $2,000 needed to justify a call—so obviously you’re supposed to call. In fact, if you made six calls and won once, you’d lose $400 five times, for a total of $2,000, and win $3,500 once—an overall gain of $1,500, or $250 per call. But, wait! There’s another player involved in this pot. Her name is Beth and 85 you’ve played poker with her many times before. She gets to act before you do. Beth calls the bettor, and you estimate her chances of having a better hand than his to be just about the same as yours. Now what? Now you need to consider what your chances are of beating both the bettor and Beth. The mistake players make here is that they tend to overcall with the same hands— or only slightly stronger ones—than they would have called with had Beth folded. That’s wrong! You need a significantly stronger hand to overcall than you need to call. Here’s why: Remember, you feel that you have an equally good chance of beating the bettor as Beth does. Mentally, here’s where most players—even very experienced ones—go off course with their logic. They think, “If she can call, then so can I, because I have just as good a chance as she does and now the pot is even bigger.” And they’re partially right: The pot is even bigger now; it was $3,500, and now, with Beth’s $400 call, it’s $3,900. So, should you overcall? No! If your estimates are correct, and we’re assuming they are, then you still have 1 chance in 6 of beating the original bettor in a showdown. But, if you succeed there, you still must beat Beth, and you’ve estimated that you have an even money shot of doing that. So, if a very similar hand were played over and over through eternity, for every two times you beat the bettor (and that would only happen 1 out of 6, or 2 out of 12 attempts), you’d also need to beat Beth (and that would only happen half the time). So, Beth’s presence takes away half your chances of winning the pot, making your real chances only 1 in 12, instead of 2 in 12. How does that translate in terms of money chances? How big would the pot need to be to call? If you followed the earlier logic, analyzing the odds before Beth’s call, you know that at 1 chance in 6 , you needed a pot five times as large as the call to break even. Now, at 1 chance in 12, the odds are 11 to 1 against you, and you need a pot eleven times the size of the $400 call to break even. So, in order to justify this overcall, the pot needs to be at least $4,400 large. It isn’t. It’s only $3,900. Using the same formula as before, we see that we’re going to lose $4,400 on those eleven failed calls, and win $3,900 once. That leaves us $500 short of breaking even over twelve tries, so the

times the Reg is c-betting air and the Fish starts calling multiple streets with a terrible Qx, underpair or gutshot draw. Turn: If there's ever a spot to fold top pair to just two barrels from a Reg then this is it. Although Hero normally wants to deploy a balanced pyramidal strategy against Regs there two great reasons for Hero to overfold the turn including this hand. Villain is pretty tight in general and seems to have a very value orientated turn barrel range betting only 45% of the time. The Whale calling the flop decimates the Reg's fold equity and any competent Reg will typically realise this. He is far less likely than usual to be bluffing this turn and Hero struggles to beat many if any value hands. So this is the right time for an exploitative strategy of overfolding. Hero can go overboard and fold QJs and maybe even KQ here and the good news is that Villain is powerless to exploit it. Why? Because to exploit Hero's overfolding, Villain would need to overbluff and overbluffing the turn three-way with a whale in the pot is just EV suicide in a vacuum. Both Hero and the Reg are simply forced to play fit-or-fold here. If Villain had checked, Hero would have had a very easy value bet against the Whale's range, but facing this barrel he has to fold. Villain's betting range has contracted massively from the flop to the turn and so Hero's pyramid shrinks accordingly. Hero folds. So far we've been looking at some marginal made-hands on the turn. Let's take a look at a spot where Hero has a draw out of position and faces a bet that renders calling unprofitable.

versus rewards. Any decision you make at the poker table can be thought of as a comparison of the risk involved in a particular play and the possible reward for the play. There are three questions involved in arriving at a decision: How great is the risk? How great is the reward? Is the reward great enough to justify the risk? When deciding whether to bluff, your risk is a bet. Your reward is the pot (as well as advertising value if you show the bluff). When deciding whether to bet a mediocre hand before all the cards are out, you risk a bet. If successful, your reward (when your opponent doesn't simply fold) is that you didn't give a lesser hand a free card to outdraw you. When you check a big hand, you risk losing a bet on that round as well as losing the pot to a hand that would have folded if you bet. Your reward is a check-raise or future bets on later rounds. When deciding whether to call, your risk is a bet, and your reward is the pot. Any poker decision can be put into these terms. What do you have to gain (including future benefits on subsequent hands) by making a particular play? What do you have to lose? The ability to evaluate properly the risk-reward ratio for any poker decision is the ultimate test on the road to becoming a champion poker player. The trouble is that unlike chess and many other games, poker is a game of speed. Every once in a while you are allowed to think about a hand, but in general you have to make decisions in a few seconds. You can't sit there for two minutes calculating odds, trying to read your opponents' hands, trying to figure out what they are thinking, and then deciding upon your best play. For one thing the other players at the table wouldn't tolerate your dawdling. For another, you would be giving away information about your hand, since any time you paused unduly long to 245 246 Chapter Twenty-four reflect, your opponents would know you had some kind of problem. (Consequently, when you find, despite your best efforts, you have to pause often when you're playing, you should also pause when you have no reason, to throw your opponents off.) Poker tends to be a game for quick-thinking people. Some geniuses are plodding thinkers, unable to come to quick decisions, and they can never become great poker players. On the other hand, some of the best poker players in the world are not super minds, but they are super-quick minds and can remember any mistake they and their opponents make. Some combination of quick thinking and instant recall has to be developed if you want to become a poker champion. Analysis in Theory One of the most difficult things for the average poker player to do is to make accurate decisions at the game in the heat of a hand. Many good and bad players alike simply decide what they think their

Mastering PKO Final Tables Final tables can be the most exciting and rewarding phase of a tournament, and being able to convert these final tables into wins is crucial to our overall results as poker players. This is especially true for Progressive Knockout (PKO) final tables, where we find both big pay jumps and big bounties. So how do we maximize our return at these PKO final tables while avoiding taking unnecessary risks and giving ourselves the best chance to capture bounties? Today we’ll be looking at how PKO final tables compare to Classic final tables, and how our strategy changes between these two formats. Payout Structure Differences Before we discuss the strategic differences between PKO and Classic final tables, we need to understand the impacts of payouts on our risk premium in each format. Here is a comparison of the payouts used in GTO Wizard for PKO and Classic games: The PKO payout structure is flatter, with first and second place being paid identical amounts from the prize pool. This is because the winner of a PKO tournament earns their own bounty and that of their opponent, which will often represent a significant addition to the final prize. The flatter payout structure in PKO tournaments leads to higher risk premiums in a vacuum. This higher bubble factor is mitigated by the effect of bounty power on our ranges. Let’s examine how these two competing factors interact on the final table. Before we discuss the strategic differences between PKO and Classic final tables, we need to understand the impacts of payouts on our risk premium in each format. Here is a comparison of the payouts used in GTO Wizard for PKO and Classic games: The PKO payout structure is flatter, with first and second place being paid identical amounts from the prize pool. This is because the winner of a PKO tournament earns their own bounty and that of their opponent, which will often represent a significant addition to the final prize. The flatter payout structure in PKO tournaments leads to higher risk premiums in a vacuum. This higher bubble factor is mitigated by the effect of bounty power on our ranges. Let’s examine how these two competing factors interact on the final table. Without considering bounties, the higher bubble factors involved in PKO final tables lead to higher risk premiums. Bubble Factors in PKOs Below are two graphs comparing the bubble factors in PKO and Classic final tables based on relative stack depth. In the first graph, we have removed the effects of bounties to emphasize the impact of payouts on our strategy. As we noted earlier, flatter payout structure in PKOs results in higher bubble factors in a vacuum. Now let’s add the bounties back in and see what happens. The drop at the end represents the point where stacks are fully invested, and we have the opportunity to win a bounty, at which point the bubble factor drops below 1. What this tells us, is that the chips you risk on the final table of a PKO are far

