@@splitsuit Dear James, this is one of the clearest, most illuminating coaching videos I've ever seen. This is such a challenging topic to get your head wrapped around, yet you present and explain the different scenarios brilliantly. As you said, it's especially interesting when we see how often students would check fold hands that have significant backdoor equity on dry boards. Brilliant. Thank you.
Same. Do the exact opposite.. as I cbet every X/R or X/C and I X/C'd every Cbet. :P Looking forward to experiment with this and learn the right way of playing
Another solid video, James. This is seriously illuminating. Cbetting OOP is one of my big leaks. Almost all of my punts can be traced back to bad cbet OOP strategy. Some of your pointers seem counter intuitive at first but do make tremendous sense once you explain them.
More of these situational quiz and answer videos going forward would be greatly appreciated, I like the format and the presentation and find these videos useful more than all others, pretty much.
Thanks Split. Very thoughtful quiz, answers & reasoning. Snowie had CBET as a reasonable option (best or close in EV) for all 10 scenarios, with 2 X/R, 1 X/C & 1 X/F, as follows: #1 = CBET (vs your X/R) #2 = X/R or CBET (vs your X/C) #3 = X/R or CBET (vs your X/C) #4 = CBET or X/C (agreeing with your CBET) #5 = CBET or X/R (agreeing with your CBET) #6 = CBET or X/C (agreeing with your X/C) #7 = CBET (agreeing with your CBET) #8 = X/C or CBET (vs your X/R) #9 = X/F or CBET (agreeing with your X/F) #10 = CBET (vs your X/R) Any thoughts on the general difference in philosophy? Thanks again, Mike
Cheers Mike! Perchance, do you know how Snowie models its answers nowadays? Have they switched over to a GTO solver model or are they still modeling answers off of the neural network?
@@lkmillerpa thanks Larry. Given that, much of the data Snowie is getting is directly from players and since most players cbet too often when OOP, make defense mistakes when IP, etc. - the recommended lines can miss nuances. Eventually, I may run this entire quiz through a GTO solver with a few range assumptions and see how the solver recommendations compare.
@@EsaelPaggin024 no idea.. hes so high right now.. btw those X/R ranges would be very hard to balance.. the guy contradicts himself a lot also- theres better teachers
I like this, this advice is different from GTO and different from basically any other advices advocating "standard lines". However I would really reconsider check/raising against sticky/fishy players who don't believe, basically most of the population up to 50NL online. The thing is they are very sceptical vs flop check/raises while very scared against turn check/raises and absolutely don't believe to river check/raises. The biggest mistakes players can make are OOP and with check/raises you start to build a big pot with marginal hands. You have to know when to barrel against who and when to stop otherwise bye-bye bankroll. Also when you cbet A9ss on J94ds what's the plan on the turn and the river?
Such a great video. Just got my $5 a week. Seriously splitsuit, you're pretty much the most intelligent poker tutor I've found on RU-vid. Sucks when I snore a measly 52%.. 😂
Another point to mention with some of the drawing hands is that checking with the intention to check raise also gives you a shot at a free card on the turn, especially if you were the preflop raiser. If you hit your hand on the turn, it is then often very well disguised.
Huge different between early po raise (tight range) & button call vs. small blind raise (wide range) and big blind call. This strategy seems to allow opponent to realize a lot of equity by checking back a variety of overcards and gut shot/back door hands that they would fold to a CBet.
Extremely clear and thorough explanations bolstered with advice demonstrating great insight into your audience's potential foibles . Very helpful - thank you.
As I criticized one of your other videos, here's some positive fb as well. This is just superb stuff. I like this one even more than some of the videos in core. Thanks so much for making this available publicly!
