Why GTO ACTUALLY Likes Tiny C-Bets (what other coaches COMPLETELY screw up)

[@MrRattenstein]

Flexing that 10 flop sizes solve

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

don't buy the lambo if you ain't gonna cruise

[@zumzumman5135]

My laptop would die

[@LessIsMore99]

We might have our differences, but I’m glad we can all come together to meme on SplitSuit

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

Bwahaha

[@CancelIFR]

"The problem with this advice...is that it is the opposite of what you should do" lol, was thinking the same thing. Let's go ahead and blast off into a polar range.

[@RyanDepauloDegenerateGambler]

I am so torn: on one hand I want to promote your channel and share it as fellow youtuber because this video is great and so so much more helpful than 90% of stuff on youtube..... but on the other I want people to stay trash at poker so don't want ANYONE to see this video

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

I'd appreciate it if you promoted it, especially as a "fellow KZbinr"

[@jacobbrinn9429]

plz dont

[@ArtificialGamingIntelligence]

Can't believe you don't have more views. You're a very good teacher and your logic is top notch. I can't wait to have more time this fall to subscribe to your course.

[@ewallt]

This type of video, where you analyze and discuss an incorrect strategy is very valuable IMO because it induces the one watching the video to think things through in a more clear cut way than if the correct plays were given in a vacuum. That makes it much easier to remember.

[@keithjackson5531]

As ever, a very well explained video, thank you Alvin.

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

My pleasure!

[@Slayalisk]

Overall lesson of the video is correct, but I don't think your PIO tree is set up in the best way. The IP flop strategy is possibly using more minbets than would be used in the true equilibrium strategy because OOP can only raise 40%/55% on the flop, and can only donk 16% on the turn. Of course IP is gonna wanna bet 1bb on the flop if the most that OOP can charge IP to see the river is 6bb or whatever lol. The strategy probably changes a lot of you allow OOP to use larger sizes

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

I generally agree with that, I was trying to be slightly realistic when giving them two sizings and a donking range in the first place, but I indeed forgot that if I added a 19 on the flop I needed to add a 75 in the raise! Edit: I went ahead and ran a sim of multi-sizes against larger raises and larger donks, and indeed the mixed GTO sim checks back more, BUT playing a pure 33 sim loses an unnoticeable amount in practice anyway.

[@ukrobochips8817]

@@AlvinTeachesPoker In Pio2.0 you can edit individual lines in the preview tree tab. As such, you can add larger raise sizes ONLY to the smaller cbet sizes, reducing the tree size. But, here's a thought. I expect there will be many spots where the solver min bets, clicks back, clicks back, clicks back etc... Squeezing every last bet out of each range until the equilibrium point of folding. How helpful that will be in the real world is debatable.

[@FuzzypupPoker]

What Alvin talks about "quantitively over qualitive" also applies to stock investing. You look at the data of the company over what it looks like it is going to do. Good video Alvin. I figured this out years ago using Flopzilla before solvers and came up with a general formula for CBing. Of course I didn't have exact numbers but I had an idea of about the maximum I could bet on board types and still be automatically profitable. I even adjusted the formula for multiway pots. Through this I discovered mathematically it was very hard to bluff 3 people and impossible to bluff 4 people. But 1-2 was relatively easy with smaller bet sizing. Sadly I don't have the time to devote to solvers because I run a business. But that's why I come here to watch you do the solver work for me :) A note on over betting the turn vs bad players. While they do not have a clue about any of this stuff a large bet on the turn naturally freezes them. They basically play pretty face up from there. But it's not because they understand this concept mathematically, but they understand it intuitively. They are concerned you have a big hand. Vs bad players in somewhat difficult spots I might adjust my bet sizing to make decisions easier for me based on the "intuition" of the player and how they react. I even worked out how it can turn a profit by making a tough decision easy even though the pot is smaller. In some situations it saves and makes you money at the same time. You make a large bet OTT with say a low 2nd pair like Kc9s4c3d and you have 97s your bad opponent will play very face up. They will give up the equity of their gutshot + 2 overs, or call incorrectly if they are bad, or they will call with incorrectly with a FD. What this sets up is a dynamic on the river where they bluff less because your hand in their eyes looks like a strong hand, intuitively not mathematically, and they check. This allows an easy decision. Whereas if you bet smaller on the turn and they basically what I call "out dumb you" make a bad GTO play that happens to work. They might XR small or XC, then bomb the river as a bluff because they think correctly you are weak. This leads to a tough decision on the river for a large pot. But what the math is worked out you would rather win a $100 pot with a 90% accuracy of decision than a $150 pot with a 50% accuracy of decision. For smaller pot is worth more. When I 1st started all the math based books are what really helps me out a lot. All the qualitative books only screwed me up. I did a lot of the math work myself trying to show strategies quantitatively and often got poo-pooed by qualitative players. This was a good 15 years ago. Thank goodness for GTO solvers. And for those reading and wondering well if everyone has a solver how will I win? Remember that a vast majority of poker players are terrible and incapable of absorbing this kind of information. Don't expect to go pro. It is a difficult life, boring at times, and with high variance. Keep poker as a hobby, side money, entertainment. Think of it as a night going out except you make money instead of losing it. I used to play for a living and I didn't enjoy it. The grind, the drag, the hours is sitting to chips rattling in your ear or beeps on the computer. Do something that contributes to the well being of others in life or something that is steady income or that grows income as you work constantly like a business. Keep poker on the side. Just like investing you don't have to be Warren Buffet or Michael Burry. You just need to know enough to clear 95% of the sheep. That is easy. From my experience 90% of players lose at poker. Another 9% are minor winners and that's ok. Usually this 9% are still bad. They read a book or two watched some videos but play qualitatively. The 1% are the ones who put their nose in the math. Now take 10% of that 1% and those are the pros like Polk or Alvin that do it for a living, have a plan, and have a backup plan like teaching over player where they turn poker into a business. But you don't have the be there. I am in the 1% but not the 0.1% and I am fine. I play online to keep my skills up but mostly play 2/5 at the casino or 1/2 if it is deep because the players are just that bad. I make a solid hourly wage and treat it as entertainment. My normal job is running my business from home which i love more than poker. Alvin you fill in the blanks I don't have time to do myself as often as I should have. Thanks man.

