One quick question: If one says „Player A has MORE very strong hands than player B“, does that mean „he has a very strong hand more often than his opponent does“ or „he has more combos of very strong hands in his range than his opponent has in his range?“ (e.g. 20% very strong vs 15% very strong / one has 18 combos of boats vs one has 8 combos of boars, regardless of the proportion it takes in the overall range?

Me too. It's fascinating how things have changed over the last decade. All this new information has gotten me interested in poker again. I'm studying new ICM and strategies from solvers and going to try playing live.

What do you do after having been a professional poker player? Just curious

Keep screaming... no worries...we luv vids

♥️

I still don’t understand solvers

we'll see you in the Lab soon, Matthew!

BOL! Horrible players at the micros and Aggros at MID. sometimes it pisses me off when I get called off with 95 and my AQ+ loses. *shrug* it is what it is

How's that going? Did you start playing again?

It's about getting as close to equilibrium as possible. If someone is 3 getting the flop too often, they're going to lose a lot of money to someone playing closer to GTO

Wtf r u on about? A lot of these strats are equilibrium so they can’t be exploited in balance.

I'm finding this to be true at small stakes MTTs as well. 33% pot is treated like weakness and bad players get station-ey with all kinds of garbage, but closer to 50% prompts more predictable actions and ranges so I tend towards that size for "small" bets. I also size up larger bets accordingly. I try to identify which players know when to use proper bet sizing (preflop raise sizes are great indicators) and use the correct smaller bets against them.

small bet sizes are for better players, great hand readers

it's extremely important to have very strong hands in your small block bet range for this reason. If you don't, you are very exploitable.

@@mbradycf Thank you

Creating your image. Especially at lower stakes cash games where you’re unknown. The opponents will reflect back to your earlier advertising and we can begin to implement max exploitation lines we likely couldn’t have prior to our advertising.

Yeah, the GTO side to this doesn't care about the opponent's perception, but an exploitative play could do as you describe where the villain perceive the hero as overbetting too frequently.

@@michaeletzkorn I tend to think of high bet frequency inducing action, but more lately of big turn overbets or even shoves, a GTO move too. I figure if you're not folding the river with a nutty hand, push (or massively overbet) the turn, denying draws equity and the villain can't just miss & fold. Even if villain folds & you lose thin value, it could put the villain or table on tilt, presuming everyone else isn't also shoving the turn.

​@@xxxYYZxxx While I completely agree with your understanding of short term frequencies, any time we're relying on the villain's fold frequency or "putting people on tilt," we're implementing an exploitative strategy in our game and not GTO. GTO is optimal regardless of the opponent's future actions (given you can make reasonable assumptions about the range of hands they are playing). Both exploiting and GTO are necessary to a high level game, and we can even exploit the fact that people are attempting to model their play on solvers, but GTO does not use short term frequencies or "advertising value" to cause the villain to make suboptimal plays.

@@xxxYYZxxx After rereading your comment, I'm in agreement just adding the dinstinction between GTO/exploitation. Overbets do seem to have a place with solvers as mentioned in the video. It can be two fold. It's both good for playing like a solver to obtain max value from your nutted range and deny draw equity as well as exploiting people's tendency to eventually want to look you up when you continue to overbet.

True. There have always been very genius players that have used many of these strategies before solvers.

@@Samuel88853 Yes and because solvers didn't exist players didn't know how to defend their ranges against such a gangster strategy. And thats why Ungar won 3 Main Events of the WSOP (2 on a row).

I use 30 and 150 but it doesnt really matter. 25 120 or 33 200 works fine as well, just got to adjust your ranges

what the previous commenter said is a great answer, I have nothing to add

which timestamp?

@@garyblackwoodpoker I think he's talking about the frequent checking OOP to check-raise as PFR.

In that case then yes absolutely. In ANY scenario in all of poker when you’re the OOP preflop aggressor and your range is forced to check a bunch on the flop, you will follow it up with a solid x/r strategy. The trick is knowing which hands want to x/r!

@@garyblackwoodpoker Thanks guys! 🙏

​@@garyblackwoodpokerinteresting I was a keen follower of DougPolk-DN Hu challenge I don't recall much of OOP checking, esp when it's a >3bet pre , there were quite a bit of cbetting Wouldn't OOP checking be less frequent in HU given both players are playing large % of their hands ? (And so you need to valuebet more?)

If they don't bluff their missed flush draws, that means by having a missed flush draw yourself you "unblock" their bluffs -- i.e. it's a bit more likely they're bluffing. That said, many opponents still bluff with the missed flush draws, so in practice it may actually still be bad to call when you block the missed flush draw. It depends on your opponent. Good players will know not to bluff the missed flush draws, but most players don't.

