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

Ok, so this calling a 4bet IP thing is super complicated, so I'll do my best to just give you guys some things to think about. And I have taken some info from Galfond's vid on BFP fwiw.

So there's basically two types of hands that we may want to consider calling a small 4bet w/ 100bbs IP, and for this example we'll use A8s and 75s. And we'll assume we 3bet to 36, villain 4bets to 82..so we need 27% equity to breakeven on the call.

So our hands have the following equities vs various ranges:
A8s has 30% equity vs TT+, AKs, AKo
A8s has 37% equity vs TT+,AKs,AKo, 98s, 87s, 76s

75s has 27% equity vs TT+,AKs,AKo
75s has 30% equity vs TT+,AKs,AKo,98s,K4s,A4s

So clearly for these to be unprofitable calls, we must be at a disadvantage postflop. Galfond believes that we are NOT at a postflop disadvantage vs some avg/weak opponents. And that we may be at an advantage w/ a hand like 75s because of our perceived strong range, and the fact that this can create very good deceptive postflop situations.

Let's look at some flops w/ our two hands vs the uber tight 4betting range. So w/ A8s (these flops assume we have a backdoor FD) we have the following equities vs TT+,AKs,AKo:

70% on A53r
59% on AT3r
42% on J83r
20% on 763r

Another thing to consider is that when we have A8s, villain will flop less than TP about 50% of the time w/ TT+, AK. So when we have a hand like 75s, there should be a lot of good bluffing opportunities since a lot of flops won't be good for our opponents range.

Now let's look at a couple flops w/ 75s (again assuming we have a BDFD).

75s vs TT+,AK
42% on J73r
29% on 983r

These can be good situations particularly if our opponent is likely to be cbetting small (extremely common in 4bet pots), and will be likely to give up on bluffs and/or be turning his hand faceup on later streets.

Now I'm obv not saying "don't ever fold to 4bets IP!" I just wanted to provide you guys w/ some things to think about. And I suspect that some of these numbers may be pretty surprising to you wrt how much equity we may have..esp keeping in mind that we assumed basically the tightest 4bet range possible for villain in most situations.

So gl, and thanks for all the feedback..please keep it coming

Obv we will flop some sort of equity some of the times. What I still don't understand is why we want to flop that sorta equity with less than two pots left to play. Why do we want to get into the spot in the first place? I'm simply not sold on the assumption that 3betting 75s is gonna be more profitable than calling. Yeah, there might be situations where there's squeeze monkeys in the blinds, but I can only say it again: Sometimes folding is actually the best play. The general trend in today's games is that regs are moving more and more into the direction of a win-every-pot-syndrome. A lot of those guys are breaking even over big samples.

Don't get me wrong, I'm far from being a nit, but I do have one of the lowest 3bet stats among winning SSNL regs. I do understand the reason why a lot of my opponents 3bet 12%-13% overall (17%-23% of those out of the blinds). They simply play a gazillion tables and wanna reduce SPRs so they can have easier decisions. FPPs are a hulluva drug I guess... (I actually have guys in my DB who's blind VPIPs are higher than their BTN VPIP, lol)

I obviously know that not a lot of people are agreeing with me, otherwise 100bb cash wouldn't look more and more like SNGs nowadays. However there are good winning highstakes regs like Samoleus whom I've heard saying similar things. There's also one guy who's sitting at your tables in this video, and who's crushing SSNL/MSNL who plays a fairly low 3bet%. whenever I PTR a preflop warrior all I see is massive swongs hovering around +/- 0. I don't think that's a coincidence.

Time Link to 00:34:33

i'm not sure you understand the meaning of exploitive (syous). 4b to $84 from $36 is not necessarily exploitive or balanced - we need to know his range to determine this. our opponent is risking $72 to win $64. he's laying himself a bit worse than 1:1, so he can do this as a bluff 53% (72/136) of the time and be balanced. if he bluffs more or less, he's taking an exploitive line.

in all likelihood, you're not facing a balanced 4b range here, since you make videos showing yourself 3b J4s!

great series so far, keep it up!!! already looking forward to the next episode

i'm not sure you understand the meaning of exploitive (syous). 4b to $84 from $36 is not necessarily exploitive or balanced - we need to know his range to determine this. our opponent is risking $72 to win $64. he's laying himself a bit worse than 1:1, so he can do this as a bluff 53% (72/136) of the time and be balanced. if he bluffs more or less, he's taking an exploitive line.

in all likelihood, you're not facing a balanced 4b range here, since you make videos showing yourself 3b J4s!

Yeah you're right. So far I'm not worried about being bluff/rebluffed. I haven't noticed or seen anyone really trying to make my life miserable. If that's a bluff from him, cool, but no one's doing it nearly enough for me to consider changing my 3b ranges.

Obv we will flop some sort of equity some of the times. What I still don't understand is why we want to flop that sorta equity with less than two pots left to play. Why do we want to get into the spot in the first place? I'm simply not sold on the assumption that 3betting 75s is gonna be more profitable than calling. Yeah, there might be situations where there's squeeze monkeys in the blinds, but I can only say it again: Sometimes folding is actually the best play. The general trend in today's games is that regs are moving more and more into the direction of a win-every-pot-syndrome. A lot of those guys are breaking even over big samples.

Don't get me wrong, I'm far from being a nit, but I do have one of the lowest 3bet stats among winning SSNL regs. I do understand the reason why a lot of my opponents 3bet 12%-13% overall (17%-23% of those out of the blinds). They simply play a gazillion tables and wanna reduce SPRs so they can have easier decisions. FPPs are a hulluva drug I guess... (I actually have guys in my DB who's blind VPIPs are higher than their BTN VPIP, lol)

I obviously know that not a lot of people are agreeing with me, otherwise 100bb cash wouldn't look more and more like SNGs nowadays. However there are good winning highstakes regs like Samoleus whom I've heard saying similar things. There's also one guy who's sitting at your tables in this video, and who's crushing SSNL/MSNL who plays a fairly low 3bet%. whenever I PTR a preflop warrior all I see is massive swongs hovering around +/- 0. I don't think that's a coincidence.

So you advocate always flatting hands like 75s or 97s? You are just not going to profit much with those, and they are even loosing calls vs tighter opening ranges. And no, I definitely dont want to emulate punketty flatting 86s in the SB vs an UTG open
I completely disagree when you say that 3-betting a lot is a bad thing to do, and saying winning players mostly have low 3-bet % while aggro 3-bettors are mostly breakeven is just false and completely ridiculous.

That discussion on flatting 4-bets is interesting, it comes from the fact that regs are 4-betting smaller and smaller, because 3-betting regs used to always shove/fold va a 4-bet, so 4-betting regs figured out that they could 4-bet bluff a lot smaller with the exact same result. If you are always shoving/folding to a 4-bet why should the guy do anything other than a mini 4-bet? Vs people who 4-bet kind of a lot and very small I think it's correct to flat quite a bit of hands and they usually bet 1/4th or 1/3rd pot on flop. I also think it's prolly best to flat AA and KK 100% vs small 4-bets. If he opens 3bb you 3-bet 9bb and he 4-bets like 19-20bb it looks pretty obvious that we should have a flatting range, and I'm never folding 97s or KQo vs that small of a 4-bet.

It's a very interesting topic as its still somewhat of an unexplored territory.

Time Link to 00:31:39

How can we call These M4Bs w/KJ or even 97s? We know he is super polarized and will prolly CB alot so we spew x % of the time wen we flop a small peace and fold when we have air? I feel we have to play pretty str8 forward here post given SPRs.