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Translated by order of the educational portal university.poker
Original source: GTO Wizard
One of the biggest strategic differences between playing in position (IP) and not (OOP) is the frequency and size of bet on the river.
Solver strategies for a player without a position, when he prefers to bet at all, often offer tiny bets (only 10% of the pot) in a wide range. For a player in a position, a mix of large bet and checks is much more common. In such a situation, the solvers do not offer a small bet. This is due to the fact that the bet in the position resumes the game, which gives the opponent the opportunity to make a check-raise. The hands that lose the most in a raise are in the middle of your range, and with them you may want to bet with a thin value. With your strongest and weakest hands, you don't mind being reared so hard.
With the strongest, you are obviously happy to see more money flowing into the pot. With the weakest, you don't mind fold ing against the winner. The strongest and weakest hands are the ones that benefit from larger bet positions, so bet strategies in a position tend to consist of larger and less frequent bet positions from the polar range. When you are without a position, the difference between a check and a small bet is very small, so it is easy to prefer the latter. If BB has a hand to hit a small bet, he can still bet it after you wait.
If you expect to be just a small favourite at a colley on the river, it's usually not worth risking a check-raise.
That's why it's rare to see an IP player betting less than half a pot on a river (unless that's all that's left in efficient stacks). Usually, if you place a small bet, it is because you are betting on a thin vellya. But if you expect to be only a small favorite at a stake, then you usually shouldn't risk exposing yourself to a check-raise. Your hands of medium strength, in theory, will be about indifferent between a call and a fold on a raise from the polar range.
No matter how you respond, your hand loses its equity once you get the raise. If you take into account even a small risk of such an increase, this is usually enough to negate the value of a thin bet. But what if your villain is bad at check-raise on the river? What if he does not have the courage to do it as a bluff or make a check with a nuts hand without a position? Does this mean you can get by with thinner valley bets when you're in position? Let's experiment and find out!
1. After everyone has check the turn
The aggressor usually has a nuts edge, so check-raise is not necessarily important for a player who waits and calls all the way to the river. However, if the aggressor on the flop makes a return check on the turn, many nut hands are removed from its range. Which then makes the check-raise on the river a more important consideration for his opponent.
Many players can't bring themselves to make a check with strong hands on the river.
One of my students called this trend “Velju panic” — the fear of winning only a small pot with a strong hand if your villain makes a check in return on the river. In fairness, this is not an unreasonable concern. As we will see, check-raises on the river from a player without a position and thin value bets on the vellya from a player in a position are in a delicate balance. Against a passive opponent who will not make thin valley bets, it is correct to bet with strong hands instead of making a check-raise. But many beginners, playing in a passive environment, do not understand how operational techniques work here, and just learn not to wait for strong hands on the river. This opens up operational opportunities for their opponents.
After the range beta on the flop and the check on the turn, BTN comes to the river with a lack of nut combinations and a lack of equity.
- For the experiment, let's take the following scenario: MTT,
depth 40bb, single raise pot, BTN vs BB on the board
I used the automatic bet size feature to determine the most common bet/raise sizes before the river. Only the most common bet size was allowed in each node, with the exception of the BTN bet on the river, where it was allowed to bet bet 25%, 50%, 100% or 400% (all-in).
Here is the final strategy on the river for BTN when BB is allowed to checkout optimally:
After a range bet on the flop and a check on the turn, BTN comes to the river with a lack of equity and nuts' hands. Had he acted first, he would have often had to check for fear of betting in a stronger bet range. This means that BB can not count on the fact that he will make a lot of bets, and therefore he has a legitimate incentive (about the optimal ratio of bluff and velja see in this video) to bet with many of his strong hands: bet in 43% of cases by sizing 66% of the pot.
However, BB's incentive to bet with his strong hands also gives BTN more incentive to bet when BB makes a check.
See how much the BB check shifts the equity allocation!
Note that BB still has to keep the nuts edge while making a check with many of his strongest hands. That's why BTN prefers the bet size of 50% of the pot. The middle of the distribution is where it has the edge. If a pot becomes very large, either because it makes big bet bets or because it receives a check-raise, then it no longer has that advantage. Even a small number of BTN nuts hands mainly make a 50% bet on the pot. Such hands very rarely put a full pot and never go all-in. It's not that they're not strong enough. Rather, the fact is that hands strong enough for a big bet call will be mostly check raises anyway, so BTN doesn't lose anything by making a small bet. In fact, he earns even more, because he also provokes raises from bluff, which would be a big bet.
