Bluff line 5/10

I don't like the play, but this would actually be a factor in favor of going crazy imo.

Again, im fine with the idea that i probably shouldve folded pre, but “do you ever see high stakes players do this”, WHAT?

Yes. ABSOLUTELY i see high stakes pros do this. Doug Polk just played a 48% vpip in the million dollar game yesterday. Matt Berkey called a $20k all in vs Brad Owen with A8s at $50/$100. Texas Mike (no idea how good he is but he has 2 bracelets) played an 89% vpip and 50% PFR for a session.

For the record, Im not using this to justify my call, but you saying pros dont ever widen their preflop ranges is just plain not accurate at least at live poker, i got a feeling it isnt accurate online either.

Fair enough, sounds like even if i should widen, I widened incorrectly. I doubt balance is super important here but whatever. I accept i shouldve folded pre. Still dont think it was “horrible” haha.

Anyway, whatever, there we go, i said i shouldve folded pre. Its the absolute rarest of feats, you guys won an internet argument, lets move on.

Yeah, maybe if he has AJ, with AQ or A4 you are ahead and theoretically don't have to bluff. But you would also have more ways to improve with those hands than with A9.

i dont play this high but from what ive observed watching live poker on youtube is that the best players play very wide in position and continuously attack weakness. they play way wider starting hands than what is typically recommended here. they also get out of the way a lot when re-attacked, especially when they are OOP.

im guessing the hands they play are not +EV in isolation, however im guessing they are very +EV over a session, because they 1) keep you involved in the game as boredom is -EV and 2) give you information about how opponents react to your play.

I don't play this high either. However, you can't judge by how people play on some invitation only private televised game. If you play standard ranges, they probably consider you a nit and don't invite you back. The whales don't want to play solid players and it makes bad TV.

It is totally ridiculous though to say ATo is a fine call or 3-bet, but if you called with A9o, you are a donk and shouldn't be playing 5/10. You don't have to play exactly solver ranges.

Ok i feel like a statement was made with absolutely zero qualifications or evidence, and i presented evidence to the contrary. I think scrutiny of my evidence over his declarative statement is kinda silly, but sure. Heres one from an open event and off camera:

Tom dwan busts from 2023 wsop me raising K5s from EP and calling a 3 bet.

https://www.pokernews.com/news/2023/07/t...

I just think its incredibly unlikely that NO high stakes players have wider than gto preflop ranges playing against weaker players. Hell, GTO has wider ranges vs weaker players. (Note, im just assuming preflop based on some postflop node locking i saw where gto sorta stops folding vs fish cbets when you nodelock their postflop percentages. Could be wrong.)

I wouldn't recommend playing like Dwan. However, some people are over the top about playing like solvers, playing certain ranges, certain sizings, etc.

If I were gonna play this hand pre in this spot, it'd prob be with a 3bet. Yawn boring idc about a call pre tbh

I like the idea of raising the flop pretty aggressively but idk if this hand should make the cut, I'd prefer hands with more nut potential. A6s, 78s, KJs all with bdfd etc. I don't think it's bad necessarily, esp if you have a backdoor nut flush blocker, just prob has you overbluffing quite a bit.

I like turn and river specifically if you have the Ad, otherwise again I think you're prob overbluffing. I really like the river sizing too.

Just because it's low value for A high hands, and has the same gutter doesn't auto qualify it as a bluff.

A6s = 4 combos
K6s = 4 combos
A7s-ATs with BDFD = 12 combos
65s = 3 combos.
66 = 6 combos.
76s = 4 combos
87s = 4 combos
86s = 3 combos.
A2s = 3 combos
A4s = 3 combos

...that's 46 combos. of bluffs.

What solution did you use? One of the cash game ones?

This is a time rake game, so since we aren't paying rake for each pot, ranges become wider. When I check the solutions for tournaments on GTO wizard (although I can't tell if the wiz assumes antes or not), this becomes a half-call, half-3bet.