that your range affects your strategy. Visualizing implied odds Implied odds are the value you expect to gain over and above your raw equity.… ICM Basics As a tournament player, you may have heard about the concept of “ICM”, but what… What is Equity in Poker? The term “Equity” is ubiquitous throughout poker theory. Equity refers to your chances of winning… Range Morphology “Morphology” is the study of form or structure. You’ve probably heard terms thrown around such… What is Expected Value in Poker? Expected value (EV) is the most fundamental metric in poker. Every decision you make is… Why doesn’t my solution match GTO Wizard? So, you’ve got your own solutions to some spot, compared it to GTO Wizard, and… Understanding Nash Distance Understanding Nash Distance. One of the most common questions when studying with solvers is “Why… Combinatorics Poker Puzzle Today we have a special puzzle for you that will test your intuition as a… The 10 Most Important Concepts for New Poker Players The 10 Most Important Concepts for New Poker Players. Fundamentals are one of the most… What is GTO in Poker? The meaning of GTO in poker is Game Theory Optimal. Game theory is a study… What does GTO aim to achieve? So what exactly is a GTO strategy? What makes it “unexploitable”? What does it try…

Hand Range 190: SB vs CO 4-bet (25bb) • Call 57.9% / • Fold 42.1%

Stack The total amount of chips, big blinds or currency a player currently has in front of them at the table.

C-Betting IP in 3-Bet Pots Having invested a considerable number of chips in your three-bet and faded several worst-case scenarios, you can expect to enjoy both an equity advantage and a positional advantage post-flop. As a result, you will get to play aggressively and over-realize your equity on most flops. When you three-bet before the flop and the original raiser calls from out of position, you have already enjoyed some good luck. True, much of your three-betting range would have preferred to take it down immediately. However, getting to play heads up after the flop in position is a nice consolation prize . For all but your strongest hands, it is a better outcome than facing a four-bet from the original raiser or, horror of horrors, a cold four-bet. In this article, we will look at how best to do that: which bet sizes to use, when you should not bet at all, and more. As mentioned above, positions do not make a big difference. The trends are the same for most scenarios, regardless of position . When the BTN three-bets the CO, they will play most flops similarly to how they would if they had three-bet against UTG. This is because the three-better modulates their preflop raising strategy based on the strength of the original raise , and the original raiser similarly modulates their calling strategy. When the open raise comes from the CO, that’s a much wider range than when it comes from UTG. The BTN compensates by three-betting a wider range than they would against UTG, and CO continues to that three-bet with a wider range. So, the relative differential between their ranges remains similar. An early position three-bet takes on additional risk that a late position three-bet does not. When the three-bet comes from earlier position, that makes a bigger difference, because an early position three-bet takes on additional risk that a late position three-bet does not. UTG1 must three-bet a tighter range against an UTG open than BTN would because they have more players behind them who would wake up with four-betting hands. Again, UTG compensates for this by calling a bit tighter against UTG1 than they would against BTN, so the difference is not huge. Stack sizes, however, make a big difference. The three-better mostly bets smaller and more often as stack sizes get shallower. In addition to their positional advantage, the three-better will enjoy a nuts advantage on most flops. This is because they are more likely to hold big pocket pairs and big broadway cards like AK that can flop strong pairs . Their three-bet mostly serves to get the SPR for the flop below 4, at which point they can treat these strong pairs as the nuts on most boards. Despite the low SPR, they want to take advantage of leverage by spreading their bets across three streets. This both sets them up to access stacks on the river when they wish to do so (whether for value or as a bluff) and puts tremendous pressure on their opponent’s medium-strength hands, which must

Cash Games Our never-ending quest for money and fame leads us to the flop. We open the… How ICM Impacts Restealing From The Blinds When I first started working with preflop solves, one of the features I found most… The ICM Benefits of Late Registration in Poker Tournaments Why do so many professional poker players register late for tournaments when they clearly would… Flop Heuristics: OOP C-Betting in MTTs Playing against an in-position cold-caller is dramatically different–and dramatically more difficult–than playing against a caller… Counterintuitive Calls Solver outputs such as those provided by GTO Wizard are models of no-limit hold ‘em,… How To Negotiate Final Table Deals Most people’s first introduction to the Independent Chip Model (ICM) is not from studying bubble… How does ICM impact PKO strategy? If you have read The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments you already know why we… Understanding Blockers in Poker Often when looking through a solver’s meticulously crafted grid of deception, one of the following… Flop Heuristics: IP Cold-Caller in MTTs A Cold-call refers to the act of calling a preflop raise when you don’t close… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in MTTs In the world of poker, the flop is a crucial stage of the game that… Flop Heuristics for Defending the Blinds in MTTs The field of Game Theoretically Optimal poker is extensive, and thus, to simplify our strategy,… Multiway strategy in Progressive Knockout Tournaments Progressive Knockout (PKO) tournaments are much more complex than traditional MTTs. The fact that players… How To Calculate Raises In Poker One of the most frequently asked questions in poker is how to calculate the size… Principles of River Play The river offers the least complicated strategy of any betting street. With no further cards… Exploitative Dynamics GTO solutions are designed to be unexploitable, performing reasonably well no matter how your opponents… How ICM Impacts Postflop Strategy Most players understand how the Independent Chip Model (ICM) in poker impacts their strategy preflop,… 10 Tips for Multiway Pots in Poker While lots of work has been placed into research and explanation of heads-up pot strategy,… What is the Bubble Factor in poker tournaments? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) shows us the real money implications of tournament chip decisions.… The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments In poker, a PKO (Progressive Knockout) tournament is a type of tournament where a portion… How To Analyze Turn Textures In Poker Master the art of turn analysis in poker. Understand how the turn card changes the… Principles of Turn Strategy Learn the principles of turn strategy in poker and discover what makes the turn unique.… Poker Strategies: Tournaments vs. Cash Games Tournament poker is not as different from cash game poker as people sometimes assume. Most… How Solvers Work A Game Theory Optimal solver is an algorithm that calculates the best possible poker strategy.… The Most Powerful Play in Poker The central strategic implication of stack depth is the question of how much equity a… When does ICM become significant in MTTs? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) was invented in 1987 by M. Malmuth and

Inside straight A straight draw which requires one specific inside card rank to complete. For example, on K56 a player holding 98 has an inside straight to a 7. See: Gutshot.

