El blanco

Hey guys,

Just thought I'd write a little something.

On Double Barreling:

This is a concept not widely used in uNL or even SSNL. It is a very common play in MSNL+, where the aggression is much higher and more frequent than those games that we play. It can be an effective play used in many different manners.

What is Double Barreling?

Double Barreling is exactly that. Firing two barrels. The purposes can be very many- from pure bluffing against a suspected float or semi-bluffing with a nice draw, the double barrel is effective.

When double barreling:

-We mix our ranges so that when we bet the turn after raising PF/betting the flop, our hand is NOT always the nuts/strong hand. Our ranges are wider and therefore harder to read.

-Along with that, we gain more action to when we DO actually have a hand.

-When applied correctly to certain players, we either dictate the action and set ourselves odds in which we would not have received (when double barreling draws) and enable ourselves another chance at winning the pot other than improving.

Some examples of double barreling:

(Assume all situations are 100BBs/6max).

The first and very standard one:

You open xx in the CO, BB calls, all else fold.

Flop: T 2 9

BB checks, You bet, BB calls Turn: A/K/paint

BB checks, You bet, he folds.

This is pretty much the standard double barrel line. We bet because the paint changed the board and therefore hand values. A villain should be much stronger if your betting (and repping) that paint card (and should fear a river bet if he calls). This is a very standard double barreling line used against all opponents.

As you move in limits, this common knowledge can be exploited (ie. calling much wider, bluff raising the double barrel because you know the opponent would double on this board nearly everytime, etc). But for now, this is still a nice play, and one that CAN be used for value too (ie. having AK on that such board and betting the turn).

Your raise A K to 4xbb. You get a TAG caller on the button, all else fold.

(10bb)Flop: T 6 6 You bet 6bb, he calls

(22bb)2

You bet 15bb, and he folds.

Notes: This is a common line used most against TAGgy regulars. This play is often used against more competent players as donkeys will continue to call with 77 and other marginal hands. As of PF/flop action, we can generally narrow TAG's hand range to a pp or some float. By double barreling, we generally fold out better hands against a very predictable range. The TAG should be thinking "he knows that the turn changed nothing, why is he betting? He must be strong"

#3:

You raise A 7 , Button calls, all else fold. He is an unknown player.

(10bbs)Flop: 4 T K You bet 8bb, He calls.

(26bb)Turn: 2 You bet 17bb

There are a few reasons why double barreling on these boards is nice. You set your own price for a draw, one that your opponent may not have given you. You also enable yourself another chance to win the pot other than improving (as stated earlier, and also the definition of a semi-bluff). In CR, GP states that K high boards are excellent ones to double barrel on, simply because you are representing a ton of strength.

As stated earlier, your hand range is widened - many times, you would be double barreling with AK and the like in this spot. Try exchanging A 7 with AK/a set/QJ and you still may very well be double barreling. Mixing your strong hands with draws is an essential skill that evolves into 5th level thinking in the HSNL games (ie. bet sizing/etc).

Betting the turn makes river play GENERALLY pretty easy. If your opponent is one that will fold to aggression, you can triple barrel at times. If he's determined and willing to go far with this hand, you can c/f- (probably the best selection for those in uNL).

Another instance in which it might be nice to double with a draw is when you pick up a draw on the turn.

You open 6 7 someone calls.

Flop: T 2 4 You bet, he calls Turn: 8 You should bet

Again, it goes along with the semibluffing thing. Sorry, forgot to add this little snipit (edit), one thing I forgot.

There are many more instances in which double barreling is effective, these are just a few. Think for yourself on some other spots and share them.

GET IT IN (poincaraux)

[Note: I started writing this up, and then got busy. It's still probably too long-winded for many people to actually read it, but I thought the EV calculations in the middle were pretty enlightening. Cliff's notes: bet more]

In another thread yesterday, 4_2_it said

Quote:

When you flop a monster the first thing you should do is look at stack sizes and figure out what size bets on each street gets everything in the middle.

I've thought about this before, and I think about it sometimes during the hands, but not enough. I wrote this up on the fly, and hadn't really thought so explicitly about this stuff before, so please give me some feedback. The basic idea is that, when we flop a

monster, we want to think about lines that will get as much of our stack in the middle as possible. Ideally, if there's money left to bet on the river, we want the pot to be bigger than our stack. The bigger the pot is, the easier it is for the villain to make a crying call.

Let's think about two standard lines:

One villain, normal stacks, hero raises in position pre-flop I play a lot of hands that are effectively like this.

To make the numbers easy, let's say it's $100NL, 6-max and this happens:

Preflop: UTG limps, Hero raises to $4, UTG calls, everyone else folds.

Flop: ($10, 2 players, stacks $95).

One bet per street, hero flops the nuts and wants to get all the money in.

The two hands that made me think about this were hands where Hero had Ace-rag suited and flopped the nut flush.

What are the lines?

If there's only one bet per street, I think the standard 2+2 lines are pot-it-all-the-way-baby and 3/4-on-the-flop-2/3-on-the-turn.

 pot-pot gives us $30 in the pot and $85 in our stack on the turn and

$90 in the pot, $55 in our stack when we see the river, and we're asking villain to put in a little more than 1/2-pot on the river.

