Understand the nuances of when to overcall and when to overfold facing aggression
Dealing with aggression is one of the hardest tasks in poker.
Not only you’re required to display substantial technical ability to properly construct your continuing ranges, but you also need emotional control and awareness of table dynamics to make the best possible decisions.
The most common situation where a lot of doubts and dissonances arise for poker players when it comes to facing aggression is when holding a bluffcatcher.
What should you do when you hold a mediocre hand and your opponent is showing no signs of intention to give up the pot?
For example, imagine you’re on the turn with a 2nd pair type hand in a single raised pot, and you decide to bet to get some thin value out of your hand. Your aggressive opponent doesn’t want to keep the pot small, so he raises you 4 times your bet. What do you do?
Situations like this can happen when you are cbetting the flop, delay cbetting the turn, double barreling the turn, probing against an in position raiser… the list goes on. It’s very common in poker to have a mediocre hand that wants to keep the pot small. So we need a plan for what we’re going to do when chips start to go in.
But before we design our gameplan for these situations, we need to address some important theoretical concepts first.
The first thing is to understand the purpose of a bluffcatching strategy. I’ve said this many times in my videos, but it’s never a bad idea to say it again – the purpose of a bluffcatching strategy is to make your opponent’s bluffs indifferent.
This understanding needs to be very clear in your head before we proceed. These hands we call bluffcatchers have one main goal in the context of our strategy: to keep the EV of our opponents weak hands at a low level. We must play in a way such that the bulk of our opponents bluffing hands make the same amount of money when playing aggressively or passively. If we fold too much, our opponents bluffing hands will exploit us by always playing aggressively and capturing a bigger share of the pot. If we call too much, those hands can exploit us by always playing passively and allowing their colleagues of higher strength to make all the money.
The second thing is to understand that the relationship between bluffs and bluffcatchers is a two-way street. While bluffcatchers aim to make some bluffs indifferent, the bluffs should do the same to the bluffcatchers. The purpose of a bluffing strategy is to make the bluffcatchers indifferent. This is really important.
When you’re constructing your bluffcatching strategy, you should keep in mind that, at least in theory, your opponent should play in a way such that some of your bluffcatchers make the same amount of money when calling or folding (or calling or raising, sometimes). This means that there are some things your opponent must do to keep the EV of calling with your bluffcatchers either close to 0 or exactly zero. Which leads to the fun part – what exactly are these things your opponent must do to keep you indifferent?
If we can understand the mechanics of the indifference generated by a balanced bluffing strategy, we can then verify whether our opponents are actually achieving that goal or not in real games. If they are not, then we can exploit them.
So let’s dive into that.
INDIFFERENCE IN A 1-STREET GAME
Indifference in a 1-street game is really simple, and you’ve probably seen multiple explanations of it (some even from myself) in your study time. So let’s go through that real quick.
The math of indifference on the river can be summarized with one magical variable every poker theorist likes to talk about: alfa.
alfa = s/(1 + s), where s is the betsize in pots.
Alfa determines 2 things at the same time – the bluff to value ratio for a balanced betting range on the river; and the optimal folding frequency against that betsize.
If you want to bet pot on the river for example, alfa = 1/(1+1) = 0.5. This means that when betting pot, you should have 0.5 bluff combination for every value bet in your range. If you have 10 value combos, then you should bet 5 combos of bluffs. By constructing a range with this ratio, you guarantee that the percentage of bluffs in your betting range is exactly equal to the pot odds you’re laying to your opponent with that betsize.
5/15 = 33.33% bluffs. When a facing a pot bet, your opponent is getting 33% pot odds – everytime he wins, he wins 2 times more money than when he loses, because he wins the pot and your bet. If you are bluffing 33.33% of the time and your opponent needs to win 33.33% of the time to breakeven on his call, then you guarantee that his bluffcatchers will make $0 when calling – just like folding. You’ve successfully made them indifferent.
Your opponent then should construct his bluffcatching strategy to prevent your bluffs from making money. And he must fold exactly at the alfa ratio to achieve that. For our example above, alfa = 0.5, so your opponent needs to fold 50% of the time against your bet. This guarantees that your bluffs will make the same amount of money when choosing to bet, or to check – $0.
While the math for indifference in a 1-street game is important, most of the circumstances you’ll face in poker can’t be properly analyzed with these tools alone. You’ll be faced with flop and turn decisions much more often than river decisions; therefore we need to understand how indifference works in a multi-street scenario.
INDIFFERENCE IN A 2-STREET GAME
Going from a 1-street analysis straight to a 3-street analysis wouldn’t be wise, so the next step in our exploration has to be understanding indifference for a 2-street game.
The easiest way to quickly understand the difference between a 1-street indifference structure and a 2-street indifference structure is to picture what would happen if we kept the same frequencies from the prior solution.
We’re now on the turn instead of river. We hold a bluffcatcher and our opponent is polarized to nuts or air. Opponent will bet pot size on turn and river. What would happen to us if IP continued to bluff 33% of the time on the turn?
