April 17, 2024 • 16 mins
What separates a great poker player from a good poker player is often bet sizing. Knowing how to size your bets like a studied pro allows you to make more money with your strong hands and run more effective bluffs.
This episode of Upswing Poker Level-Up will help you improve your bet sizing skills with 3 example situations posed as quiz questions. In all of these spots, you will play as the in position player who 3-bet before the flop.
Upgrade your poker game by practicing against a “perfect” opponent who gives you instant feedback with the Lucid GTO Trainer. Get it now at: https://upswingpoker.com/lucid-gto-trainer/
Written Version of this Episode
00:00 Introduction and Overview
02:53 Strategies for Betting in Position vs. Out of Position
06:52 Hypothetical Hand #2: Playing Ace-Queen Offsuit on an Ace-King-Three Board
09:44 Optimal Bet Sizes on Dynamic Flops
12:22 Dealing with Overpairs and Top Pairs on Draw-Heavy Boards
13:42 Adjusting Strategy for Different Textures and Opponents
15:25 Use of Tools for Board Analysis
In this episode of our poker strategy podcast, hosts Mike Brady and Gary Blackwood present a unique bet-sizing quiz designed to test your decision-making skills in various cash game scenarios. This interactive episode features three hypothetical hands, each set in three-bet pots where you are in position, allowing listeners to explore different strategies and refine their approach to post-flop play
The podcast begins with an analysis of the first hypothetical hand: playing pocket queens on a 7-2-2 board. Gary explains why betting big with strong hands like overpairs is crucial in these spots, especially in position, and highlights the common mistakes players make when choosing their bet sizes. Listeners will learn the importance of adjusting bet sizes based on their opponent’s range and the board's texture, ensuring they maximize value and control the pot
The discussion then moves to the second hypothetical hand, where the hosts break down playing Ace-Queen offsuit on an Ace-King-Three board. This scenario illustrates when to bet small to maintain a balanced strategy and capitalize on opponents' frequent folds. Gary provides insights into how bet sizing should change when you're out of position and why it’s critical to consider the effectiveness of your bets when your opponent's range is wide or narrow.
In the final hand, the hosts tackle a ten-seven-four board with pocket queens, emphasizing the need to balance checkbacks and betting ranges effectively. This poker strategy podcast covers why overpairs should not always be bet, explaining how to protect your checking range and keep opponents from exploiting your weaknesses.
Throughout the episode, Mike and Gary utilize tools like the Lucid GTO Trainer to provide a deeper understanding of board textures, bet sizing, and positional dynamics. This poker strategy podcast is perfect for players looking to elevate their cash game skills by learning how to optimize bet sizing and improve their decision-making process in various post-flop situations.
Tune in, participate in the quiz, and see if you can match wits with the pros while enhancing your overall poker strategy.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mike (00:00):
Going in three,
two. We are so back to Level Up your poker game.
I'm Mike Brady and I'm joined by Scottish cash game pro
Gary Blackwood.
Gary (00:12):
Welcome back to the show guys.
Happy to be here.
Mike (00:14):
I've got three hypothetical cash game situations prepared for this
episode and here's how it's going to work.
I'll give you a hand and recap the action.
You'll have a few moments to consider your play.
Feel free to pause if you need more time,
and then I'll turn it over to Gary to reveal what
the best play is and why.
Sometimes in poker you'll have information about your opponents that might
(00:36):
sway your decision one way or another,
but for these hypothetical hands,
assume you have no such information.
Note that there may be more than one correct answer in
some of these situations,
they're all going to be three bet pots where we are
in position,
we're going to look at three different boards.
So you're going to be able to spot the differences in
how we play these different boards in what is essentially the
(00:59):
same situation.
So let's dive in.
Situation number one,
the player in the hijack position,
that's two off the button,
raises. You are next to act in the cutoff position and
re raise with pocket queens.
The button and blinds get out of the way and the
hijack calls.
The flop is seven two two with two clubs,
the opponent checks and it's on you.
(01:20):
What's the best play here?
Check, bet small or bet big?
Gary (01:32):
So let's talk about what we definitely don't want to
be doing here and that's betting small.
We want to always bet our hand.
Really strong hand here,
really safe board,
but we want to be using the bigger size here of
at least half pot.
It's a three bet pot,
safe board.
We want to play for stacks.
Checking would be a disaster.
Betting small doesn't really get the value that our range deserves.
