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I think the best play here may be highly dependent on villain's particular tendencies.

If he peels a flop like that light and then folds the turn unimproved facing a barrel, but would bet if you checked to him, then I think betting is probably the best play. In addition to your straight outs, hitting a T or an 8 might give you the best hand too.

If he peels a flop like this light and then tries to check it down, and would also likely call a lot of your turn bets, I think checking is probably best. He's not likely to fold and you'll get to see the river unless he's really strong, in which case barreling wouldn't be profitable anyway.

I'm interested in hearing what other people would do here.

I'd fire the turn here with the increase outs and chance he's peeling light. I'd consider a third here at times too. A lot of times when you check here he turns over something like Qs4s and you lose to a better busted draw.

Unfortunaly the triple barrel didnt work , can u guess what hand he showed up with ? After the hand i realized this was prob a bad player to triple barrel but i think this would work well against a more standard opponent whose able to fold

This is really important, you will not make a lot of money by trying to fold calling stations off their made hands. This is much better against a tag player who can understand what it is you are repping.

This is really important, you will not make a lot of money by trying to fold calling stations off their made hands. This is much better against a tag player who can understand what it is you are repping.

Exactly ! this is what has me thinking we are best to check back with a draw on the turn against these type of players , rather than 2 barrel , and often they will check river tempting us to fire again , im going to pay more attention to these spots in future , Langerz you seem to still agree that we should be 2 and 3 barreling here

-1. He'll have a strong range to be sure, but more often than not the flop still doesn't bring great news. And when it doesn't, he gives up unless you've put him on tilt by incessantly picking on him. He's a nit. That's their thing.

But if it wasnt BvB or you wernt making an obvious steal , your right a cbet will work most times against a nit , i just think this particular spots leads him to call more

.

I dont think hes giving up all that easily on the flop here , the guy is sure to notice your stealing 100% in this spot so when he does pick up a hand and call hes not going to give much respect to your cbet , also his fold to cbet stat is 33% , id like to imagine this proves my point

I don't know I have always made it 4x in the SB - if he calls you are going to end up playing OOP so I like to bump it up a little extra to discourage having to play hands OOP. Although I'm not sure how many people adjust there ranges at low stakes to different preflop raise sizes.

I think this is interesting and the book doesnt do a great job at clarifing steal size OOP , in general when im in the SB and theres a nit im raiseing small , i used to always make it 4x like you langerz simple because we want our villian to fold and we are OOP , but i had a more narrow range then and id usualy be raising with a good hand , the book has me wanting to steal more from the SB , so shouldnt we make it smaller so its a cheaper steal and when he does call we will be OOP so we keep the pot small

These days im usualy confused as to what size to make it and im generaly mixing it up alot

Make it large for fold equity and steal less ??
Make it small , allowing us to steal more and keep pot small ??

If he calls a large or small bet were still going to be OOP so i dont think thats a valid point for why wed make it larger , i think it would be good to figure out what would be best against diff opponents

Nit - raise small
Tag - 19/16 - ?
Wet Noodle - 22/7 - ?
Clueless 40/8 - ?
CrazyLAG - 40/30 - ?

Book says if BB folds more than 60% , open every hand from SB , i dont agree with this , i think that leds to playing far to many hands OOP

Langerz you seem to still agree that we should be 2 and 3 barreling here

I think we should be 2 and 3 barreling "sometimes" here. In general barreling calling stations a lot is a horrible idea. That doesn't mean you can't ever do it. Some times just the perfect river card comes (my example where it the river brought 2345 on the board and my range had tons of Aces and his didn't)

Now there are some calling stations that are just so terrible that you should never barrel, but I don't think we have to discuss much how to beat them (pick up anything and value bet).

The book talks about the optimal barreling strategy. In general it is lots of bets on the flop with some bluffs and some value bets and then a lower percentage of hands on each street. The strategy if (I assume intentionally) vague about percentages though because it's very villian dependent.

Against a tight player you might cbet 100% of your range and then barrel a lot and even fire a good number of rivers. Your bluff to value bet ratio could be close to 50/50 (I'm just making up numbers), but against a calling station it could be more like 90/10.

