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NIVEL Y VARIABILIDAD DE LA TASA DE INTERÉS INTERBANCARIA (En puntos porcentuales)
If you want to figure out how often your continuation bet is going to work versus multiple players the process is very similar to the other hands we’ve seen. Filter what you believe their defending range is and deduce from that their folding range. If your first opponent is defending 60% of his holdings then 40% is
his folding range. If your second opponent is defending 65% of his range then he folds 35% of his hands. To get their combined folding range you’d multiply 35% by 40%, which would be reflected by 0.35 x 0.4 = 14%.
Yeah, they both fold 14% of the time. That’s on the tougher end of the spectrum, but you’re rarely getting two players to fold the required 33% of the time you need when you bet half the pot.
What’s the solution? Bet smaller on fit or fold boards. Also, don’t continuation bet in multiway pots without backdoor draws at the very least. It also assists you greatly if you have a good idea as to what your opponents are doing on the turn.
Turn and river play
Throwing out more barrels than donkey kong
If you can learn to blind steal, 3-bet bluff, and cold 4-bet with efficiency you will be very hard to deal with in poker tournaments. However, if all you learn is to continuation bet most of the time you’re heads- up, you’ll only be as postflop proficient as 99% of tournament grinders. What really separates the men from the boys is their turn and river play. This is where some work off the table is invaluable. Let’s say we’re in the same situation as the last section, with the same tight-aggressive opponent. The board comes K -7 -5 . We have 10 -9 , but we know this board bricks our opponent’s flatting range enough that we can justify continuation betting.We do so and he calls. Is our plan to shut down? It’s important we pay attention to his “Fold To Continuation Bet” statistics on the flop and turn. Many people are honest versus continuation bets on the flop because that’s where they make their big decision. They assume that if they flat on the flop they have to call down, because additional barrels are always coming. This person’s statistics will be something like “Fold To Flop Continuation Bet” 65%, “Fold To Turn Continuation Bet” 30%. You should not blindly barrel against this guy.
Alternatively, if our opponent never folds the flop and routinely folds the turn you know that is the street where he becomes honest. His stats will be something like “Fold To Flop Continuation Bet” 31%, “Fold To Turn Continuation Bet” 65%. This means he likes to float, but if you batter him with the second barrel he goes away.
Knowing these details drastically changes how you should approach different turn cards. A 2 turn, for example, doesn’t change much, but that’s fine if you have the person who floats a great deal. The two certainly didn’t make them a pair they feel great about. You can fire and feel good about folding their various superior high-card holdings. If you have the person who is honest versus the flop continuation bet, however, that 2 is an awful card. You can’t represent anything now.
Now let’s try something. We have a middle-of-the-road player, again, our 20/17 tighter grinder. He folds 50% of the time to flop continuation bets, and 48% of the time to turn bets. He likes to hold on a little more than the average regular, because he tends to start with a better range of hands, but he is not impervious to folding.
On this same board K -7 -5 we see a J turn. It gives us a gutshot but nothing else. Should we double barrel?
If you don’t know the answer to this one right away, you’re not alone. Let me show you how you could solve for it, starting with the flop (Diagram 11).
button. That “froze” our opponents range (derived from the circled filters) for analysis on the next card. You’ll notice that our filters are not over hands that are obviously playing versus us such as sets. That is because this time we are not analysing whether our opponent’s defending range is weak enough to allow us to continuation bet regularly. The continuation bet already failed. We are moving to the turn.
What we are instead filtering for are hands that would just call versus our continuation bets. I excluded sets and flush draws because our opponent generally plays those hands in an aggressive manner. Remember, he is tight and aggressive. Once he gets a decent equity share on the flop he knows how to apply pressure and not allow draws to get there.
Diagram 11
Notice the little boxed filter next to the range portion “weak pair.” This identifies that I edited the range. To do this simply right click the section. You can then delete hands you don’t think will come along. For this situation I had him calling with all the weak pairs that were better than a 5, but I deleted 4- 4, 3-3, and 2-2, assuming he’d fold them.
I removed all the flush draws, because that would help us with a turn double barrel. If he flats with a bunch of his mediocre flush draws, a missed draw on the turn helps us fire. While it’s likely he’d only raise with the nut flush draws and draws+pair combinations I wanted us to have a tougher decision.
Now, let’s put another card down under the flop section. This will enter the turn card and adjust the statistics on the right to reflect how his hand range has been changed (Diagram 12).
As you can see, the J has drastically changed our opponent’s hand values. He had a fairly strong flop calling range, but now 63% of his hands are weak pairs!
