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Isura

Sep
25
2008
Surprising Result on Bet Sizing
Posted in Theory | View Comments (5)
 

It is possible to attack NLHE bet sizing from a GTO perspective. A special case of this gives an interesting result. Consider another 'half street' game where the in position player has the decision to bet on the river. Clairvoyance as Chen calls it, is the situation when your opponent's hand is face up AND it is always a bluff catcher. This occurs often on the river in NLHE against poor players. You know whether your hand is good or not, and thus the only question is what size to bet (and obviously which frequency to bluff). Note that this means we never have a reason to check a hand with showdown value because villain's hand is face up.

Remember, in GTO terms, we must bet with a ratio of valuebets/bluffs such that villain has the same EV for calling versus folding (0 EV). If our range is skewed towards value hands (say 60% value and 40% air), then it is correct to bet our whole stack with our whole range. Yes, we should bet as much as possible with every hand and bluff with the appropriate frequency depending on bet size. For example, betting 2x pot means we should bluff 40% of the time.

Now some intuition to explain the result. The obvious answer seems to be for villain to call 40% of the time and negative our bluffs. This is wrong. Villain should actually fold 100% of the time. Even though we're bluffing, our range is skewed towards strong hands and thus we gain more and more for larger and larger bet sizes. To see this solution more clearly consider the case of villain calling some %, and think about our counter strategy of varying bet sizing for bluffs versus valuebets (ask me if you can't see it).

The point is that when villain's hand is face up, we should valuebet all-in with everything that beats him, and bluff accordingly. This isn't really a new concept. You may have heard the concept referred to as " the showdown tax". For example, on the river with a PSB left, bet every better hand (and some % of bluffs). Everyone is a calling station these days, so they tend to deviate from the 'always fold' case when your range is strong. Exploit that!

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Posted in Theory
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Comments
09-25-2008
DemonOfTheFall is offline DemonOfTheFall
I haven't bothered to do any calculations and I've only just started to learn NLHE but intuitively our counter strategy is to bet more with value hands and less with bluffs? Is that correct? I imagine there would also be a breakeven point at which villain folding less than 100% would be less -EV?

Working backwards, if we are in position against a poor player does this mean our turn bet sizing should almost always be sized accordingly to allow us to shove river to maximize the likelihood of a villain's calling % (assuming he always checks river and that we always know whether we are good or bad).

How does his adjustment to our 100% shoves factor into this when he adjusts his strategy so he gets to the river with all of his range that beats our range?
09-26-2008
Isura is online now Isura
"
I haven't bothered to do any calculations and I've only just started to learn NLHE but intuitively our counter strategy is to bet more with value hands and less with bluffs? Is that correct? I imagine there would also be a breakeven point at which villain folding less than 100% would be less -EV?"

It is actually the opposite. We should bet allin with bluffs and bet smaller with value hands. What you do is determine the EV as a function of bet sizing, and this function gets arbitrarily large.


"Working backwards, if we are in position against a poor player does this mean our turn bet sizing should almost always be sized accordingly to allow us to shove river to maximize the likelihood of a villain's calling % (assuming he always checks river and that we always know whether we are good or bad)."

Again, it's the opposite. We want to have maximum stack leverage for a river shove with bluffs, and leave less so value shoves should get called more often. Turn play is also more complicated of course because we have to consider fundamental aspects like board texture and his range.
09-26-2008
Isura is online now Isura
"
How does his adjustment to our 100% shoves factor into this when he adjusts his strategy so he gets to the river with all of his range that beats our range?"

Heh. I don't know how to solve that.
09-26-2008
MYNAMEIZGREG is offline MYNAMEIZGREG
You are such a ****ing sick game theorist
10-28-2008
grizy123 is online now grizy123
Updated 10-28-2008 at 02:01 AM by grizy123
This is actually fairly easy to solve for when villain is checking ranges that beats us and will plan to call. The value of a bet on all streets can be simplified to:

profitability of a bet P(b)
3) P(b) = p(cx(1+2b)+(1-c)(1+b)-x-b) = profitability bet.

let
c=probability of call
p=pot size
x=% equity in pot
b=bet size (as % of pot size)

Our % equity in pot (on the river) is simply the probability our hand is better than villains (this includes times when we're "bluffing" with AK when it's actually the best hand, and why the getting villain to fold 1/3 of the time with a 1/2 pot sized bet is incomplete analysis. I just picked on teh 1/2 psb because that's what harrington harps on all the time).

If we can estimate a probability that villain will call (c) we can derive the equity we need for a pot sized dark tunnel bluff (we might or might not be good, god knows) to turn a profit
If c=1 then x > 0.5 for P(b) > 0
If c=0.75 then x > 0.33333 for P(b) > 0
if c=0.5 then x > 0 for P(b) > 0

^ note this is not a maximization solution, it's simply the breakeven point.

Plug in b=2 and you can solve for x.


Isura's question is essentially what should x be for P(b) to be indifferent to the value of c. (for all x > than the solution, villain should fold everytime) I guess I can follow through with this but I just sat in Citizen's park for 3 hours in freezing rain so I am a bit brain dead.

That and more importantly I got an excel spread sheet with this typed out and I could solve it in about 2 seconds when I get on my desktop.

PS: not to be nitpicky, but if you're really shoving for 60% value, I think villain wouldn't give a damn if he called or folded. Shoving 60.1% should always get a fold though.
 
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