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So far, we’ve talked about how to exploitatively adjust your preflop opening hand ranges based on both player-specific reads and table dynamics. One crucial component we haven’t discussed much up until now is how to exploitatively adjust your 3-betting and 4-betting ranges while at the table.

GTO Mixed Strategies

When you study GTO 3-betting and 4-betting strategies, the first thing most players notice is that there are A LOT of mixed strategies going on. GTO solvers like to 3-bet and 4-bet with a lot of hands some small percentage of the time. Since we’re not NegreanuGPT or IveyAI mixing strategies at the table becomes a real challenge. There are methods we can use, such as the seconds on the tournament clock or the suits of our cards. For example, if the tournament clock is an odd number, you raise if it fits your mixed strategy, and if it is an even number, you just call.

Sample of a Button vs Cutoff 3-betting range with a GTO mixed strategy.

One question we want to ask ourselves is:

“Why does the solver choose a mixed strategy instead of just picking some of the available hands and 3-betting them 100% of the time?” 

The primary reason for this is against a perfect opponent; we want to have good board coverage postflop. 

If we were just to raise all our big pairs and Ax hands, we would be raising very close to the same frequency of hands, but postflop, we would miss a vast majority of boards that didn’t contain an ace. Using the mixed strategy makes it harder for our opponents to play against us on a J-8-4 flop because we can have hands like overpairs, J8s, JJ, and 88 in our range, in addition to a lot of big cards that missed.

As we discussed in part 1 of this series, in any instance where a solver is using a mixed strategy, the EV (expected value) of each strategy is either equal or very close to the same. When that’s the case, other factors, such as information on how our opponents play, start to play a much bigger role in the profitability of if we 3-bet or call with a given holding.

So, what specific things might we be looking to make exploitative adjustments against?

Range Gap Exploits

The single biggest factor in an exploitative 3-betting or 4-betting strategy is your opponent’s “range gap.”

The range gap is the difference between the number of hands currently in your opponent’s range versus the hands they will continue with if you were to take another aggressive action.

For example, if your opponent is opening in the cutoff with around 30% of hands, and if you 3-bet them, they will fold everything but the top 6% of hands. Therefore, they are folding to your 3-bet four times out of five, or 80%! 

If your opponent is opening to 2.5 BBs and you 3-bet to 7.5 BBs, you are risking 7.5 to win 5 BBs (the 2.5 BB raise plus the big blind, the small blind, and the big blind ante). With this risk-to-reward ratio, any time your opponent is folding more than 60% of the time, you show an auto-profit, even if you never win the pot postflop (assuming you don’t put more money in postflop).

So, if the range gap between what your opponent opens and what they call with is too wide, you can exploitatively 3-bet a much wider range. 

Key things to look for to identify range gaps are:

• opponents who open too many hands from a given position (it’s easier to have a wide gap when you start with a wide range!) 
• and/or opponents who are playing extremely snugly against aggression. 

Just because an opponent is tight doesn’t mean a range gap doesn’t exist. If your opponent is opening only 10% of hands, they still have a significant range gap if they fold everything but QQ+/AK (roughly 2.5% of hands). If they open 30% of hands but never fold to 3-bets, that’s not a range gap!

As a general rule, if a range gap exists, you want to:

• ramp up your 3-betting frequency (or 4-betting if the range gap is in their 3-bet range versus 4-bet continuing range), and 
• utilize a more polarized range that prioritizes hands with blockers (like Ax/Kx and even some Qx) in addition to stronger hands. 

If your opponent calls 3-bets too frequently, then you want to 3-bet a more linear range, which is a range that mostly consists of hands that are better than your opponent’s opening range.

Opponents Yet to Act

The second thing you want to consider is who is left to act behind you and anything you know about their tendencies. 

For example, if you have aggressive players in the blinds who like to squeeze a lot, then you would want to 3-bet the mixed hands more often and call with them less because when you call, you are much more likely to be facing a re-raise from one of the blinds. 

Against these types of players, you’d also be more inclined to slow-play some of your better 3-betting hands to induce a squeeze from the blinds and get to play a large pot in a situation where your hand has a huge edge over their range.

If the players in the blinds are much weaker and more passive, you may be more inclined just to call a raise so you can play postflop against the weaker players. You also know that when they do squeeze, it is much more likely to be a real hand and can react appropriately. 