“What if he’s not the type of guy to fold those hands to a double barrel?” Great question. Given his fold to continuation bet on the turn is only 48% that is a valid concern.
Diagram 12 Remember, that 48% was derived when people made typical turn continuation bets, say 50-67% of the pot. What do you think would happen if you bet, say, the size of the pot? Quickly, did you know how often that pot-sized bet would need to work? Like your multiplication tables, you should have known without thinking. If you bet the size of the pot your bet must succeed 50% of the time. If your opponent here calls with Q- Q (as I’ve filtered for) then he is only calling 37% of the time. That means he is folding 63% of the time. You have a meaty double barrel opportunity here. In Flopzilla, there is an option to lock the flop you had and then activate random turns. This is a great way to practice for several situations at once. Normally, you’d have to get into the same double barrel spot twice every few weeks and hope your memory is good enough to make some connection and eschew results-orientated thinking. This way, you can practice the situation you had trouble with, trying several turn cards, and visualizing different bet sizes. Keep notes on your findings.
What if…
Many times I show a hand like this and the next question I receive is, “what if somebody just really doesn’t like folding to continuation bets? Their “Fold To Flop Continuation Bet” is 30% and their “Fold To Turn Continuation Bet” is 40%?
Theoretically, if he is playing a wide range of hands preflop, your bet should be larger. Many aggressive players are putting up a front. They want to be perceived as aggressive and not weak. They don’t want to do anything that will make them look stupid.
Calling an overbet for no real reason is considered stupid by most poker players. Overbets are not in fashion. Most of the players who make overbets are trying to get serious value by overplaying a premium hand. These aggressive players will consider you to be a straightforward player who is overplaying a premium hand and feel quite comfortable folding to it.
Alas, if your opponent is not playing a normal range of hands preflop or seems to be particularly testy that day, just check and fold.
how often a great player at my table will check and fold. They don’t put those hands on TV because they’re not particularly interesting, but all those saved 3BB continuation bets add up in the long run.
Giving up also shows maturity. Many beginning players can never check and fold to an opponent, because it insults their ego to concede a pot to another. The guys who are actually out to profit realize that money saved is money earned.
The mythical triple barrel
Try bluffing ten rivers in online poker and tell me how the experience went. You back? Yeah, what a waste of time, huh? The problem with online tournament poker is that the river is not as threatening. On the turn your opponent doesn’t get to see your hand when they call, and the hand isn’t over. They have to sweat a new card that could hurt their holding. Additionally, another bet could threaten their stack. On the river, none of this exists. There are no more bets or cards to come that could screw things up for them. Furthermore, when they call they get to see your hand. If they were really good at folding on rivers they probably wouldn’t be playing no-limit hold’em tournaments. Given the choice of folding or investing a little more Monopoly money to win a great deal of Monopoly money and simultaneously satisfy their curiosity as to what exactly you were holding, then unsurprisingly most of these folks elect to call. As such, I don’t recommend a triple barrel very often unless the bet is an overbet or puts your opponent all- in. When his tournament life is on the line he’s more likely to think of the call in terms of real money and time invested, which may lead him to find the dusty fold button. There’s also something logically holding back the success rate of your triple barrels. Traditionally, we barrel for a specific reason. Our opponent has many possible hands, but is only going to the next street with the strongest among those holdings. Since there are so many weaker holdings, we can bet knowing that only the cream of the crop is calling. For this reason, it’s often a great idea to bet the flop for the same reason it’s a horrible idea to bet the turn. Your opponent is honest and folding too often; he only continues with solid holdings which are unlikely to fold to another bet. We’ve seen in the previous section how we can alter bet sizes to produce a fold. We’ve also seen how certain turn cards could drastically change the values of our opponent’s flop calling range. Yet, when our opponent’s range has been put through a flop and turn strainer, it’s usually less likely they have much they can fold on the river. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t triple barrel. It just means that it is trickier. One way we can set up a triple barrel is by betting small on the turn to set up a river shove. The real money and time investment of the tournament comes to mind when their tournament life is at stake. The small bet allows them to see the river with too many weak hands without a plan. Also, this is a great tactic if a number of river cards help our triple barreling range. To find out what those cards are we can do the same thing we just did for the turn in Flopzilla. In the example we’ve been working with let’s pretend we only bet 50% of the pot on the turn. We were playing too many tables and were on autopilot. This bet is not advisable for reasons we’ve already discussed and because few river cards greatly affect our perceived range. However, in our example of letting an expanded range of our opponent’s hands carry through, we bet half-pot and they called with anything better than third pair. This is reflected as follows (Diagram 13).Diagram 13 You can see what is calling in our opponent’s range. Now let’s add the one overcard which could save our ass, the almighty ace (Diagram 14). Now our opponent’s range is in tatters. A full 67.6% of it is a weak pair! What is a weak pair? That is third pair or worse. To give you an idea of how broadly you can bluff, imagine you bet 2 times the size of the pot. In a pot of $100 you apply $200 of pressure. You’re risking $200 to win $300. 200/300 = 66.67%. Your bet would need to work 66.67% of the time as a pure bluff in order to show a profit.