BLOCKING BETS 94 bluffing. There’s no reason why this would necessarily be the case other than that we simply stated it to be true. If your opponent is a consummate bluffer, she might bluffwith far more hands than she’d call with. Against such an opponent, making blocking bets isn’t nearly as attractive, as you preempt your opponent from bluffing offher money. Likewise, your opponent could call with far more hands than she would bluff with. Against such a “calling station” player, you might want to bet the river, but no longer as a blocking bet; you’d now be betting for value! Since she doesn’t bluffoften, you might not win the requisite percentage to justify calling a half-pot bet. But since she calls with weak hands often (perhaps too often), you can value bet weaker hands than you normally might. We also assumed that you could safely assume you were beaten if raised. If you pick good situations for blocking bets and don’t overuse the play, this should be roughly true. But if you start to overuse the play, your stronger opponents will begin to catch on to what you are doing, and you will find your blocking bets getting raised far more frequently. (That’s bad news for any blocking bet, whether done with a draw or on the river.) If your opponents are savvy enough to detect and raise a blocking bet, obviously that fact makes the play far less attractive. Downsides to the Blocking Bet The blocking bet can be a valuable weapon when used sparingly. Generally, it performs better against unaware opponents who won’t understand why you are making the play. Against tricky, aggressive players, use it with great caution. If they pick up on your intentions, your proverbial goose is cooked. As we alluded to before in the river example, the main drawback to using a blocking bet on the river (as opposed to with a draw) is that you preempt bluffs. Sophisticated players play aggressively and bluff(or, more generally, bet weak to marginal hands) relatively frequently. To get the best of these players, your strategy must include checking and calling with some fairly strong hands to induce and pick offthese bluffs. Like the aikido master, you must use your opponents’ strengths against them. If you tend to use blocking bets with your medium-strength hands, you give your aggressive opponents way too much information with which to beat you. They know that if you make a blocking bet, they can save their bluffing money (and still sometimes move you offyour hand with a raise). If you check, you are quite likely to fold to a bet, and their bluffing frequency and profitability will skyrocket. These players force you to “play square,” and will largely blunt the effectiveness of your blocking bets. Another downside, closely related to the last one, is that using blocking bets frequently makes all of your hands easier to read. By its nature, a blocking bet must be smaller than an average bet (or at least smaller than your opponents’ average bets). Also, blocking bets are

of Progressive Knockout Tournaments you already know why we… Understanding Blockers in Poker Often when looking through a solver’s meticulously crafted grid of deception, one of the following… Flop Heuristics: IP Cold-Caller in MTTs A Cold-call refers to the act of calling a preflop raise when you don’t close… Flop Heuristics: IP C-Betting in MTTs In the world of poker, the flop is a crucial stage of the game that… Flop Heuristics for Defending the Blinds in MTTs The field of Game Theoretically Optimal poker is extensive, and thus, to simplify our strategy,… Multiway strategy in Progressive Knockout Tournaments Progressive Knockout (PKO) tournaments are much more complex than traditional MTTs. The fact that players… How To Calculate Raises In Poker One of the most frequently asked questions in poker is how to calculate the size… Principles of River Play The river offers the least complicated strategy of any betting street. With no further cards… Exploitative Dynamics GTO solutions are designed to be unexploitable, performing reasonably well no matter how your opponents… How ICM Impacts Postflop Strategy Most players understand how the Independent Chip Model (ICM) in poker impacts their strategy preflop,… 10 Tips for Multiway Pots in Poker While lots of work has been placed into research and explanation of heads-up pot strategy,… What is the Bubble Factor in poker tournaments? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) shows us the real money implications of tournament chip decisions.… The Theory of Progressive Knockout Tournaments In poker, a PKO (Progressive Knockout) tournament is a type of tournament where a portion… How To Analyze Turn Textures In Poker Master the art of turn analysis in poker. Understand how the turn card changes the… Principles of Turn Strategy Learn the principles of turn strategy in poker and discover what makes the turn unique.… Poker Strategies: Tournaments vs. Cash Games Tournament poker is not as different from cash game poker as people sometimes assume. Most… How Solvers Work A Game Theory Optimal solver is an algorithm that calculates the best possible poker strategy.… The Most Powerful Play in Poker The central strategic implication of stack depth is the question of how much equity a… When does ICM become significant in MTTs? The Independent Chip Model (ICM) was invented in 1987 by M. Malmuth and is one… How to Study GTO Solutions Tools like GTO Wizard and other solvers should not be used to memorize specific strategies.… Principles of GTO Game theory, or GTO (for Game Theoretically Optimal), is best understood not as a rigid… Interpreting Equity Distributions GTO Wizard’s range vs range equity distribution graphs are an excellent tool for visualizing which… What is Leverage in poker? Leverage refers to the risk of future betting. When you call a bet on the… Reasons for value betting in poker You’re probably accustomed to thinking of bets as either value or bluff. In this taxonomy,… The Science of Poker Performance Poker is a game of small edges and big swings. Every hand is an investment… What is Valor in poker? Can a poker hand be courageous? How does your ability

♦ Straights are rarely x/r unless they have a flush draw, averaging a x/r frequency of 20%. ♦ The BB never has top set. Middle and bottom set are x/r about 22% of the time. ♦ Two pair is x/r about 17%. ♦ Top pair averages 44% equity on a board as connected as this one with so many flush, straight, set and two pair combinations. Top pair is simply not a strong hand on this texture. ♦ Weaker middle pair combos can be x/f most of the time and occasionally x/r. J9 and better can also be x/r with some frequency, and any Jx with a higher kicker plays a 100% call strategy. ♦ Weak bottom pairs (T8-T2) are almost always folded. T8 can get x/r a small frequency, and T9 can be x/r half the time. Bottom pair with a higher kicker is always called. ♦ Underpairs are always folded unless they have a flush draw. ♦ Combo draws are x/r about 1/3 of the time and x/c 2/3. The ones with showdown value such as AT or KJ with a heart are mostly called and the ones without showdown value can be x/r about half the time. ♦ On this flop, any high flush draw will either be a made hand or a combo draw. This leaves the flush draw category with mostly weak flush draws such as 76o and 55 type hands. This category gets x/r about 1/3 of the time and called 2/3. ♦ OESD will only continue if they are drawing to the nut straight. All 9x except 99 are folded 100%, A8o also gets folded 100%, Kx and A9 without a heart can be x/r about half the time and x/c the other half. ♦ All gutshots are folded unless they have a pair. ♦ A-high and K-high hands always have at least a gutshot. ♦ Air hands such as 7-high no draw are simply always folded. Flop Strategy Example 3 BB vs 2/3-pot c-bet: BB vs UTG on 9♥8♥4♦ (40bbs)

in the SB vs. BU opens, but this has a lot of justification. These hands perform very poorly when they don't flop a set. Given that they won't flop a set 88% of the time, we need very good compensation those times that they do. We just aren't getting this compensation when we're out of position with lesser pot odds facing a wide range that won't have a strong hand to stack off with all that often. These hands are clearly not callable SB vs steal, even to small opens with tame players behind. Although these players squeeze rarely, it's still a factor. We're not closing the action!

