Polarisation and betting frequency in GTO
A key lesson that keeps coming up in GTO theory chat and lessons is:
- bet size should be dictated by polarisation (bet bigger when more polarised)
- betting frequency should be dictated by range advantage
The two work supposedly work separately. I don’t doubt that they do, but I want to understand why a bit better.
Let’s say we have a very condensed range on a given flop and 50% equity or EV. In other Shouldn’t that make us inclined to bet less (or perhaps not at all), checking and check/calling or check/folding a lot? But the above implies we should only be toning down our bet sizing rather than our frequency.
Equally, if we have a very polarised range, shouldn’t we want to bet more as well as bigger? We want to put villain in difficult spots where they are indifferent between folding and calling because their hand isn’t that good. We may well need to bet big in order to make them indifferent, but we first need to bet quite a lot in order to put them in this position?
If our range is polarised enough, should we not be betting 100% of the time? We want to fold out better hands with our air and worse hands with our value. What we don’t want to do either way is see the pot checked down all the way to showdown?
2 Replies
If our range is polarised enough, should we not be betting 100% of the time? We want to fold out better hands with our air and worse hands with our value. What we don’t want to do either way is see the pot checked down all the way to showdown?
Usually no, because if we have too many bluffs relative to value, villain will have a very easy call with his bluffcatchers. In other words, our bluffing frequency is dictated by how many value combos we have. The more value we have, the more we can bluff while still making villain indifferent.
If our range is perfectly polarised, then equity is a reflection of the proportion of value/bluffs in our range. 50% equity means 1:1, 33% equity means 1:2 and so on. So in this type of scenario at least, having lower equity does indeed mean you can bet less often (since you can't bluff as much).
A key lesson that keeps coming up in GTO theory chat and lessons is:
- bet size should be dictated by polarisation (bet bigger when more polarised)
- betting frequency should be dictated by range advantage
The two work supposedly work separately. I don’t doubt that they do, but I want to understand why a bit better.
Let’s say we have a very condensed range on a given flop and 50% equity or EV. In other Shouldn’t that make us inclined to bet less (or perhaps not at all), checking and check/calling or check/folding a lot? But the above implies we should only be toning down our bet sizing rather than our frequency.
Equally, if we have
I don't understand the first question tbh
On the middle question, in a toy game of pure bluffs and nuts/2nd nuts, solver does normally just bet big and highly frequently. The number of examples this happening in real games is low
because you'll always have a marginal hand range.
I think you're getting confused when you say "We want to fold out better hands with our air and worse hands with our value." We want to maximise value that's the aim not getting hands to fold. Additionally you're pointing at extremes by saying we should be 100% of the time or face a checked down pot.
