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Aoueu's picture
Dealing with loose floats in micros

I'm playing at microstakes(1.5, 3.5) regspeeds, and a common villain for me is someone who'll play 70-100% hands OOP(mostly flatting), and still have a very low fold to cbet(0-40%), generaly leading out on the river(almost always). Rarely rasing flop(flatting top pair even on very wet boards, etc) or leading out turn, mostly waiting for my turn check and then betting river.What'd be the correct adjustment against this kind of play? These kind of opponents seem very common on lowest stakes, but I also don't see much of examples with likes of them in VODs. I view fold2cbet<50% as a leak, but I can't seem to exploit it.I'll describe my thought process of playing them, This is what I'm trying right now:

  • Open less buttons, down to top 60%
  • Have at least one overcard or a gutshot to cbet; unless I have a specific read that at this exact texture the opponent is more likely to fold than his usual. 
  • Check back most turns and take his float if I hit my overcard on river; generally barreling if I hit the flop or turn.
  • Fold the river unimproved. IDK if I should call w/ ace high type of hand. I'd generally call a river lead with a middle pair(despite overcards on the board), etc.

However, after running some equations on different hands, I've found that this approach barely makes up for posting a small blind with most but the top of my 60% range, and folding bottom 40% of my range will probably kill me.For example, a hand like K3o will flop a pair of kings or better in ~23%, and I'll have an overcard w/o pair in ~63% cases.  I'd have ~12.4% of hitting my by king the river. If it's a K3s, I'd have an FD in 10.9% cases, flopped flush in 0.84%; I could also pick up turn FD for another barrel, and having an FD will make me able to take his float more often.However, as I've ran some equations, I realized that if my opponent's also 3betting, say, 20%(it's a value range and I'm losing my minraise with most hands), my expectation drops. The less they fold OOP, the worse is my expectation, since I'm not getting that big blind. So against a 20% 3bet 80% flat(it's a _common_ occurence) 30% fold to cbet floater, with the above mentioned approach I'd be doing worse than +0.3bb/hand with a holding like K3o. Still better than folding, but not by far. This way I also don't set myself up to gain much value with my best hands, either; my turn bets are too straight forward.If I also fold trash against him, I'm literally shooting myself in the foot with this approach. I doubt the top value hands in my range will make up for the defecit of folding buttons and barely beating openfold with a lot of other hands. I've tried to estimate how well limping hands that don't flop well but are too good to fold, but I have no idea how to calculate opponent actions in limped pots yet.So I'm close to giving up on a straight-forward approach against these type of players. So I'm again considering barelling them, but I run into some issues:

  •  While their range is overall weak, they also have strong hands there. It's not uncommon for me to see 2 checked streets(if i didn't cbet, for example), pick up a river middle pair while they lead, and to see they've flopped top pair. That happens at least once per 2 matches, that's for sure.
  • Same for the times I do cbet, they will flat all their strong holdings, regardless of their vulnerability. If they have Jx on JT9s flop, they will flat 3 streets. And they slowplay all the nuts.
  • Among these kind of postflop villains, they often don't 3bet that much. A common situation in the videos would be to barrel off an ace high somewhat wet flop, if flatted pre - because there's not much Ax in the preflop flatting range(they're in 3bet range), and a top pair is not expected to c/c on a flop with draws. So the flop flat usually means a draw or a middling hand that you can barell off. But with my opponents, all the aces are there. And they will flat 3 streets.
  • With these factors, I have no idea how to estimate the EV of my decisions. Just judging from experience, it doesn't usually go well, even if I pick(as I hope) decent spots to barell. Sometimes they fold river. Sometimes I valuebet myself into nuts. Sometimes they herocall river with bottom pair or J high on my first bluff. Sometimes they pay for my good pair with this kind of crap.

In general, I seem to be doing bad lifetime(small sample but still plenty games) against bottom line bad players(who'd have 5%- ROI over a decent sample). That includes both very aggro players and very loose players. As far as loose floaters -I've tried to play back at them and raise rivers; barell; or, on the contrary, play very straight forward, but nothing seems to work.The only thing I've noticed is that playing standard with radical opponents(who do "something" waaay too much) is having the worst result. And most players at the lowest stakes are radical in some way. (hell, I've had much more comfort at 7's, where people have a fold button).I would be very grateful if someone described more or less in detail, what kind of lines you would take against this kind of opponent; both preflop and postflop. Would you have a limping range pre above 20bb deep?  Would you openraise bigger pre? If you barell them, what kind of betsizing would you use? How would you read their range on the turn in order to barell them, if there's a ton of hands there? Would you barell only additional equity like at least an overcard, or decide mostly by board texture(or if it's opponent dependand, how exactly?) If you barell them, how would their reaction to turn and river barelling affect your play? Sorry for a long post with a ton of questions, but I really need some help here.  Tried to provide a fairly specific opponent example, so the only varied factor in the provided opponent is the reaction to barrelling.

Aoueu's picture
Update: General population

Update:General population stats for 1k games are f2cb 52.6%, and fold to turn cbet 36%.However, observing players in a 0-40% fold to cbet zone, they also are very likely to have a 0-40% fold to turn cbet, even if they preflop range is weak. How much fold equity we need? Let's say half pot cbet, it's breakeven with 33% fold equity + if we have an overcard we can spike it  6.5% times...So, if an opponent is likely to fold to turn barrel 30% of the time, by these numbers, we should fire a turn almost always? Unless the board hits the opponent range very hard, in which case we don't have the 30%, but less, and our 3-6(?) out additional equity does not compensate for it ...but what exactly hits an 80% flat pre range fold 30% of it on flop "very hard")? Against a tighter opponent who's also 3betting plenty, I'd be wary of multiple cards in T-Q range, but I have no idea with wide ranges.However, even if we have no additional equity, we should be barreling boards where we expect to have fold equity enough by our pure bluff? Am I getting it right? This kind of reasoning seems correct, but doesn't it mean that I need to be firing "any turn board that doesn't hit our opponent very well, or any turn with plenty additional equity". Sounds like "almost any" turn for me.So, with intentions to 2 barrel...

  • If he's folding 20-30% turns on average, should I barrel only great boards / additional equity? If so, what's a great board against his range, since it has anything?
  • If he's folding <20% turns, should I change my plan to value/lot of additional equity only, or try rivers?
  • If the flop is bad for barreling, am I better off giving up on the flop? What about additional equity, how much'd I need? 
  • If it's a draw heavy flop, should I triple barrel river if draws missed? When I'd triple barrel in general?
  • If he's folding >40% turns, am I printing money barreling him on good boards?
  • Mentioning this again - what is a good board to barrel range that has 'everything' in it? For example, if the person is obviously floating me on any overcard+, I still should barrel overcards to flop 2nd pair, even though both top pair and those overcards are in his range? Should I barrel bricks on draw boards, is it additional equity dependant?
  • Bet sizing. His range OTT contains a lot of missed overcards, draws, weak draws; but also weak pairs, strong pairs, and nuts. Do I try to bet big and make him fold a weak pair? (chances are I'm not folding it out...) Or do I underbet just to fold his missed hands(probably would fold out weak draws/overs, but they'll usually chase a draw anyway...). I like a larger bet(up to 75% pot, but mostly ~66%) for value if I expect him to have a lot of draws in his range(he'll call anyway), and a <40% bet to fold out junk on a dry board(if he ever folds to this kind of sizing). Is this kind of approach reasonable?