Bluff Catching

If you check raise the flop, what worse hands call you? Based on how good players here exploitatively overfold, I’d say literally none. Maybe QQ or some Kxs (which he probably does not 3bet). Check raising massively over reps your hand. It’s like turning a weak/medium value hand into a bluff. If I were to check raise, it would be something like 12m, and then he could still come over the top with a flush draw and I’m in the exact same spot in a bigger pot. Maybe he wouldn’t ever call because of the flush draw but if he did call (with hands like AK/KQ/KJ) I’d be even more confused and probably way behind. I’d honestly rather fold top pair here than check-raise because it would be less -EV. That old school line of ‘let’s just get this hand over with in case I’m behind or get beat on later streets’ or ‘let’s find out where my hand is by betting’, even Super System in 1979 provides a good explanation for why those approaches don’t work.

I agree with you that I have to call the river, especially after I call turn and river bricks. I just leveled myself out of it, which is why I made this thread…

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Because the board is so dry, it pulled its bluffs from the 7/6, 6/5 area when those hands had backdoor flush draws as well. Solvers go out on a limb to find enough bluffs to support a x/r strategy. If you don’t have a x/r range on this board (I wouldn’t have one), then you get to call wider. In general, solvers like having as many possible hand strengths on all runouts as practical. They don’t like painting themselves into a corner where any given turn or river is universally horrible. This is the essence of solver strategy.

The solver doesn’t have any say in the matter :slight_smile: All of the sims are run with ranges that users input themselves. Preflop is the deepest and darkest of all rabbit holes in poker. Solving ranges requires massive computing power and even then only solves ranges based on specific criteria. I simply took a range from a mostly reputable source for the limp/call sim. I can see having one in a zero rake environment but frankly I think a raise/fold strategy is better overall. This range is limp/calling weak Axs, 44-77, T8s, Q8s … It is limp/raising 88-TT, J9-K9s, AKo, AA … Limp/folding mid Axo, Kxo, Jxs … IMO its a pain in the butt strategy that makes the postflop game tree needlessly complex. Better to play a raise/fold range well. OOP ranges at 200BB aren’t necessarily tighter but they do shift focus away from hands like K9o and towards 8/7s. 1 pair hands aren’t close to the nuts this deep.

Lots on cash sites at 200NL+ at 100-150BB effective. Solvers love the play when you have a merged betting strategy on the flop to keep calling ranges wide and preserve as much equity as possible from your own range. Polarization then begins on the turn and continues through the river. I have no idea what strategy V is using. Most of the active top ranked players here are pretty much clicking buttons so I’m not surprised at what you’re seeing (or not seeing). You still have people open limping Q4s from MP at 500K/1M and raising a horrid 2-pair on a river that completes obvious straight and flush draws. No need to do anything fancy vs the population 99.9% of the time - just push equity.

@SunPowerGuru - I think you might be bringing tournament ranges and strategies over into deep stacked cash play. We aren’t under pressure from increasing blinds and don’t have antes to fight over. Unless super short stacked vs a crazy person in a tournament, this still isn’t a x/r that makes sense to me. With a more vulnerable TP sure but you are either way ahead with V drawing thin or you are dead here. The raise is a win-min/lose-max proposition. Anyway, the nickel slot rooms in most casinos are filled with people who gave up their stacks on weak 1 pair hands cause they had to see if they were being bluffed :wink:

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Hahaha, and most of them didn’t know anything about bank management, and didn’t have the stones to play back at a hyper aggro player. Many also failed to protect made but vulnerable hands and let their opponents take free cards that beat them. And most of them went for big pot glory instead of winning a smaller pot when they were ahead. I sometimes give these guy a small tub of nickles out of pity.

There’s only one real rule to bluff catching… understand how your opponent is approaching the game. If you don’t have a solid understanding of where, when, and how they bluff, how can you hope to make anything close to an intelligent decision?

Any software that relies solely on Nash solutions will never provide real world answers.

*** Full disclaimer to head the accountant crowd off at the pass: It’s not a matter of “something is better than nothing”: That straw man was last seen skipping down the yellow brick road in search of courage. Strategies designed around specific player types work better than strategies that assume all players are playing the same “optimal” way.

I thought I had read this somewhere but couldn’t remember the where. I looked through every book I had, from “Super System” to “Modern Poker Theory” and nada. Then I did a search on Amazon because I was certain it had to be written somewhere. Voila! I found the source material:

LOL my friend - we can debate how to approach this some other time. I did state in my previous post that until you have a solid read, going with a default strategy is best.