Even most calling stations though realize when they are facing 3 barrels their bottom or middle pair is no good so occasionally when just the right board falls you can fire 3 and be profitable IMO.

I think this is interesting and the book doesnt do a great job at clarifing steal size OOP , in general when im in the SB and theres a nit im raiseing small , i used to always make it 4x like you langerz simple because we want our villian to fold and we are OOP , but i had a more narrow range then and id usualy be raising with a good hand , the book has me wanting to steal more from the SB , so shouldnt we make it smaller so its a cheaper steal and when he does call we will be OOP so we keep the pot small

These days im usualy confused as to what size to make it and im generaly mixing it up alot

Make it large for fold equity and steal less ??
Make it small , allowing us to steal more and keep pot small ??

If he calls a large or small bet were still going to be OOP so i dont think thats a valid point for why wed make it larger , i think it would be good to figure out what would be best against diff opponents

Nit - raise small
Tag - 19/16 - ?
Wet Noodle - 22/7 - ?
Clueless 40/8 - ?
CrazyLAG - 40/30 - ?

Book says if BB folds more than 60% , open every hand from SB , i dont agree with this , i think that leds to playing far to many hands OOP

I've actually been having the same thoughts. Since I'm stealing more in the SB I've been wanting to give myself a better price and have been going back and forth - some sessions I'm at 3x some 4x. As I've been thinking about I'm wondering if it really matters and if a constant bet size is really that important.

How many of the player types you listed above do you think would notice if you flexed your steal size and raise more with good hands and less with bad hands? I'm guessing the TAG is the only one that might. And I bet not a lot would. Heck I'd consider myself a somewhat observant player and up until recently you could have flexed your steal size against me all the time and I would have never noticed. I've been paying more attention lately since I've been thinking about this topic, but I bet there aren't a lot at these levels that would notice.

I'm starting to think about experimenting with being crazy exploitable and flexing my bet size. I'll try it tonight as long as there isn't a solid regular in the blinds and let you know how it works out.

I dont think hes giving up all that easily on the flop here , the guy is sure to notice your stealing 100% in this spot so when he does pick up a hand and call hes not going to give much respect to your cbet , also his fold to cbet stat is 33% , id like to imagine this proves my point

Now shades, you aren't really trying to use a small sample size from one single opponent as evidence of how nits play in general, are you?

We can agree to disagree. It's cool. Thanks for your input.

Regarding steal size in the SB vs a tight opponent, and percentage of hands to open:

I think you guys are making this way more complicated than it actually is. This is a simple preflop math problem that doesn't require any tough calculations. Let's try a few.

All of this is based on memory, so please correct me if you see any errors.

The book states that when your range is primary consisting of steals, you want to ideally raise the smallest amount you can get away with that will be successful. Even tight opponents can convince themselves to call a min-raise or a 2.5x raise to play in position in a HU pot vs a super weak range, so when raising from the SB 3x is usually what realistically gets them to fold a good amount.

So let's say we have a pretty junk hand, like 92o. We have a mega-nit in the BB and it's folded to us in the SB. Our plan is to raise to 3x as a steal. Just based on preflop alone, how often does this have to work for it to be profitable? It's a simple risk vs reward.

It costs us 2.5 big blinds to raise to 3x, since we're already in for 0.5 big blinds. So 2.5 is what we are risking.

Our reward is the current pot. That's 1 for the big blind, and 0.5 for the SB. So our reward is 1.5.

We risk 2.5 to win 1.5. This means that if he folds 62.5% of the time, we break even. Anything more than that and we profit. Surely you guys can find tons of nits who will call or raise your SB steals less than 37.5% of the time, right? If so, you make long term profit and they lose money based on the preflop play, and there is nothing they can do about it unless they stop nitting it up and dramatically change their game plan.

These numbers are completely independent of what happens on the flop. Even if you check folded the flop every single time they called (or fold when they raise), you still win, and they lose. So if you don't want to c-bet, you don't have to. As long as he's folding more than 62.5% of the time preflop, and you aren't spewing money when he doesn't fold, it is mathematically impossible for you to not make money in this spot in the long term. This doesn't even take into account the time we actually have a good made hand, luckbox a flop with our garbage, or the metagame benefit we get from the table seeing us raise so much. So when the book says open any two here as long as he folds about 60%, I can't see you going wrong with this advice.