It is also important to consider the stack sizes yet to act behind you and how your 3-betting or calling may do things like induce a squeeze from a ~20 BB stack or a 3-bet may pot commit you against a shorter stack behind you, making your risk amount on the 3-bet higher than you might think since you are committed to calling more chips in some situations. 

Playing Against Multiple Opponents

When there is a raise with multiple callers, and you don’t have a speculative hand you can call with, the main decision is if you should squeeze or not. 

Some of the previous concepts, such as the range gap, come into play. The primary players you want to pay attention to are the initial raiser and the last caller. Those two players are most likely to defend if you squeeze. The initial raiser because they have an uncapped range. The final caller because they will be closing the action, so they know that they will be heads up and get to see a flop. Everyone in the middle usually has a capped range and is unlikely to continue if the initial raiser folds.

There is also a dynamic that shouldn’t impact play, but it often does because we are all humans at the table with emotions. The last player feels like they are the “last line of defense” against potential steals, so at times, they will call a bit lighter than they should. Knowing whether the last caller is this type of player is very beneficial. 

The ideal situation for a squeeze is when you have an initial raiser with a wide opening range and a final caller who doesn’t have a tendency to “play sheriff” and call light. In this scenario, the initial raiser will often feel the “squeeze” of having to face your raise and potential action behind them, which increases the range gap between what they open and what they continue with, while the players behind all have capped calling ranges that make it difficult to continue. 

One last note: you do need to be aware that a single caller behind an opener will sometimes be inducing a squeeze as well if they are a good player. Against solid players capable of this you will want to squeeze lightly less often and choose hands with key blockers (such as an ace or king) as primary squeezing candidates.

Tying It All Together

So, let’s say we have a hand like QTo on the button, and it is folded to the cutoff, who opens to 2.5 BBs. If you look at the original GTO chart it’s almost a perfect 50/50 mix of 3-betting and calling! We could just use a strategy where we always 3-bet to 7.5 BBs if the queen is a red card (which would represent 50% of possible combinations), or we could use what we know about our opponent.

1. Does our opponent open too wide or fold too frequently to 3-bets? If so, we would most definitely want to lean toward 3-betting!
2. Do we have tough opponents behind us? If so, we might want to consider 3-betting to make them fold more often and get heads-up with a weaker player. 
3. Do we have weak opponents behind us who make postflop mistakes? If so, we might want to just call to invite them along.
4. Do we have tight opponents who are unlikely to come along and/or squeeze us without a big hand? If so, we could lean toward calling more frequently and taking a flop in position against the cutoff, knowing we are unlikely to be put in many difficult situations. When we are, they likely have a big hand! 

In a GTO world, 3-betting and 4-betting strategies are often mixed affairs. These are difficult to replicate in real-time, although we can use things like the tournament clock and suits to try and approximate it. 

Since these decisions are all very close in the first place, we can use exploitative reasons to govern our 3-betting and 4-betting strategies. Things like our opponent’s likely range gap and the tendencies of our opponents behind us can allow us to significantly enhance our win rate against opponents who aren’t playing perfect GTO strategies!

Remember, in the world of poker, exploiting your opponents is not just okay; it’s your ace in the hole.

Until the next deal,

Eric “Rizen” Lynch

To see Rizen PXF videos, go to the PXF Training Center. Eric is an instructor at LearnWPT where he answers questions in their Ask a Pro service, runs live workshops, and hosts live seminars!

To be alerted to future editions to this series, sign up for the free PXF Newletter!

In our previous article, we discussed how to adjust to a singular player based on opponent-specific information we gathered at showdown. Now, I want to talk a little about how to exploitatively adjust to specific table dynamics in general and an easy framework for you to use to put yourself in the right mindset to adjust your preflop ranges to best adapt to a specific table. 

A simple way to identify table tendencies is to start by asking yourself two questions:

1. How many players, on average, are seeing the flop?
2. How many hands, on average, are going to showdown?

Table Looseness:

The question of how many players see the flop speaks directly to “table looseness.” There is a direct correlation between the number of players seeing the flop and the average winning hand strength at showdown. 