Hmmm, I was under the impression that you wanna check-call your nut flush draws since if they 3 bet your raise, you have to fold if you're not getting the odds which sucks since your hand can draw to the nuts. I check-raise some of my weaker draws since if you get shoved on it's not as big of a deal since for example your 7 high flush might not be good but depending on the texture obviously don't raise all of your draws since you'll have to bluff heavy of a cr range. For your combo draws, you can really do any (cbet, cc, or cr) since depending on the draw you can call a raise and still be ahead in the hand (especially if you have overs as well). Just my thoughts and what I've heard from others and some peoples work with Pio but I could definitely be wrong. Thoughts?
for hand 10. i dont understand the reasoning for a check raise. as the PFR I dont see what hands we can rep when x/r the flop. over pairs and pocket 88, 55 maybe 22. doesn't this flop favor the BB? it seems like the pfr is being ignored and its seems like its assumed the BB knows we are raising really wide from the SB. Please elaborate. thank you
I've heard U in a bunch of videos prior to this but never saw U. U don't look like U sound! It's fun picturing what people look like without hearing them. I saw U as a little guy w glasses and no facial hair!
I said check fold on the 4rth one not realizing I had top pair. For some reason I thought it was J9 flop. Yea I c bet that one. Thanks James. You have helped my game as if you were my private teacher. Much love brotha!
Cool vid... Leak buster 2 showed me I was C-betting OOP too much. This content gives some context as to why and what other options accomplish what I need. I like the quiz format. 👍
On #3. I reasoned in favour of C-bet that since the opponents range is relatively wide (called as BB), we are in a good position to beat any of their straight draws or flopped pairs as we have top pair and J as kicker. Therefore we would be happy if they call and we would be happy if we just win the pot then and there. I gather from watching this video that with check/call we can milk the hand for even more value and that is why C-betting is worse. Not sure anyone will read this but I would appreciate any comment to help a beginner (me). Thanks :)
As I suspected, I've been cbetting too frequently. However, I didn't realize that some of those cbets should've been executed as check-raises rather than cbets.
Great video, thank you so much for this. I disagree on the x/r with 9Ts though. I feel if we cbet we can call a raise while when we x/r and get 4bet we have to fold out a lot of equity.
And on a lot of boards which are dry and unconnected, you advocate for a c/r on hands with bdfd/bdsds. That'd mean we need to balance this out with all top pairs essentially, and the occasional overpairs and sets. We don't have many 2 pairs on 862 for eg...
@@splitsuit True. I'm guessing you've done a more thorough DB analysis than I have. On such boards, when called, what would you do then? You'd be risking a pot sized bet to win pot most of the time (quick counting - you'd have 9 combos of sets, 3 or 4 2 pairs, and maybe 10 top pairs on low boards vs roughly 50 combos of broadways). Continuing from there when you have backdoors would be suicide as you'd have a roughly 30% 'continue to barrel' card - assuming bdfd and gut shot or bdfd or bdfd and oesd combos [(10+8)/47 cards left in the deck)] vs a very strong range of top pairs/sets/2pairs + some sticky overcards - which may well improve ott into a top pair style hand. Only 6 - 12 combos of mid pocket pairs which do comprise a chunk of continuing hands would fold vs a semi bluff. So assuming this line you'd either check/fold or barrel --> check/fold hoping to. I dunno if it's that profitable, though it'll work often. Definitely worth it in a tournament perhaps where smaller raises may work and you'll often be playing bb vs RFI where your range connects more on these kinds of boards. Otherwise though? I dunno.
On hand #2, there are so many ways to win the pot/push your equity on the flop, it seems to me that that's more important than whether your hand is drawing to the nuts against a single player. Obviously, you're going to get stacked most of the time that you're up against J9, but even against everything except J9 of diamonds you're going to have some live outs. Most of the time you're going to have ~12-15 live outs + some fold equity. On the other hand, if you wait until you make your non-nut flush or straight, you're more often going to be in a spot where you can't extract maximum value for your hand, so I'd prefer to put pressure on my opponent on the flop and try to win it right there.
Also JQ, JK and AJ will hate life. The 56 combo draw is close to the best scenario for them when they get raised on that board. Those hands are likely to succumb to pressure on later streets. And against 2 pairs you can fold to the 4-bet on the flop and have good implied odds when they just call and you hit. I prefer your line as well.