Having said that, A9o is a tough hand to play 200BBs deep and I wouldn't be particularly inclined to go to war with it in order to take advantage of my edge. It has very little playability, rarely makes good draws, it's often dominated.

I don't think villain should be betting flop. Villain has range advantage, but you have a nut advantage, not because you have more nut hands than villain, but because your calling range is more condensed and thus contains more nutty hands as a share of your overall range.

As played, I don't like bluffing with A9o, because if you want to be exploitative, you want Villain to be betting his AxXs as a gutshot and your hand is blocking those.

My first thought on the turn overbet is that it's an overbluff. But when I try to think of what would be a proper bluffing range, I am struggling to come up with proper hands, especially since you re overbettting. Starting from your value range that's raising flop, there are is 9 combos of sets (22-44-55) 2 combos of two pair (45s) and 4 discounted combos of A3s (presumably you re 3betting those).

Most of this range continues betting on the turn, though perhaps 45s and 22 might bet at a reduced frequency. So what are you bluffing with? 6 combos of 33, 4 combos of 67s, 4 combos of 68s, maybe 4 combos of 78s and then? That's a total of 18 combos of bluffs vs 15 combos of value? I don't think that's enough and I don't know what other hands make sense. Maybe A2s?

I don't mind Villain's fold, because this seems like an underbluffed line partly because it's hard to find natural bluffs and partly because even if you find them, most players find it difficult to pull the trigger. Lastly, given the very strong line, villain should be arriving on the river with a very strong range that includes a ton of flushes which should be his main (only? ) calls.

Ya not trying to play 40% range, just thought it was closer to a call than it was cuz ATo is a call.

And idk what the pros do in tougher games, just saying ive seen some wonky **** from them.

I never said I like it for a bluff in this hand. I just said in general worse aces will be prioritized if you had to pick one. I was commenting regarding the logic of "my ace is bad so I shouldn't bluff it."

to continue to beat a dead horse truly into the ground. im not sure why in mtt 100bb we see btn calling vs a 2.3x co open but if u take a look in pre only research mode with cev for 300bb cash

vs 2x, btn calls ~12% and 3bs 12%
vs 2.25x btn calls 13% and raises ~11%
vs 2.5 calls 12% raises 10%
vs 3x calls 9% and raises 12%

a9o isn't included as anything in any of these ranges. interestingly at 3x ato mixes c / r / f. my conclusion is mostly that the majority of these ranges are not simmed down enough (would guess the same for the mtt range but i have no idea i dont ever play / look at mtt ranges so idk why it would be different for 100 bb than the cash ones). but vs a 3x w no rake it has a9o losing .33bb by calling. dunno think its not nearly as interesting as post but i do enjoy looking at some of this stuff more in depth sometimes since i think people generally have one pre chart that they look at and apply over all circumstances regardless of stacks / rake / open size while telling themselves its equilibrium.

again am really not trying to be aggressive or be like lol u r wrong or anything. i just enjoy dissecting poker.

as like a caveat for the future, when i talk about high stakes guys i generally mean regs in open games. for me, if i can't see the solver doing something and i dont either get shown mda data or see people i know are objectively very good doing something consistently, i find it hard to buy into it being "right" or the "correct" play. it doesn't mean it doesn't have merit or maybe it isn't even the best option, i just really want to see some proof of merit of it before i'm willing to change my mind. it just works alot better for me at least to approach the game from that perspective or at least anchored there

Yeh, the one I use almost all of the time:

cash; 200bb; NL500 rake; General GTO; 3bet GTO

...there's no "no rake" option for cash and using MTT means 100bb is the max.

I always enjoy your commentary and im here to learn, even the dude i **** talked, i was mostly just doing for fun cuz he posted his comment in such a trolly way.

I knew this, but i dont have access to any sort of aggregate data, or data on open games. I do think if you were to plug some of the ranges people are playing at live poker into a solver and let it run, youd see gto playing much wider ranges. You CONSTANTLY see people limp/call a 5x raise, or even raise themselves with A4o, Q5s, 47s, etc, even at 5/T.