 3/4-pot, 2/3-pot has us betting $7.50 on the flop, seeing the turn with $25 in the pot and $87.50 in our stacks, betting $17 on the turn and ending up at the river with $70 in our stack and $60 in the pot.

How much are they worth

So, there's a *huge* difference between those two lines. Let's say, for instance, that villain has donk-certified calling hand against you, like TPTK. He'll probably call

reasonable-sized bets, but be less likely to call an overbet. Let's see how he stacks up (ha!!!) against the two lines.

 Against the 3/4,2/3 line, let's say he'll always call the flop, call the turn 80% of the time, but only call the river overbet 50% of the time. We'll analyze things

from the flop on. Then, our EV is

1.0*(10 + 7.5) + 0.8*(17 + 0.5*(70)) = $59.

 For the pot-pot line, let's say he'll always call the flop. Similarly, he'll always call the river if he gets there because there's so much money in the pot. What's our EV if he'll fold the turn more often, though? Let's say he folds the turn a lot, like 50% of the time. Then our EV is

1.0*(10 + 10) + 0.5*(30 + 55) = $62.5.

It turns out that he only has to call 46% of the time on the turn for the lines to have the same EV. What if he's a more typical calling-station kind of guy and calls more like 70% of the time on the turn? Then our EV is $80. That's 1/3 more money than we were making with the smaller bets. Intuitively, you can see that the villain will have to be a *lot* more likely to fold to the pot-pot line before we start using the 3/4,2/3 line. In practice, this means that I'm much more likely to go pot-pot on scary boards, either because I have the scary hand, or because I don't want villains drawing to it.

So, unless you think that villain is savvy enough to make some real adjustments based on the various lines you take, you should be betting quite a bit when you have a great hand. The key is thinking ahead on the early streets. We want to set things up so that, when the villain decides he'll call a 1/2-pot bet on the river, that 1/2-pot bet is a lot of money. Pots grow exponentially, so betting just a little more early on can make a big difference later on.

With shorter stacks, you won't be able to make sizeable bets on all streets. As stacks get deeper, this concept gets more important. With big hands, I usually try to squeeze out as much value as I possibly can on the early streets, because it makes it that much easier to get more value on the later streets.

Just so that you don't have to work it out on the fly, if there's $10 in the pot on the flop, pot-pot-pot bets will be bets of $10, $30 and $90, and we'll get about $130 of your stack in. That is, if it's going to go pot-pot-pot, you can get 13x the pre-flop money in.

If it's going to go pot-pot-1/2pot, the bets will be $10, $30, $45, and we'll get $85 in, so you can get 8.5x the pre-flop money in.

If it's going to go 3/4, 2/3, 1/2, the bets will be $7.5, $17, $30 and we'll get $54 in, so you can get about 5x the pre-flop money in that way.

So, if we have full stacks and want to get it in, 3/4, 2/3, 1/2 isn't good enough. Why am I focusing on smaller bets on the river? Well, it's quite possible that, in situations like this, he'll have an OK hand with a draw that missed on the river. I want most of the money in before then so that he can make a crying call.

More than one bet per street

When we flop a monster, we can run into a lot of situations where the villain has a good draw. In that situation, it's likely that we can get more than one bet in per street. Then again, those extra bets are usually on the flop.

A lot of that transfers pretty easily when you start thinking about b3b, cr, etc. The key is to think "if I bet this much, the pot will be that much on the next street and the stack sizes will be blah blah."

If there's $10 in the pot, and it goes bet-raise on the flop, you might get $20 in on the flop. If it goes pot-call, pot-call after that, you'll put in $50 on the turn and $150 on the river, getting $220 of your stack in. So, when you're playing against someone who has a 2x stack, it's important to raise early on to set things up to get the stacks in later on.

(We'll often want to bet less on the river, though).

Hmmn .. that sounds like the hand from the post I referred to earlier:

Quote:

UTG ($26.81) MP ($30.50) CO ($9.75) Hero ($38.62) SB ($41.49) BB ($47.10)

Preflop: Hero is Button with A , 2 . SB posts a blind of $0.10.

3 folds, Hero raises to $1, 1 fold, BB calls $0.75.

Flop: ($2.10) 9 , Q , T (2 players) BB bets $1, Hero raises to $2, BB calls $1.

Turn: ($6.10) 7 (2 players)

BB bets $3.03, Hero raises to $7, BB calls $3.97.

River: ($20.10) J (2 players) BB checks.HERO?

So, hero ends up with $30 in his stack and $20 in the pot, making it pretty hard to get the rest in. In this specific case, there was some history, and villain was pretty likely to think he was getting pushed around, so a push from the hero got a stubborn call. Just for fun, though, let's see how this would have played out with bigger bets:

If hero makes about a pot-sized raise on the flop, it will look like Flop: ($2.10) 9 , Q , T (2 players)

BB bets $1, Hero raises to $4, BB calls $3.

Now, even if villain goes into check-call mode, Turn: ($10.10) 7 (2 players)

BB checks, Hero bets to $10, BB calls $10.

And we see the river with $30 in the pot and $23 in our stack.