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I don’t think using limp call ranges is appropriate. It is a 3bet pot, so the ranges will be much closer to one of a 3bet pot, but a bit wider.

For the first hand, I would fold pre. Otherwise, I think the play is fine. Given the large bet sizings you don’t have to call down very many hands. Of course you have to call on flop with a King and many pairs as well. On the turn, I would call with most top pairs and pair + draw hands. On the river, I would continue with 2pair+ and a small of Kx with no diamonds.

To defend against an aggressive player, you need to continue enough hands to make the aggressor’s bluffs indifferent between checking and betting. If the bluffs have 0 EV by checking then you have defend 1 - bet / (bet + pot) hands. If the bluffs have showdown value, then you can fold more often. If the bluffs have draw equity, you fold less often to make them indifferent.

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I had forgotten I wrote that book back when I was playing the way you play now. Haha

It’s on my shelf right next to your book…

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This is some funny stuff - with a little work, you could probably get your own twitter account. :laughing:

A few final thoughts for me on this one.

  1. While I appreciate the concept of soul reads, they aren’t actually a thing 99.999% of the time. I guess if you have a total fish at a live table you can get way out of line and follow your read but other than that not so much. Same for people with no deviations in their game that you have played with online for a long time. However, most hands are played vs people we have almost no information about. Therefore it is a good idea to have a decision making framework you can rely on other than “I’ve seen this guy bluff 3 times in a hour so I’m calling”. Don’t make decisions based on limited data, especially when you don’t have an idea of what the proper bluffing frequencies are. This is an aside but I think most people wildly underestimate how often people should be bluffing. What they consider to be a wild loose player may actually be bluffing appropriately.

  2. Do not compound 1 error with another. Everyone makes mistakes in this game so that’s not the issue. The issue is when players try to justify future actions based off what they know to be errors. Because pots grow geometrically from street to street, so does the negative expectation of our decisions, unless we recognize them and make appropriate adjustments. Don’t try to defend at proper frequencies when you take an undefendable range to a flop. If you don’t adjust your ranges back to where they should be prior to a known mistake, you will make ever costlier errors at each action point one way or the other.

  3. Don’t use statistics in a vacuum. This goes with #2 above. Whether we use a limp/call range or a 3! range or something in between, we should at least think about our hand vs whatever range we assign. If someone stops the process at “I have the proper equity to continue based on pot odds offered”, they are making a huge mistake. Raw all-in equity vs pot odds is only 1 step in a process, not the answer (it assumes no further betting will occur and that you can take your hand to showdown). Am I IP or OOP? Will my hand over or under realize equity vs a standard player (now ask questions about stack depths and so on)? Do I know enough about this specific V to adjust from my standard result? It is a multi-step process, not a simple matter of division.

There are many ways to think about the game and come to conclusions. Whether you are approaching the game from a range v range perspective, hand v range or just playing your hand, have a process that you can rely on to make your decisions. If we look at the game from an exploitative view (based on our own incentives), then we have 1 process. If we look at it from a GTO point of view (based on the incentives of V), then there is another process. However we approach the game and at whatever level we are playing, just have some decision making framework in place that you can rely on.

All the statistics and formulas and charts in the world are utterly meaningless unless we understand them and know how to incorporate them in the games we actually play. Id rather see someone who has no idea what a range is or what MDF stands for making decisions based on a simple but solid framework than someone making decisions just because a chart or graph said so. There are plenty of winning players who think GTO is a really cool Pontiac and plenty of GTO “wizards” who can’t beat 25NL because they don’t adjust to the game. If you don’t believe me, there are free videos of Ryan Fee getting his butt whooped at 25NL until he threw out balance and went crazy on value.

Process, Process. Process. Find your own, test it out in practice and refine it as necessary. Ask questions, learn new concepts and grow as a player if you wish. Whether you play on a free site or in high stakes live cash games, there is a decision making framework you can create for yourself. Without one, its all guessing and gambling.

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Agreed, other than maybe the street our hand gets mucked. This is pretty much in line with whatever sim using either range. Because K9o is actually the worst Kx hand we can have, it gets folded on the turn in both sims.

**I don’t think I incorporated a flush draw in either sim I ran or in my initial analysis. Had I done so, it would have changed things quite a bit in terms of bluff candidates on both sides. However, it would not have changed the decision point on the turn if V wasn’t getting hugely out of line. Since he’s crushing the games here, I’m assuming he’s more than competent and not making enormous errors.