Hey Chris. Cbetting was given a good chunk of partial credit for #2, but your analysis is quite tactical. From a strategic point of view it's important to think about your entire range, protecting your various options, and also reacting to certain things (like if V checks the flop behind or if you CB and V raises). Again, this isn't to say that cbetting isn't viable (or even best with certain information), I just don't think it's best in the given spot =)
Just curious, are these all heads up situations? And if not, how and if would these situations change? Thanks again for all that you do here. Has definitely improved my game.
I tried to do the quiz quickly so i got my instinctual reaction, I completely ignored thinking about the quality of outs like you mentioned. I think I answered cbet to 8 of the questions lol, I cbet almoat anything
Hi James. First of all thank you for your quality videos, very few people explain concepts as well as you do. 2nd if all I was wondering if Core includes the type of info you present in this video? For example, does the check raise section go over good boards to check raise on etc? Thanks :)
You're very welcome Subie! And CORE covers a lot of the concepts we discussed in this video, but more from a 10,000-foot view level instead of super granular. That being said, there are plenty of granular examples...just not hundreds of them for check/raise textures specifically =)
Hi James, are you factoring in BB's capped range into these examples? Or are we assuming BB has a very low 3bet frequency? For the AsTs hand on the Tc9c3h board, where you opted to cbet, shouldn't we be less worried about protection since many of BB's hands that we are protecting ourselves (Broadway pairs) from would have 3bet preflop? And we also hold an Ace blocker further reducing the number of combos of those hands. Or is the bet for protection to deny BB's straight and flush draws from completing? What would be better here? 50% pot or 66% pot? Also if we check here, would we expect BB to bet draws? Which he probably has many of?
What about if you have a weak flush draw? You have 9 outs, according to this video you should check call with a weak flush draw by default but what happens if you aren't getting the correct odds to call?
Love the videos thanks for posting! Question: I have a lot of problems understanding why we check call 7d8d question 6. If we check call are we treating this as purely a pot odds problem? If we check call vs check raise due to our non clean outs we can still catch said outs on the turn. And finally if we make our straight are we treating a straight as a bluff catcher since we clearly have no SDV with check calling? Thanks!
I mean the answers he gives are probably the majority percentage of the GTO solver, but I can imagine with some of these draws nuts or no nuts there is some considerable check raising instead of check calling
Should you continue firing in the turn if your check raise get call and you miss your draw? And how much should be the check raise, 50%,66%, 75%, 100% pot?
K72 FD SB wide opening range vs BB wide defending range PF - villain would have 3 bet all his good hands - AA, KK AKS etc Flop: Ranges are both wide, but we do have the initiative. Villain can have all sets except for KK. He won’t have many FD as we have the blockers but we can have all the sets here as well. Check raising and C betting would have the same effect. Villain would fold all his junkie hands and continue with his better hands. We unblock his calling range as we have the FD, unless he’s calling with a worse FD. However I think range betting 33% pot would be better as we won’t put ourselves in a position where we have to decide what to do if villain raises our check raise. And this is presuming that he bets if we check. If we miss turn, and it’s a brick card, we can either check and give up, or polarised turn. We can have all sets as our value hands and the FD as our bluffs
I have done some work on this and a lot of these examples seem to run very closely in EV with the betting options. Good to mix things up I guess against reasonable opponents.
thanks for the valueable lesson! theres just one thing that is not touched: what do we do with our two pais and sets OOP? i thought we should mainly have them as a check-raise on wet boards to protect our draws, and check call/c bet on dry boards. what do u think?
Wow that upload was freaking awesome.... instant thumbs up 👍 Any plans for a late position one of these? (Or just more uploads like this) Would be great to get content in this format with turns and rivers that don’t always work out or look dangerous for us.
@@splitsuit Agree with Josh! Would love to hear what your advice is especially on the hands where we intend to check call medium draws. What are some lines for when we miss or hit the draw on different turn board textures? TIA and great video, very informative!
I know I'm probably check folding too often. I also know that check raising more often is probably the best solution. However it takes time and study to review the reasons for making a good check raise. I'm now in the habit of looking at my opponent's donk bet frequencies to make adjustments. Great video. I needed this one.
I scored 62%, which I don't think is too bad. Generally speaking, not enough c/r's but it looks like that's also most people's problem. I wonder what the average score is?