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

Why thank you my good man

[@gospelslang9027]

Wow. That's a lot of words. Good thing I didn't read any of it

[@FuzzypupPoker]

@@gospelslang9027 If you play poker at my table then I am glad you didn't read it as well.

[@jackungerer1702]

@@FuzzypupPoker tbf, there’s no way that reading that is +ev. Sorry dude

[@FuzzypupPoker]

@@jackungerer1702 3 likes and a love says otherwise.

[@ewallt]

How about qualitative advice that’s accurate? Like in your next video, where you lose 40 cents but have a simple enough strategy that’s easily remembered. If you can come up with a simple enough strategy that can be remembered, but doesn’t give up very much, that would be awesome for poker players who want to play better but aren’t pros and don’t want to spend hours and hours with solvers.

[@abanger]

"Very often the reason you are going to be betting very small with your entire range is because all of your range now becomes instantaneously auto-profitable. And even if you bet your entire range your opponent can't do jack about it. So it's not that the turn is auto-profitable, because GTO is never going to take a less EV line on the flop and hope to recoup the money on the turn. It's because the flop is immediately profitable."

[@OsefKincaid]

If I'm understanding him correctly the coach that you're talking about is saying that people tend to play the 1/4 flop overbet turn line too often. My guess is his advice wasn't to raise the turn on the board that you ran where an overbet is justified, but rather to raise when people are doing this line in spots where it doesn't make sense? I might be wrong, it's hard to tell without full context.

[@thawk2007]

Maybe I misunderstood didn’t that guy you had in the video say when players are overdoing it. So if someone cbets range on flop and overbet turn with nearly range then I can see how raises would make sense. If people are using the right GTO frequencies on the right boards then sure, the turn overbet shouldn’t be attacked.

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

Doesn't that apply to everything in poker, so it's meaningless advice

[@CancelIFR]

Good video overall, but I think you could have expanded a bit on why the BB overfolds the flop. BB is getting a good price preflop and gets to call marginal hands that would otherwise be folds, since they close the action. Because of this, the range is very weak and they will have a range disadvantage on the majority of boards.

[@analogdistortion2906]

man, check raising turn overbets with air will burn some serious money unless you are specifically against an opponent who only does that as a bluff. That opponent would be rare but does exist, I've played with a few players that are super aggro until they actually have a monster then get all hollywood and are "afraid to lose you"

[@bropbrap1326]

Think its worth pointing out that in the second clip you showed he didn't say anything about the opponent overbetting. He said he likes to check raise turn vs people that cbet small then double barrel with too high a frequency, but didnt specify anything about the turn bet sizing. You may have made the mistake in conflating overbetting (betting more than pot) with 'overbetting' (betting more often than you theoretically should). I don't disagree with your points at all - just that your entire explanation after that second clip doesn't really counter what he was saying because you specifically go after the idea of check raising turn vs an overbet, which he wasn't explicitly advocating for.