(01:53):
So bet always and betting bigger is the play.
Mike (01:56):
What does your overall betting strategy look like in that
situation? And while you're answering,
I'm going to open up the Lucid GTO trainer,
look at this exact board and this exact situation and visualize
the range that you're talking about as you do so.
Gary (02:09):
This is a really good board for us.
We have the range advantage,
we have the nut advantage and we're in position.
So all these factors mean that we want to be betting
virtually our entire range here.
We put a lot of pressure on our opponent when we
do bet,
they're out of position and we also get to realize our
equity on the turn and river with hands like king queen
more often because we're in position.
So if we think about how our range wants to play,
(02:30):
we want to bet really often here for this 50% continuation
bet size.
Mike (02:35):
If you're a player who kind of lived by the
heuristic, when you bet small,
you're betting often and when you bet big,
you're betting less often.
This is going to be one of the exceptions to that
heuristic. It's usually a pretty decent rule when you're betting frequently,
you're doing it for a small size.
When you're betting big,
you're likely not betting that often.
It just tends to be the case,
but it's not always the case by any means,
(02:57):
and this is a board where it's not.
The seven two two board doesn't really connect with either player's
range like Gary said,
there are some flush draws that both players can have that
does play a little bit of a role in sizing here,
but no one's really hitting trips on this board with a
deuce, it's possible to have pocket sevens,
but there's only three combos of that.
So as a result,
hands like Aces,
Kings, queens,
(03:17):
and Jacks,
which you have significantly more often as the three better are
essentially the nuts on this board.
So you want to be pumping the pot as soon as
possible. This is not a spot to trot out the very
trendy 33% or 25% continuation bet in position,
you want to be going pretty big.
Lucid likes to go half pot in this spot.
I think you can make an argument for going a little
(03:38):
bigger, but that's about where you should be at here betting
about, in this case,
eight big blinds into a 16 big blind pot and that
really sets you up to get the money in by the
river with those hands like Aces,
kings and queens,
you get to bet eight big blinds on the flop if
they call the pot will be 32 going into the turn.
You're both going to have about 80 behind.
It's not hard to imagine getting the rest of the money
(03:59):
in by the river.
Once you've reached that turn with that pot size.
Gary, suppose you had re-raised from the small blind instead,
so you'd actually be out of position on the flop.
How does the strategy change?
And once again,
I'm going to go ahead and set up that scenario in
Lucid so we can look at the differences with a nice
visual on screen.
Gary (04:18):
So we were doing so much betting because we're in
position and that strategy now changes because we're out of position.
We do less continuation betting overall in general when we're out
of position and this spot is no different.
Our specific hand of pocket queens still wants to bet extremely
often it's still a really strong hand on this board,
but we don't want to just bet our entire range here.
Some of our minimal equity bluffs will just wave the white
(04:41):
flag and let it go.
One other thing that changes is our size here.
We absolutely do not bet small here it would be a
bit of a mistake to bet small in position,
but out of position it would be a bit of a
disaster to use a one third continuation bet size here with
any part of our range,
we want to use a much bigger bet size of 75%.
If we're out of position and just use small bets.
(05:01):
The in position player gets to float us so unbelievably wide
and our life becomes a misery on the turn.
We've got a lot of air in our range.
Our opponent has floated us,
we have to check and they just get to take it
away from us on the turn.
So bigger bets and playing some checks is the way to
go here.
Mike (05:15):
Yeah,
if you bet small here as the small blind,
your opponent who's in position is going to have the pot
odds to call with hands like king queen of hearts.
That's no backdoor flush draw just king high with two overs.
I think maybe even hands like jack ten suited and stuff.
Yeah, if I force the small blind to use a small
size in Lucid GTO,
the hijack actually calls the flop with a little bit of
(05:38):
jack ten,
no backdoor flush draw,
literally jack high,
just two shitty overs and it's pretty much always calling with
king queen,
king jack,
king ten,
et cetera.
We don't want to allow them to make those profitable calls
with that many hands.
Now there is one thing I want to note.
If you're up against an opponent who's not going to float
this wide,
even against a small bet,
(05:58):
they're going to fold Jack ten every time they're going to
fold King queen,
no flush draw every single time versus your small bet,
the small bet is not quite as bad against that player.
That said,
you still want to be going bigger because it simply allows
you to get more money in with those strong hands in
your range.