Watch a lot of poker teaching vid Yours I think is done very well and I can actually follow it and learn the others just confuse me Why I am subscribed to your channel
10:01 question. cbet looks fine. what happens if i get raised ? should i continue or just fold ? all your actions are fine but you dont continue with the hypotesis of explaining whats next. .. so in this case scenario , i cbet , opponent raises me , what should i do ? also regarding the first hand with the A flush draw , i check raise and opponent raises me back to allin , should we call or fold ? i want answers bro. i want money
Hi I'm still trying to understand the decision for A5 hand why would we check raise here ? Do we check raise cause we think our opponent Is cbet bluffing ? Let's say our opponent has top pair 8 is that the correct move ?
Our opponent cannot cbet. We could. But we will miss the cbet and hope our opponent stabs at the pot with a weak hand. Our intention is to semi-bluff raise if he does stab. Why is semi-bluff raising good? Because our opponent often stabs with weak pschidt so this is by no means 8x or better. Furthermore, we have great backdoor draws. Backdoor flush draw and backdoor straight draws (a 3 or 4 on the turn gives us a gutshot, a 6 gives us an open-ender). Lastly, spiking an Ace might give us the best hand.
about 2nd hand. high u cant win @ show down with 6 high. If you dont cbet you loose a chance to big blind fold. if you bet and he calls its ok. than you you can play some turns and some rivers. its a great hand to bluff 3 streets.
what range do you think V bet/calls with? how often is that range likely to bet the turn when checked to? how often is that range likely to fold to another barrel (what about a turn AND river barrel)? Start there =)
I strongly disagree with the recommended line of the 1st hand (A5h). Check raising with the nut flush draw on the flop is often preferable. However this flop is way too dry. Other than flush draws what are we raising? 22 and 77 and that's probably it, since we have around zero 2 pairs in our range. Moreover check calling opens up more bluffing opportunities on other streets. Imagine having a hand like Ah7x. This hand can check call flop and potentially bluff on bad runouts with a heart in them. Not saying raising is bad, but unless you start raising a ton of top pairs here as well you'll be too easy to read, which in turn worsens your implied odds.
If you do x/call, what is your overall turn idea when you A.) miss and B.) improve? Answering those questions can help ID the good and bad elements of a particular line =)
@@splitsuit That's an interesting question and these questions also apply when you check raise. I guess check raising makes your line easier, but imo it's suboptimal. To answer your question: A.) On bricks check call turn and sometimes lead rivers. Yeah he can have top pair, but even so he has a tough spot with a K with weak kicker, because our line looks strong. Also the dryeness of the board means that he can definately barrel twice with a random QJ or something, so our A has marginal showdown value. On broadways you could make a move. Maybe represent 2 pair or a combo draw. Villain has so much trash here he will fold often. And if he does call the turn with something like 2nd pair you can put pressure on the river. As I said, the board on the flop is just too dry to justify a check raise, but turns and rivers can make the board just wet enough to more credibly be aggressive. B.) Lead out. Make it big. He's not going to stack off with anything but top pair+ so might as well go large. Also, this makes your bluffs in this spot much more potent, because it's really flush or nothing. Thanks for the response btw :). The check raise with backdoors on low boards is a really cool move and I will be exploring it more thanks to this video.
yeah I don't know how is c/raising on that board standard with Ah5h, it is the most standard board for cbetting, where you want to cbet majority of your range, maybe even whole range vs players who will not raise or defend enough.. There is also no explanation what are we doing with other AhXh draws in this spot? Are we supposed to c/raise all of them or what? Clearly you want to cbet most of your AhXh hands, and put some % in your checking range. I would much rather c/raise Ah2h here.
When watching tournament poker, I feel there's alot limping in the small blind. Also the stacksizes are shorter at this point, how does that effect the same scenarios given in the quiz :) ?
at 11:18 with AA thats the exact hand ive got today. i got check raise as bein in position of the button. so BB checked the flop and i fired 1/2 pot and i got raised allin instantly. i thoght he has either a strong draw , a straight or a set. so i had to fold. the flop couldve make a straight and had 2 suited in it. so did i do right thing ? on a long term perspective ? shouldve i just checked back the AA and eventually just check call the turn a small size bet ?
