Original subtitles

There's more three relevant advanced topics

that I want to cover, ranging from playability to mixed

strategies and blockers.

I've already touched base on playability,

but there's generally four hand categories: pairs, connectors

suited hands and high cards.

As you can see in the graphic. Some of them

overlap and it's hard to generalize,

but this is just a leading idea.

Where it's easier for you to understand

what I mean when I explain it.

But what is important is, that these different categories,

their equity and their playability specifically

changes, depending on their open range and their open sizing,

but also the effective stacksize.

So again we take these other factors into consideration

and merge them to make a decision.

So, looking at the openrange, certain hand categories

are hard to play against.

When for example, they have a tight range,

we will rather refrain from using

high cards or suited hands, even when we hit top pair it's

tough to play against big bets from strong ranges.

So there's small pairs like 22-55,

who perform way better deep, specifically

because of the set value. But also because there

is no blocker effect versus the top range of your opponent

and you can't really call a rejam when you're shortstacked.

So you can't call many allins. And then

there is connected hands who perform way better deep stacked,

because they can realize equity, make

more straights, hit hands that are hidden

and balance your ranges.

But it's really important that they realize their equity, that

doesn't really work short stacked. Because most often you

have a small pair, can't really realize

the equity of your straight draws or gutshots.

And also if you hit it you don't get paid out,

so it's very important to think about: when you're short

stacked,

connected hands lose on value. And then

there's other hand categories to improve in value

when stack size decreases.

Especially high card hands, when you hit top pairs like Kx,

or Ax you can call off bets,

you can call off shoves when you're short stacked.

But when you're deep stacked, you have

trouble facing multiple bets

and especially very large bets.

So it requires more equity to stackoff deep stacked

and it requires stronger hands, more nutted

hands. So often top pair is bad versus these three streets

aggressions, when the bets are very large.

And so when it's limited by a stack size

then that's good for hands like top pair.

Another very important concept is mixed strategies

or mixing your frequencies. It's especially very important pre-

flop, but also relevant post flop and you will see it

throughout the course. Especially

when the options have very close or almost equal value.

It helps us mixing our strategies and hands

and be less predictable but also helps protecting our range

and covering multiple boards. So, if there

is a lot of different types of hands that

have similar value, we want to make sure that we become as

balanced and unpredictable as possible.

And that we cover a variety of different boards

for our opponent to be harder for us to predict.

So it's important for us to have strong hands on all runouts.

So whatever turn or river comes, we

want to have strong hands on all these different versions

and categories.

So that's why we have to mix our frequencies.

We cannot only always do the same with one type of hand.

So the advantage of having a mixed strategy

is that it's really tough to play against us.

And it's hard to make assumptions against our range

but also we maximize our value and EV

with our overall strategy.

And when you think about when to use mix strategies,

it's especially important when we play preflop.

So whether it's open- raising or 3betting,

we have to think about mixing our strategies.

And it's especially important when stacks are shallow.

So we've got to mix between minraising, maybe

limping or shoving all in. Deepstacked pre-

flop it's less important because we can play raise or fold only.

And the difference is not so big because there we don't really

have to think about balancing or protecting,

but when we're shorter we really have to take that

into consideration. When we 3bet

or flat though, we have to start thinking about mixing it up.

So we have to balance having some strong hands.

Because if we always 3bet with strong brands

and never flat them, then we will become

very exploitable and predictable for our opponents.

For example, being behind us.

So again, we want to have good board coverage.

Having some strong hands in there, so

they can't outplay us on every runout,

but also we want to adjust for players

behind and against the initial raiser.

It's also very relevant playing blind versus blind,

because that's the most mixed-heavy situation,

or one of the most mixed.

There is a lot of different hands,

we have a lot of different categories

and we play a very vast majority of them

when we're first-in in the small blind.

So there, the frequency, or the importance,

of having board coverage on all different run outs increases.

And it's very important that we know

the strategy of how to play it.

I've been a lot of times in situations in the small blind,

where I didn't really know how to play.

And dealing with this really helped me

understanding the concept better.

And so the fundamental there again

is very important to understand that.