So just because that's small bet isn't quite as bad against
those types of players that you might run into in one
(06:18):
three and two five live doesn't mean you should do it.
We still recommend going for that chunkier bet of around 66
to 75% pot on this seven two two board out of
position. Let's run back the same situation but swap out the
cards, the hijack raises you re raised from the cutoff with
Ace queen off suit and only the hijack calls,
(06:39):
the flop is Ace King three this time all different suits
and your opponent checks.
Are you checking betting small or betting big?
Gary (06:52):
Now this is a spot you want to bet small.
I'd bet my hand here always I'd use a smaller size,
either one third or quarter pot.
Both completely fine.
But this is a spot where we want to bet small
and we want to bet always.
Mike (07:04):
Yeah.
So you kind of answered my next question already here,
but I'll let you expand on it a little bit.
What does your overall betting strategy look like in this situation?
Gary (07:12):
I'd bet my entire range for a small size,
either one third,
quarter pot,
both are completely fine.
The difference in EV between both of those options is minimal
so you don't have to worry about it,
just pick one and be consistent with it.
Our opponent will do so much more folding on this board
so our smaller bet size is more effective.
We can just bet our entire range here for that small
size and it's a very effective strategy.
Mike (07:34):
Again,
let's flip it around and talk about playing out of position.
Suppose you had three bet from the small blind.
How would your strategy change given that you are now out
of position against your opponent?
Gary (07:44):
So what I just said in the last answer about
the effectiveness of our bet is really important.
Think about the seven deuce deuce flop.
Do we generate tons of fold equity by betting one third?
The answer is no.
Our opponent can float so wide versus that bet with ten
high, jack high,
ace high,
the list goes on.
But on Ace King three rainbow,
however, they can't float super wide because one,
(08:05):
we connect with that board really well and two,
they have so many hands that have so little equity.
For example,
Jack ten on seven deuce deuce has got two overs,
but obviously they can't have overs on Ace King three.
So the effectiveness of betting one third here is very significant.
So the answer is we should bet our entire range here
for a small size.
Mike (08:24):
The juxtaposition between this board and the previous board really
is massive.
There's no hands on this flop really that are kind of
crappy but still have a chance to hit something.
Like on that seven two two board basically every hand has
at least one over,
maybe two overs,
some backdoor draws,
et cetera.
On this board.
(08:44):
If you have not flopped a pair,
the best you can have is a gutshot,
the queen tens,
the queen jacks,
the jack tens,
the five fours,
those hands are going to be able to call you,
but there aren't that many of those.
Most of the hands in your opponents range here,
they're going to have a bunch of ten nine suited,
they're going to have nine eight suited,
they're going to have pocket pairs like pocket eights.
All these types of hands are complete dust on this board.
(09:05):
There's nothing they can do with them.
You could probably bet 10% pot and they would fold them.
So you really get to leverage the fact that they don't
really have hands that can float and you can expect to
win the pot quite often with that small bet.
Same positional matchup for a third and final time.
The hijack raises and you three bet from the cutoff with
pocket queens.
The ladies are back in your corner for this one.
(09:27):
The hijack calls and then checks to you on a ten
seven four flop with two clubs.
What's your play check,
bet small or bet big?
Gary (09:43):
So we mainly want to be betting here,
betting around 75% of the time.
And again,
really important we're not using that small bet size.
We'll talk about why that is in a second,
but the answer here is bet relatively often for the 50%
bet size.
Mike (09:56):
What does your overall betting strategy look like on this
dynamic flop?
Gary (10:01):
So as you say,
it's a dynamic flop,
which means we've got to tread much more carefully.
You generally get to bet more often on the really disconnected
boards, but this is wetter.
The caller is going to connect with it more and therefore
continue more often versus a continuation bet.
And as a result,
our checking frequency with our range must increase.
So we still want to use that bigger half pot bet
size here when we bet,
(10:21):
but we're now checking more often overall with our range because
of how much better our opponent connects and therefore will continue
on this board.
Now when our checking frequency increases,
it's really important that we protect that checking range with certain
types of hands.
So some of our over pairs will check sometimes,
definitely not always,
but they're in there at some frequency.
And as well as that a lot of our top pairs
(10:42):
will check back as well.
It's really important that our checkback range is not too weak
and we protect them with a low frequency checkback with our
over pairs and some of our top pairs as well.
