Maximizing OOP and overbet theory

Don't like it. Why not bet three streets? 60/110/200 or whatever. I would expect more calls that way.

Just check/raise the flop. It is so easy for Villain to put you on a bluff when you do this. There are so many natural bluffs on this board and so few value hands. Villain will not fold any made hand or draw, and might even call with AK.

If you check/call flop, check the turn and let him bluff. If it checks through, jam the river and he will be tempted to call hands as bad as AKo, putting you on missed draws. When you jam here you just give him a chance to fold his air and potentially his under pairs.

A defense if this play might be that it gives your (semi)bluffs some bite when you donk shove them. But another idea is to bet everything smaller, which makes your bluffs cheaper and your value more likely to gain at least one called bet.

i dont understand what the theory is to do this on the turn lol

somewhat close sim has like a b20 range ott but i would guess you don't lose ev not implementing that and going to be unreasoably hard to do. it never does this though and theres like 1.25bb ev loss jamming ur hand vs check / b20

Either c/r the flop, which allows you to bet the turn regardless of what falls, or as played check the turn.

Your check-call, donk-shove screams, "I have at least 2-pair, Sir. You should proceed with caution. It's OK if I win the minimum."

In theory this is never a thing because

1. Your check call range is condensed, so even if you have something strong you usually trap to protect your bluffcatchers

2. You lose a ton of value by jamming turn, because you're not utilising all the remaining streets. You can sometimes do this with hands that are more vulnerable (because the equity they deny will compensate for the value that you lose), but sets generally do not fall into this category.

what other hands would villain expect you to realistically do this with? start there.

then once you get there, come up with a range of hands that call this bet.

I don't like donk betting turn. Generally turn donks should be for small size on boards where you expect villain to check back a lot. Generally when the board pairs is the most common time we donk. The 7 is a blank, only really bringing in 87. He is likely to barrel his good hands and potentially his bluffs.

I think we should plan to check raise either flop or turn. In theory at this depth the play might actually be to check call flop and turn, but honestly villain is probably not going to value bet thin enough on the river if we just check call turn, nor are they going to find enough bluffs. For example, if the bet turn and a spade rolls off on the river, they are still supposed to jam AA and KK with or without a spade. They are also supposed to barrel AK with or without a spade both on the turn at high frequency and jam AK on a rivered spade with or without a spade in their hand at high frequency. In practice villains will check back river with overpairs if spades get there, maybe even if spades don't get there. So I do think we need to take the betting initiative at some point but I don't like donk betting to try to do that.

I'm sorry, I misread the hand, somehow I thought V checked and you bet. I like the turn donkshove even less now. I have no idea why you would ever do this.

aside from there being no reason in theory to do this, you're likely to get villain thinking you maybe somehow hit 2pair on the 7, or are getting afraid of a third spade with 2pair+ or whatever. It's a super fishy line that results in one of two things:

1. A bad player reacts idiosyncratically based on whether he decides to read this as a bluff or as value, and who knows which it will be
2. A good player realizes that the line itself is idiosyncratic, and thus has to decide what kind of idiosyncratic YOU are, and whether this is a wacky bluff or scared value or what.
2b. A good player who doesn't bother trying to interpret what this bet means, and just tries to defend how they would facing a normal bet of this size

Note how both are unpredicatable and come down to unknowables about how a bizarre line will interpreted, excepting case 2b, in which case the line still achieves nothing.

Did you guys read OP’s read on V? This is someone who relies on theory to justify calls that are too loose. Taking him out of theory with this donk jam seems like as good a way as any to get paid. (Check-raising flop seems fine too though.)

Those of you saying Villain gets let off the hook with this line should reread the OP. Villain is quite likely to talk himself into a call, using all sorts of excuses, chief among them that folding is too exploitable, and that the only way this line makes sense is if we had a draw that picked up more outs on the turn.

Also, I would ignore that logic about 3bet sizing.

This is how calling stations think, which is not the read I have of this villain, even if he may be too loose preflop.

In studying the only game I enjoy more than poker, I once came across a concept that I think applies just as well to poker.

The poker version is this. When a player starts playing and is just beginning to learn the game, he falls into one of two categories: either he is too tight and needs to learn to open up his range to improve, or he is too loose and needs to learn to tighten up to improve.

This Villain obviously falls into the second category. And if you read the part about his awful river call, you’ll see why I think he is not far enough up the learning curve for me to not consider him a station.

Grunch:

Raise bigger pre. At least $30. Wouldn't hate $35.

Flop is interesting, in that I think donking small, check-calling, and check-jamming are all defensible options.

Turn donk jam is weird though. I'd prefer to check-jam. I understand wanting to bet on such a wet board, so it doesn't check through, but we're letting V's over-pairs and bluffs off the hook with this line.

If we're planning to donk jam any brick turn, I think it makes more sense to check-jam the flop.

I did read the OP, but I admit I forgot the read by the time I got to the turn. I appreciate your pointing out how the read may make OP's line more of a defensible exploit of this particular V.

That said, and without wanting to insult Señor Banana, his reads can be somewhat unreliable, inasmuch as they often seem to run counter to the reveals in his threads.

Still, giving him the benefit of the doubt, I suspect that hero's line here is simply too much of a deviation and hard exploit. Even if V is a bad try-hard student of the game, frequently overthinking things, he shouldn't struggle to fold anything worse than TPTK when hero jams.

The worst part about the donk jam is that V can only call with thick value. Hero's line prevents V from bluffing or over-valuing a worse hand. Had hero checked, a try-hard like V will probably barrel, and likely for a large size, so hero gets at least one more street of value, and possibly traps V into calling off the rest when hero jams.