If four or more players regularly see the flop, you want to exploitatively adjust your preflop range to give yourself more opportunities to make sets, strong/nut flushes, and strong/nut straights. Some of the biggest pots are won when you have stronger draws than your opponents or when you flop a set when your opponent flops top pair and can’t find their fold button.

Showdown:

The question of how many hands go to showdown speaks directly to continuation betting (which we will discuss in great detail later). 

If most hands are going to showdown, then continuation betting is going to be something you only want to do with significant equity in the hand. 

If most hands are not going to showdown, then you want the ability to not just be able to continuation bet frequently but also select hands that have the ability to frequently fire again on the turn and river as well. 

Most commonly, this is done with hands that flop backdoor equity (for example, if you have two clubs, then one club on the flop gives you a “backdoor” club draw as you can hit running clubs to make a flush) so that you can frequently fire on the turn when you turn additional equity in addition to the times the turn is a card that is significantly better for your range than your opponents.

So, the more players that are regularly seeing the flop, the more you will want to exploitatively include hands like pocket pairs, suited aces, suited broadway cards, and some of the bigger suited connectors and suited kings in your range. You’ll also want to reduce how many offsuit big cards you have in your range. 

Let’s look at an example. First, below, is the default, early position first-in raising chart for a GTO table at 50 BB effective stacks:

Loose Tables:

Next, in the chart below, we see it exploitatively adjusted for a loose table with multiple players seeing the flop and many hands going to showdown. Note that more pairs (actually all pairs) and big-suited hands are being played while fewer offsuit big cards make the cut.

Tighter Tables:

Now, let’s look at how things change when the table is tighter (see chart below). When fewer players see the flop, the smaller pairs and some of the suited connectors significantly decrease in value. 

Big, offsuit cards increase in value (compared to a loose table) as top pair more frequently wins at showdown, and having your opponent “outkicked” can be a large source of profit.

Notice, in the chart above, how it consists of more big card hands and suited hands capable of firing more barrels and fewer pairs since your implied odds (definition below) are lower, and those hands are troublesome to fire multiple barrels with. If you wanted to be closer to GTO and have better board coverage, you could mix 22-66 at a smaller frequency. One way to do this in real-time is to tell yourself you’ll only play the “red” (or “black” but not both) combo of each pair, so you’re playing them all exactly ⅙ of the time.

Hand frequency going to showdown often directly correlates with your implied odds as your opponents become “stickier” across multiple streets; hands with greater implied odds (pocket pairs, big suited cards) increase in value. When opponents are less sticky, many of the suited and connected cards can retain their value as good semi-bluffing candidates across multiple streets. Still, your weaker pocket pairs and offsuit cards become more problematic. 

Exit Points: 

You could take this one step further and pay attention to the most common exit points postflop. If most players are playing extremely “fit or fold” (i.e., when they hit the flop, they continue, and when they don’t, they fold), you would use slightly different ranges than if most hands are ending on the turn and river, with opponents only giving up once the bet sizes start to increase. 

These two questions work in tandem as well. The hand range you’ll exploitatively want to open with at a loose table where many players are seeing the flop and many hands are going to showdown will be slightly different than a tight table when many players are seeing the flop, and few are going to showdown. The smaller pocket pairs will start to disappear from your range as the implied odds those hands receive when they flop sets becomes worse, while you’ll be able to expand some of your bigger suited cards out a little bit for more semi-bluffing opportunities

Are You Paying Attention?

It is important to note that when you ask yourselves these questions, the answers should be somewhat obvious if you’re paying attention. If you’re not sure if there are a lot of players seeing flops or not or if a lot of hands are going to showdown, it is likely not a table where there is an outlier, so you should just stick with your solid, GTO-based, first-in hand ranges. 

You will also have to constantly reevaluate these questions as the blinds increase and players are eliminated and replaced by new ones. If you’re going to make exploitative changes, it is important to consistently be engaged and pay attention to the table dynamics around you. 

Winning in poker is often built around putting yourself in the best possible situations from the very beginning of the hand. By paying attention and asking yourself a few simple questions while you’re playing, you can make slight alterations to your preflop ranges to set yourself up for success. 

We will do a deep dive on 3-betting and 4-betting next, as those can also significantly impact your preflop ranges!