Mike (10:52):
Think for a moment about what happens if you implement
the perhaps more intuitive strategy of always betting with your over
pairs and your top pairs on this board.
I think it's pretty typical to look at a board like
this ten seven four,
2 clubs think wow,
there are a lot of draws.
I have to charge those draws,
I have to get them out of there.
If they have over cards,
I have to deny their equity.
I'm going to always bet when I have an over pair,
(11:13):
I'm going to always bet when I have top pair.
That's a pretty intuitive thing to think.
I wouldn't blame you if that would be your approach on
this board,
but consider what that means when you do check.
If you're always betting your overpairs on your top pairs,
when you do check back,
it's because you have Ace King or Ace Queen or King
Queen suited or whatever over card hand that has missed this
(11:34):
board. So unless the turn pairs one of your over card
hands, you're going to be in a pretty rough spot.
You're basically always just going to have unpaired over cards.
If your opponent bets into you,
you're going to be at a pretty nasty spot.
It would be really,
really bad if they start to perceive you to be a
player who's only checking back with high cards because now they
can really attack on the turn if it's not a high
(11:54):
card, knowing that you never really have anything and you're going
to be in a tough spot and you're often going to
have to fold.
You don't want to put yourself in that situation.
You want to check back with some of these top pairs,
some of these over pairs.
So when you do reach the turn after checking back,
you're not always screwed.
If they bet you're going to be lying in weight with
a hand like pocket queens sometimes with a hand like Jack
ten suited,
quite often they're not going to be able to exploit your
(12:17):
checkback range and your strategy is just going to be more
robust overall and you're going to be tougher to play against.
Gary (12:22):
Absolutely.
And the final thing I want to add here at the
end, whilst we are talking about certain types of textures where
we do want to play a small checkback range with some
of those over pairs,
some of those top pairs,
it's really important that those of us watching or listening don't
just go out and start checking back tons of hands on
boards that we shouldn't.
So there are some textures where we want to play some
check backs,
but there's still a lot of textures out there where we
get to just bet our entire range.
(12:43):
So don't confuse the two.
My advice is to be mindful of some of the boards
where you do want to play check backs on,
for example,
the ten seven four flush draw.
But let's go ahead and bet our entire range where that's
the right strategy.
Mike (12:55):
And if you're thinking,
well how can I study all these boards?
How can I figure out what are the boards where I'm
supposed to check back and what are the boards that I'm
supposed to always bet?
That's where tools like Upswings new Lucid GTO trainer make things
really, really easy.
You can go join right now,
it's $49 a month and you can instantly look up any
of these boards in any of the positional matchups and see
(13:16):
how often am I supposed to bet,
how often am I supposed to check what are the sizes
that like to get used by the solver?
And it really saves you a lot of time in your
study and allows you to build these robust strategies that we're
always talking about on this podcast.
Let's flip it around one more time and talk about playing
out of position.
Gary, how do things change if you are out of position
as the small blind three better on that ten seven four,
(13:39):
2 club flop.
Gary (13:41):
Two really important factors here.
One, as we know it's a wetter more dynamic flop,
so we do more checking and two,
we're now out of position.
Both these factors added together means that our strategy will involve
a lot more checking,
which means our betting range is more polarized and as a
result our bet size will go up to an even bigger
size of 75%.
(14:02):
This is not a great spot for us out of position
on a connected dynamic board that our opponent is going to
continue on relatively often.
So we bet less often with our range,
but we bet for a bigger size.
If the board is like ten four deuce rainbow,
we bet more often.
But this wet connected ten seven four flush draw where there
are straight draws and flush draws galore,
we're going to check a lot more often.
Mike (14:24):
And to your point about the in position player continuing
quite often even against the pretty big size,
the in position player only folds 36% of the time on
ten seven four and that's against a pretty big bet.
So you're simply not getting your continuation bet through very often
here, so you kind of want to have the goods a
little bit more often,
right? Gary (14:42):
Yeah,
absolutely. And if we take a quick look at some of
the types of hands that are not continuation betting here,
these hands would definitely continuation bet at least much more often
if we were in position.
You've got hands like queen jack suited some Ace four suited
Ace five suited without the backdoor flush draw all these types
of hands which are happily betting in position or betting on
a dryer texture.
These hands are just check folding and a lot of people
(15:04):
need to hear this.
There are some scenarios where you three bet pre-flop.
It's completely okay to just go ahead and check fold.