on a K♥8♦5♦ flop: K♠T♣ or 7♥6♥? OK, I’ll admit… The Curious Case of Open-Limping Buttons Before the advent of solvers, open-limping was considered the province of passive, gambley recreational players… Cleaning Out Sticky IP Callers A “sticky” player on your left, one who calls your preflop raises too often and… Defending Against Tiny 3-Bets Tournament poker is about precision. Cash games, where stacks typically run into the hundreds of… Heads up! Exploiting SB’s Preflop Mistakes Heads up (HU) tournament play presents unique challenges to the average player. Many tournament players,… C-Betting As the OOP Preflop Raiser Position is an extremely valuable advantage in poker. Most players would describe the comfort zone… Overchoice: Making Sense of Multiple Sizings Solver solutions with multiple bet sizes often involve a lot of mixing between those sizes,… River Refinements: When Your Opponent Won’t Check-Raise One of the biggest strategic differences between playing in versus out of position involves betting… Turn Barreling in 3-Bet Pots There are two articles on the GTO Wizard blog that make good prerequisites to this… The Right Way To Think About Protection Suppose Paul the Protector is in a 200bb cash game and opens A♠A♣ in the… The Importance of Board Coverage The first public version of the GTO Wizard announced AI upgrade already has some useful… How To Adjust When Villain Has No Bluffs “They always have it!” is a common, semi-joking expression in poker to describe the tendency… Adjusting on Later Streets After Exploiting Flop The key to exploiting opponents profitably is knowing when to stop. I’m not referring to… C-Betting IP vs Passive Poker Players A preflop raiser enjoys a significant range advantage over a BB caller, enabling them to… C-Betting Against ICM Preflop Ranges You raise from early position (EP) in a multi-table tournament and the BB calls. Both… The Art of Bluff Catching Bluff catching—calling a bet with a modest hand which you expect to win only if… Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by IP On some flops, it is simply not possible for the preflop raiser to continuation bet… Is Limping Pimping? In a past Discord post, one of our members noted that an upside of implementing… Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by OOP A preflop raiser who continuation bets too often is always a potential target for exploitation,… Preflop Button Mastery in PKOs Playing from the Button presents many unique opportunities in any tournament format, especially in PKOs.… The Worst Turn Card Greetings from GTO land. In today’s article, we will use the Turn Reports feature to… Navigating Range Disadvantage as the 3-Bettor Picture this: We’re playing a NL500 6-max cash game, and we’ve won a few pots,… Mastering Three-Bet Pots In Position in MTTs Playing in position against a three-better is a lesson in playing to your advantages. As… Mastering Three-Bet Pots Out of Position in MTTs Three-bet pots are scary. Playing out of position is scary. Put them together, and you’ve… The Greatest Final Table in Triton History Today, we’ll examine one of the most epic final table battles I’ve ever witnessed! Our… Mastering Thin Value Bets

Hand Range 327: CO 60bb (2.3x vs BN 3-bet) • All-in 2.8% / • 4-bet 15.5% / • Call 39% / • Fold 42.8%

main man Warren Zevon here for a quick chorus of “ItAin’t That PrettyAtAll!” And if this sounds like a rant, so be it, because people overvalue suitedness like crazy and if I can get you to stop doing that one thing, playing those low suited connectors from anywhere but late position, then your poker gamewill really improve and you’ll get your money’s worth from this book. Start by recalling all the times you’ve limped into a pot with something like 87s, thinking the hand needs a lot of customers and you’re trying to get a cheap flop and engineer the right price to draw to a flush (because you read that in a book). Please don’t tell me you’ve never done this; I canread minds and right now I’m reading yours. Not only that, I can prove your bias toward suitedness just by asking you a simple question: Would you even consider playing that 87 from earlyposition if it weren’t suited? Of course not. When you look down at that hand in first position, you aren’t even a bit tempted to play the 87o. But 87sis a siren song, calling your name and tempting you to head for the fatal cliffs of a flush draw. The suited cards ensorcell you, obscuring the fact that you have 8 high. The first key to the puzzle is always to remember that, suited or unsuited, the most likely improvement of any hand of hold ’em is one pair. So if you start with 87, suited or otherwise, your most likely improvement is 8s with a 7 kicker or 7s with an 8 kicker. And this is in a multi-way pot. Why multi-way? Because you either limped, encouraging others to limp behind you, or jumped into the midst of the “limpede” with all those callersgiving you such good value, because some book told you how great suited connectors play in multi-way pots. The reason why the books say that isthat they are focused merely on the price the pot is offering you. The more players, the bigger the price, and drawing hands like a good price. Well, that would be true if this were a game where you all just put money in before the flop, saw five cards with no further betting, and determineda winner after all the cards were dealt. But that isn’t poker. That’s more like craps. In poker, there’s betting. You have to make decisions after the flop. And one crappy pair in a multi-way pot? Good luck with that now, with your mid-pair mid-kicker against all that traffic. How likely is it to be anydamn good? But in a heads-up hand (which is likely to be the case if you raised with your 87s from later position and got a caller), your one pair is actuallylikely to be the best hand. One pair against only one player is usually best. So if you make one pair, you’d definitely be better off against only one guy. But one pair isn’t the most likely thing to happen to your 87s on the flop.

Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Understanding The Impact Of Field Size On ICM In Poker When people talk about game selection in multi-table tournaments (MTTs), they invariably talk about the… Defending vs BB Check-Raise on Paired Flops This is a companion piece to Attacking Paired Flops from the BB; you will get… Mastering PKO Final Tables Final tables can be the most exciting and rewarding phase of a tournament, and being… Attacking Paired Flops From the BB Paired flops present unique challenges to both a preflop raiser and a BB caller. The… KK vs QQ vs JJ at WSOP Main Event With only fourteen players remaining in the 2023 WSOP Main Event and blinds of 400K/800K/800K,… Responding to BB Squeezes You open raise, someone calls, and the BB squeezes. How should you construct your strategy?… Crushing a Top HUNL Poker Bot In 2022, Philippe Beardsell and Marc-Antoine Provost, a team of Canadian programmers from Quebec, developed… GTO Wizard AI Explained We are excited to introduce GTO Wizard AI, formerly known as Ruse, the world’s best… GTO Wizard AI Benchmarks GTO Wizard has combined the power of artificial intelligence with traditional solving methods to bring… Table Management in PKOs Perhaps the most important strategic consideration in Progressive Knockout Tournaments (PKOs) is making sure you… Overcalling From the BB In poker, overcalling refers to calling a bet or raise after another player has also… Understanding Which Mistakes Cost You the Most Money I am fortunate enough to have worked for many years with the mental game coach… Overbetting The Flop in Cash Games Although most commonly analyzed on turns and rivers, flop overbetting can be a devastating weapon… Using New Skills at the Poker Table How many times has it happened to you that you make a mistake only to… Flatting Ace-X Hands Shortstacked Playing out of position is tricky, but it’s an essential part of tournament play. With… Playing Limped Pots as the BB in MTTs Success as the BB in limped pots begins before the flop. The BB’s equilibrium strategy… The Absurd Game Theory of Chopped Boards A “chopped board” in poker is one where the community cards make up the best… Playing Limped Pots as the SB in MTTs MTT confrontations between the small blind and big blind force no-limit players into uncomfortable situations,… The Art of Learning Poker In his book The Art of Learning, chess and Push Hands champion Josh Waitzkin describes… Is Donk Betting for Donkeys? “Donk betting”, or betting from out of position into the player who was the aggressor… Delayed C-Betting This is a companion piece to Probe Betting. It stands on its own, but understanding… Probe Betting As far as rules of thumb go in poker, “check to the raiser” is a… ICM and Blind Battles: The Big Blind This is a companion piece to this article on the SB’s strategy for blind vs… ICM and Blind Battles: The Small Blind ICM incentivizes more conservative play, which means that at stages of the tournament where risk…