Sure people don't XR enough but SB v BB (or OOP in general) these are very tricky pots to play ott and otr. It will just leave us with a ton of awkward turn spots oop with bloated pots. I would advise all except experts players to be very careful in these spots.
If i play against weak players do my game need to change to get more value? And i know you said that i have to be mature about it and be honest if i m really about the best player , for exmaple with weekend players do i need to play the same hame that you recommand?
Hey Roby. The term "weak" needs to be expanded further. If you mean "weak" in that they never fold and take high-cards to showdown, then reducing your bluffs makes sense. If you mean "weak" in that they are too fit-or-fold and make huge folding mistakes against cbets, then cbetting more air makes tons of sense. Try to be specific in your player typing and it will help you find easy adjustments in your value:bluff ratios =)
What is the frequency that your opponent does Not have top pair? Say middle, bottom, just air and then stabs. Against a frequent Cbettor who’s stabbing with air a lot this is profitable. You could take the same line with flopped 2 pair & sets. & hope he wants to gamble thinking you’re on a draw.
i respect your contribution to the poker community but i have l am disagree lots of hand that you say . i am a winning player , and those move that you disagree actually use by Pluribus , i dont think you can debate with AI and solver. draw with no show downvalue should be play aggressive, first we can possible bluff out, buy the pot from better draw , like some A high flush draw. , those draw with show down value can still possible play passively as we dont want face a 3 bet all in with a draw.
The explanation for why you should not check fold with nothing doesn't make sense. You "check raise because it works" but what happens when it doesn't work? What happens when I check raise and he raises again? None of these poker theory videos ever explain that half the time they are calling you with trash and getting lucky on the flop.
Thanks! I've been known to study a bit myself =) If you disagree, why not lay out your proposed lines and reasoning? I've created a thread if you want to go long-form: forum.redchippoker.com/discussion/12696/the-oop-cb-quiz
I disagree with a lot of the answers on this one. I really don't think you're c-betting enough for value and you're checking too much just because it is not vulnerable. There are still plenty of weaker hands that would call/float that I would want to get value from. I also disagree with your reluctance to play lower straight draws and flush draws aggressively simply because they are not drawing to the nuts. At 100bb deep at almost all player pools I am going to be more than happy to get it all in with a lower flush/straight, yes they could be beat once in a while but we are going to lose a lot when that happens regardless and it doesn't happen very often. I also think if we are really ever folding a flush/straight for fear of a higher one, without a huge read, then we are folding waay too often, we will be at the top of our range with those hands and should very rarely fold. I think getting it all in with those hands would definitely be the highest EV as we crush 2pair, sets and even some sticky TPTK hands way more often then we are beat.
Nothing wrong with disagreeing, and I appreciate you taking the time to formulate your thoughts. That said, I suspect you might be cbetting too often OOP (as most players do) which keeps your checking range super face-up and will create massive issues when you play against more competent opponents. Cbetting a ton works in many games, but when it starts to break down it's tricky to identify and thus slow to adjust...
@@splitsuit i absolutely agree that it's okay to disagree and I love discussing different ways to play a hand. I think that in the majority of the examples we are at least in the top 1/3 of our range here (if playing a wider SB raise preflop then hitting top or 2nd pair or strong draw is definitely in the top 1/3) and should be cbet imo. Then let's just assume if we choose a raise sizing of roughly 1/2 pot, we are giving our opponent 3:1 on a call and he should optimally fold 25% of his range (I feel like most players fold way more than this). Then we should be betting 75% of the time (assuming we get to this point with similar range strengths which I think is close enough to true) in order to make him indifferent between folding/floating hands on the cusp of 75% of his range. If he folds more than 25% of his range then we can exploit that by adding even more hands into our betting range beyond that of 75%. Therefore I am c-betting a very wide range here if I choose a 1/2 size. do you see any flaws in my frequency analysis/assumptions? I am curious, what overall frequency you are c-betting here?