What happens if we raise to 4x from the SB? Now we are risking 3.5 to win 1.5. He needs to fold 70% of the time for us to show an automatic profit. It's a little less forgiving, but would probably still work great against a lot of tight players. Whatever works best for you and the situation, I suppose.

Bottom line: Until your tight BB starts playing some hands, you can rob him blind by raising to 3x every single time.

This was meant to be a short post, but I like hearing myself talk.

Random side note: I really suck at multitabling. Even just two.

Regarding steal size in the SB vs a tight opponent, and percentage of hands to open:

I think you guys are making this way more complicated than it actually is. This is a simple preflop math problem that doesn't require any tough calculations. Let's try a few.

All of this is based on memory, so please correct me if you see any errors.

The book states that when your range is primary consisting of steals, you want to ideally raise the smallest amount you can get away with that will be successful. Even tight opponents can convince themselves to call a min-raise or a 2.5x raise to play in position in a HU pot vs a super weak range, so when raising from the SB 3x is usually what realistically gets them to fold a good amount.

So let's say we have a pretty junk hand, like 92o. We have a mega-nit in the BB and it's folded to us in the SB. Our plan is to raise to 3x as a steal. Just based on preflop alone, how often does this have to work for it to be profitable? It's a simple risk vs reward.

It costs us 2.5 big blinds to raise to 3x, since we're already in for 0.5 big blinds. So 2.5 is what we are risking.

Our reward is the current pot. That's 1 for the big blind, and 0.5 for the SB. So our reward is 1.5.

We risk 2.5 to win 1.5. This means that if he folds 62.5% of the time, we break even. Anything more than that and we profit. Surely you guys can find tons of nits who will call or raise your SB steals less than 37.5% of the time, right? If so, you make long term profit and they lose money based on the preflop play, and there is nothing they can do about it unless they stop nitting it up and dramatically change their game plan.

These numbers are completely independent of what happens on the flop. Even if you check folded the flop every single time they called (or fold when they raise), you still win, and they lose. So if you don't want to c-bet, you don't have to. As long as he's folding more than 62.5% of the time preflop, and you aren't spewing money when he doesn't fold, it is mathematically impossible for you to not make money in this spot in the long term. This doesn't even take into account the time we actually have a good made hand, luckbox a flop with our garbage, or the metagame benefit we get from the table seeing us raise so much. So when the book says open any two here as long as he folds about 60%, I can't see you going wrong with this advice.

What happens if we raise to 4x from the SB? Now we are risking 3.5 to win 1.5. He needs to fold 70% of the time for us to show an automatic profit. It's a little less forgiving, but would probably still work great against a lot of tight players. Whatever works best for you and the situation, I suppose.

Bottom line: Until your tight BB starts playing some hands, you can rob him blind by raising to 3x every single time.

This was meant to be a short post, but I like hearing myself talk.

Random side note: I really suck at multitabling. Even just two.

Longest short post ever

I agree with everything you said with a mega nit in the BB. Now put someone in the blinds that calls too much. What's the best raise size then?

I'm starting to think about experimenting with being crazy exploitable and flexing my bet size. I'll try it tonight as long as there isn't a solid regular in the blinds and let you know how it works out.

Report from the test - it's hard to pay attention to steal size when you are at a table two to your left that is playing 70/10 with a 3 BI stack in front of him. Sadly those players sometimes still flop top set so I ended up down on that table. Happily I still had a nice positive session. I did play around with raise size and didn't see much difference between people's play flexing between 3 and 4 x, but most of my time was spent ISO raising.

I did have what I thought was a nice 3 barrel bluff that I'll post tomorrow (against a TAG) since I'm very tired now.

Villian is what I'd consider an ordinary TAG reg meaning he does a lot of things well, but just not great. Has a cardrunners avatar, plays 20/15/4 3.4 3bet. Even though I have 400 hands on him I don't have any specific postflop reads probably because his WTSD was 14%.

Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 175766
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $56.50
Hero (UTG): $35.65
MP: $17.45
CO: $26.20
BTN: $25.00
SB: $25.00

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is UTG with 3 3
Hero raises to $1, 2 folds, BTN calls $1, 2 folds

Standard raise here and get called by the villian on the button. I think his range is somewhat wide here even though he is tight. Any pair, some broadway combos, some Axs, some SCs.

Flop: ($2.35) 6 Q 5 (2 players)
Hero bets $1.50, BTN calls $1.50

Pretty dry board and one I'd cbet a lot. Villians fold to cbet % is only 29 so when he calls his range is still very wide. Most of his pairs continue, probably any straight draw or gutter, probably any Q,6 or 5, and probably worse like Ace hi.

Turn: ($5.35) J (2 players)
Hero bets $3.50, BTN calls $3.5

On the turn I think most of his range is pairs between 6 and Q, and other weak hands so I fire again on the J. He seems to peel light on flops and give up later so I keep up the aggression.

River: ($12.35) T (2 players)
Hero bets $6,

After the turn call I probably wasn't going to fire a lot of rivers. I think my image against this is pretty solid though. I don't think he has better than a one pair type hand here very often. I also think he's the type to put me on AK here a lot. So I fired once more for 1/2 pot making it look like I was trying to eek out value with AK.

Final Pot: $12.35
Hero wins $11.75
(Rake: $0.60)

A couple thoughts going forward with the study group...

I went over to check out the study group on the smallstakesnolimitholdem.com page (no I'm not planning to ditch you guys, just curious how others are doing it). They seem to have a pretty slick set up so far and thought I'd steal some of their good ideas (I have no shame) and float them out here.

It appears that they are going to have both video reviews and sweat sessions amongst the group. I've not done either before personally (I recorded one video once and found enough mistakes on my own I never did anything with it - it was a big help just to record it though), but I think that's a fabulous idea. I'm curious about others interest in this as well. The sweat sessions would probably be harder for me to pull off, but if the time worked out I'd be interested there as well.

Other than that they did similar to proposed here...tackle a section of the book each week and then have a week long discussion. For the first topic they did have a poster post several questions to get the discussion going. I'd be willing to try to do something similar if that sounded like a good idea (I might copy some of the good one from there ).

One nice thing they do there is have a different thread for each topic. I think that is going to be tough here, but once we get going I think it would be good to have a first line of a post list out the topic just to make sure we know where it's coming from.

It would be good to get a couple more participants before we dive in too deeply. The 3-4 that are active have had some great discussion, but a few more opinions would be nice too. I'm curious if there are any lurkers out there that have some interest if we start having a more structured review. If so sound off. Maybe until we get a few more we can just start with a couple video reviews. I'd be willing to try to post one this week to get things going if that sounds like a plan to the rest.

Regarding steal size in the SB vs a tight opponent, and percentage of hands to open:

I think you guys are making this way more complicated than it actually is. This is a simple preflop math problem that doesn't require any tough calculations. Let's try a few.

All of this is based on memory, so please correct me if you see any errors.

The book states that when your range is primary consisting of steals, you want to ideally raise the smallest amount you can get away with that will be successful. Even tight opponents can convince themselves to call a min-raise or a 2.5x raise to play in position in a HU pot vs a super weak range, so when raising from the SB 3x is usually what realistically gets them to fold a good amount.

So let's say we have a pretty junk hand, like 92o. We have a mega-nit in the BB and it's folded to us in the SB. Our plan is to raise to 3x as a steal. Just based on preflop alone, how often does this have to work for it to be profitable? It's a simple risk vs reward.

It costs us 2.5 big blinds to raise to 3x, since we're already in for 0.5 big blinds. So 2.5 is what we are risking.

Our reward is the current pot. That's 1 for the big blind, and 0.5 for the SB. So our reward is 1.5.

We risk 2.5 to win 1.5. This means that if he folds 62.5% of the time, we break even. Anything more than that and we profit. Surely you guys can find tons of nits who will call or raise your SB steals less than 37.5% of the time, right? If so, you make long term profit and they lose money based on the preflop play, and there is nothing they can do about it unless they stop nitting it up and dramatically change their game plan.

