Poker Video: Limit Hold'Em by Deepsquat (High Stakes)

Time Link to 00:04:03

Hi Deepsquat,

I thought the QJs hand on the right table was very interesting. I can envisage the Btn (pf 3-better) having something like KQs or KJs when he checks the A67 monotone flop, but what range do you put the big blind (pf capper) on after he checks both the flop and turn 9 ?

I would have expected him to have a pocket pair say TT-KK, but would then have expected him to bet the turn after the flop was checked through.

I was just amazed to see your turn and river bet bluffs win the hand, and wondered how often you would expect your bet bet approach to be successful ? This hand looked quite strangely played to me by your opponents !

Time Link to 00:08:09

AQs hand on right table.

I understand your comments for liking a turn bet on the JJ4A board, such as not wishing to be 3-bet if you check raised and also not giving a free card to a single club flush draw.

However at game speed your turn check seemed reasonable to me as your opponent had check raised the flop. As played, if your opponent had bet the turn, which do you now think would have been better between calling or raising ?

Time Link to 00:28:37

A5o on the right hand table.

Are you 3-betting this hand pf in the btn, because you consider the CO to be a weak player ?

Time Link to 00:37:38

KJo on the left table.

Is this near the bottom of your range that you will cold call a pf 3-bet in the big blind ?

Time Link to 00:53:04

In this A9s hand you mention that you would not be betting the turn with a 9x or 8x hand.

That made me wonder what 9x or 8x hands other than this A9s and perhaps A8s that you would have cold called 2 bets pf in the big blind with ?

Finally, thanks for another very good video.

Hi Deepsquat,

I thought the QJs hand on the right table was very interesting. I can envisage the Btn (pf 3-better) having something like KQs or KJs when he checks the A67 monotone flop, but what range do you put the big blind (pf capper) on after he checks both the flop and turn 9 ?

I would have expected him to have a pocket pair say TT-KK, but would then have expected him to bet the turn after the flop was checked through.

I was just amazed to see your turn and river bet bluffs win the hand, and wondered how often you would expect your bet bet approach to be successful ? This hand looked quite strangely played to me by your opponents !

Hey Fantam,

Thanks for watching!

I actually put BB on that KQs/KJs range. I think like yu said, he should bet his PP's by the turn and would expect him to bet his weaker speculative hands like QJs/JTs. Only other hand that could make sense is 55 with no spade but probably unlikely.

Its hard to quantify how often this works but i think its a spot that alot of regs give up, where we should be thinking about their range and sometimes trying to steal the pot when it gets big.

You can probably level some villains into bad folds too, and worse case you get paid off lighter in future as they think you always bet when checked to.

It was definately a strange hand.

AQs hand on right table.

I understand your comments for liking a turn bet on the JJ4A board, such as not wishing to be 3-bet if you check raised and also not giving a free card to a single club flush draw.

However at game speed your turn check seemed reasonable to me as your opponent had check raised the flop. As played, if your opponent had bet the turn, which do you now think would have been better between calling or raising ?

Its really a close spot. Id prob lean towards calling and hoping hes barrelling a bluff seeing as some bad players (and good) will bluff raise boards like this that are unlikely to hit my range hard. I think hes very polarized when he bets the turn, normally a flush, Jx or air.

The problem with cr is that we really dont want 3bets going in on the turn as we are often drawing to 2 outs so thats why i like donking best as we can limit how big the pot gets vs a somewhat unknown player and like i mentioned in the video, we prevent him checking back 88 or something on the turn

A5o on the right hand table.

Are you 3-betting this hand pf in the btn, because you consider the CO to be a weak player ?

Spot-on, i think we can isolate pretty light in this spot. If the weaker player is very SD bound, we should be doing it more with hands like this as opposed to suited connecters fwiw

KJo on the left table.

Is this near the bottom of your range that you will cold call a pf 3-bet in the big blind ?

Yep, w/out a read it is. There are times we can play KTo too, its very dependant on how wide the ranges are and how well they play postflop.

If both players are bad, we can prob go even lower, perhaps even K9o but its hard to prove.

Assuming both players are competant, i think KJo is a decent place to start

In this A9s hand you mention that you would not be betting the turn with a 9x or 8x hand.

That made me wonder what 9x or 8x hands other than this A9s and perhaps A8s that you would have cold called 2 bets pf in the big blind with ?

Finally, thanks for another very good video.

