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Poker Video: No Limit Hold'Em by BalugaWhale (Mid Stakes)

Wonderful^^
But my problem is that this series will end soon
Don`t you have some more topics to talk about?

"If I were truly being balanced, I would be 3-betting 8% of hands: 4% comprised of bluffs and 4% comprised of premium hands."

This is false. If you define a bluff as a hand that is raising with the intent of folding to a 4-bet, then any nash equilibrium strategy would be raising with a bluff a lot less frequently than with a nonbluff and the strategy you propose would be highly expoitable, as the original raiser could simply 4-bet to pot or less with the bottom of his range for profit in a vacuum. If you define a bluff as a hand that, if action is folded back around to the original raiser, prefers him to fold rather than do something else, then our range is certainly composed of more bluffs than nonbluffs. The only way your statement is true is tautologically only if a bluff is defined as "a hand in the bottom 50% of your range."

You say that "being balanced isn't ALL about having as many combos of value hands as bluffs in our range"; It's NOTHING about that. The reason we should balance is to play better poker. You didn't give the balance side a fair fight.

"If I were truly being balanced, I would be 3-betting 8% of hands: 4% comprised of bluffs and 4% comprised of premium hands."

This is false. If you define a bluff as a hand that is raising with the intent of folding to a 4-bet, then any nash equilibrium strategy would be raising with a bluff a lot less frequently than with a nonbluff and the strategy you propose would be highly expoitable, as the original raiser could simply 4-bet to pot or less with the bottom of his range for profit in a vacuum. If you define a bluff as a hand that, if action is folded back around to the original raiser, prefers him to fold rather than do something else, then our range is certainly composed of more bluffs than nonbluffs. The only way your statement is true is tautologically only if a bluff is defined as "a hand in the bottom 50% of your range."

You say that "being balanced isn't ALL about having as many combos of value hands as bluffs in our range"; It's NOTHING about that. The reason we should balance is to play better poker. You didn't give the balance side a fair fight.

1) what does "play better poker" mean? Does it mean "play more exploitative poker?" Or does it mean "play more unexploitable poker"?

2) balance is most certainly about finding the Nash sweet spot between value bets and bluffs (or between calling/folding, or between raising/folding, etc etc). I was certainly incorrect in my 8% example, but even in such a simple example the true Nash equilibrium can be pretty hard to determine (when you consider factors like table dynamics, history, player type, etc.).

Andrew

2) balance is most certainly about finding the Nash sweet spot between value bets and bluffs (or between calling/folding, or between raising/folding, etc etc). I was certainly incorrect in my 8% example, but even in such a simple example the true Nash equilibrium can be pretty hard to determine (when you consider factors like table dynamics, history, player type, etc.).

Andrew

My understanding of balance is GTO play, I could be wrong on this. It is independent of everything except our own actual range for getting to that spot (which starts from preflop) and the SPR. When we play GTO we can give an outline on exactly how we construct our range to every single villain at the table and they will not be able to do anything about it. Only reason poker is still profitable is because a non-NP algorithm hasn't been developed yet.

1) It means neither because that's not the operative choice. Playing better poker means optimizing more effectively over the choices we actually have, which is our tendencies, using the information we actually have which is NOT our opponents' tendencies.

2) Yes, the Nash Equilibrium involves balancing, but my point is that 50% is never a magic number and playing optimally unexploitably doesn't mean playing optimally unpredictably.

My understanding of balance is GTO play, I could be wrong on this. It is independent of everything except our own actual range for getting to that spot (which starts from preflop) and the SPR. When we play GTO we can give an outline on exactly how we construct our range to every single villain at the table and they will not be able to do anything about it. Only reason poker is still profitable is because a non-NP algorithm hasn't been developed yet.

This is basically true, except that no-limit poker is significantly difficult to find a complete GTO strategy at full stacks. Obviously, small and medium stack poker bots have been successful, and even some full-stacked bots have done well, but poker is still not solved by computers, and certainly not solved by people striving to find balance.

Obviously, if you played poker against a GTO bot you could not win. I think I explained that in the video; balance/GTO implies a non-losing strategy.

Andrew

1) It means neither because that's not the operative choice. Playing better poker means optimizing more effectively over the choices we actually have, which is our tendencies, using the information we actually have which is NOT our opponents' tendencies.

2) Yes, the Nash Equilibrium involves balancing, but my point is that 50% is never a magic number and playing optimally unexploitably doesn't mean playing optimally unpredictably.

1) Those choices are inherently based on our opponent's tendencies, provided that our opponents are not balanced (the closer they get to balanced, the closer we would need to get to balanced). For example, we could control our value/bluffing ranges against a fish who never folds, but it would be pretty silly to include a bluffing range in order to balance.

2) Certainly 50% is just an arbitrary number that I threw out that doesn't have anything to do with playing GTO.

Andrew

If you define a bluff as a hand that is raising with the intent of folding to a 4-bet, then any nash equilibrium strategy would be raising with a bluff a lot less frequently than with a nonbluff and the strategy you propose would be highly expoitable, as the original raiser could simply 4-bet to pot or less with the bottom of his range for profit in a vacuum.

No. Even if his 4bet is just 2x your 3bet, he will have to put more money into the pot than he stands to gain when you fold.
Say that villain opens for 3bb,you 3bet to 9bb and he 4bets to 18bb. Villain is putting 15bb into the pot to win 13.5bb. If you fold 50% and 5bet 50% villain will lose money on his 4bet-bluffs.

No. Even if his 4bet is just 2x your 3bet, he will have to put more money into the pot than he stands to gain when you fold.
Say that villain opens for 3bb,you 3bet to 9bb and he 4bets to 18bb. Villain is putting 15bb into the pot to win 13.5bb. If you fold 50% and 5bet 50% villain will lose money on his 4bet-bluffs.

1+ the beauty of balance..

No. Even if his 4bet is just 2x your 3bet, he will have to put more money into the pot than he stands to gain when you fold.
Say that villain opens for 3bb,you 3bet to 9bb and he 4bets to 18bb. Villain is putting 15bb into the pot to win 13.5bb. If you fold 50% and 5bet 50% villain will lose money on his 4bet-bluffs.

but his EV with his value4bet-hands would be increased.

but his EV with his value4bet-hands would be increased.

Depends on Villian is understanding to balance the correct range of his 4betvaluehands imo.

GTO only cares about position (in/out of position, players left to act) and SPR.

Pseudo GTO uses estimates of villain's range.

When we create an "unexploitable" 4bet range we are not designing a GTO strategy. The reason is that we are not considering how that range will influence all our other ranges. GTO is a complete strategy that takes all possible lines into account and where villain's range has no impact on our reaction.

Playing good poker is a matter of making it as hard as possible for villain to estimate our range while still exploiting him in the lines where we have a good estimate of his range.

Examples

Example #1: When a nit opens UTG adjust your 3bet range. A GTO strategy would not make any adjustments.

Example #2: There is a fish in the BB. Adjust your flatting range and 3bet range. GTO would call and 3bet the same ranges.

Example #3: You know that villain calls river bets all the time. GTO would still bluff.

Example #4: You are playing in a game where the other players are likely to exploit you preflop if you fold too much to 3bets. Adjust your opening range, calling and 4bet range so they cannot make a lot of money applying pressure to you preflop.