Remember, in the world of poker, exploiting your opponents is not just okay; it’s your ace in the hole.

Until the next deal,

Eric “Rizen” Lynch

To see Rizen PXF videos, go to the PXF Training Center. Eric is an instructor at LearnWPT where he answers questions in their Ask a Pro service, runs live workshops, and hosts live seminars!

To be alerted to future editions to this series, sign up for the free PXF Newletter!

Definitions in this article:

The purpose of the “Amateur Hour: Lost in Translation” blog is to review the teachings of amazing professional poker players and analyze why it can be difficult for amateur players to implement these ideas.  This author is most definitely an amateur poker player who sometimes struggles with the “GTO Insanity” that he sees in the game today. Maybe you have the same issues? 

Jonathan Little is a legendary poker player and teacher. I love his content and appreciate that he produces so much free analysis for his training site. You should follow him on YouTube and Twitter/X.

The name of the video I’m reviewing is “The BIGGEST BLUNDER Poker Players MAKE!” But the title screen is a little different, it reads: “This is the #1 Blunder People Make with Value Hands.”  Watch the full video below. It features a hand played poker pro James Romero, who has $6 million in tournament winnings, in a $1500 WSOP Tournament. 

So, let’s review the hand in the video, including Little/Romero’s commentary versus my “amateur hour” thoughts.

It’s a simple setup: Romero is in the big blind with Ks8s and 100 big blinds. The villain, a recreational player, is to his right on the button and also has 100 BBs. 

Little/Romero Commentary: Our heroes say that Ks8s is nearly the best hand Romero could have in his “check/calling range.” They state that hands like K10 or KJ should be raised.

Amateur Hour Commentary: This makes perfect sense to me. I often call with this sort of hand in the BB. So far, so good. However, I’m often just calling with K10s as well.

FLOP:  Kc Td 4h … Romera has flopped top pair.

Little/Romero: “There’s almost no run out where we’re folding unless it runs off an Ace … so check/call down … easy game.” 

Amateur Hour: Mind blown!

Little/Romero continue their commentary by chiding the villain when it is revealed he had AhKd and somehow could not find a way to get all the money in the pot — 100 blinds worth.  Romero states he would have called for his tournament life if the button had played it correctly.

Amateur Hour: The first thing that popped into my mind was the post-WSOP dinner with friends and fellow players. A buddy turns to me and asks how I busted 100 big blinds two hours into a WSOP bracelet event. “Must have been a hell of cooler, right? Kings versus Aces?”

I would try not to answer, but others would notice and pressure me about my bust-out hand. Finally, I would reply: “Well, I woke up with K8 suited and defended my big blind. Then I check/called the flop after I hit top pair, check/called a big bet on the turn after a blank hit, and finally check/called an all-in after another blank. The guy woke up with Ace King. Bad beat.”

My friends would stare at me blankly before one of them recaps what I just said: “Let me get this right, you flew across the country for your one Vegas trip per year, entered a $1500 WSOP tournament with dreams of a bracelet in your head, and check/call your way out defending your big blind with top pair bad kicker 2 hours into the event. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Dude, that is some weak a&$ sh!*.  Are you just a calling station? Why would you do that?” 

“Because Jonathan Little told me so.”

The truth is I don’t like the way Little/Romero would play this hand. In my amateur brain, the correct thing to do is check/raise the flop. And I mean a big, solid check-raise. With such a big raise, AK will shove it all-in right then and there, and then you have a decision to make. And I probably then fold. This is what old timers like me call betting to “see where you are” in a hand.

Is that so wrong?

Well, apparently, yes. I’m not very practiced at GTO solvers, but I went to GTO Wizard and did a sloppy job putting the hand in. But it most definitely agrees with Little/Romero. On a river shove, GTO says you are calling 78.8%.

And knowing this, I’d probably still would not call off my stack with top pair/weak kicker. My thinking is: “Sure, the button’s range is wide, but that doesn’t mean he can’t beat K8. Isn’t K10 just as likely?” Also, I know how to play a shorter stack. It would hurt folding to a shove re-raise, but I would have plenty of opportunities to get it back.

I wonder if Phil Hellmuth would go bust on this hand, as Little/Romero would have. Somehow, I don’t think so, but what do I know?