Thats a good point.

Fwiw I think we can definately play T9s for sure, not sure about 98s but i know people who would play that but i want a read before going that low.

I think this is one of the benefits of this strategy is that we can play hands like this w/out narrowing our range too much.

I really hate the turn c/call on the last hand (you with A9 hitting 2 pair on the turn). Betting will *very* often allow you to 3-bet when villain has an A (a naive, aggressive villain may even 4-bet here with AK). If he has a pocket pair and you check the action can go check/check, check/raise/fold, check/raise/call - the likelihood of each very player-dependent. 2 of those possibilities almost certainly have you winning less than if you just kept betting.

Your choice to check though might be best for when the villain is hopeless with something like KQ (but this is a tiny percentage of his range). Checking may also be best for your meta-game allowing you to get some free turns in the future when you want them. But, overall I think you're giving up too much by not betting here.

I really hate the turn c/call on the last hand (you with A9 hitting 2 pair on the turn). Betting will *very* often allow you to 3-bet when villain has an A (a naive, aggressive villain may even 4-bet here with AK). If he has a pocket pair and you check the action can go check/check, check/raise/fold, check/raise/call - the likelihood of each very player-dependent. 2 of those possibilities almost certainly have you winning less than if you just kept betting.

Your choice to check though might be best for when the villain is hopeless with something like KQ (but this is a tiny percentage of his range). Checking may also be best for your meta-game allowing you to get some free turns in the future when you want them. But, overall I think you're giving up too much by not betting here.

Do you mean turn c/r?

Do you mean turn c/r?

Yes. I also see I messed up on trying to describe my possible actions and scenarios. Let me try again.

Villain's likely hands are a good A or a pocket pair (weighted more towards pocket pairs).

When villain has a pocket pair:

If villain is not a good hand reader, he may just see the A and get scared and check behind.
A good hand reader should know he is doing well here against your range when he has KK-TT and bet here but he might fold to your check raise as your action looks really strong. Probably not, but it's possible.

So playing for a c/r here when he has a pair leads to getting 1 more BB from villain in the hand in several scenarios. Sometimes possibly 0 if a scare card for villains pair comes on the river when he checks behind the turn. And 3 BB in one scenario (possibly the most likely scenario, but the other possibilities definitely exist).

You just betting out will get 2 more BBs from villain in the vast majority of cases.

When villain has an A:

You likely get 3 more BBs in most cases when you go for your turn c/r.

Just betting the turn, villain will often raise here allowing you to reraise (which I think is probably the correct action for him vs your range). So you will get 4 more BBs from villain in this hand.

Anyway, It could be argued that our EV is close to the same for the instances when villain has a pocket pair either way you decide to play it (quite dependent on villain's playing style which you mention we don't know) but I think we are sacrificing a considerable portion of a BB when villain has an A. What do you think?

I think its good to look at this hand and look at our overall range too. I think it also comes down to what assumptions we make too.

My thoughts are that most villains will vbet hands better than TT when we check and also possibly bet some silly hands that they shouldnt, like KQ but im not factoring that into my argument. I think TT-KK will prob never fold to a cr either, but hard to say.

I think hands between TT-KK may not raise the turn if we bet, but his Ax hands will, which allows us to 3bet like you said. Fwiw, i rarely think anyone sane caps AK on the turn when we B/3B.

I think we need to have a cr range on the turn here, i think we simply arent going to have enough hands we can bet for value on this specific turn card, and i also think we have very little FE with our draws. I cant really name one hand that villain would fold on the turn given our likely range.

So although that suggests that betting may be better with this exact hand in a vaccum, like i said earlier we need to be thinking about how we want to play 55 or T9s or our draws on this turn, i think blindly barrelling all our flop cr hands is bad vs most.

We prob should be betting some draws and some value hands but i think i could make an argument for checking 100% of our range on this turn...

If we agree that we need a turn checking range (if you do?), then what should it be?

Well, to be balanced, we need some semi-bluffs obviously but lets look at our value hands.

I think we should probably use card removal to decide what value hands to B/3B and which ones to cr. I think given we have A9 on A982, there are a few less combo's of Ax for him to raise our turn bet with so this is a good one to cr as we prob get slightly less opportunity to b/3b

I think a hand like 99/88 is the perfect hand to b/3b with seeing as there are more available combos of Ax to raise us with.