So the frequencies and having different frequencies

is important for us to exploit or win

against our opponent in the big blind

because the more balanced we are, again the harder it becomes

for him to play against us and the more unpredictable we become.

So we want to develop a simple and understandable,

we don't want to overcomplicate it, but also unpredictable and

very tough and balance strategy and we will show you how,

in the upcoming lectures. When I talk about simplifying it,

it's also important to understand

when not to use mixed strategies. So when

one option has higher EV, we want to go with the pure play.

We do not want to mix between different options

because if we believe one option clearly is the better choice,

we want to go with that.

So, for exploitable reasons we want

to really focus in on that.

So if our opponent has a big raise/folding-gap,

we make a lot of profit already with 3betting.

We don't want to overdo it, but there

is a lot of hands where we want to adjust automatically 3bet

against this opponent, if we have a very

solid read. On the other hand,

if our opponent doesn't ever fold to 3bets,

we do not need a bluffing range.

We don't generate enough folds, so it's not necessary

for us to mix in any bluffs, especially when normally

the equities run very close and the value is really close.

So against these type of opponents,

where we have a pretty strong read,

we will just not mix it and just 3bet for value

or fold with weaker hands.

It's important to also understand

when not to use make strategies.

So when one option clearly has the higher EV,

we want to go with the pure play and just choose

that one option.

So, especially in exploitable situations

or when we're not very sure about the very detailed things,

we want to simplify strategy. But especially when we

have information about our opponent

we want to use that to our advantage.

So if we're quite certain that our opponent has a big raise/

folding-gap,

so he's raising too much and folding too much,

after you raised, then we definitely

want to use all our hands that we

want to 3bet and just auto-profit from a 3bet.

So in that case, we wouldn't mix it up

we wouldn't flat or fold certain hands,

but we would just go with the 3bet

if we believe that our information is strong.

On the other hand, it can go in the other direction as well.

If we feel like he doesn't fold to 3bets,

we do not generate enough folds with our bluffs

and we will reduce our bluffing frequency

and might just have a pure fold with these hands.

So, very important to not stick with the strategy

if we are not certain about it, but also have stronger information

that lead another way. In the graphic,

you can see how mixed strategies will look graphically.

So, KQo in this example, we 3bet 50% of the time

and we fold 50% of the time.

So you can see that with red and blue.

T9s, in comparison to that, in certain situations

is even a hand where we'll mix all of it.

So we will mix 3betting, calling and folding.

And in this example, almost a third of the time.

So you will see, throughout the course,

that we will show this in different scenarios

and also explain why mixed strategies and apply why it's

important, but always keep that in mind, we will always

try to balance our range, mixing through different actions.

Blockers are relevant in most situations of poker.

Especially preflop for 3betting-ranges.

When ranges get tighter and there's less combinations

available in the specific ranges. Postflop

we want to block defending ranges

and unblock bluffs, especially the smaller

the ranges get and the less combinations we have,

turns and rivers, there blockers become a very essential tool

and something we always have to keep in the back of our mind.

Because this is a basis of how we can make decisions.

And so we have to be aware, what range we are facing,

but also be aware of our own range.

So, blocking means reducing combos,

both in their value range and in their potential buff-range.

So, in most cases, we want to make sure,

that we block or unblock the strongest hands of the villain.

So, in this example, let's look at how strong

the blocker effect can actually be.

If we take the hand where we have A7o,

and we look at the range of very strong hands an opponent

potentially could have, the amount of combos

that he can have from AA to AK, which

are some of his strongest hands, significantly

gets reduced through holding A7o.

So, there's only 15 combos left from initially 22 combos,

because now that we have the ace of spades in our hand, he cannot

have AA with the ace of spades or AK with the ace

of spades.

So, we actually cut about a quarter

of his possible combinations and reduce his very strong hands.

So this, for example, would be a hand

we could use for a raise/folding range in shorter situations

or even blocking hands post flop

and in other situations.

So it's very interesting to always

have in mind what hand we have and how we block or unblock

our opponents' range, so we reduce his value range

and in some parts we also reduce his folding range.