I’m in a bit over my head with El-Jog and other top players, I suspect, but in playing against him myself a few times when he was playing at lower stakes while climbing, it felt like he had one of the highest aggression frequencies of any of the very strong players. If he’s betting more than others, then his bets in general reflect less strength, and you need to get sticky or aggressive yourself with a larger part of your range to ovoid over folding. I agree that K9 was probably a call there, but honestly I don’t think you want to call 100% of the time in that situation. If your calling frequency goes up too much, I think a player that strong will dial down his bluffing frequencies.

Your A high call in the second example was nice. Again, there is nothing wrong with folding that, but it is certainly a hand you can bluff catch with some of the time, also.

But I think in your first paragraph you hit on the correct strategy against players that are actually strong: you want to find some bad hands in your range to be check raising and making other aggressive moves with, so you can widen the part of your range that you can derive value with making the same moves. A strategy overly focused on making tough calls leaves you in an overly defensive situation where it is hard to derive as much value.

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Thanks for this helpful perspective. I think the biggest problem with my preflop call was that I was hoping to flop showdown value and call down, which is way too passive and not a winning plan. It would be better to fold medium strength hands that don’t flop well like k9o and add in more 3bet bluffs.

Is calling a 3bet OOP ever really a good decision? Even with a hand line TT or JJ if you flat you are basically going to be forced to call down in uncomfortable situations a lot of the time.

MDF is fine when you have no reads on your opponent. I looked at V’s profile and see he has won over 5 billion chips in 4 months. That alone makes him a hyper aggro player who also understands exploitative poker, and that’s all the read anyone needs.

Facing a min raise in position, HA players will raise almost any 2 cards. Call this a “soul read” if using a derogatory term for a part of the game you don’t understand makes you feel better, whatever. Make up a number like “99.999% useless” if this helps sustain your delusion.

HA players miss the flop 2/3 of the time like everyone else. If checked to, they will c-bet close to 100% of the time. Think about that. Think about what that means. Do the math.

Specific player types exhibit specific tendencies. If you bother to learn how to identify player types, a careful statistical analysis will reveal these tendencies. These are deviations from “optimal” play, and they can be exploited. Unless you would rather pretend they can’t possibly exist.

Your open was too small, which set a chain in motion. When checked to, of course he’s going to bet at you. You won’t check raise, and the line you took 100% guarantees he will try to run you over. On this hand, on the next hand, on every hand.

2/3 of the time, his c-bet is a bluff. You can’t think of one hand he would call a raise with on that flop? No, you can’t think of a hand YOU would call a raise with. HA would call at least once with a lot of hands, depending on your bet sizing. A + bottom pair, A + middle pair, most of his flush draws. HA players are looking to take a card off, and are happy to do it on the chance that they turn a card that they can stack you with.

Min raising a HA player is putting a “kick me” sign on your back. Open 5 or 6 BBs in that spot and open up your 4! range. You wanna flat there, OK, but remember he can be playing any 2 cards. “Wait for a hand, then trap” is not ever gonna cut it. “Hope to hit this flop” is suicide. Check raise, put him in a tuff spot, and force him to adjust to you.

Call this whatever you want. I call it pokering. I’m sorry your simulators suck at player modeling. No, wait, they don’t even try. I guess if no books have been written about it, it can’t possibly be a “thing.” I guess the last 2-3 years of correlating player types to tendencies through detailed statistical analysis has been a total waste of my time, doh!

EDITED to add: Look, I’m sorry if I come across as confrontational here, it’s not my intent. For the record, I greatly respect 1Warlock and JoeDirk. Joe solicited opinions, I gave mine. I understand that the way I word things can seem aggressive. I’m not looking for a fight. I like talking pokering, and I understand that my approach is not in keeping with current modes of thought. I just think that the current modes are wrong. OK, not wrong, but incomplete. I love you all, if you were here, maybe we could cuddle, OK?

Hey,
I respect your opinion and your ideas. If you read some of my earlier posts, it was part of my plan (albeit possibly a bad one) to induce aggression, exactly as you said the bet would. The weak bet can get folds from 23o or can get him to bluff too much. So, he played exactly into my hands, but I folded the river. The reason my play is weak is the times when I don’t hit top pair, when I just give away 6bbs by folding the flop. In the exact situation that played out, it worked perfectly, but I folded because I was not sure how strong I am supposed to be to call. I see from the subsequent analysis that I could have made my life a whole lot easier by taking a different line pre-flop, but I was originally curious just about how decided which hands to call with in similar situations.

I still don’t agree that getting aggro back with marginal hands is the way to beat aggro players, but that is a slightly different topic.

