On The 9 Pricing

I would expect the opposite. On the nine pricing works on the principle that the posted price looks lower because people mentally tune out the cents. So 19.99 is ready as 10 or 19 dollars, something like that.

When you're dealing with poker chips betting on the nine will require lower denomination chips, which means you'll be putting out more chips and it will look like more.

Also it's just annoying and slows the game down as it typically forces the dealer to make change all the time.

Oh I meant online lol doing it live would be insane

Oh ok, that makes more sense. Lol. Online it could help, especially against players who are multi-tabling and making quick decisions. It would be an interesting experiment to try it on half your tables or something and compare results over time.

I have a theory that using non-standard sizings in general would earn more EV. Sizes that theoretically might lose a small amount of EV could gain a large amount in practice if you've studied them and most of the field has not.

I have also not tested my theory and typically just use more standard sizings. If I get up to where I'm regularly playing high stakes it's something I might try experimenting with though.

Wouldn’t it be more beneficial to try this at lower stakes?
I’m actually quite interested in the idea of atypical bet sizing as an exploit. Something about the prevalence of overbet jamming in modern poker has gotten me interested in pursuing these exploits.

Oh yeah, I didn't mean I would first try experimenting with novel sizes while playing high stakes games. I just meant that at lower stakes players are already unstudied in common lines/sizes. So you can already print money just playing standard theoretically sound poker. I think the real value would come in putting good players in unfamiliar spots so they make more mistakes, which becomes most necessary at high stakes.

That reminds me of what top pros do in chess. It's quite ironic to see it in a game of perfect information, but super GMs tend to do it to weaker GMs to try to get winning chances. It's also very common in blitz where the time component makes it difficult if not impossible to calculate. I can only imagine that in poker it is exponentially more profitable due to potentially bigger skill gaps between players, generally short timeframes to make decisions, and poor general mental modeling by players who do too much memorization.

Yeah it's not totally a novel concept in high-level poker either. I can't remember the player's name, but a couple years ago a guy playing the Triton high stakes tournaments was taking some novel lines and the commentator was talking about how he was doing it intentionally to take his opponent into less well studied game trees. I think Alex Foxen was the opponent when they were talking about it, and he seemed to adjust pretty well on the fly. He's a top player though and anyone relying too much on memorization would likely get torched.

One thing I have incorporated into my game is that I will try to manipulate my opponents perceptions about what I'm doing in certain lines. For example on boards that the preflop raiser should be checking a lot. In many of these spots a majority of regs are incorrectly range betting with a small sizing. Sometimes i know I should be checking a lot or betting on the larger side. However against top players I will sometimes bet small with a stronger range. So I'm actually checking a lot with weaker hands but I use a sizing to manipulate my opponent's perceptions into thinking I'm range betting. I do this with strong hands to intentionally induce raises from good players who I know are likely to attack undefendable range bets. This can be a pretty effective exploit against good players. I sort of present them with an easy exploit that I know they will often use against weak regs, then I counterexploit it.

Interesting. Are these at anonymous tables or tables with HUDs in use? I remember Doug Polk talking about his match with Sauce, where Sauce essentially was doing the same thing by C-betting flop a very low percentage of the time, then crushing Polk on 4th street and rivers. But Polk dug thru the data, found it out quickly, and adjusted.

No I make most of my income playing live poker. Even in live poker though good players tend to recognize what I'm doing and adjust eventually. Fortunately the poker world is big enough that I can keep reusing the same tactics with new pros I encounter. It also helps that I fit the stereotype of a lot of whales/weak regs. I just lean into the stereotypes a bit then break the patterns that pros use to exploit the field.

Online anonymous tables would probably be the toughest place to implement these strategies as people generally aren't getting as far out of line with their exploits.

I think you can utilize similar strategies online though if you understand your own stats and how other players are likely to adjust to your play.