33.33% bluffs is what our opponent needs to be balanced in a 1-street game. But if we’re on the turn and he only bets 33% bluffs, then he never gives up the river. His nutted hands are invulnerable, so the 10 value combos on the turn remain 10 value combos by the river. If he only bets 5 bluff combos on the turn, then he must follow through with 100% of those combos on the river, which means his river betting frequency is 100%.
Well, this can’t be optimal. If your opponent always follows through with another bet on the river, then calling turn will be Negative EV for you. This is because you make no money facing a river bet – your opponent made sure to make you indifferent. Therefore, everytime you call a turn bet, you lose the whole amount you invested, simply because you’re not getting anything back in return. You call the turn only to face a river bet 100% of the time, and against such bet calling or folding makes no difference. It’s like you’re calling the turn to always face a bet on the river and you always fold against that bet. Hopefully you can see how that’s terrible.
By now you can visualize what’s the most important variable when bluffcatching on the turn – how much your opponent gives up by the river.
Assuming your opponent makes you indifferent with his river bet (which is almost never the case in real life, but we’ll get to that), the only way to compensate for the money you lose by calling turn and facing a river bet is by sometimes facing a check and getting to showdown against some of your opponent’s turn bluffs. For that to happen, they need to bring sufficient bluffs from the turn to the river to both 1) balance their river betting range and 2) give up enough of the time to give you incentive to call the turn.
If you can understand this then you can also realize that all of this is determined mathematically.
If your opponent bets pot on the turn, he is giving you 33% pot odds. Since your investment can only be returned through getting to showdown, your opponent must give up the river exactly 33% of the time for your turn call to breakeven.
With this we’ve covered the most important variable for bluffcatching in a 2-street game – how much your opponent gives up on the river. If you want to improve your bluffcatching efficiency on the turn, you must understand how much your opponent needs to give up on the river to give you incentive to call a turn bet. By studying population tendencies and comparing the frequencies of your player pool to GTO frequencies, you will be able to determine whether your opponents are overbarreling or underbarreling relative to solver. Both deviations have consequences to how you want to construct your turn bluffcatching strategy.
Now, the second most important variable in this discussion is wether the bettor is balanced or not with their river betting range.
In the context of theory, we don’t discuss that variable because the bettor is always balanced. But real opponents in real games won’t be. So you need to understand how them potentially overbluffing or underbluffing can generate EV for you.
When we combine the potential for the bettor to overbarrel or underbarrel relative to solver (description of how often they bet or check the river with their global strategy) with the potential to overbluff or underbluff when betting (description of the percentage of bluffs in the betting range), there are 4 possibilities for how real opponents will behave against you:
- Underbarrel in frequency; underbluff in range composition;
- Underbarrel in frequency; overbluff in range composition;
- Overbarrel in frequency; underbluff in range composition;
- Overbarrel in frequency; overbluff in range composition.
By understanding the repercussions of each of these possible scenarios, we can develop an exploitative gameplan to increase our efficiency when bluffcatching the turn with mediocre hands.
SCENARIO 1 – Underbarrel in frequency; underbluff in range composition
In this scenario, our opponent checks river more often than he is supposed to in theory; and when he bets, his range lacks sufficient bluffs to be properly balanced.
This scenario is very common against overly passive players, specifically river passivity. They do bring bluffs from turn to river, but after they get called on the turn they decide to give up with their weak hands. These extra give ups cause them to end up checking more often than solver, and when they bet their range is too strong.
Against this deviation, the correct adjustment is to overcall the turn and overfold the river.
The excess of river give ups makes you get to showdown more often and win after calling turn, which increases the EV of calling with bluffcatchers. This extra EV will be sufficient for you to at least push mixed strategy turn calls to pure calls; and may even be sufficient to turn pure turn folds into pure calls. Then, when faced with a river bet, you can simply fold as calling will be -EV for you.
SCENARIO 2 – Underbarrel in frequency; overbluff in range composition
In this scenario, our opponent checks river more often than he is supposed to in theory; and when he bets, his range contains way too many bluffs relative to balanced.
This scenario can happen when your opponent fails to value bet correctly on the river, and ends up checking with hands solver would still value bet with. The extra checks with value hands leads to higher global checking frequency (underbarrel), but since they still fire the bluffs their range composition becomes skewed towards bluffs. This tendency is very typical of recreational players.
Against this deviation, the correct adjustment is to overcall the turn and overcall the river.
The excess of checks doesn’t bring you any EV directly, because you are getting to showdown against hands your bluffcatcher is likely losing to. But since he is overbluffing the river, you have extra EV in the river check-call line, which not only incentivizes you to overcall the river, but also to bring more bluffcatchers from the turn to the river to take advantage of the overbluffing mistake.
