Hand #1

zampana1970

Alright, I'm gonna give this a go!

My Opening Range: 77+, AJs+, A5s-A2s, KJs+, AQo+
8% of range/108 combos
Weakest opening pair: 77
Weakest Suited Connector: KJs
Weakest Ax: A2

Flop: Ah9c2s

Continuing with: 99+, AJs+, A5s-A2s, AQo+ - 6.6% of range, 88 combos
Betting: Big Ax, KK, QQ
Checking: Small Ax, A2, 99
Check/Raise: A2, 99, Ax a couple of the suits of small Ax, JJ, TT
Check/Call: all the rest of Ax, JJ, TT
Folding rest of range

Bet AA and KK, check/call A4dd

Turn: Ah9c2sJh
Continuing with: AA, JJ, 99, AJs+, A2s, Ah5h-Ah3h, AQo+ -- 4%, 61 combos
Betting: A9, A2, AK, AQ
C/R: AA, 99, JJ, A5/4/3 (would I rather C/R with KK or QQ? What is a check/raise doing here? Balancing the sets. Maybe I should have some non-A FD to c/r here?)
C/C: all other Ax hands
Folding: KK, QQ, TT

AKo - calling
AcJc - this could be a raisable hand or is a call?
Khqh - if I had it here would be a raise for sure but I don’t think I have it?

River: Ah9c2sJhKs
My range now is AA, JJ, 99, AJs+, A2s, AKo -- 3.4% 46 combos
Betting: AA, AK, AJ
C/R/F: A2, A9, AQ, A5 (bluff)
C/C: JJ, 99, all other Ax hands left as bluff catchers

99 is a check/call
KhQh is not here…
AQ is a check/raise/fold as a bluff to balance 2p hands here

Push on the river, getting 2:1, so only have to be good 33% of the time
Against this range:AA, JJ, 99, ATs+, KhTh+, QTs, QhJh, AcKh, AdKh, AcQh, AdQh, AcJh, AdJh
99: 62% - call
JJ: 72% — call
AA: 77% — call
AK: 45% — call
AQ: 26% — fold

The wider his range is here with the various 2p the better our value hands do and worse our marginal do. Also depends on how much V will include bluffs here. How likely is he to bluff the river? How likely is he to have made it here with a FD? What would he be calling/bluffing? No Axhh. K9hh? QThh? Weak TAG would likely not have a lot of those hands here, so prob very few bluffs. So don’t need a lot of bluff catchers on the end, I don't think.

I realized later too that I need a check/raise/call range too, maybe?

And still trying to see how to find the combo I hold at the table in these ranges in spots like this, quickly.

Interested to see if anyone stuck with me this far - I kinda dug way deep into these exercises, which I think is the point!

Ben Hayles

Well done zampana. I've scanned through your answer quickly and I'm impressed with the detail. This is exactly what is intended. If you drill through these, you'll start to find it easier to translate to live play.

What are the pros and cons of including KQs/KJs (with backdoor draws) in your Cbet flop range?
What are your precise pot odds for calling the shove on the river?

zampana1970

Hey Ben thanks for the check over!

The KQs/KJs BDs are great for cbetting as they have some big card blocker card value, so we might fold out some PPs, some of the 2nd or 3rd pairs. Cons would be we're going to run into Ax a good part of the time, so we'd prob want to size our cbet a little lower - say 1/3 to 1/2 pot, so that we only have to get a fold 25 to 33% of the time?

We are getting 2.1:1 to call their shove. I believe...

Ben Hayles

@zampana1970 I like your thinking regarding the Cbet sizing - we can probably get away with choosing different sizes against this opponent. You might want to check those pot odds once more on the river (27BB to call / Pot 93.4BB). Try and express them as a percentage so you can easily compare it with your perceived equity (of each hand e.g. AQo you said you had 28% equity with).

zampana1970

Yes good call of course keeping everything in percentages makes total sense. We're getting 29% odds here so if the AQo is in fact 28% then we have a slight value call.

Quadzilla

Greetings, I'm a beginner with range building workbooks. On the turn zampana1970 said he'd continue with Ah5h-Ah3h, but the Ah can't be in his range, since it's on the board, no? (Very impressive breakdown, by the way. I can see I have a long way to go...)

zampana1970

Yes good point. There are likely all kinds of little errors in there. I think I neglected to have card removal turned on in my hand range builder...

