Why Crushers Are So Aggressive
Why does it feel like the best of the best are always aggressive?
Are they just running hot and getting dealt the nuts more often than everybody else?
Of course not. They just know when and how to apply aggression most effectively. And with the help of hundreds of millions of hands of data, we'll look into how you can do the same at your stakes without punting off your chips unprofitably.
In this hand, DavyJones922, certified crusher, opens Queen Jack suited and gets three-bet by Prodigy, a top tier player himself.
Davy calls and flops second pair. Pr0digy c-bets 25 percent pot, which allows him to c-bet a very wide range, maybe even his complete range in practice.
Many hands in Davy's range have at least a draw or are a pair. So, most folds come from those without a straight or flush draw, but also low pocket pairs that don't have a spade, especially to , have to fold. suited is a clear call.
The turn is a king, which can help if we were behind as we now have a gutshot to the nuts, but it can also throw us back against hands like , , or , which now picked up a better pair.
Pr0digy checks.
Now, most players would just check back here. We have a decent pair, which might be ahead and win at showdown, and we might even improve on the river. So, should you just check if you were in a similar spot at lower stakes?
Well, to have a crusher's win rate, you can't just think about your hand's incentives. Instead, when you make a decision, you need to consider your overall range.
Here, we would definitely want to bet some hands for value. Most two pair and straights, want to get money in.
Now, if we have value bets, we also need some bluffs to be balanced and not be predictable and exploitable against good opponents.
So, which hands are the best to bluff here?
Flush draws might come to mind first as they don't have much showdown value. However, there are not that many of them that don't have a pair. And also, they actually prefer checking because betting and having to fold against a check-raise is a big loss. So, they would rather check behind and realize their equity.
Instead, theory suggests something that only advanced players are capable of: turning a pair into a bluff. Unfortunately, is not the right pair.
According to GTO, second and third pairs always check behind in this spot. And the pairs that would be turned into bluffs are different ones. Low pocket pairs. These simply have much less showdown value than the higher pairs, and they also get to fold out better pocket pairs by betting, which is a big EV win.
Still, if you were in this situation at middle or low stakes, betting Queen Jack would not be a bad idea.
Why? Well, because Davy Jones did it, too. And copying every play that high stakes crushers make is the best way to become a crusher yourself. Just kidding.
The thing is, we don't know exactly why Davy bet here as there can be multiple reasons. But regardless, you want to make decisions based on what applies to your opponents at your stakes. And if you don't have a specific read, your best approach is to rely on pool data, meaning how the average player in a player pool plays and where they make mistakes. And for that, we'll look into data from hundreds of millions of hands.
In this spot, after cbetting the flop small, the average opponent in the small blind check-folds more often on the turn than they should in theory. Across all Ace high boards, we see an overfold of around 6 percentage points.
In theory, they should check-fold third pair 49 percent of the time and second pair only 26 percent of the time against this turn bet. But factoring in the average regular's overfold of 6 percentage points, they likely check-fold them more often.
The according simulation including these node-lock deviations shows that we could bet much more often against such an opponent on the turn.
However, we still wouldn't bet Queen Jack suited. Instead of adding second and third pairs as bluffs, our best adjustment would be to add more low pairs and high cards. So flush draws as bets first.
So, why did I say betting Queen Jack could still be profitable for you?
Well, the hand isn't over yet.
And on the river, we again see the average of players fold more often against a bet than theory allows.
Which means not only can you bluff more often on the river, but if you can already expect your opponent to overfold the river when you're on the turn, you can bet more often on the turn as well. Because that gets you to exploit that river spot even more often.
So, factoring in an overfold on all rivers into the node lock (Yes, I did manually node lock every river to be overfolded by 4 percentage points). We see that even most third pairs, including Queen Jack, would be profitable bets on the turn.
So, how can you spot these situations when you haven't studied every single board for population's behavior?
Well, for spots like this, there are two factors that tend to make a player overfold.
- They have to implement a strong checking range here. Basically, every set and every straight has to slow play the turn. So, if they don't do that and sometimes bet them themselves, they already have a weaker range when facing your bets, which makes it hard to defend often enough against aggression.
- Even with so many slow played nuts, GTO would still demand some call downs with most pure top pairs and even a lot of and , which are not the most comfortable hands to call off your stack with. So many people just won't do it.
So, if you see spots where these two are the case, you can usually be more aggressive than you think and profit from their overfolds.
Just remember that expecting an overfold from your opponent doesn't mean they fold every time.
So sometimes you will simply get caught bluffing. But with the right research and intention, you had a good reason for it. That's the difference to just punting it off.
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