CARDROOM 19 Games in progress: When you join a game in progress, you will be required to post if you take a seat that the blind position has just passed. To post, you must place a bet equal to the big and small blinds combined in order to receive cards. This money goes into the pot in addition to the money from the current blinds. Like the big blind, you automatically get to see the flop, unless there are raises that you decide not to call. When joining a game in progress, you also have the option to wait until the blind position gets to you and then enter the game as a normal blind. Many people do this because it is cheaper in the long run and lets them observe the game before they play. The blind bets are your cost for receiving those initial pocket cards during the times you are not in the blind position. Leaving the table during play: You are allowed to temporarily leave your seat. Either leave your chips on the table, or tell the dealer you are taking a break, and the dealer will hold your seat for a specified interval of time, usually a half-hour. No cards will be dealt to your spot unless you are seated at the table. If you miss your turn as a blind, the dealer marks your spot with a button that says "missed blind." When you return, you will be required to pay the missed blind to get back into the game, or you can wait for the blind to come back to you. Leaving the game: You can leave a poker game at any time. Tell the dealer your seat is open, pick up your chips and take them to the cashier's window to exchange them. Dealers do not buy chips back from you. General Conduct Poker is a fast moving game, and for beginners, it is intimidating to play. Poker has many unspoken norms for behavior, and you risk quick ostracism if you violate them carelessly. If you are new, don't hesitate to ask questions of the dealer. Also, most poker players are friendly and will assist newcomers with proper conduct. 20 THE INTELLIGENT GUIDE TO TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER Don't pick up your cards: Leave your cards face-down on the table. Look at them by cupping your hands over them and turning up the corners. Get in the habit of looking at your cards once and leaving them face down. There are many other things to observe at the table, so avoid looking at your cards repeatedly. In addition, many cardrooms have rules against taking your cards off the table. Even where it is permissible, picking up and holding cards is still a bad habit to acquire. It is easy for the players next to you to see your cards if you are holding them in front of you. Protect your cards: If you win a pot, teturn the cards to the dealer after the money is pushed to you. If you sit next to the

the smaller the three bet can be so if you're playing off of say 30 big blinds you don't need a three bet to 5x on the polar range maybe you should be bet to four X versus on the larger stocks you can even go a little bit larger in terms of squeezing if there's some flat calls in the middle when you're squeezing you don't need a size up as much because that range is already weaker so we looked at with the linear range we know a linear range has a weaker flat calling range so if you're playing really deep suck and you have someone the flat called you know they already probably ever we can so my three and a half a can is a position open maybe I squeeze now to four X instead of three and a half add like a half a big blind versus a polar range maybe I add a hole make it five X because they have a stronger flattened range you can kind of use your judgment there these are all kind of guidelines and the sizing is as important as picking the right type of hands and the right frequencies facing a linear 3-betting range so when you're facing linear ranging linear ranges for bedding becomes a tractive in your hand playability matters when your for Betty so say you're facing a 10% linear 3 bet you might for bet like the top 4 to 5% of hands and the reason for betting becomes more attractive especially if you're deep stacked against a linear range is that the person is going to be able to continue with a lot of their three letting range because their strong hands and especially if they're in position they're gonna flat call out and so you can get a lot of value from the top of your range as a note from before squeezing more verse flatters whom use a linear range so attack weaker flouting ranges when you know someone uses a linear range and then they flat call you know they don't have that top ten fifteen percent of hands because they just chose to flat call instead of three bets so you can squeeze a lot more and isolate yourself into a heads up pot with the extra dead money in for betting also becomes attractive against linear ranges because you gonna force your opponents to fold high equity hands so if someone is three betting a linear range and they're three Betty hands like pocket nines and pocket tens you can or say Jack ten suited Queen ten suited you can for bet and put them in a really tough spot with those hands and if you don't make them fold preflop it's easy to make them fold on a lot of high variety of flops and so for betting becomes very attractive against these linear ranges and yeah just kind of what I've been talking about the three better could continue wide versa for better so you can

Fold AA Preflop? One of the criticisms of ICM is that it is boring and robotic. In my… OOP C-betting vs Loose Cold-callers In a previous GTO Wizard article, I asserted that “Playing against an in-position cold-caller is… Short-Stacked Play in MTTs Playing a short stack well is an essential tournament skill. It is extremely rare to… When To Ladder in Tournaments In my last two articles, I wrote about the effect field size and payout structure… How Payout Structures Impact ICM Last time we discussed the ICM considerations in game selection, we looked at field size,… C-Betting IP in 3-Bet Pots When you three-bet before the flop and the original raiser calls from out of position,… C-Betting OOP in 3-Bet Pots Continuation betting from out of position can be a dicey proposition in single-raised pots. Cold… Dynamic Sizing: A GTO Breakthrough Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Dynamic Sizing Benchmarks Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Understanding The Impact Of Field Size On ICM In Poker When people talk about game selection in multi-table tournaments (MTTs), they invariably talk about the… Defending vs BB Check-Raise on Paired Flops This is a companion piece to Attacking Paired Flops from the BB; you will get… Mastering PKO Final Tables Final tables can be the most exciting and rewarding phase of a tournament, and being… Attacking Paired Flops From the BB Paired flops present unique challenges to both a preflop raiser and a BB caller. The… KK vs QQ vs JJ at WSOP Main Event With only fourteen players remaining in the 2023 WSOP Main Event and blinds of 400K/800K/800K,… Responding to BB Squeezes You open raise, someone calls, and the BB squeezes. How should you construct your strategy?… Crushing a Top HUNL Poker Bot In 2022, Philippe Beardsell and Marc-Antoine Provost, a team of Canadian programmers from Quebec, developed… GTO Wizard AI Explained We are excited to introduce GTO Wizard AI, formerly known as Ruse, the world’s best… GTO Wizard AI Benchmarks GTO Wizard has combined the power of artificial intelligence with traditional solving methods to bring… Table Management in PKOs Perhaps the most important strategic consideration in Progressive Knockout Tournaments (PKOs) is making sure you… Overcalling From the BB In poker, overcalling refers to calling a bet or raise after another player has also… Understanding Which Mistakes Cost You the Most Money I am fortunate enough to have worked for many years with the mental game coach… Overbetting The Flop in Cash Games Although most commonly analyzed on turns and rivers, flop overbetting can be a devastating weapon… Using New Skills at the Poker Table How many times has it happened to you that you make a mistake only to… Flatting Ace-X Hands Shortstacked Playing out of position is tricky, but it’s an essential part of tournament play. With… Playing Limped Pots as the BB in MTTs Success as the BB in limped pots begins before the flop. The BB’s equilibrium strategy… The Absurd

to form an accurate model of your strategy. By varying your playing strategy over time, opponents may be induced to make mistakes based on an incorrect model. Opponent modeling allows you to determine a likely probability distribution for your opponent’s hidden cards. Other forms of deception (such as calling with a strong hand) are not considered here for this simulation. A minimal opponent model might use a single model for all opponents in a given hand. Opponent modeling may be improved by modifying those probabilities based on the collected statistics and betting history of each opponent. Several other identifiable characteristics may not be necessary to play reasonably strong poker, but may eventually be required for world-class play. Opponent modeling is integral to successful poker play. It is important to differentiate an optimal strategy from a maximizing strategy. The optimal player makes its decisions based on game-theoretic probabilities, without regard to specific context. The maximizing player takes into account the opponent’s sub-optimal tendencies and adjusts its play to exploit these weaknesses. In poker, a player that detects and adjusts to opponent weaknesses will win more than a player who does not. For example, against a strong conservative player, it would be correct to fold the probable second-best hand. However, against a weaker player who bluffs too much, it would be an error to fold that same hand. In real poker, it is very common for opponents to play sub-optimally. A player who fails to detect and exploit these weaknesses will not win as much as a better player who does. Thus, a maximizing program will out-perform an optimal program against sub-optimal players. Although a game-theoretic optimal solution for Hold’em would be interesting and provide a good baseline for comparing program (and human) performance, it would in no way “solve the game.” To produce a world-class poker program, strong opponent modeling is essential. I am sure this E-book will help you win more money in the long run and will pay for itself in just one session. If you want to buy the complete book or have any questions email the writer – [email protected].