Martin B

Z- I found your analysis thorough and thoughtful. It is very helpful to see your thoughts and then go back over my own ranges and thought processes. I'm still wrapping my brain around flopzilla and working like this. I have not gotten to go over it in depth yet but my range preflop was just a percent wider than yours with a few more suited connectors and minus the A2-5s hands. I usually don't play them in such early position. At first blush I see that I did not c bet with a wide enough percentage of my opening range on the flop. Thanks for posting and please continue!

zampana1970

Will do! This is what I love about this workbook: there is no answer key. We can come to the table with different ranges (and we should!) and in comparing we can get the flavor of how different players construct. When it comes to the later hands in the book, where we are constructing V ranges, we can use what we're learning here to make sure the ranges we make aren't just be mirrors of our own. I'd love to see players who will play wider ranges in these spots and love to hear their arguments of why they decide to play that way.

Patrik B

Hi all,
I will also give it a go. I've never done something so extensive like this and I am probably going to make a fool out of myself. I am also not a native speaker so my grammar will probably also be off.

Anyway to the hand:

My Opening Range: 77+, AJs+, AQo+, KQs, QJs, JTs, T9s, 98s
7.8% of range/104 combos
Weakest opening pair: 77
Weakest Suited Connector: 98s
Weakest Ax: AQo

Flop: Ah9c2s

On the Flop, I am probably going to bet my range. Maybe I am not betting AA since it smashes the Flop so hard.

I am going to bet about 1/3 - 1/2 Pot - As played the bet needs to work about 28%

A small bet on a dry A high flop should do the trick since Willans KX, Suited Connectors do literally have nothing to continue on.

I am betting 96.6% of previous range - 84 combos
77+ - KK, AJs+, AQo+, KQs, QJs, JTs, T9s, 98s

Turn: Ah9c2sJh

So when called on the Flop I think that Ax makes a lot of villains range.
I would continue to bet my strong hands for Value since I am getting called with hands like A5, A3, ---

I am betting 45.6 % of previous range - 36 Combos
JJ,99,Ako-AQo,AKs-AJs,KhQh,Th9h, 9h8h

I am going to check-call with hands like KK, QQ

River: Ah9c2sJhKs

I would still bet a lot of my range for Value and I would give up on the missed draws.
I am betting about 90.9 % of previous range - 30 Combos

The river jam is interesting: We only need about 29% Equity to make the call but I just can't really see what hand would take this line that we beat with AQ.

Would villain ever have something different than JJ,99,AQs-A9s,AQo-AJo? If not, our Equity with AQ would only be around 23.44%


I have to admit, that is rather hard to go through this book on my own. If someone feels the same and would love to talk through the examples together, let me know. I would love to do that.

Love to hear your feedback
Cheers
Patrik

zampana1970

Hey Patrik - curious why you cbet your full range?

Patrik B

Hey zampana,
great question :)

After thinking about it, maybe I should adjust the line to the position in am raising from.

My thinking was, that we are going to hit this board a lot with our range.

So I c-bet for two reasons:

1. If we hit the board good / great I would love to get value from hands that villain will call. The villain will most likely call down 2-3 streets with hands like A4, AT.

2. If we miss, the small c-bet is going to fold a lot of hands that could catch up at the river and is probably always going to be profitable because there is no way, that villain is going to defend with 66%- 75% of his flatting range. Given, that we c-bet 1/3 - 1/2 pot.

But then again I could be totally wrong about my line and my thinking. I think just going through the book myself will help me think about ranges but is probably not going to help me find the best lines in different hands.

Do you work with other players?

zampana1970

Do I work with other players as in coaching? Good lord no I'm no where near ready for that if ever. Just sharing my learning!

Might be worth checking out Ed Miller's 1% - and here I'm not totally sure whether I'm right or wrong here but I feel like there has to be some hands that we check/fold here because a) we want to start cutting down our range for future streets -- otherwise we end up with too many combos later in the hand and b) we want to have a check/raising and check/calling range for those times when we have monsters that we don't want V to fold out of, and for when we have some value but don't want to bloat the pot - TPWK maybe. So to balance those combos we're checking and continuing with we need some bluffs and we need some folding hands too -- otherwise V will know to put us on a hand if we check, cuz we never fold to their bet.

Patrik B

I was not talking about coaching more about this. Talking over hands, lines and so on. I truly enjoy talking with you and it get's me thinking a lot. I know, that I have still a lot of weakness in my game and talking over spots really pushes me forward.

I will definitely think about me checking range a lot in the next couple of days.

I don't know maybe you would like to talk through some of the examples together. If so, let me know it would be great and I think we could both learn new things (or bad ones in my case :)

zampana1970

Ya man I'm totally in. I'd like to keep it in the forums because I feel like it's the best place for people to come later to see what we talked about - as opposed to skype say or slack. Is that cool?

zampana1970

Who is "you" and what is the "entire thing?"

greg Pajak

First timer here as well. :) For the attached Hand #1 I wasn't sure if I was doing it correctly, and what to put in on the final page of Hand #1. Also, when do we start looking at HRC and the ICM stuff with the payouts?