@@UpswingPoker but why is he more likely to be bluffing if it is less likely that he has a missed flush draw?

@@UpswingPoker if u hav the A spades then u r blocking a bunch of floats on a spade flush board, so he would be less likely to be bluffing, not more likely.

@@asdffdsafdsa123 they are not "supposed" to bluff those hands, so in solver land having the A of spades (for example) unblocks their bluffs. As mentioned above, though, in practice you're right that it will just mean they're less likely to be bluffing. You have to be playing against a top player or a computer for this mechanic to "work" as the solver says.

​@@UpswingPoker I am puzzled by this too. I think the idea is that holding a hand that they would bluff with makes it less likely their bet is a bluff because you removed that combo from the range of hands they would bet with. And so holding a hand they would *not* bluff with makes it more likely their bet is a bluff because their remaining combos include more bluffs? I think the question I still have is whether it also makes a value bet from them more likely? If you block their non-bluff range but also their value range with the same hand - let's say KhJh on a Jack high board with two hearts - the % chance their bet is a bluff seems higher but the % chance their hand beats yours (AhJh, pocket Jacks, two pair etc.) is also higher? Can anyone clarify this?

thanks bru

I get why having the Ace of spades would be more neutral then previously thought, but describing it as "really good" is what confuses me.

this one confuses me too. If we shouldn't bluff river with missed flush draws, what are we triple barrel bluffing with on 2-flush boards?

On many boards the aggressor should give up with missed FDs on the river as they block the most likely folds for the opponent. Think of a board like JT6 with a flushdraw where the turn and river brick (don’t compete the flushdraw). If the aggressor bet flop and turn, then some of the first hands that the caller arrives to the river with that will now fold are going to be missed flush draws. This means that as the caller when we have a card that is the same suit of the missed flushdraw (say a hand like AT with the ace matching the suit of the on board flush draw) we actually make it more likely that the bettor has a bluff. Obviously this concept is highly sensitive to your opponent’s strategy. Sometimes it’s very appropriate to bluff with missed flushdraws, and some people will tend towards bluffing missed flushdraws even when they would be better served to give up. In those instances calling with a hand that blocks the missed flush draw becomes much worse.

@@NateKantnerMusic it depends. On some boards you'll be very deficient for bluffs and so you will have to still bluff missed flush draws. But on a board where you have a variety of bluffs to choose from, the missed flush draws should be among the first to be excluded from the bluffing range.

@@michaelalper8651 in practice, against opponents who don't know they should be giving up with flush draws, it's bad to block the flush. But at equilibrium (aka solver poker), it is good to have the missed flush draw when facing a bet because you unblock bluffs (i.e. they're supposed to be giving up if they have the missed flush draw you block). Key note though: against low stakes opponents this is not very relevant because they'll probably still bluff with the missed flush draw.

I think you have to x/r K with decent kickers, x/c K with bad kickers and other pairs, x/r two pairs, sets, oesd and some backdoors and cbet mainly air?

We're coming out with a product later this year that will allow you to play against a high quality solver and get instant feedback on your play.

@@UpswingPoker I look forward to that. Do you know if there's one currently anywhere? - Thanks.

GTO means that nobody can exploit you. Is an unexploitable strategy by definition. If they understand that you are playing GTO how they will adjust and exploited you?

We highly recommend checking out our extensive blog on upswingpoker.com/blog! We have a ton of great content that will help you learn about concepts like range advantage. For example, here's our article about the different types of advantages: upswingpoker.com/nut-range-positional-advantage/ To quickly answer your question, equity advantage (AKA range advantage) is simply who's range of possible hands has a higher percent chance of winning versus the opposing range of possible hands. The % is how often that player would win if we just ran out the rest of the board and see who had the best hand.

@@UpswingPoker Hey! Wanna give you a shout out for that reply. Really clarified the concepts using clear language. Much respect!

It absolutely makes sense. That's how the solver treats missed flush draw hands at equilibrium. I agree that against low stakes players, who probably don't know to give up with missed flush draws, having the flush blocked becomes bad again because they probably bluff with it.

What you said doesn't contradict what was said in the show. At that timestamp Gary basically says it's mainly mid and high stakes players who understand that concept. He said "some" low stakes players understand. Assuming your 95% guess is accurate, 5% would be "some"

interesting way to look at it!

just for you Bill, no

ya bottom guy cause of his accent, is mumbling, talking way to fast - this isn't a conversation it is supposed to be instructional - he slow down and enunciate better

what is the advice exactly? You want me to quit the podcast I produce? No offense taken btw, different strokes for different folks.