In part I of his pre-flop ranges series, Sonny discusses what hands you should be open raising with and how to respond to 3-bets when you are out of position.
why EV of opening KQo is more then EV of opening AJo? (according to database results for opens from UTG)
AJo is better vs random then KQo vs random. and even when we confront these hands versus real call open ranges, I don't want to put exactly ranges now, but what I want to say that people like to call a lot of Ax with weak kicker then Kx
why EV of opening KQo is more then EV of opening AJo? (according to database results for opens from UTG)
AJo is better vs random then KQo vs random. and even when we confront these hands versus real call open ranges, I don't want to put exactly ranges now, but what I want to say that people like to call a lot of Ax with weak kicker then Kx
The EV is actually from my actual database results rather than the result of any theoretical calculation. You can see in the charts the number of trials it is based upon. I give the EV BB/100 instead of the actual BB/100 because I had my software filter out the all in luck.
Would be good if you could make a video or write here in the forum what you think about playing a call/fold-strategy from utg vs 3b. What hands to call with against certain opponents in different positions. Like what hands can you call profitably in utg/hijack against a 10% 3bettor in the Btn and so on.
I dont actually see alot of ppl 3betting in the btn vs utg/hijack too often rly, so is it profitable to call AQs in the utg in these kind of spots?
What do you think about 3betting alot more from the button myself against a 18-22% opener from utg? What are the hands you can call in the btn vs a 20% utg opener?
What strategy do you prefer from utg: call/fold, or 4b/fold?
Would be good if you could make a video or write here in the forum what you think about playing a call/fold-strategy from utg vs 3b. What hands to call with against certain opponents in different positions. Like what hands can you call profitably in utg/hijack against a 10% 3bettor in the Btn and so on.
I dont actually see alot of ppl 3betting in the btn vs utg/hijack too often rly, so is it profitable to call AQs in the utg in these kind of spots?
What do you think about 3betting alot more from the button myself against a 18-22% opener from utg? What are the hands you can call in the btn vs a 20% utg opener?
What strategy do you prefer from utg: call/fold, or 4b/fold?
This stuff is going to be covered in part II of this series. For instance, let's say your opponent is 3 betting around 10% of hands-what hands could be called profitably if you were going to play checkraise or fold on the flop? Generally, not too many hands can be played profitably this way vs. a tight range which is pretty typical when you open UTG or hijack and get 3 bet by the button. But when you open the BTN and get 3 bet by the blinds, you are often up against very wide ranges and certain hands will be profitable in this spot even playing a very bare bones checkraise or fold strategy.
With regards to the AQs, if I were going to call out of position and take a flop I would probably want to be up against an opponent I was pretty sure had a wide range (9-10%+).
Someone who is opening 18-22% UTG would be super loose, so my guess is that you could get away with a fair amount of 3 betting on the button versus that guy. Maybe something like QQ+ as 3b/5b for value, some combinations of AK as 3b/5b bluff, and then something like A2-A9s and KJs as a 3 bet bluff (I like to 3 bet bluff with the best hands that are not quite good enough to call and also usually with hands that have some blockers). This would leave you 3 betting around 5% versus UTG. Then you could cold call 22-JJ, AQ, and some of the better suited broadways like AJs and KQs (you could probably cold call a little wider than this if real weak players were in the blinds).
With regards to calling 3 bets out of position from UTG I am not a huge fan of it-I mostly play 4 bet or fold in this spot unless I have a specific reason to call. For instance, if the 3 bettor is super polarized then calling becomes a much better option with premium hands like AA and KK.
Sorry but as much as I love math and all these percentages you need to take into account what's happening at tables.
- Very rare to see anyone 3bet bluff UTG raiser.
- People are not into jamming or fold mode when facing a 3bet especially if you're playing NL50- they will call your 4bet with all random stuff.
Can't see how any of these reasoning can apply and lol at even thinking about balancing your game before NL200 or even NL400. Maybe I'm off cause I'm mostly a HU player but that's what my experience in 6max tell me.
However, I appreciate all the thought process and the effort you put in the video.
why EV of opening KQo is more then EV of opening AJo? (according to database results for opens from UTG)
AJo is better vs random then KQo vs random. and even when we confront these hands versus real call open ranges, I don't want to put exactly ranges now, but what I want to say that people like to call a lot of Ax with weak kicker then Kx
I guess that KQ's playibility is a little better. KQ flops more draws with TJx, T9x, 9Jx, ATx and AJx flops, whereas AJ only flops gutshots on KQx, KTx and TQx boards.