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

The same logic applies to pot or 125 pot, you don't raise a hyper polarized range.

[@bropbrap1326]

@@AlvinTeachesPoker I mean sure, but at least in the clip you showed there was no specificity to the bet size at all. He could be talking about check raising turn a lot vs people that cbet small then double barrel small as there was no actual betsizing context given

[@tdfriese]

@@AlvinTeachesPoker You're definitely right that you don't raise much against a hyper polarized range, but there's a second question here which is how a mediocre reg is even constructing his 67% or 75% or 100% pot turn range. I believe Splitsuit that this player type exists, and I want to do what you suggested at the end of the video: do the research, identify the trends, put in some nodelocks for IP's flop and turn strategy, and run a sim. My guess at the solution is that if V is barrelling too much air, we still don't need to raise much, bc our bluff catchers are beating his bluffs already, and we lose money against his value when we raise. But if V is constructing badly and has too many middle of range hands in his polar sizing, we might do well to find more bluffs if he is then overfolding those hands. Of course this paragraph has a lot of 'if's in it.

[@Schwabozz]

lets set up a model where they bet range on the flop and overbet turn with a too high frequency that was what i understood splitsuit was saying. Is there a Point where pio prefers XR over XC

[@JoeHamilton1986]

Could it be that Splitsuit is referring to check raising the turn overbet with unmade hands that get to the turn, and not the solid bluff catchers? It seemed to me like he was saying that if someone is way out of line with the turn overbet (way too many bluffs), then you yourself can exploititavely check raise the turn the times you have no SDV yourself.

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

Imagine you are playing against a player who is good enough to recognize when you can and cannot 1) range bet the flop with sacrificing EV, 2) recognize when to use turn overbets correctly. I imagine this player also 3) recognizes when your opponent should have no theoretical turn value range and over-call or over-fold accordingly. Also, this line now never works if you are seen going XC XC XC with two pair+ because then you have a neutered turn value XR range and you get 3bet or called down lighter than you think. It's all cute to play theory poker, it's a whole other thing to play against studied opponents who know 1+2 but somehow lack 3.

[@granjerojose]

I think the point is that it doesn't make much sense to raise that polarized range, regardless of which hands you pick.

[@CancelIFR]

Why would you want to raise into a polar range that has the nuts and air, even with hands without SDV? IP has a lot of nutted hands in their range and draws. If you are trying to fold out the air portion of their range with worse air, good luck with that strategy. The only time this would apply is if IP is betting too many marginal made hands for the polar size, which I don't think is the case.

[@firsttoact5143]

Great video and makes complete sense on the board you picked but is there an argument that in practice, the pool tends to overuse small bets on many boards they shouldn’t. If someone is range betting across all textures, for example, should we not be raising them pretty aggressively / calling wider on the boards they’re not entitled to range bet on but do?

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

Who is range betting across all textures besides red chip guys

[@firsttoact5143]

@@AlvinTeachesPoker Looking at pool data I think a lot of players simplify their flop strategy massively to focus on later-street play and end up overusing the small range bets. My point was only that if someone is range betting on a board PIO says they shouldn't, do we not indeed XR more aggressively? In no way saying this is what the red chip guy was referring to and I enjoyed the video (and love your content in general) but just trying to make sure I take the right upgrade from this.

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

Errr what pool are you playing in? I just disagree with this premise.

[@TheDwarfInvasion]

@alvinteachespoker It's not immediately obvious to me why it must be true that GTO will never take a less profitable line on the flop in order to make a more profitable decision on the turn. It doesn't seem likely for many reasons, but why is it impossible? Thanks in advance.

[@mitchplease6566]

Hey , out of curiosity, if you're trying to improve at tournament play in the micro's is studying GTO/Solver lines really the way to learn? From what I gathered 9/10 people (especially at these stakes) are not playing GTO frequencies, so I imagined studying the call/raise ranges of those improper frequencies would technically leave you with a -ev line. I am interested in how you would do mass database analysis on average population lines because I feel like that would be more beneficial while learning and not worrying too much about solver lines until more people are playing GTO freqs. What are your thoughts?

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

There are so many things wrong with this argument but I think really it boils down to this :How do you know if someone is betting too much if you don't know what optimal is, so how can you even learn exploit without learning optimal first?

[@mitchplease6566]

@@AlvinTeachesPoker Great point, thanks man.

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

In my own school I teach solver work first and then exploit second and frankly by the time you finish learning gto basics you've usually moved up three stakes and you stop worrying about what the $5 sng pool is doing. People obsess so much about maximizing against their pool rather than maximizing their long term growth as a player that they just can't see the forest for the trees.