These numbers are completely independent of what happens on the flop. Even if you check folded the flop every single time they called (or fold when they raise), you still win, and they lose. So if you don't want to c-bet, you don't have to. As long as he's folding more than 62.5% of the time preflop, and you aren't spewing money when he doesn't fold, it is mathematically impossible for you to not make money in this spot in the long term. This doesn't even take into account the time we actually have a good made hand, luckbox a flop with our garbage, or the metagame benefit we get from the table seeing us raise so much. So when the book says open any two here as long as he folds about 60%, I can't see you going wrong with this advice.

What happens if we raise to 4x from the SB? Now we are risking 3.5 to win 1.5. He needs to fold 70% of the time for us to show an automatic profit. It's a little less forgiving, but would probably still work great against a lot of tight players. Whatever works best for you and the situation, I suppose.

Bottom line: Until your tight BB starts playing some hands, you can rob him blind by raising to 3x every single time.

This was meant to be a short post, but I like hearing myself talk.

Random side note: I really suck at multitabling. Even just two.

Good post Fish , you should join my Math group !

Ok so you made us see why we are raising small into a tight BB and making a profit , and how we make a profit if we raise 4x into someone who folds more than 70% of the time

So when it comes to stealing into a player who is willing to call more in this spot we should drop our stealing % but keep to the 4x raise size , so the pot is bigger when we do hit or have a hand which we will happen more often since were not stealing so much and it should get them to fold more often preflop since it is that bit larger.

Yesturdays session i had a aggro TAG to my left on 2 tables (same guy) , i decided to drop my steal % but still make it 4x , the guy was 3betting a good amount forcing me to fold a good amount , it got me thinking i should really open up my 3betting in the BB when a SB opens cas it works so well , is this something ye guys do ? i dont think i 3bet much here at all cas i usualy call with my strong hands AJ+ cas they will most likely fold to a 3bet

Villian is what I'd consider an ordinary TAG reg meaning he does a lot of things well, but just not great. Has a cardrunners avatar, plays 20/15/4 3.4 3bet. Even though I have 400 hands on him I don't have any specific postflop reads probably because his WTSD was 14%.

Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players - View hand 175766
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $56.50
Hero (UTG): $35.65
MP: $17.45
CO: $26.20
BTN: $25.00
SB: $25.00

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is UTG with 3 3
Hero raises to $1, 2 folds, BTN calls $1, 2 folds

Standard raise here and get called by the villian on the button. I think his range is somewhat wide here even though he is tight. Any pair, some broadway combos, some Axs, some SCs.

Flop: ($2.35) 6 Q 5 (2 players)
Hero bets $1.50, BTN calls $1.50

Pretty dry board and one I'd cbet a lot. Villians fold to cbet % is only 29 so when he calls his range is still very wide. Most of his pairs continue, probably any straight draw or gutter, probably any Q,6 or 5, and probably worse like Ace hi.

Turn: ($5.35) J (2 players)
Hero bets $3.50, BTN calls $3.5

On the turn I think most of his range is pairs between 6 and Q, and other weak hands so I fire again on the J. He seems to peel light on flops and give up later so I keep up the aggression.

River: ($12.35) T (2 players)
Hero bets $6,

After the turn call I probably wasn't going to fire a lot of rivers. I think my image against this is pretty solid though. I don't think he has better than a one pair type hand here very often. I also think he's the type to put me on AK here a lot. So I fired once more for 1/2 pot making it look like I was trying to eek out value with AK.

Final Pot: $12.35
Hero wins $11.75
(Rake: $0.60)

I think the 1 thing that makes this work so well is that your UTG , i think this is a great position to do a 3barrel bluff , its good to do but on very rare occasions cas i think the book has us firing the turn alot more than we used to so lets not go crazy with firing that 3rd barrel , i think small stakes can be beaten without using that kind of high variance play , one last thing is i think the 3barrel would be more believable if your turn bet was a little larger like $4 , make i look like your trying to get value with you TP/overpair from Qx , FDs , weaker pairs , i like the river bet size tho cas it gives us a good price