Also, KQ's pairs play better. Cause if you flop 2nd pair it's on a A high board, and on this kind of board your opponent will often play very straightforward against the utg raiser.
With AJo you'll have more marginal situations like playing QJx and KJx boards oop, where you'll get floated a decent amount and will have a hard time to extract value when you are ahead.
You really need a ridiculous amount of hands when you start looking at stuff like this so I wouldn't really fret too much over AJo vs KQo. AJo is going to be better in theory in pretty much every conceivable situation since it has more equity, and if you're making significantly more with KQo vs AJo it's probably either because you're misplaying the hand postflop or you don't have a big enough sample size. Look at his sample for AJ vs AQ. He's making more with AJ, but I'm pretty sure everyone would agree that AQ is a more profitable hand to open utg than AJ.
You really need a ridiculous amount of hands when you start looking at stuff like this so I wouldn't really fret too much over AJo vs KQo. AJo is going to be better in theory in pretty much every conceivable situation since it has more equity, and if you're making significantly more with KQo vs AJo it's probably either because you're misplaying the hand postflop or you don't have a big enough sample size. Look at his sample for AJ vs AQ. He's making more with AJ, but I'm pretty sure everyone would agree that AQ is a more profitable hand to open utg than AJ.
BTW, I liked that you used slice. =)
Yeah, obviously it can't really be proven, but my guess is that KQo and AJo are of pretty similar value when opening from UTG and hijack. Neither hand has alot of great three barrel opportunities in this spot, but on the button for instance I think AJ is significantly better since people are much more likely to call your open with hands like A2s-A9s, QJ, JT, etc and AJ dominates all those. Yeah, I like slice too :)
I really doubt that a 4bet/folding strategy oop vs a 3-bet is optimal in many games over microstakes. Please elaborate your reasoning behind this besides saying "other Leggo coaches advise this", which i doubt as well.
Do you think calling JJ and AKo oop in UTG is -EV against ALL players versus which it is -EV to 4bet?
My problem with that approach (of 4bet/fold oop vs 3bet) is that it is only reasonably applicable in a very narrow field of situations:
-both of you have about 100 BB or less
-he 3bets to 9 BB or more
-there are no coldcallers
-it is microstakes.
When you do not introduce a callingrange into your oop defending plan then you will lack the experience playing it when it is necessary. For example when he starts 3betting you to 8 instead of 9 BB when he knows of your plan, he is much better off, or testing you with 7 BB 3bets if you fold too much on the flop. Similar principle applies when you are both deeper, like 150 BB +.
I really doubt that a 4bet/folding strategy oop vs a 3-bet is optimal in many games over microstakes. Please elaborate your reasoning behind this besides saying "other Leggo coaches advise this", which i doubt as well.
Do you think calling JJ and AKo oop in UTG is -EV against ALL players versus which it is -EV to 4bet?
Obviously, doing a certain amount of calling of 3 bets out of position can be +EV. It is definitely not the case that I or any other coach that I know of maintains that you should never call a 3 bet out of position. But it is definintely the case that a ton of coaches have emphasized in their videos many times that you should play extremely tightly when out of position and facing a 3 bet.
The approach given in this video is meant to be illustrative and to give people some ideas as to the relative merits of different strategies. It is not meant to be something that is inflexibly and unswervingly applied to every situation and every possible stake of play. Alot of the discussion in the video focuses on how particular strategies (very tight, playing wide value ranges, etc.) will be better or worse depending on how the opponent varies his play. While the strategy I recommend in the video could be used as a complete strategy against 3 bets when out of position and facing a 3 bet in the 9-11 BB range, my hope is that each individual viewer will consider the strategic points raised, and then modify my recommended strategy to make it optimal for their own games and situations. Could and should these modifications consider introducing a calling range? Of course they should.
