Some lessons from “Applications of No-Limit Hold’em” by Matthew Janda (Flashback to 2013)

I used to blog. Or at least tried to. That crazy adventure ended a while back. And the blog has disappeared into the abyss of websites who’s domain name wasn’t extended.

Gone.

Forever.

Or maaaaybe … that just doesn’t happen on the internet. With the power of the Wayback Machine, I digged through my personal archives and looking for posts still worth reading and maybe even sharing.

Like my book review about “Applications of No-Limit Hold’em” by Matthew Janda.

The book is old (for a poker book, as knowledge is often quickly kind of outdated), and was written in the Dark Ages of poker: the pre-solver days.

But it did provide us with some small steps in the direction of Enlightenment.

Below is how it originally appeared on my discontinued blog. The lessons still apply today & the book could still be worth a read. Just keep in mind that not everything in there is the one and only Truth.

Before and after reading the book, you can benefit greatly from checking out this thread on the 2+2 forums, where the author happily chimes in.

Janda also has a more recent book: NL Hold’em for Advanced Players. That one is more high level and an easier read. I tweeted a tweetstorm about it and I would recommend to start with that book before going back to Applications of NL.

<Original post>

This is a book I had been looking forward to for a while, since it would be a GTO-based approach for 6-max games, and as we all know, GTO is so hot right now.

Anyways, it was endorsed by none other than sauce123, so the book also had to be … so hot right now.

But unfortunately, it wasn’t what I expected it to be. Then again, for the price of a ‘normal book’ (something like $35), you shouldn’t expect to find the holy grail of poker. And while I had hoped for more, I wasn’t entirely dissappointed. But things like using a 3.5bb open instead of let’s say 3bb in all examples (and playing bigger pots on every street because of this), just seems lazy and gives the book the classic ‘out of touch with today’s games feel‘ a lot of them tend to have. Mr. Janda’s defense is that he started writing the book 2+ years ago while 3.5bb was still cool and all the formulas used are still valid if you fill in the right numbers. But in my humble opinion, the book should have gotten the update to today’s standards.

Looking past the stuff that sort of bothered me, there are certainly a lot of things I liked and some important points I learned. On top of that, there are 10 hands discussed at the end of the book. I wrote hands, but I actually meant ranges. Pretty in depth range versus range analysis. Now it can be done even more in depth when you do it yourself with a nice elaborate CREV simulation, but this is as good as it gets in a book (for now?). Looking at the perspective of both players on each street is something each of us should have done by himself a long time ago. But most of us can be lazy (or at least I can be), so we (I) have never done that in all these years of playing poker.

Here’s an overview of what I learned (or already knew, but had kind of forgotten):

1) When you open and a regular flats in position, he’s going to have a pretty strong range most of the time. It makes sense to not just relentlessly cbet and check more often.

2) It also makes sense to defend your checking range. If you’re checking to check/fold every single time, you become easier to play against and any villain can take advantage of you in that spot.

The cliffs of the recommendations relating to cbets found in the book, are:

• cbet the flop for value when going for 3 streets
• cbet the flop for value/protection when you’re hand is vulnerable and you can make villain fold high equity hands (for example overcards to your middling pair on a low board)
• mix in a reasonable amount of “good” bluffs (bluffs with extra equity or the potential to turn some)
• check your other hands and some stronger hands to check/call or check/raise

Now I’m not saying I agree 100% , but this leads to stronger checking ranges both in position and out of position as the preflop raiser, so you’re not as weak in those spots as you might have been in the past. It also means you can delayed cbet more credibly as a bluff, since you have some made hands that you check on the flop to bet on later streets.

3) Punish capped ranges. Don’t be afraid to go big, both for value and as a bluff obviously (and preferably in a balanced way) versus a capped range (for example when you call in the BB versus a BTN open and villain checks back the flop.)

Why?

Let’s start with this relatively simple example of a river scenario everyone uses to explain some GTO basics:

Player 1 arrives at the river with nuts or air and player 2 has only bluffcatchers. When player 1 makes a potsized bet on the river, his GTO bluffing frequency is 33%. This is because of the pot odds player 2 gets to call: he gets 2–1 odds, so needs to be right 33% of the time. If player 1 bluffs more (or less) frequently, player 2 can always call (or fold). The EV of player 1′s river bet is the whole pot, while the EV of player 2′s call versus a GTO bluffing frequency is zero.

When player 1 bets bigger than pot, he’s allowed to bluff more frequently because player 2 gets worse odds on his call. A double pot bet on the river gives player 2 only 3–2 odds, he needs to be good 40% of the time, which is also player 1's new GTO bluffing frequency. This way he gets to bet the river more often with an EV of pot when betting a balanced range.

Betting versus a capped range is kind of similar to this river scenario, and you can see why it makes sense to go big.

4) It’s ok or even good to have multiple betsizes. Just try to make sure they’re all (somewhat) balanced.

For example, let’s take a look at a hands I played: villain opens the button, small blind folds and I call in the big blind.

We can assume not many players will have our hand beat here. With so many possible draws you can represent on the turn, it makes sense to overbet a balanced range with the value part being most JX+. On the other hand, 88 isn’t something I want to lead for more than pot. So you can have second sizing for weaker value hands and again, some bluffs.

Villain in this hand was a regular with a stronger than usual range for checking back the flop and if he’s afraid I’ll try to blast him out of the pot with my bluffs, he needs to call with some % of the top of his range.

Two different turn betting ranges with one having a stronger value part than the other shouldn’t be a problem, since villain’s range is capped anyway. Because of this it’s hard for him to represent many strong hands on the turn. This means he can’t do a whole lot about you splitting your range except for checking back some nutted hands on the flop. And when you’re playing versus a villain capable of frequent overbets, this is exactly how you could adjust to that.

5) Players need to defend a smaller fraction of their range when facing a bet in multiway pots. This is so obvious, but reading about it again was just what I needed.

6) On the river, ranges are usually more defined with fewer combinations of hands. It’s common for our holding to significantly change our opponent’s betting or calling frequency because we can remove a large fraction of hands from his range. That’s why it’s important to properly utilize removal effects on the river. Of course I have made some blocker bluffs in the past, but right now I’m putting more and more emphasis bluffing and calling with the right hands.

Should you be interested in the book, you can find more discussion, comments and replies by the author on 2+2.

</Original post>