Strategy
Playing poker is hard.
Playing poker well is very hard.
Playing optimal poker is impossible.
I believe most people would agree with the above statement. The idea that no one can play perfectly balanced and remember the exact frequencies of solver outputs is an argument used often when the context is debating whether poker will ever die or not. If you state that it’s impossible to play poker completely unexploitably, even if one tries really really hard, then you have to admit that there will always be money to be made in the game (as long as sites don’t make rake absurdly high).
I subscribe to that view as well. It seems to me playing properly balanced is unachievable for pretty much any poker player.
The main reason why I believe this to be true has to do with some stats I posted in my YouTube channel 2 weeks ago as a form of quiz. I asked people to guess how often a GTO player is “allowed” to play his nutted hands (defined as a 90% or more equity hand) as pure strategies, before becoming imbalanced, for the following lines: flop cbet, turn cbet and turn delayed cbet (SRP BTN vs BB):
To my surprise, 47% of the people answered correctly – option D) 30%, 15%, 5%.
What these stats mean is that:
In the flop cbet line BTN vs BB, you should ‘mix it up’ the play with your nuts 70% of the time;
In the turn cbet line BTN vs BB, you should ‘mix it up’ the play with your nuts 85% of the time;
In the turn delayed cbet line BTN vs BB, you should ‘mix it up’ the play with your nuts 95% of the time.
In this context, mixing it up just means playing 2 or more different actions with the same hand in the same spot. One can achieve that by using a randomizer, as you probably know (if you don’t, check out my Play & Explain videos, I use it often).
Now, let me ask you something: do you think you are mixing it up with your nutted hands 85% of the time when you double barrel? 95% of the time when you delay cbet?
You and me both know the answer to this question. I don’t have to say it out loud.
Now, I have some good knews and some bad knews. Let’s go with the good knews first.
The good knews for you is that, even though you are likely very exploitable with your strategy and range constructions, since you are at least not mixing it up with your nutted hands as often as you should (amongst many other range construction problems, very likely), 95% of your opponents are not attacking your leaks (at least, not intentionally).
The bad knews, on the other hand, is just the same information, but from your perspective – you are also very likely not attacking the leaks of your opponents enough. Money is out there for grabs, and you’re just refusing to take it, or you can’t see the opportunities when they arise.
It’s crazy to me how exploitative play is not more often pursued by poker professionals. It seems like everyone is obssessed with GTO strategies and GTO heuristics, and not much attention is given to how our opponents are actually imbalanced, and how much that matters for our strategy development.
Hint: it matters a lot.
What you should take from the above stats is not just that “playing optimally is very hard” – that was already a given, even before you knew those numbers. What actually matters is: what are you going to do with this information?
The first part is the interpretation part. If being properly balanced requires so much mixing with the strongest hands, and a very quick self-evaluation will reveal that we don’t get nearly as close to those frequencies, then we can safely assume the same will be true for our opponents, and therefore 2 things are going to happen:
One of their strategic options will contain more nuts than it should;
The rest of their strategic options will contain less nuts than they should.
1 should be self-evident, but it’s important to highlight it, as it also creates opportunity for exploitation. If people (you included) are failing to mix their play sufficiently when holding a strong hand, what that actually means in practice is that they are taking an specific action more often than they should with that hand class (and the remaining actions less often than optimal).
The nutted hands are getting concentrated in an specific strategic option, making it stronger than it should be in theory. The exploit is straightforward – if it’s a betting range, you start folding the weak bluffcatchers and any other low EV hands you would previously call with. If it’s a checking range, you start playing more passively and bluffing less.
The real fun part however comes when we get the opportunity to exploit the remaining strategic options. The ones that lack nuts.
Imagine you’re playing BB vs BTN, you defend preflop and flop comes Ts9h2s. Your opponent cbets big, around pot size, and you call. Turn comes a Td, making the board paired.
In this circumstance, it is optimal for you to lead 66% of the time, as that card is really good for your range. Then, even against a strategy that leads this much, your opponent is still supposed to play carefully when you check. So much so that he should slowplay the top of his range 25% of the time:
What if this player does not slowplay this much though? In fact, that’s what I expect to happen against 99% of opponents. When people have the betting lead, in a big pot, with a nutted hand, on a draw heavy board, they won’t play like a solver. They’ll just bet.
This assumption is backed by data when we take a look at the behavior of the population in this line after checking back the turn – they fold a lot more than solver, and raise a lot less. Exactly what a range lacking nuts would do.
If they concentrate their strong hands into their betting range, that will inevitably leave their checking range unprotected. Getting to the river, they will be capped – while you’ll have all the possible strong hands.
What happens then? This happens:
This is what the solver does on the river after IP caps it’s turn check back range and a blank comes up. This is what you should do against your opponents.
As soon as your opponents range lacks the proper amount of nutted hands, a few things are going to happen:
First and most important, all of your hands go up in equity. Your strongest hands are now completely nutted (just like T4s above became the ultimate nuts); your middling strength hands become good hands; and your weak bluffcatchers become thin value hands.
Your opponent will have trouble calling properly against aggression, because now that he lacks many snap call hands (or even raises), he will be forced to call your bets with some pretty marginal hands to prevent you from overbluffing;
He will also struggle to reach the necessary raising frequencies, as he simply doesn’t have the hands to do it with.
These 3 things lead to 3 immediate exploits you should use against capped ranges:
1 – Increase your betsizings will all hand classes: the equity boost from facing a weaker range allows your value hands to bet bigger, as their equity against calling range increases, even for big sizes;
2 – Never give up a bluffing hand: your opponent is now required to call with weaker hands more often, but he probably won’t. Data shows that population heavily overfolds the lines where they’re capped. Capitalize on that by firing with your bluffs;
3 – Bet more often and for thinner value with middling strength: the lack of nutted hands leads to lack of raises. Lack of raises leads to either more calls or more folds (or both). In any of those cases, the EV of your middling strength hands increases;
Keep in mind that it’s not just a checking range that can be capped. It’s pretty common for example for people to split their betting range into 2 betsizes in a postflop node. One example is the probe node BB vs BTN. I love to exploit that node because lots of times you’ll see someone betting small or medium on a texture where it’s extremely common for people to size up with their nuts. Sometimes it may even be optimal to split the betting range into multiple betsizes, but your opponent won’t do it correctly. He will just put the nuts into the big bet size, more often than he is allowed to. Therefore, the smaller bet sizes become capped, and you can apply the same exploits mentioned above.
As a final, but important note: a lot of people get confused with item 1, because they think “well now that my opponent has a weaker range, shouldn’t I size down with the nuts to capture more calls?”. And the answer is no; at least not necessarily.
Sizing up with both your value and bluffs is a good min exploit strategy – your opponent is weaker, so you bet bigger for value, and because of that you bet bigger as a bluff for the sake of balance.
If however you don’t care about being face up in this situation, and is fine with using a different betsizing with a bluff and a value bet, it still does not mean you should pick a smaller one with the nuts. Sizing down does not necessarily guarantee higher value bet EV.
But more on that on a future post. For now, you should:
Bet bigger than you are comfortable with, whenever you get the chance;
Bluff more than you are comfortable with, whenever you get the chance;
Depolarize more than you are comfortable with, whenever you get the chance.
Keep on the lookout for capped ranges. Then, execute the things above – and thank me later when it makes you more money (because it will).
I On the theme of exploiting capped ranges, take a look at this video about Redline issues. I talk about how you can improve your redline by increasing your betsizing against capped ranges:
3 Reasons Why Your Redline Sucks (And How To Fix It)
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See you next week. Until then – keep it simple.
Saulo
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