Here's an example. You open to 3 BB UTG and your opponent 3 bets you to 9 BB on the button. You have JJ and call. Let's say your opponent is pretty typical for microstakes in this spot and is 3 betting around 3.5%. Now the flop comes 732 a rainbow. You check and he bets. Now all your choices are unattractive. If you just fold then you basically used your hand as a set mine and you weren't getting the right odds to do that preflop. If you checkraise to get all the money in, on the other hand, your opponent will often fold, but will have you crushed when he does call. Finally, if you just call, you may well have the best hand, but you have really left yourself at your opponent's mercy out of position and with 2 cards left to fall. If you just call your opponent down you will get shown a better hand the great majority of the time he bets the turn and the river and if you always fold you will get bluffed out some percentage of the time. I think it's relatively obvious that as you increase your opponent's 3 betting frequency preflop, there comes a certain threshhold at which calling the 3 bet, even out of position, is better than folding. I think you are also correct in your assertion that there is a narrow 3 bet range that your opponent could be on where flatting the 3 bet OOP is higher EV than 4 betting for certain hands like JJ and AKo. Nevertheless, caclulating what that narrow band would be for each individual hand is something that would be incredibly time consuming and I already put a ton of time into this video as it was. I don't necessarily think that making those extra calculations would be incredibly productive for a micro stakes video where the goal of the video is to fix major leaks lower stakes players have as opposed to introducing super refined strategy.
The video doesn't discuss at all how to deal with very small 3 bets (for instance you open to 3 BB and your opponent 3 bets to 7.5BB). From watching the high stakes videos, this sort of 3 betting seems to have become very fashionable at higher stakes. It has not, however, really filtered down to microstakes very much at all where the average 3 bet size in position is in the 9 to 10 big blinds range. If your opponent 3 bets you to just 7-8 big blinds and you are on 100 BB stacks, I think it would be fine to call with any pocket pair, and maybe a few other hands as well depending on how wide your opponent is raising.
By the way I do intend to discuss cold calling 3 bets in part II of this series, but mostly with regards to late position situations (e.g. BTN vs. blinds, CO vs. BTN, etc.). I don't intend to get into the topic of cold calling UTG vs. BTN-not because I don't think it's interesting or because I think it is impossible to ever cold call profitably in that spot. Mainly, the reason I don't intend to discuss it is that against the narrow 3 bet ranges that are typical in that spot I don't think you can cold call very many hands profitably and if you are up against an atypical opponent who 3 bets much more often than normal in that spot, my hope is that the viewers would be able to draw valid conclusions about which hands I would think are OK to cold call by analogy from the analysis on how to play against wide ranges in later position.
It's for microstakes and doing every single situation would take forever. The math shouldn't drastically change if he 3-bets to 8bb instead of 9bb. Now his 3-bet has to work about 64% of the time instead of 66.7% of the time and you can adjust accordingly depending on how often he's 3-betting and how wide you're opening. If a good player knows of your plan you can always just fall back on playing what you consider close to game theory optimal. I think what you're asking is how this applies to higher stakes, but these videos are for micros.
It's for microstakes and doing every single situation would take forever. The math shouldn't drastically change if he 3-bets to 8bb instead of 9bb. Now his 3-bet has to work about 64% of the time instead of 66.7% of the time and you can adjust accordingly depending on how often he's 3-betting and how wide you're opening. If a good player knows of your plan you can always just fall back on playing what you consider close to game theory optimal. I think what you're asking is how this applies to higher stakes, but these videos are for micros.
This exact reason is why I also didn't try to model what would happen if people called 4 bets with weak hands. I just assumed that if we 4 bet they would either shove or fold. Of course, my assumption is not accurate in real life as people do call 4 bets with all sorts of hands like AA-TT and even junk like KJs and QTs sometimes. But if I try to estimate the EV of each of the possible strategies against some guy who called your 4 bet with QTs the analysis would take weeks (to say nothing of the fact that I would have to make postflop assumptions which could easily be debated) and the calculations in the video took a long time to do as it is. My overall intuition, however, is that if you have a strong range like QQ+ and AK and some guy calls your 4 bet with a hand like KJs, QTs, or 88, your EV would be pretty close to what it would be if he had just folded that hand (I've toyed around with some math in this regard and I don't think the difference is more than one big blind either way). Overall, though, I found that pretty tough to model because you have to do separate simulations for rainbow, two tone, and monotone flops (since cbetting and jamming frequencies will be affected by this), and it's really time consuming.
About opening from first two positions, could you split A2s-A9s in A2s-A5s and A6s-A9s an chceck if it changes something. For me playing low suited aces is profitable.
