Mid/High Stakes Limit Hold'em Poker Forums

Now lets try the turn assuming that we decided to fold double alpha on the flop. Since fast playing the flop is very common for hero in this situation, I am assuming that we need to remove all the hands we would have raised the flop with, as well as the hands we folded, before we move on to the turn. Yay, another chance to apply alpha and attempt to simulate GTO. Lets say hero decides to c/r all 2nd pair + for value.

two pair + = (97, 44) top pair 9s = (K9, Q9, J9, T9o, 98o, 96s) 2ndpair 7s = (A7o, K7, Q7, J7, T7, 87, 76, 75)

This value range consists of 162 combinations. If we apply bluffs using alpha (1/P+3) we get 11.7%. We know that since most our draws have big equity, we can include more than alpha. Here I guestimate a good semi bluff range to include:

Oesd: 65, 86, T8
gut shot: 85 (id probably fold 85 of hearts and spades right away to a 3! because i think we should have at least something that folds right away giving our villain incentive to 3bet bluff)
flush draws up to Jx hi: T6s, J6s, J8s

This semi bluff range gives us a total of 55 combos which is .25 of our raising range. note that this is much larger than alpha .117 but most of these draws have very strong equity and it seems intuitevly that semi bluffing all these hands is a winning play. Also note that so far we have left in our Qx Kx and Ax flush draws in the check/calling range.

Now back to our turn folding decision. If we remove all the hands we folded in the previous post, and all the hands we raised on the flop, we are left with:

(A2-A6, A8 / A2s - A6s) (K5o, K6o, K8o, KTo / K2s - K6s, K8s) (Q8+bdfd, QT+bdfd, QJ+bdfd / Qd4d Qd5d Qd6d Qd8d Qc8c, QdTd QcTc) (J8, JT / Ts6s Th6h Tc6c)
(64s, 54s, 55, 33 ,22)

= 240 combinations of hands

Now our turn card comes: T

now we have 232 combinations of hands, and a new set of hands that improved to top pair.

Our villain cbets the turn giving us 4.25:1 which makes alpha = 0.19

Lets see exactly what the bottom 19% of our range, to this point, looks like:

bottom 19% = all of our Qx hi UI plus Kx hi up to K5 plus 5 combinations of K6.

This seems closer to intuitevly what I would think is correct compared to what alpha gave us on the flop. However, if someone were to ask me if peeling with A2 no draw on the turn here is correct, I would not know the right answer. Lets raise the number a little bit and see what it looks like. Since we used double alpha on the flop, lets use alpha + .5 of alpha or alpha x 1.5 which would equal .29

bottom 29% of our range: this brings our folding range up to include K8x hi UI or all our non A hi hands. Since the newly folded Kx hands only includes K8, which we are not folding because it now has an oesd, this means we are still actually folding the exact same hands as original alpha told us.

And again to do the river, I would do the same thing, remove the suggested folding hands as well as all the hands I would c/r. Then I would be left with a range that I would apply exactly alpha too (=0.14) and fold 14% of the range that I have left after taking a c/c c/c line (and using our new adjusted alpha numbers). But this also gives me a problem becauese say the river is a brick like the 4 (remember that we c/r the turn with some hands so our range now doesnt have our Tx as well as some of our draws) alpha of .14 means that we would have to call the river with K8 hi some of the time which seems somewhat suicidal.

Im hoping others can put in there input as well as point out anything wrong with my thought process or miscalculations.

Oh how I wish you had done the math on the static board
I'll try to dig into this later today.

One thing I never properly grasped. Let's say alpha says we should fold K8 of our bluffcatching range on turn but it just developed a draw.

Since the newly folded Kx hands only includes K8, which we are not folding because it now has an oesd, this means we are still actually folding the exact same hands as original alpha told us.

Should we now just fold the next possible hand instead (KJ would also have a draw, KQ is 2 overs, so maybe rather fold A2?)?
What if the draw had no showdown value whatsoever (say 85 just developed an OESD), are we folding one bluffcatcher to keep the draw, or are we folding (x times) alpha BUT taking back the non-showdownable draws?

i just saw the title of this thread and went on raging monkey tilt.

But since talking about GTO and equilibrium strategy and such makes y'all feel smart, i'm not going to bother repeating myself. Carry on.

i just saw the title of this thread and went on raging monkey tilt.

