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[Highlight] To CBET or not to CBET OOP

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Somnius
Joined: 05.05.2009

In this highlight thread we will explore some considerations in determining whether we should cbet oop.

Here is such a hand:

Originally posted by sandraardnas
Poker Stars, $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 6 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

Hero (SB): $108.26 (108.3 bb)
BB: $121.57 (121.6 bb)
UTG: $103.29 (103.3 bb)
MP: $445.93 (445.9 bb)
CO: $105.26 (105.3 bb)
BTN: $154.46 (154.5 bb)

Preflop: Hero is SB with K 9
4 folds, Hero raises to $3, BB calls $2

Flop: ($6) 6 8 9 (2 players)
Hero ???

Hey, vill is average reg, maybe bit more agro.
On this flop I except to get raised quite a lot, so I wouldnt bluff much. Then, Id like to protect weak checking range with more TP+ kind of hands.
If I bet stong 9x, then it would be a bit unreachable.
Hand might seem like it needs protection but bb is probably going to bluff very often on this board especially with hands that has most outs against A9, after xb he will be probably left with hands like QJo which has 2 overs at most.
Also if I get raised then it wouldnt be dreamed spot.
So what do you think about checking high TP here?

What worst hand would you x/r for value in this spot when you dont really know about his betting frequency in such spots?

In general we should be aiming to cbet with a relatively low frequency oop, especially in a speed variant environment.

Some reasons for this are:
- Coldcall ranges are a little tighter
- There are fewer fish and more reg-vs-reg play
- Being oop generally sucks and we want to try to keep the potsize to a minimum

So, in this hand we are BvB and in the SB with a marginal hand. It does not take many bluff hands to balance our confident value bets on this board. AK, AQ, AJ alone are 48 combos, add in flush draws, gutshots and we are already at well over 60 combos. If we value bet all overpairs+ that is TT+(30), twopairs(18), sets(9), straight(4 to 8) = 63 combos.

If we valuebet 2/3 pot with the prescribed bluff range we are already over-bluffing - so now we can valuebet more and include hands like A9, K9 etc or bluff less.

Considering the factors mentioned above + the potential of maintaining a valid x/c range means we should likely be maintaining a low cbet frequency oop. Even ~30% or lower might be ideal. Of course we can help our x/c range by doing so with very strong hands like top set or mid set sometimes as well. Doing so can have a dramatic effect on the equity of our x/c range while not doing much to influence the value combo % of our cbetting range.

However you craft your range - it is difficult to say exactly what is optimal and it does depend on your sizing strategy. We can posit however that generally, and especially in speed variants maintaining a low cbet % oop will be higher ev than most other conflicting strategies.

If you are cbetting with a higher frequency, overbetting turn and shoving river or something similar it opens the door to much more in the way of bluffing potential and thin value betting - however that is trivially more EV, difficult to implement as well, and potentially much higher variance.

What do you think - low cbet oop or super aggro mode and keep large cbet range?


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3 replies
GingerKid
Joined: 05.08.2007

So, in this hand we are BvB and in the SB with a marginal hand. It does not take many bluff hands to balance our confident value bets on this board. AK, AQ, AJ alone are 48 combos, add in flush draws, gutshots and we are already at well over 60 combos. If we value bet all overpairs+ that is TT+(30), twopairs(18), sets(9), straight(4 to 8) = 63 combos.

If we valuebet 2/3 pot with the prescribed bluff range we are already over-bluffing - so now we can valuebet more and include hands like A9, K9 etc or bluff less.

why are we overbluffing with 2/3 bet size using prescribed bluff range? If we bet 60 value combos, then by assuming perfectly polarized range, there should be around 110 bluffs. Since on low connected board, our bluffs have a lot of equity vs villians range,and our range is much stronger, then we can increase our number of bluffs to lets say 130-150.
Also I dont see a reason to bet only 2/3 on low draw heavy board, having stronger range, when we can bet pot size, or overbet, and that way use more bluffs in our range.


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GingerKid
Joined: 05.08.2007

Considering the factors mentioned above + the potential of maintaining a valid x/c range means we should likely be maintaining a low cbet frequency oop.

I dont see why would I cbet oop less? If we think that villians are calling too wide or raise too wide, then we can easily exploit it by bluffing more on later streets, c/r, 3bet etc.

What do you think - low cbet oop or super aggro mode and keep large cbet range?

Depends on the villian, or if unknown on population reads. It is imo pointless to make exploitative approach without info, it is impossible. If I play on pokerstars zoom, then regs are in general very tight, so I will go crazy with 3 barrels and overbets, and if i play party poker, regs are more stations and more spewy, so I would let them spew, and not overbluff vs unknown.


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awesomeo
Joined: 09.11.2009

I think on a board like that there could hardly be such thing as polarized cbet range, because any value 1 or 2 pair hand is very vulnarable and the reasonable bluffs have a lot of equity. Our equity is higher than the equity of villains whole continuing range but he will realize more because of position so its probably imposible to desing default readless plan for the hand that wouldn't seem flawed in a way. Basicaly any aggressive player, capable of raising or barreling his equity will have advantage over us on that texture and positions. We never look forward to be in a spot like that, except when holding the nuts, while having gutshot on BB is perfectly fine situation. So if we concentrate on how to minimize our losses maybe focusing on balancing our checking range and making sure we have strong hands in it would be the better idea. That still doesn't answer the question if K9o should be there.

If we start betting K9o we are bluffing and when called we will probably shut down at some point and fold when we face a bet, which is the same as starting to checks and fold to barrels at some point.

The range I would cbet/3bet/get in is something like the nuts, top, maybe middle set, combodraws, nut flushdraws:
99-88,T7s,75s,AsKs,AsQs,AsJs,QsJs,AsTs,KsTs,QsTs,JsTs,As9s,Js9s,As8s,As7s,Ks7s,Qs7s,Js7s,9s7s,As6s,As5s,Ks5s,Qs5s,Js5s,Ts5s,9s5s,8s5s,As4s,As3s,As2s

These are 38 combos that I'd label "value cbet range" and it is optimistic with the non nut flush/streight draws. If we assume 35% open from SB we have 9% value cbet range. So we can fill that up with bluffs and get close to 30% total cbet range. The problem is that if villain doesn't raise but start to call there will be many runouts where we wouldn't want to bet 3 streets with our "value range" and big part of it has no showdown value. So it make sense to have hands with showdown value in our bluffing range. And if we will be checking 66, 2 pair, big overpairs maybe we can bluff with weaker overpairs and top pairs and continue checking with the middle pairs. That should allow us to have top pairs, 1 card OESD/gutshots and overcards in our "bluffing range". We can put some of the smaller flushes in both betting and checking range.

The point of all that is that we can't really have polarized range on such board so the concept of betting proper ratio of value:bluffs probably works a bit defferent than it would on A72r in terms of what is value and what is bluff. And the bluffs need much more equity and possibly showdown value too when the value hands lack it.

If so then K9o is a decent bluffing hand to balance non showdown value "value" hands in our cbet range.

Or maybe we just x everything and cbet poralized T7s, 32s, 43s range _drink:


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