If we force the check here for the small blind and
then force the bet for the hijack,
we're going to see a lot of check folds and there
are some scenarios where it's just okay to check fold.
A lot of people think I three bet pre-flop,
I have to win the pot.
It's completely okay to just go ahead and check fold sometimes.
Mike (15:24):
Yeah,
that really reminds me of something that poker players love to
do, which is they conflate what are two independent things with
each other.
They're like,
oh, well you called the turn with that hand so you
have to call the river.
No, you don't.
You don't have to.
You called the turn because you thought it was a profitable
call and now you're on the river and you don't think
it's a profitable call.
(15:44):
And just like Gary's saying here,
you three bet pre flop because it was a profitable three
bet in a vacuum and now you've reached the flop and
now the best move is to check fold.
That can be the case.
It's totally okay.
You are supposed to lose some hands in poker.
You don't have to worry about getting your soldiers back every
single time.
Sometimes you got to lose the battle to eventually win the
(16:06):
war. That's all we've got for you today.
Let us know what poker topic do you want to learn
about. We are very open to suggestions for future episode topics
here on the Upswing Level Up podcast.
You can tweet at me @mbradycf tweet at Gary,
which is @GazzyB1233 So let us know what you want to
(16:27):
hear about.
You can also tweet with the #UPLevelUp.
We'll definitely see it.
Thank you very much for listening.
Hit that like button and subscribe.
If you enjoyed the show,
share it with your friends.
See you in the next one.
Going in three,
two. We are so back to Level Up your poker game.
I'm Mike Brady and I'm joined by Scottish cash game pro
Gary Blackwood.
Gary (00:12):
Welcome back to the show guys.
Happy to be here.
Mike (00:14):
I've got three hypothetical cash game situations prepared for this
episode and here's how it's going to work.
I'll give you a hand and recap the action.
You'll have a few moments to consider your play.
Feel free to pause if you need more time,
and then I'll turn it over to Gary to reveal what
the best play is and why.
Sometimes in poker you'll have information about your opponents that might
(00:36):
sway your decision one way or another,
but for these hypothetical hands,
assume you have no such information.
Note that there may be more than one correct answer in
some of these situations,
they're all going to be three bet pots where we are
in position,
we're going to look at three different boards.
So you're going to be able to spot the differences in
how we play these different boards in what is essentially the
(00:59):
same situation.
So let's dive in.
Situation number one,
the player in the hijack position,
that's two off the button,
raises. You are next to act in the cutoff position and
re raise with pocket queens.
The button and blinds get out of the way and the
hijack calls.
The flop is seven two two with two clubs,
the opponent checks and it's on you.
(01:20):
What's the best play here?
Check, bet small or bet big?
Gary (01:32):
So let's talk about what we definitely don't want to
be doing here and that's betting small.
We want to always bet our hand.
Really strong hand here,
really safe board,
but we want to be using the bigger size here of
at least half pot.
It's a three bet pot,
safe board.
We want to play for stacks.
Checking would be a disaster.
Betting small doesn't really get the value that our range deserves.
(01:53):
So bet always and betting bigger is the play.
Mike (01:56):
What does your overall betting strategy look like in that
situation? And while you're answering,
I'm going to open up the Lucid GTO trainer,
look at this exact board and this exact situation and visualize
the range that you're talking about as you do so.
Gary (02:09):
This is a really good board for us.
We have the range advantage,
we have the nut advantage and we're in position.
So all these factors mean that we want to be betting
virtually our entire range here.
We put a lot of pressure on our opponent when we
do bet,
they're out of position and we also get to realize our
equity on the turn and river with hands like king queen
more often because we're in position.
So if we think about how our range wants to play,
(02:30):
we want to bet really often here for this 50% continuation
bet size.
Mike (02:35):
If you're a player who kind of lived by the
heuristic, when you bet small,
you're betting often and when you bet big,
you're betting less often.
This is going to be one of the exceptions to that
heuristic. It's usually a pretty decent rule when you're betting frequently,
you're doing it for a small size.
When you're betting big,
you're likely not betting that often.
It just tends to be the case,
but it's not always the case by any means,
(02:57):
and this is a board where it's not.
The seven two two board doesn't really connect with either player's
range like Gary said,
there are some flush draws that both players can have that
does play a little bit of a role in sizing here,
but no one's really hitting trips on this board with a
deuce, it's possible to have pocket sevens,
but there's only three combos of that.