But since talking about GTO and equilibrium strategy and such makes y'all feel smart, i'm not going to bother repeating myself. Carry on.

fwiw, you obviousily don't like to repeat yourself, but i wonder why did you go on raging monkey tilt and further what won't you like to repeat?
Because I would like to learn what your thinking on this is! I for myself think it's way beyond any use for me.

fwiw, you obviousily don't like to repeat yourself, but i wonder why did you go on raging monkey tilt and further what won't you like to repeat?
Because I would like to learn what your thinking on this is! I for myself think it's way beyond any use for me.

because for most people, this is the wrong way to go about playing poker. But people still continue to talk about it because discussing such a complex concept makes them feel smarter/better at poker.

because for most people, this is the wrong way to go about playing poker.

I'd love to see you and KPR16 discuss this in a video!

because for most people, this is the wrong way to go about playing poker. But people still continue to talk about it because discussing such a complex concept makes them feel smarter/better at poker.

must be nice to have everyone figured out

must be nice to have everyone figured out

it is

it is

It would be cool for coaches who play similar games/stakes to take opposite sides on an argument and present their cases.

Btw are you saying people should take whichever action that will most likely achieve the outcome they desire.

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)

Not that I know an answer, but using 2xalpha seems high. In MOP there was an example where on turn, alpha (EDIT, or rather 1/(P+1) ) was 1/6 but it turned out it was correct to fold 1/5 of times (dynamic board, one more betting round to face).

I made some calcs on AKKr board where UG opens and BB defends.

UG opener: 55+, A6s+, K9s+, Q9s+, J9s+, T8s+, 98s, 87s, 76s, A8o+, KTo+, QTo+, JTo (17%, 226 hands)
BB defends with 22+, A2s+, K2s+, Q2s+, J7s+, T7s+, 97s+, 86s+, 75s+, 65s, A2o+, KTo+, Q9o+, J9o+, T9o, 98o, 87o (33%, 440 hands)

Board comes blanks. UG bets flop always and after that valbets when he has 55%+ equity on hero's range (hero CR's any K and AQ on the flop, those are removed from his range for later streets). If hero defends by dropping alpha, he'll end up calling river with all his pairs and QJo. But the problem with this is that if hero had originally defended 100%, he'd probably end up calling with J highs also (which in a sense makes sense as they still beat most of villains bluffs and have enough equity on the river). But had hero only defended 25%, he'd probably end up folding some of his paired Aces. This just doesn't compute to me. So the question remains: how to handle the asymmetric ranges in GTO? Should hero perhaps dump all T-high and worse (which he'll never use as a bluff catcher) regardless of the range he saw the flop with, then fold according to alpha from the rest?

As an attempt to handle the asymmetric ranges I tried dropping everything from BB's range that has less that 38% equity (price of calldown) on the flop. That lead to hero folding 99- and all the Queens and Jacks without a gutshot, but I never used alpha there (at least directly... basically using 38% is the same as lumping all the bets to come to get alpha but then swich from combos to equity).
Started to use alpha on turn, now hero was folding JJ, TT and part of his gutshots on turn already (gutters have more equity against villain's range than TT). So very different result from the first calc I made.

I was also thinking about dropping any hand that doesn't have equity to call the first bet (backdoors like T9s would now qualify for calling). But that can't handle the scenario where hero defends too litte.

So maybe using the optimal defence range (what ever that may be) would be the answer. If hero defends too much but want's to play GTO from there on, he's first drop everything that wasn't in the optimal range, and then go by alpha on later streets. If hero is a preflop nit, he'd start by "dropping" hands that weren't in his range to begin with, so actually folding less than alpha (maybe on multiple streets).

Talking about this def doesn't make me feel smarter.

This might be riduculous but I tried adjusting our flop folding range by multiplying alpha by the ratio of the difference in total range size between UG and BB. 440:226 = 1.9:1 So if alpha comes out to 0.15 on the flop, we adjust for assymetrical ranges by folding
(0.15)1.9 = 0.285 ???

Another idea I had was to start off with alpha and add on 0.3 right away to account for the average drawing equity of villains range. Then also add on 1 combo of folds for every 3 combos of drawing hands that are within alpha of our folding range to make up for the times that we draw out. (I arbitrarily picked 30%ish for both of these adjustments as average equity of the drawing hands we are continuing with below alpha). For example if 65 and T8 are both open ended straight draws on flop, thats 32 combinations of hands we are continuing with below the alpha threshold of folding. Therefore, we fold an extra 11 combinations of hands above the alpha threshold.