the big blind from having a flush it it incrementally decreases the number of hands the big blind is likely to have that are ahead of the button's hand which in turn slightly improves its rank vis-a-vis villains Equity distribution and the flip side is also true if we're holding a car that lowers the probability or blocks the big blind from holding a calling hand that is weaker it would slightly lower the rank of the button's hand vis-a-vis villains Equity distribution for example let's say that the river is the Ten of diamonds instead of the five of diamonds in this case not only is it possible that the big blind has made a flush that pushes our top pairs down the equity distribution now it's also possible that the big one has made a straight which pushes down our top pairs even further here we see that virtually no top pairs or repairs or even two pairs bet even with the ace of diamonds blocker instead the threshold for Value bending has moved up to a set but interestingly we see that among our sets pocket Deuces and pocket sevens basically bet all the time whereas pocket Queens which are stronger only that some of the time so why is this well this is a function of card removal in this case the queen blocks some of the potential Bluff catchers that the big blind may call with such as Queen Jack and queen nine that blocks our straights or in other words the buttons Queens remove some of the weaker portion of the big blind's Equity distribution which in turn very slightly decreases the strength of this hand but holding pocket sevens or pocket Deuces would have little to no impact on the big blinds Equity distribution from a probability standpoint so to sum things up when facing a close value-baying decision we should first assess how aggressive we want to be overall and our predominant sizing by estimating who is more likely to hold the strongest hand and whether villain is likely to hold a very weak hand then assuming that we aren't betting all or none of our range we then rank where our hand fits relative to villain's Equity distribution and if the decision seems close we combo select by focusing on incremental equity and card removal so that is is a video for today thanks for watching and until next time stay balanced [Music]

presolved solutions do not offer much in the way of explicit guidance… Top 5 Mistakes in Spin & Gos As a Spin and Go poker coach, I regularly encounter common mistakes that players make,… An Introduction to Spin & Gos I was playing Tournaments for the first decade of my career. But after my first… Relationships and Poker In my more than 15 years of poker coaching, I’ve helped hundreds of clients improve… Do Multiple Sizes Matter? Should I work out the other tools or just stick to the crowbar? Solver results… The Science of Learning Applied to GTO Wizard The way we were taught to study in schools was flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN preflop raiser in a 100bb cash… When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody… Protect Equity and Prosper When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend… Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative poker thinking. When you’re value betting against… Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots When the BTN open-limps off a short stack, the postflop play against the BB should… I’d Rather Be Drawing Which is the better hand on a K♥8♦5♦ flop: K♠T♣ or 7♥6♥? OK, I’ll admit… The Curious Case of Open-Limping Buttons Before the advent of solvers, open-limping was considered the province of passive, gambley recreational players… Cleaning Out Sticky IP Callers A “sticky” player on your left, one who calls your preflop raises too often and… Defending Against Tiny 3-Bets Tournament poker is about precision. Cash games, where stacks typically run into the hundreds of… Heads up! Exploiting SB’s Preflop Mistakes Heads up (HU) tournament play presents unique challenges to the average player. Many tournament players,… C-Betting As the OOP Preflop Raiser Position is an extremely valuable advantage in poker. Most players would describe the comfort zone… Overchoice: Making Sense of Multiple Sizings Solver solutions with multiple bet sizes often involve a lot of mixing between those sizes,… River Refinements: When Your Opponent Won’t Check-Raise One of the biggest strategic differences between playing in versus out of position involves betting… Turn Barreling in 3-Bet Pots There are two articles on the GTO Wizard blog that make good prerequisites to this… The Right Way To Think About Protection Suppose Paul the Protector is in a 200bb cash game and opens A♠A♣ in the… The Importance of Board Coverage The first public version of the GTO Wizard announced AI upgrade already has some useful… How To Adjust When Villain Has No Bluffs “They always have it!” is a common, semi-joking expression in poker to describe the tendency… Adjusting on Later Streets After Exploiting Flop The key to exploiting opponents profitably is knowing when to stop. I’m not referring to… C-Betting IP vs Passive Poker Players A

to study in schools was flawed and has negatively impacted… Check-Raising a Single Pair In this article, I will address a question raised by Twitter/X user ’Matt Riley’, who… The Turn Probe Bet Imagine yourself defending as the BB caller vs BTN preflop raiser in a 100bb cash… When To Encourage Multiway Pots in PKOs I was recently shown this fascinating PKO hand from the GTO Wizard PKO library. Somebody… Protect Equity and Prosper When we think about the best hands to bet in a given situation, we tend… Do Solvers Have Targets? Targeting has long been a staple of exploitative poker thinking. When you’re value betting against… Disciplining Big Blind in Limped Pots When the BTN open-limps off a short stack, the postflop play against the BB should… I’d Rather Be Drawing Which is the better hand on a K♥8♦5♦ flop: K♠T♣ or 7♥6♥? OK, I’ll admit… The Curious Case of Open-Limping Buttons Before the advent of solvers, open-limping was considered the province of passive, gambley recreational players… Cleaning Out Sticky IP Callers A “sticky” player on your left, one who calls your preflop raises too often and… Defending Against Tiny 3-Bets Tournament poker is about precision. Cash games, where stacks typically run into the hundreds of… Heads up! Exploiting SB’s Preflop Mistakes Heads up (HU) tournament play presents unique challenges to the average player. Many tournament players,… C-Betting As the OOP Preflop Raiser Position is an extremely valuable advantage in poker. Most players would describe the comfort zone… Overchoice: Making Sense of Multiple Sizings Solver solutions with multiple bet sizes often involve a lot of mixing between those sizes,… River Refinements: When Your Opponent Won’t Check-Raise One of the biggest strategic differences between playing in versus out of position involves betting… Turn Barreling in 3-Bet Pots There are two articles on the GTO Wizard blog that make good prerequisites to this… The Right Way To Think About Protection Suppose Paul the Protector is in a 200bb cash game and opens A♠A♣ in the… The Importance of Board Coverage The first public version of the GTO Wizard announced AI upgrade already has some useful… How To Adjust When Villain Has No Bluffs “They always have it!” is a common, semi-joking expression in poker to describe the tendency… Adjusting on Later Streets After Exploiting Flop The key to exploiting opponents profitably is knowing when to stop. I’m not referring to… C-Betting IP vs Passive Poker Players A preflop raiser enjoys a significant range advantage over a BB caller, enabling them to… C-Betting Against ICM Preflop Ranges You raise from early position (EP) in a multi-table tournament and the BB calls. Both… The Art of Bluff Catching Bluff catching—calling a bet with a modest hand which you expect to win only if… Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by IP On some flops, it is simply not possible for the preflop raiser to continuation bet… Is Limping Pimping? In a past Discord post, one of our members noted that an upside of implementing… Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by OOP A preflop raiser who continuation bets too often