If our opponent is going to fold third pair or worse on this river he will be folding 67.6% of the time. You will have a 1% edge. Certainly, this is enough to make a play chipEV profitable, but perhaps not enough to make us shove, considering ICM equations. Yet, if our opponent is also going to fold a king, he will be folding 76.42% of the time. You now have a 10% edge if you shove for 2x the size of the pot!
Of course, smaller bets can be just as effective and won’t require nearly as high of a folding percentage.
Diagram 14
This is where the math becomes especially interesting in no-limit hold’em. So many people would never try a bet 2 times the size of the pot, because it feels so gross when you lose and have to show a bluff. We, however, are going to adhere to logic, not what the peanut gallery will yell at us.
That’s a check-raise, fool!
Three years ago, I was teaching for a larger backing house at a camp of theirs. They’d flown players from around the world to receive poker instruction from me and one of my friends for a week. The kids were great, but one instance really made them lose their mind. Near the end of the camp, I played a session on a big screen for them. They were aghast at how often I flatted from the big blind. “I would never do that!” they exclaimed. Then, when they saw me check- folding some bottom pairs, they looked like they were going to go into cardiac arrest.In today’s environment, it’s much more popular for people to flat from the big blind. This worries some, as the game has changed and they don’t know how to react. I addressed in a previous section why it’s actually free money: people flat, miss the board 60%+ of the time, and then fold. We’re in 2006 again!
To avoid being one of these people you need to develop a competent check-raise bluffing game.
One of the first things you should look for when planning a check-raise is the person’s stack size. Imagine what their continuation bet will look like coming from their stack. If you check-raise will the person have room to flat you, allowing them to see the turn? Will they be able to 3-bet bluff you should they get suspicious? If they can’t do any of these things then you’ve put them in a very tricky position. They will need to move all-in in order to catch your bluff. Many people don’t have it in them to turn over a high card when all the chips go in.
The stacks I recommend to check-raise are typically around 30BB. If they have less than that it can work as well. In fact, your check-raise won’t have to be as large, so it will mathematically need to succeed a smaller percentage of the time. However, one should be careful when trying to use a check- raise on these smaller stacks. When someone puts in a greater percentage of their chips they are more likely to say, “screw it” and pop in the rest of them. You won’t be making nearly as many underpairs fold.
You can also do a check-raise bluff on larger stacks, but you might want to make your check-raises larger. Most people size their check-raises somewhere around 2.2x their opponent’s continuation bet. Out of position, this is an insult. It’s saying, “I know you have nothing, and I’m going to give you an incredible price to 3-bet or float, because I know you won’t do anything with it.” Obviously, this injures some men’s egos. It’s better to make it closer to the size of the pot. Then your check-raise is absurd, and you’re the idiot. They don’t lose face folding, and remember, a pot-sized check-raise only needs to work 50% of the time. If you pick your boards correctly you’ll know they have no pair and no draw 60%+ of the time.
What boards should we check-raise?
When people start trying to develop a check-raise bluffing game they try to bluff boards that are very hit or miss. Say they and their opponent are 40BB deep. Their opponent opens from the cutoff with 25% of their hands. He raises to 2BB. Our hero flats from the big blind with 9 -7 after everyone else folds. The pot is now 6BB. The board comes Q -Q -2 .We’ve missed, but this looks like a very hard board for our opponent to hit as well. Yet, how can we know for sure how often our opponent hit the board?
Under the statistics column I’ve placed a filter next to every hand of our opponent’s that is better than A-K high (as marked by “overcards”). You’ll notice that only 43.6% of the time our opponent has A-K high or better. That means 56.4% of the time he has no pair, and no more than three overcard outs.
It looks like a great flop! We check, and villain on the cutoff bets 3BB. Delighted, we make it 7BB. Take that! Diagram 15 The problem is if our opponent is a thinking player, (and most of them are thinking players now) he’s going to wonder what you have. You have an even weaker range than he does. His opening range could still contain bigger pairs. Since you just called preflop, it’s less likely you have those holdings. If you hit trips on this board with a queen, what are you necessarily getting value from? You have the deck crippled. You might get value from a smaller pair right now, but will you get more on the turn? Furthermore, if you