[@23reech]

Great stuff as always. Is that one dislike by Splitsuit? :D

[@SetMiner]

The check raise on the turn reps a nutted hand, so I don't think Sweeney is wrong. I would wager you do it yourself.

[@travispoker]

Hi Alvin, do you have any affiliation program for your course? If so, I’m very happy to promote it on my channel. Please let me know if you are interested.

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

Only for customers already.

[@makeitrainepoker6355]

"The problem with this advice is... it's the opposite of what you should do.." Quite a problem indeed lol!

[@hockjock35]

As a poor college kid with a wife n stuff I wish I could actually learn some of this stuff... Ive tried so hard with poker and PIO but gosh does it still look like a mess to me sometimes

[@mitchplease6566]

time invested. A lot of it initially is memorizing preflop ranges and trying really hard to play within those lines. Once you get a solid preflop game a lot of the decisions later become easier, I just struggle to find out how to study vs population when studying vs GTO opponents seems to be easily achieved

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

It's probably because you're focusing on how to play specific hands and not focusing on humanizing the outputs into playable strategies.

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

If you think studying against gto opponents is easily achieved, you're welcome to play in private games against my students and see how you fare. Come on man, this is just bullshit.

[@mitchplease6566]

@@AlvinTeachesPoker I didn't really mean to imply that it was easy to get good vs GTO opponents if that's what it sounded like. Just that the information received by solvers isn't necessarily how the population would play at low stakes and that I'd like to learn a way to see their tendencies.

[@hockjock35]

@@AlvinTeachesPoker Yeah I've been trying to use it much more smarter this time around. Essentially just running a bunch of aggregation reports to figure out board textures where simplifications are possible

[@K2KingTwo]

What video did splitsuit say this? I want to watch that lol

[@drewdickinson6374]

So Splitsuit is advocating for smaller flop bets now and not bet 75% everything in order to disguise hero's range? I was hoping he still was digging in his heels in about "bigger is better"

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

Who knows what strategy I recommended three years ago they'll advocate next.

[@TacoBully]

Solid video again!

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

Cheers mate

[@alechorrigan1799]

I feel the passion in this video well done

[@chesscoachgerry4140]

Great stuff!

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

tyty

[@kennethnelson1125]

Nice video!

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@JayJay-jw6zf]

Alvin you did own spiltsuit or whatever he is called. So owned. Can tell he tilted you, but you always sound tilted tbf

[@dot333333]

Noooooooooooooo!!! If you keep correcting these people then where will the money come from? :)

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

I've been correcting them for years and they'll never learn. At this point it's just cracking the honey pot.

[@BoleDaPole]

There is no money in poker unless u run like a god.. the real money is in training material and videos. That's why all these pros quiet and only play other pros, or only give out advice.

[@ralphlill5496]

Thank you!!!

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

danke

[@MattGreenNL]

Shots fired

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

When I yawn in the morning the bees come pouring out

[@AdrianWan]

Heck yeah keep it up

[@mothecat776]

ALVIN. As a new fan, I wish you long success. However I notice that your style of telling it like it is may get you into long term trouble. Especially when you call out your colleagues, specifically. It would suffice to say may others are wrong, and not put their voice out there (we and they know who they are). Which can piss the masses off. Just some good 'sage' advice.................

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

Nah, not looking for advice that isn't genuine to who I am

[@Basedavenger27]

Good stuff

[@harrycardillo8671]

Nice one.

[@StreetSoulLover]

Without even watching - you cbet flops because bad players still overfold the flop...

[@joergschulteoverberg2176]

Realy like your videos, but i would prefer content videos of yourselfe..Maybe u could at least link the regarding video..could not find the splitsiut video, but it feels like u quote something out of context...

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

You really really should not give splitsuit the benefit of the doubt. He's hasn't been good at poker since poker, and red chip poker's theoretical content is probably 90% questionable 10% plagiarized (allegedly). Also no, it's not out of context, splitsuit just plays theory poker and i doubt he plays against people who actually effectively use the strategy he's describing in the first place.

[@monkeybrainpoker4581]

I think your content should be valuable on its own merrit you seem to look for this value by constantly putting down others down , it seems you look to make others wrong so you can feel superior, its boring , a lot of so called poker coach schemes are full of shit including ones you mention imo however your need to publicly attack them for whatever ego or feelings of inferiority you may have is better suited to a private session with a psychologist.

[@AlvinTeachesPoker]

I know, I really need to work on my confidence