It seems to me that Little/Romero are playing this hand strictly by GTO standards. We know the button has a wide range, but is he three-barrelling with nothing for 100 BBs that often? Surely, he can beat K8.

Can Little put himself into an amateur’s shoes and find a way not to risk your WSOP tournament life on such a hand? (But maybe that doesn’t matter at all.) Also, if Romero is in a WSOP tournament at a table with a lot of amateurs — which is likely — should he squander his enormous poker advantage on this one hand? 

It’s GTO insanity, folks. I prefer exploitative play. But, of course, I’m an amateur. What would you do? Tell us on Twitter. 

Final Notes:

1. Jonathan Little and James Romero made this video about the recreational player’s mistake of not getting all his money in — not the fact that they would check/call 100BBs with top pair, weak kicker. I get that. If I were the Rec Player in this hand, I’d bet 1/2 pot on the flop (he bet less), half pot on the turn (he bet 1/3), and then I’d have to decide what to do on the river. Playing online, I always think: “Am I folding to a reraise?” In this case, I would not be folding to a reraise in an online tournament, so I just put it all-in. However, to be completely honest, if I’m playing live at the WSOP, I’m worried the big blind had K10, and I’m probably 1/2 potting again and reluctantly calling a re-shove. Just being honest. Little is trying to teach me to play it correctly, like I would in an online tournament.
2. I watched Jonathan Little play brilliantly live on PokerGo in a Poker Masters event, eventually going out second in a tough field (and then again later winning the PokerGo Cup!). On the final table, he made two huge calls that kept him at or near the top of the leaderboard. Later, he said: “I don’t like folding.” And I’ve seen him say that many times. So maybe he IS a calling station? I hope so because maybe it means all those hero calls I’ve made in my past were not “historically bad” – as my opponents would sometimes tell me.
3. Since writing this article and watching this video about a dozen times, I find myself winning a lot of hands in situations very much like the K8 scenario above (except I’m just check/calling and my opponent isn’t often testing me for my tournament life). But do I call for my World Series of Poker tournament life at the river with the top pair average kicker? Maybe I’ll find out this summer!

Until the next poker lesson I don’t understand,

MentatKing

In our first two articles in this series (see Part 1 and Part 2), we primarily dealt with the theory behind exploitative adjustments. In this one, we’ll give a real-world example of how you might adjust to a player in real-time based on information seen at showdown. 

Let’s say you’re sitting in a daily tournament, and you’re on the button a few orbits in. You see a hand get to showdown, and the player in middle position shows down Ace Five offsuit (A5o) as a hand they raised first-in with. 

If we look at what a first-in range is supposed to look like at 50 BBs, it should be something like this:

As you can see, A5o is not anywhere NEAR on that list! 

Why we shouldn’t play too many hands

In our previous article, one of the things we discussed is the reason not to play more hands than we should have to do with equity realization. The main reasons are:

• We have to fold to 3-bets too often when our range gets too wide;
• Many hands (like A5o!) have difficulty realizing their equity out of position. 

With a hand like A5o, most of the time when you connect you will flop top pair with a bad kicker or bottom pair with a good kicker. While you could flop two pair or better, it will be less than 5% of the time. This means that in most instances, you will either miss or have to attempt to navigate your way to a showdown with a vulnerable hand, most likely out of position.

So, what do we do to punish a player who opens too widely? (Of course, you will want to see more evidence of a player opening too wide – not just one hand – but let’s say we see a pattern of the player doing this.)

Typical Play vs. Unknown Opponent 

Here is what a “typical button” response looks like against someone who opens in the middle position and it is folded to us:

(Above: Standard Button Re-raise (red), Call (green), and Fold (blue) ranges vs. middle position opener).

This chart has you calling around 17% of hands and re-raising around 7% of hands. Note that K9s you are re-raising and calling, while K8s is mostly a call.

A helpful shortcut

But that is the “typical button” response that assumes the middle position player is making a typical opening bet. But what about our player who opened A5o, and we suspect opens wide? How do we respond? One “shortcut” I use is to find the first position where the hand the loose middle position player is playing (in our example A5o) starts to become a part of an appropriate first-in opening range. 