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“confrontational” isn’t the word I’d choose here. If we didn’t have so much history of actual debate, I’d go with something far less generous. I might even offer to take you out and buy you something pretty. We confront others with facts. Anyway, since nothing factual was disputed, there isn’t anything left to say about it. I’m sure we will be back to discussing topics objectively in short order and without impediment. I look forward to it. The parts about general strategies for dealing with HA players is actually fairly good. I wish you wouldn’t have ignored the numerous times I said it was 100% appropriate to add information to a model. I don’t know how I could say that any more clearly. The parts about models not being able to incorporate deviations and so they ignore them is simply objectively false.

In case I wasn’t clear in my objectives on this thread, let me restate them quickly. I engage here to help with how people make decisions. I have never provided any advice on how to deal with any specific player and never would. I don’t think it would be appropriate to do that in any public forum. I also don’t place any particular importance on the results of any 1 hand other than to help dissect the decision making process that went into it. The hand is over and will never be repeated again. Beating it to death so we could play it better the next time is a fool’s errand. Monday morning quarterbacking is even less productive.

When @JoeDirk started this thread, he asked for help in methodology for dealing with a specific type of opponent. I tried to help with that by exploring frameworks with which we can make decisions in a game of incomplete information. These frameworks can be used for any hand at any time vs any opponent. Whatever conclusions people want to make about a particular player can them be used to supplement the framework, not to replace it. If you have more information that you are confident in, you should absolutely use it. IMO, having somewhere to start and something solid to work off of should be the foundation.

To put a bow on how to deal with aggro players OOP, old and new school strategies are mostly in agreement. Facing bets that signify a merged range (like a ~100% c-bet frequency with a small size) on a dry board like this one, both schools play back aggressively with x/r. Facing a polarizing bet size on a dry board, both schools are mostly calling down and throwing in nutted hands as traps. @SunPowerGuru had the right instincts to keep you from being run over but didn’t choose the most efficient part of the range to do it with. This is the danger that comes with ignoring the foundation. You can be right on instinct and then go on to act in a way that kills the value of your entire range.

No one likes flatting 3! OOP but in any games other than the most passive, you will have to deal with them. In higher raked games where the incentive is to 3! as opposed to call preflop, they are ubiquitous so you get used to it quickly. The hardest part about playing 3! pots in general is coming up with ranges for your opponents. Single raised pots are pretty easy to range but people have wildly different 3! strategies at lower stakes.

I found it useful to look at 3! pots in the same way I’d view single raised pots with lower SPR’s and tighter ranges. Its not hard to get stacks in at 100BB in a 3! pot so strategy takes that into account. There may be no x/c, x/c, x/r line available because IP will xb or shove the river, depriving you of the opportunity to x/r. Aggression (on appropriate boards) is moved towards earlier streets for that reason. You will also have to recognize when certain boards are just horrible for your range and get out earlier rather than later, if you think the opponent is going to barrel aggressively and the board favors his range.

@JoeDirk

Overall I think you played the K9o hand well, except for folding the river, especially considering the fact you were playing a set strategic exploit. You clearly understood that this player was particularly overly aggressive and adjusted your strategy. I think your plan/strategy was definitely a good one but it should not be your plan 100% of the time, every time you Vs this player.

Overall players in general are making a poor assessment of this player in general or just saying I have no information so lets see what the computer says:

CPU NOOOO

“Trying” to implement a GTO strategy that is completely ignorant of understanding a particular player is significantly less profitable than making adjustments & exploiting. This is RP for free chips not a high stakes cash site with GTO players. The Top Aggressive players on RP are more capable of bluffing & gambling - fact!

You clearly have a good & reasonably accurate understanding of the Villains tendencies, capabilities and frequencies in general. I wouldn’t call this player a maniac or hyper aggro but its certainly the image they are trying to represent.

I very much agree with @Yorunoame general analysis. You should not be calling 100% on the river but close to. No Top players on RP are playing close to GTO, and almost none will be playing a static strategy. Your decision should be based on the table dynamic, and the ebb and flow. Is the Villain winning or losing currently? Many other small pieces of information & data should influence each individual decision. IMO against this particular player on that particular river its a call. The river was about as good as you could expect.

Bluff Catching: Decisions when bluff catching should not be based solely on GTO strategy. There is almost always more information & data that is relevant, even if its very minor. Against a tight player that doesn’t have a high c-bet frequency you could probably often make an exploitative fold often on the flop. Against more competent aggressive players you need to bluff catch more often.