Not the worst line as played

Pre is a standard fold - not sure why you want to get involved with A9o but whatever

Flop is about as good as you can ask for besides hitting your hand. Problem is villain has all 55/44/22 and A3 and lots of overpairs. While he doesn't have these hands often, you still put yourself in a really bad situation in future streets unless you hit a gin card and when you're wrong you just gonna blast away money. I would just call this flop instead of raise and check the bad turn and overbet the good river if checked too. Still could all be avoided by just folding the A9 preflop.

Turn is not a good card but since you raised I guess we have to keep going with it. Fine as played.

River - congrats you hit gin, hopefully he doesn't have A3 and you will win this a lot. Still not a great play imo but you got lucky and river is a mandatory bluff as played.

You should be aware that you are essentially just gambling in this hand - and because you got a lucky run out you won your hand. Most rivers you will end up losing a lot of money here as he won't fold to the majority of river cards.

The problem is that when you hit your gutshot it is often a chop. He has better aces as well as mentioned can have set and straight, which you are unlikely to have, and can have lots of overpairs.

This is a wet board. Any ace has a straight draw and at least overcards. Any pp is at least an overpair. You have almost the worst hand and draw you could have with an ace or pp. So definitely way overbluffing in GTO lingo.

Tomark,

I am going to address a couple different points.

1. There are not that many good posters left in this forum who have a lot of live poker experience. Even Mr. Spyu who is one of the best posters here doesn't play live poker (seems like he plays almost exclusively online nowadays). I suspect that even submersible who is also a high quality strat poster doesn't put in that many hours of live poker anymore (no offense to him at all...he is much stronger than me at theory and the overall pokerz). It's unfortunate that we lost Miark (big loss for this forum) and other high quality posters who were grinding a lot of hours in big live NLHE games and sharing their perspectives.

Therefore, it is going to be really hard to develop a good consensus on what constitutes overly loose play or "just the right sweet spot" play because we don't have the mass data that you are looking for. 2plus2 doesn't have it for you. I know you are trying to get feedback, but you already know that you are going to hear mostly back from players who aren't at a high level or players like Mr. Spyu who is a high level poker player but (unfortunately for us live players) hasn't played much live poker lately.

Beggars can't be choosers. You just can't expect to get high quality feedback here on 2plus2 nowadays.

2. Live poker is inherently looser and splashier in general even when you look at the for-profit winners. There are all sorts of reasons for this. Maybe certain pros are trying to create a loose/gamble image for some reason. Maybe certain pros are playing looser ranges than optimal because they are trying to exploit the table in certain ways. Etc.

If you are playing similar ranges as what you see them playing without knowing the why behind their reasoning, you might be playing overly loose. They are possibly exploiting something, and if you don't know why they are exploiting something...maybe you shouldn't copy their looser than optimal play.

Sidenote about watching live streams to see what top notch pros do:

1. The structure of these stream games is much different. Often there is an ante (sometimes a large ante). That affects strategy a lot. And there are often side bets in the form of standup game, 72 game, etc.

Therefore, you can't really comment that you see Tom Dwan doing XYZ preflop as anything relevant for the live NLHE games that you play in unless you play in ante games and/or side bet games.

And then there is the whole meta game that pros will purposely play a looser than optimal style to get back into the stream game lineup for the future. They know that nitting it up on a stream is a quick way to get UNINVITED for future stream games.

As far as A9 offsuit itself versus AT offsuit.

I think that there is actually a big difference between A9 offsuit and AT offsuit.

The main difference is that A9 offsuit has much less "realizable" equity than AT offsuit because A9 will flop/turn much less straight/straight draw equity.

Even if you think that you are "one pip off" when comparing A9 offsuit to AT offsuit, it matters a lot that AT can flop some gutshot straight draws that A9 will never flop.