This is almost certainly wrong.

But I've heard something "kind of similar" that might be technically correct, but having tried it I'm dubious of how good it is in live games 2-5 and lower.
Also I can't remember which pro I heard it from, and none of the solved charts I've seen have it as a thing and my first guess about where I heard it was Alex Miller's course (because he uses a private solver that works out it's own bet sizes) and I couldn't see anything about it there.

So first a couple of things you probably know:

1. Most solvers have bet sizes as an input from the user, because otherwise it's too complicated to solve. This includes preflop 3bet/4bet sizes. So the well known 3bet/4bet sizes are "educated guesses".

2. The biggest factor in opening is the number of people behind you and how deep you are ... more is worse, in both cases 😉

3. From doing a lot of solver work the current consensus is that EP opens smaller (and tighter) than CO which opens smaller than BTN. Eg. Smash live cash at 400bb has 2.25bb opens until HJ, then 2.5bb in CO and 3bb on BTN. 100bb/200bb are 2.25xbb until CO and 2.5x on BTN.

4. At full ring live "EP" and "MP" cover multiple players who all have the same ranges.

5. The further you are from the open the more you can call. Eg. If you are next to act after the opener then you often want to 3bet or fold range, but if there's an open UTG and you are on BTN you can now call a lot.

...so the way I remember it being explained is that if you have UTG+1 vs. UTG both open ranges are identical (#4) and you never have a calling range (in theory), so your 3bet can be slightly smaller than "std" because you both still have a lot of people behind and your 3bet gets EV from getting players behind you both to fold (and uncaps your range) and then you get to play a slightly wider 3bet range IP vs. the opener.
This still applies to MP vs. MP to some degree, and even a little bit to CO vs. HJ (get EV from BTN folds).

Then on the other side if UTG opens and you might want to 3bet on the BTN, there's a large amount of EV you get with a lot of hands by calling IP that your 3bet range is smaller ... so you can go to a bigger size with a slightly tighter 3bet range and slightly wider call range.

None of that explains making CO vs. HJ being a bigger 3bet size though.

And to repeat ... all the solved preflop charts I've seen have MP vs. EP; BTN vs. CO; BTN vs. EP; as all having the same 3bet raise size.

Also my personal experience is that when I've tried this even at 2-5, what happens way more than theory would dictate is that UTG makes it 15; you 3bet to 25 or 30 in UTG+1 and then some random idiot (who might well be a reg) thinks "Oh, this is a bit weird, I'll pretend 30 is just a big open I guess." and calls pretty much the exact same range they'd have called the 15 open with.

Result:

Good high effort post!

So V's logic is something like this (if I can remember).

Axiom 1: All 3-betting ranges are tighter than opening ranges.

Axiom 2: The earlier position the player, the tighter the range.

Axiom 3: 3-bets at our game should be almost entirely for value.

Axiom 4: Uncapped ranges should be feared.

Extreme 1: UTG opens and UTG+1 3-bets. These players both have to have tight ranges, UTG+1s slightly moreso (Axiom 1). His range should be targeting value but since UTGs range is also so narrow there are a lot of hands he can 4-bet (as a % of combos he has), he doesn't want to bloat the pot OOP with so many uncapped ranges left to act (Axiom 4), because UTG is so narrow there's only thin value to be had here, hence the small bet.

Extreme 2: CO opens and BTN 3-bets. Both players should have wide ranges and CO's range should contain a lot of hands that we can get value from. Because we can be wide CO has to defend more frequently. There's no one behind us so even if blinds come along or raise we have absolute position so building a pot is good with our value. Sometimes we'll fold to cold 4-bets from the blinds I suppose if we're too wide.

I'm interested in this.

I don't quite see how this logic translates into smaller 3-bets EP v EP and larger LP v LP. It's not a thing in GTO, but as an exploitative adjustment in weak live games I guess it could be possible? If UTG's range is really SO narrow (tighter than GTO), however, then of course our 3-betting strategy will change, but why our sizing?

I'm curious if anyone else thinks this makes sense. I can see how it could kind of make sense, but I'm not really buying it.

i don't see what is achieved by calling flop and then donk jamming in turn.

Either:

CR flop

CR Turn all your in

i prefer CR flop but you can hardly go wrong here. Flop a set and poker is an easy game.

i see loose evidence for 3bing large otb vs other positions if u look at research mode in gtow (i guess bc range is more polar?) but i think the ev of all the sizing options here are probably similar at equilibrium. i think mostly people are not going to be able to understand how to adjust to non standard sizes in real time, particularly the lower caliber players. kind of unrelated but for a long time, bvb i would 3b 2x and people had alot of trouble dealing with it (either way overfolding bc standard ranges or vpiping 100% bc pot odds)

whenever i'm cbetting and they check call and then decide to donk the turn big i always overfold

throw that out of your toolkit (unless as an exploit) and c/r the flop instead where you're much likelier to come off as bluffing and play for stacks

I'm surprised no one's talking about pf. We 4x the button straddle in LJ, over a limp, then get 3! by a short-stacked player who we're told: respects our game & is new but tricky. How good do we think our 8s are vs his 3! range?

(Edit, who's considerably LAGgier than most new players. "The solver says!" LOL. Tell V to knock that $@(t off. /Edit.)

We're not deep enough to setmine and we're OOP.

Anyone else, I might fold, but if V has a 3!/f button, I'm toying with a 4! vs an action-closing call with a medium pair and a ~3-4 SPR.

AP, we hit our set, ldo x-r flop. Especially vs this V.