So as a result,
hands like Aces,
Kings, queens,
(03:17):
and Jacks,
which you have significantly more often as the three better are
essentially the nuts on this board.
So you want to be pumping the pot as soon as
possible. This is not a spot to trot out the very
trendy 33% or 25% continuation bet in position,
you want to be going pretty big.
Lucid likes to go half pot in this spot.
I think you can make an argument for going a little
(03:38):
bigger, but that's about where you should be at here betting
about, in this case,
eight big blinds into a 16 big blind pot and that
really sets you up to get the money in by the
river with those hands like Aces,
kings and queens,
you get to bet eight big blinds on the flop if
they call the pot will be 32 going into the turn.
You're both going to have about 80 behind.
It's not hard to imagine getting the rest of the money
(03:59):
in by the river.
Once you've reached that turn with that pot size.
Gary, suppose you had re-raised from the small blind instead,
so you'd actually be out of position on the flop.
How does the strategy change?
And once again,
I'm going to go ahead and set up that scenario in
Lucid so we can look at the differences with a nice
visual on screen.
Gary (04:18):
So we were doing so much betting because we're in
position and that strategy now changes because we're out of position.
We do less continuation betting overall in general when we're out
of position and this spot is no different.
Our specific hand of pocket queens still wants to bet extremely
often it's still a really strong hand on this board,
but we don't want to just bet our entire range here.
Some of our minimal equity bluffs will just wave the white
(04:41):
flag and let it go.
One other thing that changes is our size here.
We absolutely do not bet small here it would be a
bit of a mistake to bet small in position,
but out of position it would be a bit of a
disaster to use a one third continuation bet size here with
any part of our range,
we want to use a much bigger bet size of 75%.
If we're out of position and just use small bets.
(05:01):
The in position player gets to float us so unbelievably wide
and our life becomes a misery on the turn.
We've got a lot of air in our range.
Our opponent has floated us,
we have to check and they just get to take it
away from us on the turn.
So bigger bets and playing some checks is the way to
go here.
Mike (05:15):
Yeah,
if you bet small here as the small blind,
your opponent who's in position is going to have the pot
odds to call with hands like king queen of hearts.
That's no backdoor flush draw just king high with two overs.
I think maybe even hands like jack ten suited and stuff.
Yeah, if I force the small blind to use a small
size in Lucid GTO,
the hijack actually calls the flop with a little bit of
(05:38):
jack ten,
no backdoor flush draw,
literally jack high,
just two shitty overs and it's pretty much always calling with
king queen,
king jack,
king ten,
et cetera.
We don't want to allow them to make those profitable calls
with that many hands.
Now there is one thing I want to note.
If you're up against an opponent who's not going to float
this wide,
even against a small bet,
(05:58):
they're going to fold Jack ten every time they're going to
fold King queen,
no flush draw every single time versus your small bet,
the small bet is not quite as bad against that player.
That said,
you still want to be going bigger because it simply allows
you to get more money in with those strong hands in
your range.
So just because that's small bet isn't quite as bad against
those types of players that you might run into in one
(06:18):
three and two five live doesn't mean you should do it.
We still recommend going for that chunkier bet of around 66
to 75% pot on this seven two two board out of
position. Let's run back the same situation but swap out the
cards, the hijack raises you re raised from the cutoff with
Ace queen off suit and only the hijack calls,
(06:39):
the flop is Ace King three this time all different suits
and your opponent checks.
Are you checking betting small or betting big?
Gary (06:52):
Now this is a spot you want to bet small.
I'd bet my hand here always I'd use a smaller size,
either one third or quarter pot.
Both completely fine.
But this is a spot where we want to bet small
and we want to bet always.
Mike (07:04):
Yeah.
So you kind of answered my next question already here,
but I'll let you expand on it a little bit.
What does your overall betting strategy look like in this situation?
Gary (07:12):
I'd bet my entire range for a small size,
either one third,
quarter pot,
both are completely fine.
The difference in EV between both of those options is minimal
so you don't have to worry about it,
just pick one and be consistent with it.
Our opponent will do so much more folding on this board
so our smaller bet size is more effective.
We can just bet our entire range here for that small
size and it's a very effective strategy.
Mike (07:34):
Again,
let's flip it around and talk about playing out of position.
Suppose you had three bet from the small blind.
How would your strategy change given that you are now out
of position against your opponent?
