Mid/High Stakes Limit Hold'em Poker Forums

That's not really how GTO works though. It is villain-strategy-agnostic.

If we look at hero's GTO strategy starting from preflop, yes, villain can't gain an edge by folding KK- or defending 32o+. But once those decisions have been made, and we're looking at Hero's GTO on the flop (or turn or river), I belive what we know of villain's hand strength distribution (and not his strategy on present and following streets) will effect Hero's optimal strategy.

EDIT: FMP

GTO will lead to different post flop strategies against villains who
a) only defended AA preflop and folded everything else
b) defended 100% preflop

But as I said, I need to brush up... I believe I'll have to start up with terminology

kpr = k345? zoinks!

Not the first time i've made that mistake.

This thread now makes my head hurt. "asymmetrical ranges"??? "Villain-strategy-agnostic"???

I will now return to the beginner's forum.

All an asymmetrical range means is that the range in question isn't congruent or symmetrical if you prefer (i.e. if you fold a piece of paper perfectly in half, then it's symmetrical, but if you cut the top right corner off and make the same fold down the middle, then it's not the same, it's now boom! asymmetrical).

Villain strategy agnostic can mean lots of different things, but I'm guessing that it means that he's either skeptical of villain's strategy or that there's an area of villain's strategy that's simply unknown. So we need to account for this in our strategy and be willing to adapt our strategy with new information instead of believing that our strategy is best regardless of what new information comes in. Amiclose?

Okay so after some quick wikipedia browsing I have an even simpler answer!

So in regards to poker, an asymmetrical range just means that it doesn't look pretty.

Conversely, a symmetrical range looks very pretty. So if you're laying your opponent 4.2:1 and your range is pretty (symmetrical), then you have 23.8% bluffs and 76.2% value and your opponent should be indifferent to calling or folding.

Amiclose?

On the nose.

I may have said this wrong anyhow. Maybe profitable isn't a given assumption, but what I was saying is that based on alpha BB would need to call with some hands that are really kinda silly to 'catch bluffs' but since this would be a bad idea, we have to concede pots to the stronger distribution more than we'd like.

I may have said this wrong anyhow. Maybe profitable isn't a given assumption, but what I was saying is that based on alpha BB would need to call with some hands that are really kinda silly to 'catch bluffs' but since this would be a bad idea, we have to concede pots to the stronger distribution more than we'd like.

Hmm... not sure how to look at this. From BB's point of view, what would make calling down by alpha (i.e. taking a GTO approach to bluff catching I assume?) a bad idea? Could you give an example of what you have in mind here?

Hmm... not sure how to look at this. From BB's point of view, what would make calling down by alpha (i.e. taking a GTO approach to bluff catching I assume?) a bad idea? Could you give an example of what you have in mind here?

Pretty much the example I used from before, say you defend BB vs a 3off raiser and the flop is AAK. If you were folding alpha of your hands ONLY after rc;kb you'd need to call with some combos of like J7.

I think we just need to make some assumptions about his pre-flop range, then play 'balanced' according to this. It may be his rage is so strong (on AAKr, a 10% range has 2-pair or better 90.7% of the time), that we aren't getting the correct pot-odds to bluff catch with unpaired hands.

It's theoretically incorrect to make assumptions on a persons range, as a multistreet GTO solution is more complex than that. But a more complex calculation has to take in to account the cost of the preflop 3-bet, which is too hard for us to compute (we have to consider probabilities of different board textures, hot/cold equity, positional advantage etc).

For an extreme example, we can safely assume that villain doesn't have J2o in his range. Now it may be that if the flop comes AAK we are folding too much vs a range that includes these hands, but there are many other board textures, and it's probably a safe assumption that 3-betting J2o is unprofitable because most of the time flops like this don't come down.

Pretty much the example I used from before, say you defend BB vs a 3off raiser and the flop is AAK. If you were folding alpha of your hands ONLY after rc;kb you'd need to call with some combos of like J7.

Folding according to alpha only would be wrong as villain has several streets to bluff/value bet, so yes, BB has to fold more than alpha (directly) suggests. I was wondering if you've done the math to see what GTO actually would suggest and whether those hands still look silly? I guess this could be reasonably simplified by making the flop AKKr and no more new cards coming (i.e a true static board) but with the normal 3 betting rounds to go.

It's theoretically incorrect to make assumptions on a persons range, as a multistreet GTO solution is more complex than that. But a more complex calculation has to take in to account the cost of the preflop 3-bet, which is too hard for us to compute

I don't understand the first sentece. What is incorrect about estimating villains range?

Also, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but once we're looking at GTO after flop, we shouldn't worry about whether the preflop play was optimal or not. That was in the past. Both players appeared on the flop with whatever range they did, and now they have a hand value distribution based on that range and the flopped cards.

Folding according to alpha only would be wrong as villain has several streets to bluff/value bet, so yes, BB has to fold more than alpha (directly) suggests. I was wondering if you've done the math to see what GTO actually would suggest and whether those hands still look silly? I guess this could be reasonably simplified by making the flop AKKr and no more new cards coming (i.e a true static board) but with the normal 3 betting rounds to go.

