Hey everyone, my name's Uri Peleg, and in this video I'm going to teach you how to think and study like a pro.
We're going to start out showing the hand that I'm going to review. This is $10/$20.
Running through the hand, we open , face a three-bet, call.
Flop comes . We check. Villain checks back.
Turn is the .
- We check.
- Villain bets roughly two-thirds.
- We go for a check-raise.
- Villain calls.
River is the , and we decide to go all in.
Villain calls us with .
So this is the hand. I'm going to show you guys how to think about the hand like a regular player, and then how to think about the hand like a pro. So we're going to load up the hand in GTO Wizard.
How Most Players Analyze
Now, most guys just want to see whether or not they messed up. So they'd go to the turn facing a bet, and they'd see that indeed their hand can check-raise and should check-raise once it checks.
On the , if you look at , shoving is the same EV as checking. They're both mixed.
They might look to see whether their opponent's hand ( ) is in there, and they'd see it is. Then they kind of move on and say, "Okay, well-played hand by both."
How Pro Players Analyze
Now, if you're a pro, the difference is that you think about poker as though it's a chessboard. You think about the entire hand matrix. And so, the fact that you're curious about implies you're curious about what's happening in this hand with your entire range. Otherwise, you wouldn't be curious at all.
So, we'll start by going to the turn, and we'll note that when we have an open-ended straight draw, we're supposed to bet 95.5% of the time...
...and when we have a gutshot, we're supposed to bet 77% of the time.
So, our idea to check our open-ender in order to check-raise, while generally a good idea when you're out of position, doesn't apply on this turn. And we want to figure out why. What's the difference here?
And I think the answer is, you know, as a pro, you kind of look at these things and weigh, and you might even say, well, there are three sizes here, and I'm only going to implement one size in-game. I think I'm going to go with a polar size. So, we edit this down to just the one size.
So we'd start with this as our analysis, because this is a more realistic model of how we play. And then again, we'd see that Queen Jack, or open-enders, are betting 98 percent, and this is roughly 100.
So our idea to check to check-raise with an open-ender was incorrect.
Now, of course, we do want to have hands that check to check-raise. So let's see what those are. So, if we check and our opponent stabs small, which he should almost never do, he actually should only stab big. But if he stabs small, the bluffs we check-raise would be backdoor draws and some Ace highs, including every , not about blocking suited or anything. So, kind of surprising.
And I think that, of course, if we get here with , we check-raise it. But we're not trying to get here with that hand.
If our opponent bets big, similar idea. We'd kind of check-raise , but we're not trying to get here with .
And I think that the story here is that when you're at a shallow SPR, you don't want to inflate the pot too much with your open-enders. Draws to the nuts get devalued the less money there is behind. So, in a way, these hands would rather go for the one bet than shoot to go for two bets.
You'd rather take weaker draws. Even a hand like , which is a top-pair type of draw. You're just drawing to top pair because it's a shallow SPR. Top pair is top pair, does the job. Whereas in a deep SPR, you want stronger hands.
So, is trying to keep more money behind to make more profit when it hits, not in a rush to put money in. And I'm sure that in a single-raised pot or in a deeper SPR, this would be different.
And if you wanted to keep going, we would explore that idea further by loading up the same situation in a single-raised pot and seeing if indeed this concept holds true: that with the SPR being deeper, we do actually start checking .
Now, if we were to check this, and we'll do this really in short, I just loaded a 300-big-blind-deep sim of the same BB vs. BTN three-bet scenario where the flop goes check, check, then we'd immediately see that deeper, yes, open-enders do check.
So, this might just be an SPR thing. And that's important to know and to contextualize because sometimes you play against someone who's short, sometimes you play against someone who's deep, sometimes it's a four-bet pot, sometimes it's a three-bet pot. So, how much money there is behind determines which hands go for check-raise bluffs and which hands go for bets.
Now, I want you guys to note that we're thinking of the hand like a pro, and we haven't gotten to the river decision, which is what we're interested in.
River Analysis
Now, let's kind of go as played. And our opponent stabs one small, which he shouldn't, but he has multiple options and we have just one. So, let's not get into that for this video. And like we said, we could check-raise sometimes, rarely, and have him call. And then let's look at the river decision again.
And we'd see that offsuit never bluffs. Queen Jack suited mixed bluffs. And possibly we were thinking this hand would always bluff. It blocks trips. It has no showdown value. Why wouldn't it bluff?
And here we run into another kind of thing that we can learn and add to our game. And this thing is that when you check-raise and your range is draws and value, and all the draws miss, you're going to have to give up with a decent amount of your draws. So here, if we look at having no made hand or King high, you'll see that we actually need to give up 75% of these. And it doesn't look like there's a clear advantage to one over the other. The EV differences are very minor.
But just like is going to look good, is going to look good, is going to look good, is going to look good, and is going to look good. You can find an excuse to bluff any one of them. And in practice, you need to give up a lot.
So, this is another thing in case we weren't sure if we're pure jamming . We need to be aware of the structure here. All of my draws missed. So, I need to have a give-up frequency with my air. And there's no busted flush draw air which can kind of be first in line to give up.
Advanced Balancing Based on Suits
Now I'll add an additional thing on top of this because you might think, well, I want to block trips with my . Shouldn't spades be better than hearts? Shouldn't clubs and spades be pure and hearts and diamonds be give-ups?
And the answer is the EV is very marginal, and that's surprising. We'd expect it to be different.
So let's look at why. And when we go all in and look at our opponent's calling range, we can see that indeed he is calling trips with clubs or spades, but he's also folding and calling . And here he has the ability to manipulate his suits in the opposite direction.
So, by having the ability to control the suits of different hands like offsuit, suited, and maybe something like offsuit, the solver can make you indifferent regarding your suits. And then it means that whether or not you block trips doesn't matter.
Now, what can we take away from this? In practice, first of all, that against a naive opponent, it does matter. You should block trips. He's not going to make these mixes. He's not going to look at his suits and say, "Well, my opponent is more likely to bluff with spades. So when I have a spade, he's more likely to be bluffing. And so I should overfold with my spades and call more with hearts, which he'll give up, and call more with diamonds, which he'll give up." And you guys can see that that is actually what's happening here. That and are calling more.
And there are other nuances here, but generally speaking, I'd say this is a fairly advanced play, and I wouldn't recommend spending much time on it unless you're already playing nosebleeds, in which case you probably know this already.