SCENARIO 3 – Overbarrel in frequency; underbluff in range composition
In this scenario, our opponent checks river less often than he is supposed to in theory; and when he bets, his range lacks sufficient bluffs to be properly balanced.
This happens when your opponent is way too passive right there on the turn. He is so passive and value heavy with his turn betting range that he is not bringing sufficient bluffs from the turn to the river. This causes him to barrel too much – as his range is very skewed towards value – but when he bets he still underbluffs, because the amount of bluffs are not sufficient.
Pay attention to the difference between this scenario and scenario 1. In Scenario 1, opponent still contains proper amount of bluffs in his turn betting range, but then gives up with those on the river. In Scenario 3, opponent is giving up with the bluffs already on the turn, making his turn betting range excessively strong.
This scenario will happen against the most passive players in your pool, like the very nitty regs and tight passive recreationals.
Against this deviation, the correct adjustment is to overfold the turn.
There is no money to be had by calling a turn bet. You won’t get often enough to showdown to compensate your turn investment, and when you face a bet you still can’t profitably call.
SCENARIO 4 – Overbarrel in frequency, overbluff in range composition
In this scenario, our opponent checks river less often than he is supposed to in theory; and when he bets, his range contains way too many bluffs relative to balanced.
This happens when your opponent doesn’t properly control his bluffing frequencies, either on the turn or on the river. His frequency increases because he is not giving up as much as he should with his bluffs, and the excess of bluffs in the betting range generates an overbluffed range composition.
This scenario will happen in any circumstance where your opponent fails to recognize the necessity to play passively with his bluffs. It can happen with recreational players and regs of any level.
Against this deviation, the correct adjustment is to overcall the turn and overcall the river.
The excess of bluffs in the river betting range adds EV to the river call line, which adds EV to the turn call line. To maximally exploit this deviation, not only you should always call the river with your bluffcatchers, but you should also not fold your bluffcatchers on the turn when facing aggression. The correct play is to close your eyes and call them down.
PRACTICAL EXAMPLE
To make all of this crystal clear to you, we can use real numbers from a common spot – facing triple barrels BB vs BTN in SRPs.
What matters to us in our analysis is:
- What’s the GTO triple barrel frequency
- What is the player pool triple barrel frequency
- What is the player pool range composition in the triple barrel range
With these 3 numbers at hand, we can determine whether it is correct to overcall or to overfold the turn and river with our bluffcatchers. Let’s start.
The GTO triple barrel frequency can be obtained by running aggregated reports in PioSolver. Aggregated reports are a feature of PioSolver (and other solvers in the market) that goes through multiple board textures (how many you have available) and builds an excel spreadsheet containing numerous variables from the equilibrium strategy for a particular node of the game tree – EV, Equity, Frequencies, and others.
They also provide a weighted average of the frequencies for the line you decided to run the report for. So if you want to know for example how often a solver cbets the flop on average, all you gotta do is solve all the 1755 strategically unique flops and then run an aggregated report on the flop cbet line.
The line we are interested however is the triple barrel line. Specifically, the sequence B30-B75-B (IP bets 30% pot on the flop and 75% pot on the turn). Luckily for you, I have aggregated reports for every single line of the NLHE game tree.
The numbers we are interested at are these ones:
This gives us our first variable:
GTO 3Barrel Frequency: 46.48% (1 – 53.52%)
When it comes to the player pool, these are the numbers:
We observe a 7-8% Overbarrel by population.
And finally, the range composition:
We observe overbluffs ranging from 5% (recs when betting 1.2x pot – balanced is 35% for that size; they have 40%) to 13% (regs when betting 2x pot – balanced is 40% for that size, they have 53%).
What the data shows is that both profiles are overbarreling relative to solver on the river, and their betting ranges are overbluffed in pretty much any river sizing. This constitutes scenario 4, and we should overcall turn and river.
This is why you see me calling down so much in my videos. Scenario 4 is very common in poker.
Developing an appropriate gameplan for bluffcatching requires doing the quantitative analysis above for all the relevant spots in the game tree. That may seem like a lot of work, but it isn’t. At least not when you have the data. Once you have the data, it’s just about pulling numbers from excel spreadsheets and H2N range research reports. The real work is building all this data. It literally took me years, dozens of thousands of dollars and multiple employees to build the infrastructure I have today to study poker.
Since I don’t think you can access similar data, our best option here is to design qualitative guidelines that will help you make better decisions in game. Your thought process when bluffcatching on the turn should be as follows:
- Do you think villain will overbluff the river after you call turn?
1. If yes, overcall turn and river;
2. If not, do you think a river bet is coming very often after you call turn
1. If yes, overfold the turn;
2. If not, overcall the turn and overfold the river;
By following this thought process with discipline I’m sure you’ll make much more money with your bluffcatching strategy.
| For a more practical analysis of bluffcatching decisions, showing lots of real hand examples, check this video from my channel where I explain my top 10 most insane calldowns of all time
Thanks for reading. See you next week.
Until then – keep it simple.
Saulo