I'm not sure I understand your question. GTO suggests? As far as I know there's no better method but to take alpha and adjust (subjectively) based on asymmetrical ranges. You could perhaps use the exact range you think the opener has, and decide the best hands you could make indifferent to barreling every street, making sure you continue with enough hands relatively on this texture. To be honest I'm not sure how the mechanics of this would look, and in practice, I just fold more on AAK.

Not only does the texture make it less likely he can exploit by smashing but the fact that he opened 3off limits him also (because other players can pick him off if he's opening garbage) which supports the argument of folding more on the flop than alpha would suggest.

I was wondering whether you've actually done the math on how to optimally, i.e. non-subjectively take into account the asymmetric ranges. MOP really doesn't cover asymmetrical ranges in multistreet situations... would it be so that once villain contbets, we first have to drop all of our hands that are doing worse than any part of is range (or maybe match it so that our non-dumping range has (5/9)*100% -the price of calldown- equity?) and then start folding according to alpha from the remainder of our range? Links to any texts on this appreciated.

Also, I missed from your example the fact that villain opened 3 off (you mentioned that as an answer to my question). That'll make his range so strong that he'll have very few bluffing hands, so yes, villain may very well be able to barrel all of his range. But is it still just a matter of first dumping a bunch of hero's defending hands and then going by alpha? So if the open came from the button, the mechanics is just the same but the first bunch of hands that need to dumped is smaller, then it's alphatime?

BTW, earlier when I said Hero needs to fold more than alpha because of the multistreet betting, that was technically wrong (and my phrase "GTO suggests" was invalid). I forgot that on a static board, the bluffcatcher (Hero) gets to play each street independently (i.e. folding his range-adjusted bluffcatchers directly by alpha) although the opener gets to bluff more than alpha would suggest. So after the asymmetric ranges have somehow been accounted for, bluffcatching should be driven by alpha. On a dynamic board Hero should start folding more than alpha of his bluffcatchers because of the multistreet betting.

So now that I (think) I understand this a bit better, I quess the question is "how to correctly handle the asymmetric ranges on the flop?"

Pasita, when KPR said that one of the reasons we might have to fold more is because of the reason that villain opened 3 off the button (for example) but I dont think he was saying that is correct for certain. Im not sure that, that actually has much to do with our folding range once we have seen the flop. Our range that we are defending takes into account where our villain is opening from, therefore, I would assume that that is the adjustment to our opponent opening from a strong position. Also, the fact that there are players in between our opponent and us, that helps make him indifferent to stealing our blind, but I dont think it should be factored in to making us indifferent to calling down once the flop comes. This is all speculation on my part.

Also, Im not sure that there are actual numbers that you are looking for. I think every board texture is going to produce a different % of our range that we should be dumping. I have currently been messing around with this one many different board textures using combonator and I can say that so far I havnt figured much out and it becomes somewhat frustrating. I am going to post an example right after this so I dont have one huge post. Maybe we can all work on this example together and possible get some answeres to our questions.

Villain opens from the cutoff and we defend in the big blind in a 1/2 blind structure game. I am going to assume (not knowing if I am correct) that we should use our possible range up to this point. So if we ever 3bet in this situation, then we should take those hands out of our possible range. My arbitrary defend range this position minus hands that I arbitrarily set as a 3b range:

(22 - 55)
(A2 - A8, A2s - A6s) (K5 - KT, K2s - K9s) (Q6 - QJ, Q4s - QTs)
(J7 - JT, J6s - J9s) (T7 - T9, T6s - T8s) (96 - 98, 95s - 97s)
(86, 87, 85s - 87s, 75, 76, 65, 64s, 54s)

for clarity, the 3b range that I omitted looks like this:
66+, A9o+ A7s+, KJo+ KTs+, QJs, JTs, T9s, 98s

Flop comes: 7 9 4

Once our villain Cbets, we are getting 5.5:1 which using alpha = 0.15

We already know that we need to fold more than 15% but lets take a look at what the bottom %15 of our range looks like:

bottom 15% = all Tx and lower UI as well as J his up to J8 UI.

On this board, most of that range consists of draws that we are certainly not folding because our opponent can not make us indifferent to continuing with draws. If we went exactly off alpha, we would only be folding J6 hi which we only have combos of suited and we arnt folding the flush draw, therefore, we would only be folding the 3 combinations of J6 that didnt have a fd.

This intuitively seems a little loose as peeling with hands such as Q5s and K2s with no draw or bd draw seems like a losing play.

Now the real question in hand is how much more (higher than alpha)
should we fold immediatelly? I have no idea what that answer is or if there is even an exact answer to it. (I am assuming there isnt). So the best we can probably do is to guestimate. Lets look at what double alpha looks like on this board. (alpha(2) = .30)

bottom 30% = all Q his UI (minus 2 combos of QJ but lets round up and include them for ease).

This seems more reasonable, as peeling with some Kx hands and folding them on the turn seems like a reasonably balanced strategy. Also, hands such as QT and QJ probably shouldnt be folded right away as they have solid top pair outs as well as good backdoor draw potential. Im gonna go out on a limb and say that folding QT and QJ without a backdoor flush draw and peeling with any combos that have bdfd potential is the final strategy I would apply (if I decided this number of double alpha is an appropriate stategy in our attempt to simulate GTO). Let me know what you think we should adjust by! I will attempt to do the turn in the next post.