2. Ban checks and raises
Take a look at BTN's check strategy. What change do you expect to see in the simulation where BB is not allowed to check-raise on the river? Will the overall frequency of BTN bet increase or decrease? What bet sizes do you think they will use more and less often?
Answer these questions for yourself, then check the results below:
BTN bet a little more often, but this is not the main change in its strategy. The biggest difference is the more frequent use of both smaller and larger bet sizes.
A few things happen here:
- BB has less incentive to wait for strong hands when he can't make a raise on the river. This makes it safer for BTN to push hands as weak as two A5 pair and make valley bets sized with a pot with a top pair and even with a second pair and a top K9 kicker!
- BTN can also place bets with more bet arms when he doesn't have to worry about being slashed and bluffed out of the bank with a bluff.
- Hands that were not strong enough to place valley bets at all due to the risk of a check-raise can now place a bet of 25% of the pot. This includes weak hands such as the third pair J7.
- Bluff is also more appealing when BTN is betting in a weaker range when there is no need to worry about being bluffed.
After we “banned” raises, BTN has more options, but half of the bank remains its most used sizing, as the middle of the equity distribution is still where it retains the most edge. The EV BTN of a check is 5.03 bb in a simulation where BB cannot raising — compared to 4.73 bb in a simulation without such a restriction. This amounts to 30bb/100 or just over 6% of the pot, so it's worth looking for these larger, subtler bet when the opportunity arises.
3. Triple barreling
Check-raises work a little differently when the preflop aggressor continues to bet on the flop and turn. Unlike our previous example, he has a lot of nut hands in the range and a lot of incentives to make big bet.
Indeed, in a simulation where BTN makes a double barrel on the same board, BB rarely gets a chance to hit the river because BTN mostly plays Push or check strategy:
If it is possible to make a sized bet with a pot, the bet is less than very attractive. After a bet of 50%, the BTN bank will receive 5:1 on the call raise all-in, so the solver in any case offers to pay BB with a BTN value range to strong hands. Sometimes BTN will lose half a pot instead of a full pot in a bluff, but this means that sometimes it will just get a return bluff from a hand that would fold.
The main disadvantage of betting less is a smaller win with hands that would call all-in, while we still lose from the upper part of the BB check range.
When BB is not allowed to raising, BTN is significantly more likely to sizing 50% of the pot, so much so that it uses it more than Push:
This gives it an extra 0.5bb in equity, about 2% of what is already a fairly large pot. The separation of hands that belong to a particular range is intuitive. BTN pushes all his strongest hands and puts 50% of the pot with a slightly weaker range. If BB does not raise, there is no need to cheat by making small bet with strong hands or to push secondary hands, because they will in any case be paid when equalizing all-in raise.
Most bluff is indifferent between two sizes:
Here your strategy is simple. Your best hands earn more money when pushed, gaining the most from the top of the BB range. Your second-class hands earn by reducing their losses against the top of the BB range, while stimulating calls from the more hands they outperform.
4. He always has something
Naturally, even the most nit nit will raising when he has nuts. And with something smaller, he won't raising. He will not raising a thin vellya and he will not raising a bluff as a bluff. For his opponent, this does not change anything compared to the above simulation. If he only checks nuts, he may not raising anything at all… until you pay him yourself. Against such a player, your strategy should be as we see above: throw your strongest hands and make a slightly smaller bet with secondary hands. Then you fold if he raises you. Read about the right game against bluff in the articles: bluffing, theory and practice of catching bluff, exploitation of passive opponents.
Villain, who raises only with nuts, most often may not raising at all.
This last part is key. Everything falls apart if you start to justify yourself with “pot odds” and “small price”. If his hand is always better than yours, there is no price at which it would be right to make a call. You've made an exploitative assumption, built your betting strategy around it, and should follow it by dropping when you're racked, no matter how good your hand is. Any hand good enough for a call is a hand you ought to push yourself.
If his hand is always better than yours, there is no price at which it would be right to make a call.
5. Conclusion
Solvers rarely recommend small bet positions because the hands that benefit the most from small bet positions are the medium, thin Velho hands. They are the ones who risk the most by resuming trading. But if this risk is mostly mitigated because your villain will rarely/never make a check-raise on the river or make a check-raise with only the strongest hands, then you can exploit them with thinner valu bets and a less deceptive strategy. You just bet relative to the strength of your hand — more with your best hands, less with your slender valleys, and reset if he makes a raise.
