Hey everyone, what's up? This is Uri for GTO Wizard, and in this video, I'm going to show you how to crush people who range bet small. Let's get into it.
So, the key to beating any strategy is, first of all, to understand it. In order to understand the strategy of range betting small, I'm going to ask you a simple question: if we're optimizing for a hand group—say, either big hands like A♠8♠ or A♠K♠ on this board, A♠8♠2♠, or medium to small hands like pocket nines, pocket sixes, or K♠Q♠ high—which type of hands do you think the small bet optimizes for?
The answer to this is very clearly the small hands. A♠K♠ and A♠8♠ want big pots. They want to bet big. Something like nines would really appreciate a smaller bet size. So the first key to understanding the small bet strategy is that it's centered around small hands. In poker, a lot of the dance is: how do I get a lot of money in with my big hands without leaving my little hands too face up so they get run over?
One way to do this is just chunking everything together.
So betting everything here, I forced the solver to bet everything. Once your opponent calls and you get a turn card, you now separate your range into two bits, which I'll show you guys how to do. It's very straightforward and very particular to this kind of strategy, where after the small flop bet, anything like nines or sevens becomes very clear cut. Now we bet or check.
This is called a polarized bet—either very big or check—and all our medium-strength hands get to the river.
So this is the idea of a small bet strategy. Now, how do you beat people once you understand this idea? There are actually a few different segments to beating it, and a few different types of mistakes you might be making.
Tip #1 – Defend Wider
Mistake number one is folding too much. When your opponent bets small, it's very important that you're aware of a concept called backdoor equity or backdoor draws. Just continuing with pairs and draws and maybe high-card hands isn't enough.
I'll show you this quickly on the solver where you can see a hand like J♠10♠ just continuing on a 2♠♣ rainbow. J♠10♠ is almost three to a straight, but it can make straights on both ends. A hand like 9♠7♠ is always continuing. A hand like 6♠7♠ can continue, and even 5♠6♠ can continue. This is due to the backdoor equity. These hands can turn draws. Similarly, all sorts of hands with backdoor flush draws—even as weak as 9♠5♠ suited or 7♠4♠ suited—get to continue versus a small bet.
If you're not aware that you can continue with these types of hands, there's a very high likelihood these small bets are running you over. So, the first step to countering small bets is to continue with a wide calling range.
Tip #2 – Check-Raise Flop Aggressively
The second step to continuing versus a small bet is your raising range. I already said this is meant to optimize for your opponent's weak to medium-strength hands. If we don't raise aggressively, they get to see the river kind of cheap with any hand they want. So, what the computer does to counter this is it has a very aggressive check-raising strategy with both a lot of bluffs and value hands, a lot of backdoor draws, in addition to made hands—especially on these kinds of dry boards.
This awareness of backdoor draws is important. There are also some hands that are not actually looking to put a stack in. You'd see something like A♠6♠, A♠9♠ suited, 8♠9♠ suited, or a pair of deuces generally looking to bluff. A pair of eights or sixes at times, too—it depends on the runout.
The idea with these hands is we can attack the weak to medium-strength hands. It doesn't have to be by putting our stack in. It just needs to be by putting more money in with a better hand. So, something like A♠6♠ would go check-raise. Then how do you play it later? Just as though the pot is the size you got to, and this is your hand strength. So, very likely check the turn and maybe throw in a small value bet on the river.
Of course, if you turn a six, things change. And yeah, that's part of the game—constantly re-evaluating your hand. So, the number two thing is you want to be check-raising aggressively, including a bit merged and including backdoor draws. This denies your opponent the ability to see the river for free.
Now, I’ll throw in a caveat: if you're going to check-raise, you better know how to play the turn, and you can study this with GTO Wizard. Most hands tend to play rather intuitively, but understanding which turn cards are good or bad for each player helps to manage your frequencies in these spots.
Tip #3 – Probe River Aggressively
The third key to beating guys who range bet is recognizing that these guys have kind of pulled a trick. They took their weak hands, bet them along with the strong hands on the flop, but once they check the turn, generally speaking, they get to the river with a very weak range.
The computer will actually check back stronger than most humans will, but in practice, most guys keep betting all their good hands and check back a range centered on 3s through Kings, 8x, and K-highs. The third key here is to be extremely aggressive on the river.
Here, you see an example of the solver going for a pot-sized bet with most all pairs, going for quite a few bluffs. If I were to input multiple sizes, you'd actually see there's also a wide swath of middle pairs betting small to punish your opponent for all the 7s, 5s, 4s, 6x, and K-highs he got to the river with. So very wide, very aggressive betting.
The less your opponent is trapping, the more you can actually size up these bets even bigger, even have overbets. The key thing is recognizing the weakness in the strategy is at two points:
- When they bet the flop, there are a lot of weak hands in there.
- Once they check back the turn, they get to the river with quite a lot of weak hands.
These would be the pressure points where we can try to take advantage of the strategy. Whereas when they bet the turn big, that’s a very strong range, and there's not much you can do there other than hope you have a good hand and fold quite often the rest of the time.
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