Starting to study strategy - looking for answers :)

I am probably not the most qualified person to talk to you about these things since I also started studying strategy for HUNL, but I thought it might be nice to get the ball rolling and to provide people with someone to correct/add on to lol.

1) This is a fair and intuitive question, you're right when we do start betting "non value" for some sizing we get our opponent to fold his weak holdings and continue with stronger parts of there range. However what we commonly see if that villain especially if they fail to trap or call our raise doesn't have enough combos to continue alone that reaches the minimum defense frequency (MDF) threshold. Minimum defense frequency is the minimum percentage of range someone facing a bet has to defend against rather through a call or raise in order for the person betting to not print money with 0% equity hands. You can think about it as if we construct a proper betting strategy (<- important feature needed) and villain fails to meet MDF then even hands that win 0% of the time can win a non zero precent of the time so these hands print money for free. So you're right we could run into an opponent who only calls their strongest stuff but this should be a green light to bet more bluffs. Also usually if you are barreling you will see that your value region differs something that might be a big bet on the turn might no longer be value on the river if it gets called thus you can check it down, knowing value thresholds for these spots is a good start to understanding what is and isn't a bet.

2) I think part of this question depends in what lines are these opponents a calling station, for instance like if your opponent is a calling station on the flop but doesn't defend enough of this now huge range on the turn to a second barrel I think your supposed to bluff more on the flop and continue then on the turn. If your opponent over calls the river to a certain sizing we can start shifting our value range around and get more thin value hands paid off winning more at showdown and start bluffing a bit less. I'm not super well studied in playing calling stations, but its important to know that bluffs only exist so we can get called and get paid with value so if your opponent doesn't really need you to bluff you can take some of them out of the strategy and wait for them to make the adjustment.

3)Not sure what you mean by this one sorry.

4) Anyone you can get to overfold or anyone that doesn't raise bluff enough. This is because we will get them to fold equity with our bluffs and we will rarely have to bet fold something that wanted to realize its equity, except when we are crushed (since they don't raise bluff enough).

Whether or not your betting ranges are polarized or linear is situational (like most else in poker). You will sometimes run into flops where either your opponent has a monster hand or nothing. An extreme example would be a flop of AAA - either your opponent has the last ace, a pocket pair or basically nothing. If you had a hand like KQ on this board, you likely beat all of villainÂ’s nothing hands, but lose to his big ones. It probably doesnÂ’t make sense to bet a hand like that. If you have the last ace or something like KK, then you probably do want to get value, but doing so will be tough since there arenÂ’t a lot of combos villain can have that will call. Therefore when constructing a betting range for a spot like this, you want to include your own value plus hands more like 65s that likely arenÂ’t beating anything villain might fold. You donÂ’t want mid-strength hands with showdown value in your range. Hence a polarized range.

On the other hand, if you have a connected flop like Th Jh 7c, you probably want to bet a more linear range. You wonÂ’t have problems extracting value in a spot like this; villain will have all kind of draws that will call your mid strength hands (think of hands like AT, QJ, and the like). You want to bet less with air on these flops since you will get fewer folds, hence a less polarized range. (Of course, you will want to reevaluate ott and otr depending on what draws do or do not complete).

The river should almost always be polarized unless your opponent calls too frequently. You should only bet the river if your opponent will call with a worse hand or will fold a better hand. This means (usually) thick value (where there are calling hands that are worse than yours) or complete air (where villains will fold hands like missed draws and weaker biotin pair type hands that have you beat). Hence a polarized range in general unless you have an opponent who will call with hands they shouldnÂ’t - then you can bet your more medium strength hands.

EDIT - in the “AAA flop” example, you might want to slow play when you have the last ace, but at some point you will want to bet and the same principle applies. You will still want a polarized betting range on the turn in this spot)

Great spirit! I encourage you to learn first the basics of GTO and then how to exploit players with obvious deviations from GTO. Think the game in terms of position, ranges and board texture and how those dictate correct frequencies and sizing and how they relate to pot odds, correct action (f-c-r-xr) frequencies and equity of a hand.

GTO idea: You basically fold the weakest hands that has less than zero expected value if called or raised. You bluff-raise hands that are too weak to call with (GTO), these are close zero expected value but they hinder you opponent to exploit your strategy. You call with middling and raise and check-raise occasionally with your strongest hands. It's more nuanced than that as texture and perceived ranges play a part too. Mind the position and how it changes the GTO idea esp. preflop. This is reflected by many preflop strategy guides.

Questions 1-4) From that GTO perspective you can work out all your questions. When the opponent is deviating from your perceived GTO strategy, you craft a counter strategy. e.g. you obviously fold more against someone betting only the strongest hand (the case above), on the other hand against highly aggressive bluffing player, you call down with a lot of hands - from medium strength to strongest, etc.

Hey guys,

I really appreciate the answers from everyone. It’s been just over a week but things have changed very quickly. Since really getting my head down and studying and learning patterns of GTO, I’ve really seen a difference.

I went from getting beat pretty much every session on NL25 zoom to swapping over to cash where i’m averaging 40bb/100 hands at my lowest.

Something’s clicked mentally, I feel like i play so intuitively now but slower, there’s more thought going on. Granted this is a very small sample size, not anymore than 20 hrs this week so far.

I’ve also been studying outside of wizard learning to use my tracker that admittedly i’ve had for a while but never fully understood. As i type this i’m 49 hands deep on a table, 68bb up from what feels like the easiest poker i’ve ever played.

So, more to my goal at the moment.

Keep going. I’m very fortunate that my best friend in real life is a pro, he’s been going 3 years professional in the online space and kills it. 5 figures a month killing it. He’s been my teacher for this whole journey and now i feel like Im branching out on my own and finding things out without being showed them. I’d like to build a bankroll from this stake, thinking 20 buy ins at Nl50 before moving up.

Your replies have all been so helpful, you’re all great ❤️

I wouldn't worry about how you are playing the flop, as it doesn't matter that much against real opponents in single raised pots. Just play your strategy well. Betting good stuck and checking weak stuff isn't a polarized strategy. Let's start with a primer on ranges.

If you are playing a depolarized strategy, where you are betting a lot for a small size, usually your entire range, think about what happens to your opponent's range. When he calls, he has shed all of his junk, so he actually has a range advantage on nearly every turn, so you generally want to polarize on the turn. Obviously, board texture and runouts will change this, but this is a general strategy. A big leak by lower stakes players is betting too much/too thin with middling value on the turn. For example, We have KT flop K72, we bet 33%, they call. Turn is a brick like a 9. This is a hand where checking starts to make a lot of sense. Anything weaker will check a lot. Too many people just blindly bet here.

With that said,

1. Yes, this is a problem related to above. If you are double barreling too often, then the river gets too thin and you end up value owning yourself. Think about how much your hand is worth and try to get exactly that much. With a top pair middling kicker type of hand, we want to get around 2 streets of value, so you probably want to throw in a check somewhere. The type of villain will determine where you want to check. Against fish who call too wide, I would checkback flop with a 2 street value hand, because villain will have too many bluffs on the turn and will probe turn and river too often.

2. Simple. Bluff less and value bet thinner.

3. I don't understand the question.

4. The strategy works well against weaker players who will over fold and under raise, but is easily exploited if someone catches on to what you are doing.

Overall, I think you are thinking about the game in the wrong way. Any strategy has merit, at the lower stakes, you just need to think about the incentives of your hand and build a strategy around maximizing the value. Funnel weaker players into lines that maximize value.

This is the exact strategy I started implementing and have seen an awesome change. Really had to take a step back to realise it but you’re 100% right, changing the mindset to the game has led me down a much better win rate ����