Mersenneary Video 6 - Advanced End Game Play - The Small Blind (Part 2)

To Balance or to Exploit?

• One of the central questions in poker strategy.
• Against bad, static players, you'll be wanting to exploit as much as possible. Forget balance.
• Against Phil Ivey, you want to play an equilibrium strategy that cannot be exploited.
• Your opponents, in general, will be somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. We'll talk about ROFL for both cases and how to practically apply it.

Exploitative Play

• Adaptive and Standard.
• Adaptive exploitative play: Changing your strategy based on villain tendencies divergent from population norm.
• Example: Your particular opponent is 3-bet shoving close to ATC, far wider than average, so you tighten up your raising range.
• Standard exploitative play: Standard non-equilibrium play taking advantage of leaks the population has in general.
• Example: In general, villains tend to play too fit-or-fold in limped pots, so you stab at a lot of them OOP with no showdown value until reads tell you villain is surprisingly competent.
• Knowing how the general population plays is extremely important and profitable. This is an area I lack proper knowledge in that could instantly increase my win-rate significantly. I have made it a priority to observe  population leaks but am having trouble identifying the less obvious ones.
• population plays too fit-or-fold in limped pots.
• population tend to be too loose on the first hand.

12bb Sample Case

• I'm going to propose a ROFL range you might use against a decent but not Godlike player at 12bb from the SB. Throughout, we'll talk about how you might adjust to exploit different BB leaks. This isn't meant to be a perfect equilibrium range, just a launching point to get you thinking.
• Raise (2x)
• Example Range (48.3%): 77+,A8s+,K2s+,Q4s+,JTs,J7s-J5s,T6s,96s,86s,75s+,64s+,54s,A8o+,K2o+,Q6o+,J7o+,T6o+,96o+,86o+,76o

• In this Range:
1. Hands that are raise/calling and dominate wide 3-bet shoving ranges (19.3%: 77+, A8+, K9+, Q9+).
2. Hands that are raising to steal but do decently post-flop if we get flatted (the rest).
• Sample 2x Raise Range Balance Properties
• Example Range (48.3%): 77+,A8s+,K2s+,Q4s+,JTs,J7s-J5s,T6s,96s,86s,75s+,64s+,54s,A8o+,K2o+,Q6o+,J7o+,T6o+,96o+,86o+,76o
• This is 48.3% of all hands.
• Raise/call range depends on opponent. Let's start with what might seem like a reasonable range 12bb deep: all pairs, all Ax, K8+, Q9+ (20.5% of all hands, ~42% of raising hands). However, 3-bet shoving is profitable with 32o if that's your calling range!
• From experience, people usually aren't shoving 100% over min-raises 12bb deep, even if they know that's your calling range. You probably have that leak yourself against players who min-raise a healthy percent 12bb deep.
• This is what we mean by standard exploitative play: You can exploit the fact that most people don't 3-bet shove enough at these blind depths.
• Raise (2x) - Adaptive Exploitation
• What do we do if...
• Villain is 3-betting a high frequency?
• Raise/call more frequently when you raise, both by folding or limping more junky hands and by raise/calling with more marginal hands.
• Villain is 3-betting infrequently?
• Add more air hands to 2x range (often, all of them). Figure out openshove calling range to know whether to openshove (for value) certain hands instead.