I played a hand today that got me thinking about the best way to get villains stack in if I flop it <25bb eff.
Say I flat a min raise with QTo 20bb deep and the flop comes AKJ rainbow and the turn is a 9 in all instances.
Villain 1 is a weak tight player cbetting a polarized range, checking back these flops often for pot control at this stack depth. So my assumption is I should lead flop and turn and set up a river jam vs this opponent.
Villain 2 is aggressive and barrels a high %, so I would be inclined to c/call flop and c/r jam the turn.
Villain 3 is also aggressive but I have a read that he checks back the turn for pot control with marginal holdings on this type of board, so i would c/c flop and lead turn and river.
The question being are these the best lines to take for maximum value vs players with these tendencies at this depth, or is it better to play my hand fast on the flop vs any of these opponents.
Thanks
What is probably more interesting of a question is: how do you play your entire range here?
On a AKJr flop, most villain's will be cbetting most of their preflop range, with some opting to check back Kx, Jx & some lower PP.
As such, we expect villain's cbetting range to be polarised, and his checking back range (if he has one at all here) to be fairly capped.
How are we going to play our value holdings & how wide is our value range?
How are we going to play our draws?
Then, where can we add bluffs such that our entire range does better overall vs villain's strategy?
And how does our range allocation conditionally affect our other ranges? <= this becomes much more important vs thinking players
Generally, players OOP won't contest the example board much without the goods. A lot of players will c/c their Kx & Jx and opt to c/r flop, turn or river with their nutted holdings. Others will c/c and lead river. And it is quite common to see a c/c flop, c/r turn when the turn brings a FD with your particular holding. This creates imbalances in their game which can be exploited. I'm not saying you should be perfectly balanced, but you should give some thought to where you want to be imbalanced for exploitative reasons.
To answer your question, you should start with the range that you take to the flop, then allocate all your hands to design an entire RvR strategy, rather than thinking about a single hand in isolation.
Villain 1 => I'm c/r flop & barrelling off to specifically target the stabborn value component of his polarised betting range. The times he checks back, I'm leading turn about pot and making about a half pot river bet to target his elastic capped checking back range. I'm also bluffing a ton, with much bigger river bets because he is so price sensitive with his capped range. If he adjusts, I can allocate my value hands into this range to abuse his bluff catchers.
Villain 2 => I'm c/c all the way vs these guys. I will be c/c with a ton of Ax, Kx, Jx and I want to use my nutted holdings to strengthen these otherwised capped ranges in the spots where villain will be betting too much. By raising, I'm only going to allow these guys to correctly slow down at times and if they are good aggressive players that will also conditionally expose me in a ton of river spots. Probably not too big of a deal playing short stacked but still, we want to let these types of villains bet.
Villain 3 => What you describe, the comments against villain 1 still apply to. Given these tendencies, we can also add more of our pure whiff holdings to our c/r bluffing range because "one then done" type villain's like that which you describe usually have the correlated tendency of playing quite straight forwardly vs resistance. Additionally, we can consider drawing more & calling with more high card value because we will often get to see 2 cards for the price of one call. This would be getting a bit marginal though, because we don't really know how he plays on the river & arguably we actually have worse implied value vs these guys with our longer shot draws.
I would encourage you to map out a more hollistic strategy than what you've effectively asked: "how to play the top of my range".
Post a starting range: what you would call @ 20BB & we can discuss the best way to allocate your entire range.
Going through this exercise will make you a lot better at being able to quickly estimate range distributions which drive betting & calling decisions as well as making you a better hand reader. It will also make you a much more formidable opponent against players who are capable of adjusting ...
Sounds like a good idea, thanks cdon.
Ok so my flatting range at 20bb consists of something like what is below. I am obviously 3bet jamming a lot of the Ax vs a lot of opponents but some of them I will flat dependent on villains opening % and how well villain plays post flop. Pocket pairs I'm pretty much always 3betting nai or jamming so I left them out. Then I will expand and contract this range slightly vs different opponents.
I am actually slightly unsure if this is a good baseline flatting range at this stack depth, so if you could offer your thoughts I would appreciate it.
So how would I go about allocating my range on the flop we have discussed? I am very interested to see your thought process for this.
Ellzebub,
To tackle this problem properly manually will take me time I'm not prepared to spend on it for interest sake, free of charge.
I have been developing an analytical tool which would allow me to explore this type of macro strategy analysis, but it is not finished yet.
Apologies for not following through on my offer to help you.
Perhaps, another forum participant will try to tackle the problem ...
Regards,
cdon
Not to worry cdon, you have been more than helpful in the past.