better in every scenario right it doesn't really work like that if you did get it all in before the flop with these two hands you see pocket twos actually beats ace king a little bit more often however take jack 10 suited right below it here we see jack 10 suited is actually better than pocket twos if you ran it against each other and it turns out it's generally thought that ace king and jackson suited are both pretty strong hands because well ace king can always just make top pair top kicker jack 10 suited can make straight send flushes and it has a lot of potential when you see the flop with it because usually you're going to flop a straight draw or a flush draw or something whereas pocket twos usually it's a bad pair so different hands thrive in different scenarios it turns out the small pairs are quite good whenever you have relatively few big blinds remember i discussed earlier the effective stack size this is where that kind of concept starts to become very very important because some some hands are much better when you're deep stacked and some hands are much better when you are shallow stacked then however if you run ace king against jack 10 suited well you see ace king just crushes jack 10 suited so we have this like a triangle right where ace king loses to twos but ace king beats jack 10 but jack 10 beats two so don't get stuck in your head thinking oh this hand's always better than this one so i need to always play this hand and never play this hand poker is a difficult game and i'm going to do my best throughout this course to simplify it for you but um realize that you want to play good hands if you play a lot of bad hands well uh you should expect your money to go to your opponents now that you know which hands are generally playable and which hands are generally not playable let's discuss the three main reasons to bet in nolam and texas holdem and they are for value for protection and as a bluff so let's go through these one by one a value bet is when you are betting because you want worse hands to call you this is when you have a hand like the nuts the nuts are the best possible hand before the flop whenever you have a pair of aces you have the best possible hand in this scenario you want your opponents to call you because whenever they put money in the pot some of that is going to be going to you because you are the person most likely to win the hand when you have the best hand so when you are betting for value it's very important that you make sure that worse hands can realistically call you this will sometimes occur on the flop the turn or the river where let's say you have a

this person is willing to pay better than even money on the outcome of a fourth head each time three heads appear in a row, you are assured of making money. Since past coin flips have no affect on future ones, the probabilities remain 50-50. Anyone willing to pay out better than even money on wagers against coin flips--even selected coin flips that occur after streaks-will lose over the long-run. I relate the story of my friend's belief in coin flips because it is easy to see that the belief is wrong. However, many gamblers share the same wrong belief and don't realize it. They will behave as if the past does affect the future. Examples of common behaviors: You have just lost seven hands in a row at blackjack. You decide to bet the table maximum on the eighth hand because it must be time for a win. After all, how often do you lose eight hands in a row? You have received garbage poker..hands for the last hour and decide that no matter what, you will bet heavily on the next hand because it must be time for a winning hand. You repeatedly play the same lottery numbers, believing that if those numbers haven't won yet, their time must be coming. Each of these behaviors results from believing that "I'm due." Claiming that "I'm due" is just another way of claiming that the past affects the future. MATHEMATICAL CONSIDERATIONS 99 There are more subtle expressions of this wrong thinking, such as believing that other players in the game affect the probabilities. Examples: Some poker players believe that the more players there are competing for a pot, the more likely it is that they will be dealt three-of-a-kind or better. It is easy to fall into this trap, since winning hands tend to be higher when there are more players at the table. Three of a kind is much more likely to be the winning hand when seven players compete, while with two players, a high pair is often enough to win. However, winning hands are higher, only because more hands are dealt, and to win, you have to beat more people. Whatever the number of players, the probability of you, an individual, receiving three-of-a-kind is always the same. Present events, such as the number of players who decide to fold early, do not after the fact affect the probabilities on the past event of the deal. Just as the past doesn't affect the future, the present does not affect the past. Some poker players believe in betting heavily during winning streaks and advise not to leave the table. This may be sound advice if the reasons for the winning streak have to do with being at a table filled with bad players. However, if the reason is a sudden streak of great cards, there is no reason to believe this has anything to do with the table, your seat, your opponents, the dealer, the day of the week, the color of your socks, or any factor, period. Good streaks happen

Hand Range 163: BB vs LJ (25bb) • All-in 5.1% / • 3-bet 5% / • Call 66.8% / • Fold 23.2%

AI upgrade already has some useful… How To Adjust When Villain Has No Bluffs “They always have it!” is a common, semi-joking expression in poker to describe the tendency… Adjusting on Later Streets After Exploiting Flop The key to exploiting opponents profitably is knowing when to stop. I’m not referring to… C-Betting IP vs Passive Poker Players A preflop raiser enjoys a significant range advantage over a BB caller, enabling them to… C-Betting Against ICM Preflop Ranges You raise from early position (EP) in a multi-table tournament and the BB calls. Both… The Art of Bluff Catching Bluff catching—calling a bet with a modest hand which you expect to win only if… Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by IP On some flops, it is simply not possible for the preflop raiser to continuation bet… Is Limping Pimping? In a past Discord post, one of our members noted that an upside of implementing… Exploiting Excessive C-Betting by OOP A preflop raiser who continuation bets too often is always a potential target for exploitation,… Preflop Button Mastery in PKOs Playing from the Button presents many unique opportunities in any tournament format, especially in PKOs.… The Worst Turn Card Greetings from GTO land. In today’s article, we will use the Turn Reports feature to… Navigating Range Disadvantage as the 3-Bettor Picture this: We’re playing a NL500 6-max cash game, and we’ve won a few pots,… Mastering Three-Bet Pots In Position in MTTs Playing in position against a three-better is a lesson in playing to your advantages. As… Mastering Three-Bet Pots Out of Position in MTTs Three-bet pots are scary. Playing out of position is scary. Put them together, and you’ve… The Greatest Final Table in Triton History Today, we’ll examine one of the most epic final table battles I’ve ever witnessed! Our… Mastering Thin Value Bets in Checked-Down Pots Valuing your hand appropriately—determining whether it’s strong enough to value bet or so weak you… Maximizing Value on Monotone Flops Monotone flops tend to provoke great anxiety among poker players. It’s easy to imagine that… How to Defend Against Turn Donk Bets Responding effectively to donk bets on the turn is tricky;, there’s no getting around that.… How and Why You Should Use Turn Donk Bets Donk betting–taking the betting lead away from the previous street’s aggressor–on the flop is rarely… How Stack Sizes Change Your Range In this series, we have looked at factors that can influence ranges in otherwise identical… How to Leverage GTO Wizard’s EV Comparison Tool With the advent of solvers, some troubling new turns of phrase have entered the poker… Should You Ever Cold Call a 3-Bet? When there’s been a raise and re-raise before the action is on you, you will… When ICM Breaks Down If you have read my previous GTO Wizard articles and my books, you’ll know I… When Is It Correct To Fold AA Preflop? One of the criticisms of ICM is that it is boring and robotic. In my… OOP C-betting vs Loose Cold-callers In a previous GTO Wizard article, I asserted that “Playing against an in-position cold-caller

slow to catch on, there is no reason to think he won’t adapt as soon as he realizes that Hero is never bluffing. If Villain counter-exploits Hero by switching to a strategy of always folding to his all-in, his EV becomes: This is 2x more than equilibrium per hand and 10x the amount Hero was exploiting the Villain for! So, Hero should be able to exploit Villain at least 10 times in a row before he catches on to Hero’s strategy and adjusts, otherwise Hero will lose money. If Villain counter-exploits Hero even 2 out of 10 times, Hero would still lose $30, or -$3/hand, compared to GTO. If the Villain was particularly slow catching on and allows Hero to keep exploiting him for 45 hands in a row, and only adjusts for the final 5 hands, then Hero’s EV over 50 hands would be -$12.5 compared to simply playing GTO. Unless your opponent is completely oblivious to your play, you can’t expect them to ignore your betting frequency when you are obviously playing MES and being completely unbalanced. Assuming they are intelligent and capable of adjusting to your play, how do you take advantage of their leak in a way that doesn’t leave you open to massive counter-exploitation? You can build their leak into the structure of the game. A perfect poker player’s utility function would be equal to their EV, but most players’ decisions get affected by different factors such as the fear of losing money, looking stupid, or the embarrassment of being bluffed, and those psychological traits will slightly tilt decisions in one way or another, decreasing a player’s