Its obviously player dependant. If we dont care about balance and he will monkey raise us with everything then we should prob bet our value hands always and chk our marginal hands and draws.

If he is extra-ordinarily passive we should bet too as the turn will get checked thru too much and we wont get raised with our marginal holdings

If hes a decent Lagtag, i like a cr here for the above reasons. What do you think?

> If we agree that we need a turn checking range (if you do?), then what should it be?

If we think villain always bets TT+ and Ax here and calls down when we c/r, what does balancing our play here achieve for our meta-game? Also, you mentioned he is an unknown which means there is a decent chance we will never play against him again.

On the other hand, if this is our assumption, then going for a c/r should be the most profitable play as, according to my calculations, him having KK-TT is more likely than him having Ax (there is a large chance that UTG folded an Ax hand likely leaving only 2 As left).

Going for the turn c/r also has the benefit of saving us a BB when villain has a set and 3-bets after our c/r (assuming we don't cap our top 2 pair - do you?).

So, I think I've come around on this hand. My initial instinct was that villain much more likely to have Ax than a pocket pair here and going for a c/r is likely costing us a BB. But after some work, I see the opposite is the case (that pocket pairs are much more likely). So, while maybe I don't understand the need to balance our checking range here, it appears that the c/r line may be the most +EV.

> If we agree that we need a turn checking range (if you do?), then what should it be?

If we think villain always bets TT+ and Ax here and calls down when we c/r, what does balancing our play here achieve for our meta-game? Also, you mentioned he is an unknown which means there is a decent chance we will never play against him again.

On the other hand, if this is our assumption, then going for a c/r should be the most profitable play as, according to my calculations, him having KK-TT is more likely than him having Ax (there is a large chance that UTG folded an Ax hand likely leaving only 2 As left).

Going for the turn c/r also has the benefit of saving us a BB when villain has a set and 3-bets after our c/r (assuming we don't cap our top 2 pair - do you?).

So, I think I've come around on this hand. My initial instinct was that villain much more likely to have Ax than a pocket pair here and going for a c/r is likely costing us a BB. But after some work, I see the opposite is the case (that pocket pairs are much more likely). So, while maybe I don't understand the need to balance our checking range here, it appears that the c/r line may be the most +EV.

Not usre if i mentioned in the video (thought i did) that these sort of plays should be designated for regs/people you have history with. Like you said, its pretty useless vs unknowns.

In terms of meta-game or whatever terminology people like to use, I like to look at our range as a whole when we cr the flop like we did and then are confronted with this turn card.

Theoretically, it means that villain cant vbet us as thinly as he would like, which means we get free cards occasionally with draws and also means we can save bets with hands like 9x or 66 (if you play the flop this way) that may not want to b/c or b/f turn. I think chk/chk isnt a bad result on the turn in general given his likely range. If he doesnt charge us with TT-KK sometimes thats obviously good.

Overall it allows us to not be transparent and make villains decisions harder.

If we always bet this turn, I think its probably not correct in general. We cost ourself too much to SD
If we always chk with an average strength hand or draw, then we are unbalanced and villain can vbet with impunity

Checking with 100% of our range vs a good player could be xpert??.....interesting discussion

Concerning the A9 hand, I'm sure we need a check range here on turn, but not sure whether a CR range is really necessary and realistic (unless maybe if you go for the 100% check turn option). The thing is, this is a quite special situation already - you cold called in BB and CR'd flop. If you CR your two pairs here for value, how do you plan to construct a bluff range for this turn? If it's just JTcc, QJcc it's looking pretty thin (may be enough though, depending on how many 2 pairs you actually can have here).

What I'm worried about here is villain either checking back the draws (showdownable except for an unlikely JTs!) he has in his range or getting away from his [pair/overs to the flop] at some point in the hand when you go for the double check raise, gaining you nothing but missing the opportunity to 3!.

Oh btw having the "special focus section" in the end of the video is nuts, there's plenty of "play along" videos out there (not that I'm complaining about that part). Might even be in the beginning of the video so if a spot in the real time play actually comes up, you get to say "and as we discussed in the theory part, here's a great spot to...".

lol, just noticed... in case there was any doubt, I meant to say "The Nutzz", not "nuts".