Gary (07:44):
So what I just said in the last answer about
the effectiveness of our bet is really important.
Think about the seven deuce deuce flop.
Do we generate tons of fold equity by betting one third?
The answer is no.
Our opponent can float so wide versus that bet with ten
high, jack high,
ace high,
the list goes on.
But on Ace King three rainbow,
however, they can't float super wide because one,
(08:05):
we connect with that board really well and two,
they have so many hands that have so little equity.
For example,
Jack ten on seven deuce deuce has got two overs,
but obviously they can't have overs on Ace King three.
So the effectiveness of betting one third here is very significant.
So the answer is we should bet our entire range here
for a small size.
Mike (08:24):
The juxtaposition between this board and the previous board really
is massive.
There's no hands on this flop really that are kind of
crappy but still have a chance to hit something.
Like on that seven two two board basically every hand has
at least one over,
maybe two overs,
some backdoor draws,
et cetera.
On this board.
(08:44):
If you have not flopped a pair,
the best you can have is a gutshot,
the queen tens,
the queen jacks,
the jack tens,
the five fours,
those hands are going to be able to call you,
but there aren't that many of those.
Most of the hands in your opponents range here,
they're going to have a bunch of ten nine suited,
they're going to have nine eight suited,
they're going to have pocket pairs like pocket eights.
All these types of hands are complete dust on this board.
(09:05):
There's nothing they can do with them.
You could probably bet 10% pot and they would fold them.
So you really get to leverage the fact that they don't
really have hands that can float and you can expect to
win the pot quite often with that small bet.
Same positional matchup for a third and final time.
The hijack raises and you three bet from the cutoff with
pocket queens.
The ladies are back in your corner for this one.
(09:27):
The hijack calls and then checks to you on a ten
seven four flop with two clubs.
What's your play check,
bet small or bet big?
Gary (09:43):
So we mainly want to be betting here,
betting around 75% of the time.
And again,
really important we're not using that small bet size.
We'll talk about why that is in a second,
but the answer here is bet relatively often for the 50%
bet size.
Mike (09:56):
What does your overall betting strategy look like on this
dynamic flop?
Gary (10:01):
So as you say,
it's a dynamic flop,
which means we've got to tread much more carefully.
You generally get to bet more often on the really disconnected
boards, but this is wetter.
The caller is going to connect with it more and therefore
continue more often versus a continuation bet.
And as a result,
our checking frequency with our range must increase.
So we still want to use that bigger half pot bet
size here when we bet,
(10:21):
but we're now checking more often overall with our range because
of how much better our opponent connects and therefore will continue
on this board.
Now when our checking frequency increases,
it's really important that we protect that checking range with certain
types of hands.
So some of our over pairs will check sometimes,
definitely not always,
but they're in there at some frequency.
And as well as that a lot of our top pairs
(10:42):
will check back as well.
It's really important that our checkback range is not too weak
and we protect them with a low frequency checkback with our
over pairs and some of our top pairs as well.
Mike (10:52):
Think for a moment about what happens if you implement
the perhaps more intuitive strategy of always betting with your over
pairs and your top pairs on this board.
I think it's pretty typical to look at a board like
this ten seven four,
2 clubs think wow,
there are a lot of draws.
I have to charge those draws,
I have to get them out of there.
If they have over cards,
I have to deny their equity.
I'm going to always bet when I have an over pair,
(11:13):
I'm going to always bet when I have top pair.
That's a pretty intuitive thing to think.
I wouldn't blame you if that would be your approach on
this board,
but consider what that means when you do check.
If you're always betting your overpairs on your top pairs,
when you do check back,
it's because you have Ace King or Ace Queen or King
Queen suited or whatever over card hand that has missed this
(11:34):
board. So unless the turn pairs one of your over card
hands, you're going to be in a pretty rough spot.
You're basically always just going to have unpaired over cards.
If your opponent bets into you,
you're going to be at a pretty nasty spot.
It would be really,
really bad if they start to perceive you to be a
player who's only checking back with high cards because now they
can really attack on the turn if it's not a high
(11:54):
card, knowing that you never really have anything and you're going
to be in a tough spot and you're often going to
have to fold.
You don't want to put yourself in that situation.
You want to check back with some of these top pairs,
some of these over pairs.
So when you do reach the turn after checking back,
you're not always screwed.