Since A5o is a hand that first starts to appear as an appropriate “GTO opening hand” is in the cutoff position (see seat position explanations from our friends at LearnWPT), we can look at how the button reacts to the cutoff’s opening range as a model for how we might adjust. It’s not perfect because the middle position player may not be opening the entire cutoff range, but it will give us a good idea of what sorts of hands we should be expanding our range to include:

(Above: Where would A5o be a typical GTO opening hand? The answer: In the Cutoff. We adjust accordingly.)

As you can see above, against the wider opening range, the button is adjusting by expanding both the amount of hands it calls and 3-bets, now calling 18% of hands (as opposed to 17%) and 3-betting over 10% of hands (as opposed to 7%). It has mainly expanded by 3-betting a lot more of the lower Axs/Kxs/Qxs hands, although it has also started 3-betting some of the Axo more as well. 

So how do we exploit?

Now, all of this is a great starting point for theoretically correct play. Since we’re talking about exploitative play, though, there are other things we’re going to want to consider. 

The main other consideration is who is yet to act behind us in the blinds. 

If we have weaker players who don’t 3-bet often, we would want to skew our adjustment to calling more frequently and utilizing our positional advantage postflop. This doesn’t mean abandoning 3-betting altogether. We should still 3-bet frequently, but many of the hands we might usually mix could become calls.

Conversely, if we have IveyAI and NegreanuGPT yet to act behind us in the blinds, we would want to 3-bet a lot more than call!

This discourages them from squeezing us aggressively. After all, they are going to be paying attention to the showdown as well. If they know there is a wide opener and a caller, they will astutely recognize this is an excellent squeeze spot and will be re-exploiting our exploit of calling wider by 3-betting wider and punishing us! 

So, if our opponent is opening too wide in middle position, when it is folded to us after they open, we’re going to want to both call and 3-bet more frequently. 

We will expand our range out to the right to include more suited hands and pay attention to the skill and tendencies of the players yet to act behind us and 3-bet more often when good, aggressive players are yet to act and call more often when weaker, more passive players are yet to act.

What about when it’s not folded to us? 

Well, if someone is opening too wide and other players call, this is a perfect spot to channel our own IveyAI/NegreanuGPT and start to squeeze more liberally! When someone opens too many hands and players call loosely behind them, it creates a perfect squeeze opportunity. If there are good, aggressive players behind the loose opener who will appropriately widen their 3-betting range, we can even start to cold 4-bet bluff more to re-exploit those players! 

So, as you can see, the presence of one player who is opening a bit too loose can significantly alter the preflop dynamics of the entire table. You could just stick to the standard GTO preflop charts, and you would make money off those, but you can make so much more by making adjustments to exploit the mistakes they’re making. Sometimes, you can even re-exploit good players through the bad players by squeezing and cold 4-betting a few more hands as well!

We haven’t talked a lot about post-flop up to this point, but I do want to make sure to point out that if you are calling wider to exploit the fact that your opponent has hands like A5o that don’t realize their equity well post-flop, you MUST be floating and raising post-flop to put them in difficult positions. If you call preflop with K5s and then fold every time you miss, you aren’t really exploiting them; you’re just playing more hands.

Final Thought:

If you read this article carefully, I hope you see how important it is to PAY ATTENTION to what players are doing at the table. I can’t tell you how many people are on their phones and barely pay attention to anything unless they are in a hand. These “distracted players” are often playing with less information than you. Do they know that the older player in seat four is actually playing a LAG game? Did they notice that the player in seat six always continuation bets 50% pot then checks the turn if called?

Bottom line: You can exploit better and more often if you pay attention. More on this in future articles!

Remember, in the world of poker, exploiting your opponents is not just okay; it’s your ace in the hole.

Until the next deal,

Eric “Rizen” Lynch

To see Rizen PXF videos, go to the PXF Training Center. Eric is an instructor at LearnWPT where he answers questions in their Ask a Pro service, runs live workshops, and hosts live seminars!

To be alerted to future editions to this series, sign up for the free PXF Newletter!

Exploitative Play: Be Curious

If you’re anything like me, your journey into serious tournament poker likely started with a search for basic, fundamental knowledge. The first thing most serious players grab hold of is some starting hand range charts. For an engineering type like myself, it felt like unlocking the holy grail of poker. 

After all, once I know what hands to play, surely poker looks something like this:

Step 1: Play the correct starting hands from the charts.