Concerning the A9 hand, I'm sure we need a check range here on turn, but not sure whether a CR range is really necessary and realistic (unless maybe if you go for the 100% check turn option). The thing is, this is a quite special situation already - you cold called in BB and CR'd flop. If you CR your two pairs here for value, how do you plan to construct a bluff range for this turn? If it's just JTcc, QJcc it's looking pretty thin (may be enough though, depending on how many 2 pairs you actually can have here).

What I'm worried about here is villain either checking back the draws (showdownable except for an unlikely JTs!) he has in his range or getting away from his [pair/overs to the flop] at some point in the hand when you go for the double check raise, gaining you nothing but missing the opportunity to 3!.

It certainly an interesting spot. Im pretty sold on checking this turn alot in this particular spot for the reasons i gave earlier in the thread. But i think B/3b can be good with the range i listed above.

Regarding bluff ranges or semi-bluff ranges on the turn, i think we only really need a couple of combos as there are only a few value cr combos we will have. JTs is definately there and any straight draws that pick up a FD on the turn that we raised flop with, 76s will be in my range alot. Some may say its too loose but i think its profitable, especially if there is a bad player in the pot.

I think we need to consider all possible scenarios on the turn with all of our range and weigh them up as opposed to the occasional time we give overcards to our TT or whatever a free card when we chk the turn. You can certainly be unbalanced here vs some opponents and it will be fine, but i think vs regs who will punish you with KK or any Ax on the turn here, we should consider a balanced chk range.

Also, you dont realistically need to be balanced in this turn spot. You can chk/r a predominantly value based range here and get away. As long as there are a couple of semi bluffs in there you are ok. Villain doesnt know your true frequency.

I should also mention that we should be slowplaying occasionally on the flop here too. Probably a KK/AA hand could be good. Its not a disaster to let UTG in, in fact it can be +EV and can mean we can rep a stronger range on the turn here the times we peel with QJs or whatever and can really semibluff credibly because we are rarely strong

As long as there are a couple of semi bluffs in there you are ok. Villain doesnt know your true frequency.

But... but... that's like cheating on GTO

I guess you've sold the "card removal effect" to me here... I've been using that myself more on river CR spots, when A rivers for example. It's not that the effect itself is so huge here, especially when you expect villain to raise any TT+, but there's also the matter of balancing again... if you b/3! all of your 2 pairs here, there just won't be enough bluffs to go around.

Which is part of what's bugging me here. In a [0...1] range game one could theoretically always find the perfect ranges to flopCR-turnB3!-riverCRfold, for example, but with finite card combinations that's not going to happen. Which was why I was wondering earlier about whether a perfect turn CR range (or even any turn CR range!) has to be present in this quite unusual turn spot (CC pre, CR flop, turn is an A).

Maybe this has been discussed somewhere (links appreciated), but how do you figure out which ranges are the important ones to be constructed to reach a good GTO approximation? For a simple example, you seem to have only call and fold ranges when facing a steal in BB (no callers in between). That's an easily balancable set of ranges, but it's likely not GTO (you're in effect exploiting the fact that villain will make later mistakes against your now super wide call range). Most people don't have a donk range on flop hu (and many even multiway, it seems), which once again is not likely to be GTO but exploiting the tendency of contbetting. Turn donk betting ranges seems to be super narrow etc.

As an aside, I've been reading on 2+2 about how Polaris is being developed. They're actually trying to handle the early stages of the hand as precisely as possible and grouping stuff more later on, reason being that any savings on computational intensity preflop are negligible compared to later streets. It's kind of opposite of what I've heard as a reasoning for "no 3! BB hu" (something in the lines of "it makes things easier to just group my hands into one range here").

Hopefully phil reads your post, he knows more than I do about the development of polaris and also GTO in general. I know very little about how its developed, algorithms, game tree etc

I think it definately makes sense though to tackle the easiest street first. As the game tree expands throughout the hand obviously decisions become more complex and it seems each polaris is becoming better each year. So i assume they arent bucketing as many hands together as they were in previous years, but i dont know that much about it tbh

Regarding GTO ranges etc, i will defer to some of the "GTO" guys. I guess the term gets thrown around alot instead of balance. Ive never actually done any specific calcs to decide my ranges, i simply try and make sure im reasonably balanced in each spot. Its prob not the answer you were looking for but id by lying if i told you i sit there all day calculating best way to reach GTO, esepcially in 3handed+

I think it would get so complicated for multiway that most humans will prob do themself a diservice trying to figure it all out while playing. The average reg plays so far from GTO anyway probably