Ive addressed this before, not gonna beat this dead horse too much, but I was merely disagreeing with submersible’s statement that high stakes players dont play looser vs weaker players. Was not using it in defense of A9o.

I really have no intention of trying to emulate pros (except to the degree im just generally trying to get better). I dont even watch a whole lot of poker streams, which is probaby why i couldnt think of better examples off hand.

I agree that the strongest players here seem to lack live experience. Makes for some especially interesting perspectives though imo. They almost like… strip thru the bullshit (but occasionally the bullshit actually matters)

As I mentioned, these TV games are by invitation, and they don't invite you if you play tight. Some people play very loose in tournaments such as the WSOP ME with a lot of amateurs to exploit postflop. Some people play really tight and scared in tournaments, so you can play loose in later stages to steal pots, preflop or postflop.

Also, live you are playing one table, so if you have a skill advantage, you may make a profit playing marginal hands, rather than just waiting for strong ones.

You probably have to be really good these days to beat online cash. I wouldn't bother with it with all the bots, etc. and difficulties playing from the US. But, yeah, you probably need really solid ranges online now.

I am not a top player, but I play solid. However, can't see how this preflop call can be that bad.

okok a few things. i literally only play live. the reason why i harp so much on theory when analyzing hands (which is at least why i think you all think i play online) is because it's really most of what we can discuss from the hand histories provided. the issue for me is when you start veering off from what we can actually prove is you end up with really nebulous concepts to try to justify plays. the most glaring example was the early solve for y seasons of poker play out loud that were basically a meme. it just sort of becomes a word salad / impossible to really argue when you start saying things like "i did this bc skill edge". like what does that mean? what is your interpretation of a skill edge here, how do you know you have one?, how does that lead to doing this? at what point do your adjustments lead to you losing that skill edge or opening a larger skill edge for the other opponents still to act (ex you 3b 50% of hands here and the blinds are reasonable people and notice this) if your default play vs an unknown nitty rec is to take this line in all nodes w a9o i think you're going to end up veering into dicey territory quickly because of the implications of what you're doing in your game plan overall (unless you have some kind of evidence beyond i saw a cbet so i assumed he was range betting, i know my unknown opponent who likely doesn't have a logical thought process will interpret my betting as x).

but circling back, usually theory is the one thing we can come to an understanding on what's right or wrong. explo play and adjusting is great if you are right (and can be catastrophic if you're wrong!) but you're generally not going to know that you're right / how right you are without a good amount of evidence.on this forum we generally get about 12 words of how a villain plays with random hh's that don't tend to have enough sway to change entire strategies imo. i've said this but i think most of the forum wants to just change strategies on a whim ie go full explo and i think that's mostly because people don't have strong fundamnetals / default strategies. you're going to be much better off learning a good strategy you can apply in any game as opposed to trying to divine out exploitative reads based on little information / current player pool dynamics at least imo.

dunno is just alot easier and much less mentally / emotionally taxing to just try to play well as opposed to mind reading your opponent and outguess them in every spot.

the thing with this hand is it isn't just a9o in the button facing a 3x co open. if you're doing this in this spot (without much reason / randomizing), you're likely doing alot of other things in similar spots that end up adding up to actually losing a sizeable amount over all. whether it's lack of understanding or tilt of some kind (impatience, ego, entitlement, boredom, a million different reasons why people play differently than optimal), it does end up making a difference winrate wise. it just takes longer to manifest live because it's harder to gather information about people and the game moves at a glacial pace.

i also never said that high stakes players don't play looser vs weaker opponents. there's alot of spots you can widen your ranges. i just haven't really seen much evidence of anyones default range calling a9o here otb vs a 3x (or realistically any size) from a nitty rec. if you have reason to believe that happens and is a normal adjustment for people i'm open to being wrong. but there's a large difference between "i want to get in more hands with weaker players" as an abstract and what you did in this hand both pre and postflop.

now we simply must let this thread die