If they bet you're going to be lying in weight with
a hand like pocket queens sometimes with a hand like Jack
ten suited,
quite often they're not going to be able to exploit your
(12:17):
checkback range and your strategy is just going to be more
robust overall and you're going to be tougher to play against.
Gary (12:22):
Absolutely.
And the final thing I want to add here at the
end, whilst we are talking about certain types of textures where
we do want to play a small checkback range with some
of those over pairs,
some of those top pairs,
it's really important that those of us watching or listening don't
just go out and start checking back tons of hands on
boards that we shouldn't.
So there are some textures where we want to play some
check backs,
but there's still a lot of textures out there where we
get to just bet our entire range.
(12:43):
So don't confuse the two.
My advice is to be mindful of some of the boards
where you do want to play check backs on,
for example,
the ten seven four flush draw.
But let's go ahead and bet our entire range where that's
the right strategy.
Mike (12:55):
And if you're thinking,
well how can I study all these boards?
How can I figure out what are the boards where I'm
supposed to check back and what are the boards that I'm
supposed to always bet?
That's where tools like Upswings new Lucid GTO trainer make things
really, really easy.
You can go join right now,
it's $49 a month and you can instantly look up any
of these boards in any of the positional matchups and see
(13:16):
how often am I supposed to bet,
how often am I supposed to check what are the sizes
that like to get used by the solver?
And it really saves you a lot of time in your
study and allows you to build these robust strategies that we're
always talking about on this podcast.
Let's flip it around one more time and talk about playing
out of position.
Gary, how do things change if you are out of position
as the small blind three better on that ten seven four,
(13:39):
2 club flop.
Gary (13:41):
Two really important factors here.
One, as we know it's a wetter more dynamic flop,
so we do more checking and two,
we're now out of position.
Both these factors added together means that our strategy will involve
a lot more checking,
which means our betting range is more polarized and as a
result our bet size will go up to an even bigger
size of 75%.
(14:02):
This is not a great spot for us out of position
on a connected dynamic board that our opponent is going to
continue on relatively often.
So we bet less often with our range,
but we bet for a bigger size.
If the board is like ten four deuce rainbow,
we bet more often.
But this wet connected ten seven four flush draw where there
are straight draws and flush draws galore,
we're going to check a lot more often.
Mike (14:24):
And to your point about the in position player continuing
quite often even against the pretty big size,
the in position player only folds 36% of the time on
ten seven four and that's against a pretty big bet.
So you're simply not getting your continuation bet through very often
here, so you kind of want to have the goods a
little bit more often,
right? Gary (14:42):
Yeah,
absolutely. And if we take a quick look at some of
the types of hands that are not continuation betting here,
these hands would definitely continuation bet at least much more often
if we were in position.
You've got hands like queen jack suited some Ace four suited
Ace five suited without the backdoor flush draw all these types
of hands which are happily betting in position or betting on
a dryer texture.
These hands are just check folding and a lot of people
(15:04):
need to hear this.
There are some scenarios where you three bet pre-flop.
It's completely okay to just go ahead and check fold.
If we force the check here for the small blind and
then force the bet for the hijack,
we're going to see a lot of check folds and there
are some scenarios where it's just okay to check fold.
A lot of people think I three bet pre-flop,
I have to win the pot.
It's completely okay to just go ahead and check fold sometimes.
Mike (15:24):
Yeah,
that really reminds me of something that poker players love to
do, which is they conflate what are two independent things with
each other.
They're like,
oh, well you called the turn with that hand so you
have to call the river.
No, you don't.
You don't have to.
You called the turn because you thought it was a profitable
call and now you're on the river and you don't think
it's a profitable call.
(15:44):
And just like Gary's saying here,
you three bet pre flop because it was a profitable three
bet in a vacuum and now you've reached the flop and
now the best move is to check fold.
That can be the case.
It's totally okay.
You are supposed to lose some hands in poker.
You don't have to worry about getting your soldiers back every
single time.
Sometimes you got to lose the battle to eventually win the
(16:06):
war. That's all we've got for you today.
Let us know what poker topic do you want to learn
about. We are very open to suggestions for future episode topics
here on the Upswing Level Up podcast.
You can tweet at me @mbradycf tweet at Gary,
which is @GazzyB1233 So let us know what you want to
(16:27):
hear about.
You can also tweet with the #UPLevelUp.
We'll definitely see it.
Thank you very much for listening.
Hit that like button and subscribe.
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See you in the next one.
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