Step 2: ???

Step 3: Profit!!

Once I figure out that pesky step 2, it’s nothing but Lambhorginis and Rolexes for me! 

Hyperbole aside, one of the key things I said in part one of this series is that “It’s important to love the process.” When we start playing poker, having basic rules to keep us out of trouble is important, and learning starting hand charts is a great way to begin that process. 

As you grow and learn, it’s important to embrace the words of one of my favorite coaches of all time, Ted Lasso, and always “be curious.”

Let’s look at first-in hand ranges as an example of how we can be curious and implement that in exploitative play.

(above) Chart courtesy of LearnWPT! Click on the image above to get your free hand range charts.

If we look at an early position Game Theory Optimal (GTO) first-in opening hand range chart above, one of the first things that might stick out is that some hands are raised only some of the time and folded the rest. For example, hands like 98s, 55, and ATo.

Why would we only raise a hand some of the time? Surely, it’s either good enough to raise or it isn’t. If we dig further, we find out the Expected Value (EV) of the hand is zero! Why would we raise with a hand to win zero chips, on average?

The Non-Curious Player

The non-curious player would look at the charts, assume the computer did the work for them, and follow along. Not us, though; if we dig further and were to remove all the hands that are mixed (i.e., the hands in the GTO chart that can either fold or raise first-in) and have 0 EV from our opening range and re-ran the simulations with our range locked, what we would find is that the EV for opening our entire range, on average, went down!

Rethinking Mixed Hands and Overall EV

If we think about it, part of the reason we make money with hands like AA is that our opponents must also believe that sometimes, we will have ATo, 55, or K6s. If we can never have these hands, our opponents can more easily fold against us, and our big hands make less money! Surely, this means we should just play those hands 100% of the time, though, then our Aces will make even more money.

So we re-run the simulations now, playing all the mixed hands 100% of the time. When the simulations are done, we again find that the EV for opening our entire range goes down again!

Looking more closely, our EV for hands like AA goes up slightly, but all of our hands on the fringe drop in value. This is a combination of our range getting wide enough that we have to fold too frequently to 3-bets behind us and our weaker overall range having a much tougher time realizing its equity post-flop against the relentless computer pressure when we are frequently out of position post-flop.

The GTO is Just a Starting Point

“So great, Eric, what you’re telling me is just to play the GTO ranges?!?”

Not at all! I’m saying that they make a great starting point, and it’s important always to stay curious and ask questions about the “why” and “why not” so we can adjust appropriately. 

Exploitative Play: Adjusting to Your Opponents

What if we sat down at the World Series of Poker Main Event tomorrow, and it was filled with a table full of satellite players there for the once-in-a-lifetime experience? Do you think those players will likely punish our weaker ranges by constantly 3-betting us and floating us in position post-flop? If the answer is no, then not only can we play those mixed hands 100% of the time, but we can probably play some other hands just outside our normal range profitably!

Alternatively, if we play in a nightly tournament on a cruise ship after the drinks have been heavily flowing, do we need to play weaker hands to get significant action the times we have aces? While we probably shouldn’t shut completely down, keeping our range wide isn’t necessary to profit on the bigger hands in our range against a group that is likely unaware of what our range actually looks like and is more likely interested in having fun and gambling it up! 

This is the beauty of exploitative play.

We can start with a solid, fundamental GTO baseline strategy and then adjust it to the players and table conditions present to improve our win rate. In the case of our preflop ranges, instead of them being these rigid, fenced-in ranges that we always play the same, they will be like living, breathing organisms that will expand when our opponents aren’t punishing us for playing too many hands and contract when they’re being a bit overzealous themselves. 

The Importance of Staying Curious

I will give more concrete examples of how to make these adjustments in future installments of this series. For now, I wanted to give a relatable example of how, as long as we always love the process and stay curious, we’ll have a framework for recognizing how to deviate from standard lines profitably. 

Remember, in the world of poker, exploiting your opponents is not just okay; it’s your ace in the hole.

Until the next deal,

Eric “Rizen” Lynch

To see Rizen PXF videos, go to the PXF Training Center. Eric is an instructor at LearnWPT where he answers questions in their Ask a Pro service, runs live workshops, and hosts live seminars!

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