Limp To call the big blind preflop, before anyone has made a raise.

u s h e s , an d a c e s ; i t c ann o t b e u s e d t o m ak e a p a i r e x c e p t w i th a c e s . My fri en d N . S . b o ught into a $ 2 - $ 4 draw p o ker g am e fo r $ 4 0 , an d th e fi r s t h an d h e p i c k e d up w a s an a c e - h i g h s tr a i g ht : E v a l u a t i n g t h e G a m e 2 6 3 He was in third position behind the dealer. The man under the gun checked, the second man checked, and N.S. gleefully bet $2. Everyone behind him folded, but then bang! The man in first position raised, and the man in second position reraised. Stupefied, N.S. called the double raise, and the first raiser called the reraise. When it came time to draw cards, the first man stood pat. The second man stood pat. N.S. was smart enough to realize his straight was beat, if not by the man in first position, certainly by the man in second position. So he cleverly discarded the ace of clubs to draw to a straight flush in hearts — or any kind of flush, since with the joker he'd have an A,Q high. Drawing to N.S. actually had four cards that would make the straight flush — the and When he looked at the card he'd drawn, there it was — the king of hearts! He'd made a royal flush, the pure nuts of pure nuts. The man in second position bet. N.S. raised. The man in first position called. The man in second position reraised. N.S. reraised. The man in first position eventually folded his jack-high flush, but the reraising continued until the entire $40 with which N.S. bought into the game was in the pot. The second player turned over a full house — kings full of 9s. With a broad smile N.S. revealed his royal flush. He was about to gather in the pot when his opponent asked, "Where are your openers?" "Openers?" N.S. said. "I had a straight." "But you drew one card," said his opponent. "You don't have openers." Remember that in Gardena card rooms you need jacks or better to open. The joker can be used only with aces,straights, and 264 Chapter Twenty-five flushes. Since N.S. had thrown away his ace of clubs and had indeed drawn one card to make the royal, he had no proof whatsoever that he had opened with a legal opening hand. Of course, there's a posted rule in Gardena card rooms to cover such situations: "When splitting openers, player must declare same and protect split card by turning it face up under a chip." N.S.

checks on the flop turn is a five we don't know if we have like the best of it we assume we do but yeah check or a small bet I guess River we just checked down no need to bet and we lose to five six because we didn't bet the five so we defend King eight perfect this is a flop we would check call we have King High we have a gut shot we have a backdoor Diamond so we don't need to like Bluff all that much here but sure if you wanted to check raises as a bluff you could um but wheat is fold so this is a mistake too we're folding in spots where we have Equity we're folding in spots where we have outs a seven gives us a win a king High could be good if we're up against like Queen Jack or up against Jack eight you know there's some hands we can beat um so that's some other uh the nuances I've noticed here we got Queens against a button open easy three bet spot we don't ever want a flat call here we don't ever want to shove we just want a three bet to like six and a half or seven big blinds something that looks like we could just be pouncing on against these short stacks love it thank you patar let's go baby we finally put in a good Gray size here and and I and I believe this is because Batar finally feels comfortable with his hand in the other hands with the pocket floors and the ace Jack and stuff I feel like we saw small Ray sizes because maybe our hero didn't know how to play those hands so here we see a lot more comfortability it looks like and uh we win that 7-5 suited fine let's raise the button uh we definitely want to bet this flop with a double gut shot in the ace high board good bet we get called we turn a pair we can just check now so here this this is a Bad Bet because the three or four that we now beat is gonna fold the ace is still going to call the deuce is gonna call so this is this really this bet doesn't really get called by things that we beat uh sure maybe diamonds on occasion but still it it it shouldn't and we get shoved on that's also why we check two tens comes in for a small three bet I think two tens here wants to have bigger three bets so I look at the stack size behind me here dictating my sizes so I I know I'm gonna be like two to three x usually but look at the stacks we got 27 24 20 and then a big stack so I'm probably gonna gonna make my sizing a little bit bigger here to like 6.6.5 big blinds just because if these people want to play the hand I want

discussed the ICM considerations in game selection, we looked at field size,… C-Betting IP in 3-Bet Pots When you three-bet before the flop and the original raiser calls from out of position,… C-Betting OOP in 3-Bet Pots Continuation betting from out of position can be a dicey proposition in single-raised pots. Cold… Dynamic Sizing: A GTO Breakthrough Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Dynamic Sizing Benchmarks Dynamic Sizing is a revolutionary new poker algorithm that automatically simplifies your strategy with the… Understanding The Impact Of Field Size On ICM In Poker When people talk about game selection in multi-table tournaments (MTTs), they invariably talk about the… Defending vs BB Check-Raise on Paired Flops This is a companion piece to Attacking Paired Flops from the BB; you will get… Mastering PKO Final Tables Final tables can be the most exciting and rewarding phase of a tournament, and being… Attacking Paired Flops From the BB Paired flops present unique challenges to both a preflop raiser and a BB caller. The… KK vs QQ vs JJ at WSOP Main Event With only fourteen players remaining in the 2023 WSOP Main Event and blinds of 400K/800K/800K,… Responding to BB Squeezes You open raise, someone calls, and the BB squeezes. How should you construct your strategy?… Crushing a Top HUNL Poker Bot In 2022, Philippe Beardsell and Marc-Antoine Provost, a team of Canadian programmers from Quebec, developed… GTO Wizard AI Explained We are excited to introduce GTO Wizard AI, formerly known as Ruse, the world’s best… GTO Wizard AI Benchmarks GTO Wizard has combined the power of artificial intelligence with traditional solving methods to bring… Table Management in PKOs Perhaps the most important strategic consideration in Progressive Knockout Tournaments (PKOs) is making sure you… Overcalling From the BB In poker, overcalling refers to calling a bet or raise after another player has also… Understanding Which Mistakes Cost You the Most Money I am fortunate enough to have worked for many years with the mental game coach… Overbetting The Flop in Cash Games Although most commonly analyzed on turns and rivers, flop overbetting can be a devastating weapon… Using New Skills at the Poker Table How many times has it happened to you that you make a mistake only to… Flatting Ace-X Hands Shortstacked Playing out of position is tricky, but it’s an essential part of tournament play. With… Playing Limped Pots as the BB in MTTs Success as the BB in limped pots begins before the flop. The BB’s equilibrium strategy… The Absurd Game Theory of Chopped Boards A “chopped board” in poker is one where the community cards make up the best… Playing Limped Pots as the SB in MTTs MTT confrontations between the small blind and big blind force no-limit players into uncomfortable situations,… The Art of Learning Poker In his book The Art of Learning, chess and Push Hands champion Josh Waitzkin describes… Is Donk Betting for Donkeys? “Donk betting”, or betting from out of position into the player who was the aggressor… Delayed C-Betting

Contents About David Sklansky vii About Ed Miller viii Introduction 1 About This Book 4 Some Notes About the Examples 6 I Fundamentals 8 The Skills for Success 9 Manipulating the Pot Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Adjusting Correctly to Stack Sizes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Winning the Battle of Mistakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Reading Hands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Manipulating Opponents into Playing Badly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 From Skills to Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 No Limit and the Fundamental Theorem of Poker 13 Thinking in Terms of Expectation 16 Final Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 The Pot Size Philosophy 18 The Pot Size Philosophy — An Example 20 The Importance of Implied Odds 24 Imperfect Information and Implied Odds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Don’t Justify Their Optimistic Calls 29 Final Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 ii