I think its good to use min betting in certain situations occasionally as an exploitative mixed strategy against very aggressive players. You need to include a mixed range both premium, strong & marginal holdings, & be prepared to 4bet & call as well as fold to be deceptive & less exploitable. You could also include a 4Bet bluff on very rare occasions but I would not against a very good aggressive player OP.

Min raising in general is obviously bad as I’m sure you’re well aware, and ofc OP you need to make the IP player pay more to offset the positional advantage/disadvantage. From what I have seen, and from my own perspective min raising looks weaker than a check/limp. Putting a sign on you back saying “Kick Me” & acting like a bad weak limp prey player Vs strong aggressive predatory players is a good exploit. Your encouraging and incentivising an aggressive player to 3bet more often with a wider range. This means you can 4bet wider. Villain having a wider range also means statistically Villain has more bluffs often mixed with hands like AK KQ KK AA that are over betting for value.

Players that are opening to over 5BB OP against a very good player at these stakes with K9o will go broke very quickly if they are not able to recognise they are way outmatched & quit. Check raising the flop “to see where your at” is a mistake too as you have tried to explain. You know where you’re at already - TP sad kicker. You don’t want to take away Villains incentive to keep bluffing by check raising.

Limping in early position and aggressively raising was something ilovecat used to regularly do with premium holdings. I’m certain their play & strategy was far from GTO but they regularly got the Top players to put their chips in bad. I don’t think cat was the best player on RP but they did play their particular style & strategy very well.

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Hey there,

Here’s my 50 cent. Do keep in mind my opinion/advice goes against what most experienced players/advisers will tell you.
It is, of course, very much a matter of circumstances. Who you play against, the bet structure, etc. Quite very importantly, whether is real money and if the players know each other. If not, stop being a snow flake. You have folded a Kc9h because you were under the impression people were paying close attention to your game. Maybe there were, maybe they weren’t. Most likely, they weren’t. I agree, your first instinct, to call, was good. It’s at the very least reasonable. Not a bad call.

Then again, it’s who they are and who you are. If you actually know the guys, and know for a fact they pay attention to your game, factor that in. Otherwise, safe bet, they don’t. They’d barely notice if you leave and somebody else takes your place. This is still RP, this is still fake money.

Guys, JoeDirk has received all of your valuable advice and put it into action tonight in this spectacular hand:

Go with the comments!

Hey, I’ll post an analysis of this hand when I get a chance. Were there some questionable parts, probably, but I had a plan and went with it. How somebody with billions of chips throws a temper tantrum after losing a buy-in is beyond me.

What was your hand? Based on your reaction I’m guessing it was a big pocket pair with a heart

Honestly, the more I think about it, the more straightforward it becomes. I don’t limp behind often, but I’d been raising a lot so 75s just didn’t seem likely to get folds. It also performs reasonably well multiway because it either flops a monster, a draw, or is easy to fold. Once I limp, I don’t plan to fold to one raise, especially in position. The preflop call is the only “bad” decision I made IMO.

Flop is monotone, gives me an open ender. Villain bets a normal size, not really defining his hand further. My direct odds might not be great, but I believe there are implied odds and it’s an opportunity to steal on a later street since the board is so draw heavy. I’m not too worried about flushes because villain raised from bb preflop, which weights him more heavily towards bigger pocket pairs and Ax, so he only has 5ish combos of flushes.

Turn brings a second 8 and villain bets again. Now I’m obviously not loving my draw on this board in this spot, but the board looked great for my range and terrible for what he seems to be repping (an overpair). I made this play with 75s, so I can also have 86s/J8s/T8s/98s/87s/66/22 or maybe even 88. He basically has none of those except maybe 1 combo of 88. Plus I can have lots of made flushes, though I may have raised the flop with many of those. I went for the big bluff knowing that I almost certainly have outs and that even an overpair could fold on this board.

He asked what I’d have done if he shoved turn, and it’s true that would have been the worst case scenario. I’d probably have folded rather than gamble when I could be drawing dead, but that possibility doesn’t make my semi- bluff a bad one.

River gives me the straight and it’s easy to dump in the rest. After just slowly calling the turn he is never ahead on this river (unless he somehow has 98). He makes what I assume is a cry call with an overpair and a heart. Seems like it should be a fold because I have so many boats, flushes, and now straights, so there aren’t really many bluffs left, especially if he has a heart blocker.

So, I had a plan to steal the pot, got an ideal board, he got sticky with an overpair, and my out hit. Pretty simple.

Your “analysis” is a mixture of the desire of the human being to justify their actions,the tendency to be result oriented and the inability to play poker.

There is no need to add anything else either.