How You’re Getting Exploited?

16 Sep 2024

If you’re making mistakes at the tables that cost you real money and don’t even realize it, your opponents are exploiting these errors, and it will continue unless you address them. In this topic, we’ll uncover how you’ve been exploited and provide strategies to stop the bleeding. So let’s get into it!

Over-Folding & Over-Calling

We're going to use a specific post-flop leak to demonstrate how you might have been getting exploited by your opponents. Watch the following hand and see if you can identify the issue:

In this hand, Hero opens pre-flop with K-6 and gets called by the big blind. On a semi-connected flop, Hero decides to check behind with a hand that has low equity and poor blockers. Then, on the turn, facing a small bet with an unimproved hand, Hero decides to fold, which is the correct decision in GTO terms.

So, what's the problem here? Defending against turn bets is one of the most challenging aspects of poker. When we analyze the behavior of top players who consistently win millions at the poker tables, we observe that even they tend to fold too much when facing these bets. 

While a GTO bot would fold about 22% of the time against a small turn bet, regular players fold 29% of the time, a 7% over-fold compared to a balanced strategy. At lower stakes, the over-folding is even more pronounced, with players folding 14% more often than solvers.

Before we delve into why this over-folding happens, you should ask yourself whether this over-folding is really a problem. While it's true that most players fold more than poker solvers in such situations, does this over-folding actually cost you money? Not all deviations from solver strategies are mistakes. For instance, some argue that over-folding against recreational players on the river is correct because they don't bluff as much. In such cases, over-folding can be a profitable strategy if it aligns with your opponent's tendencies.

To determine whether over-folding against turn bets is a leak that costs you money or a beneficial exploit, you need to study your opponents' behavior. Understanding whether their betting range construction encourages you to over-fold or over-call is crucial. This can be complex but essential for refining your poker strategy.

Do you know what your opponent's strategy needs to look like for you to want to over-fold the turn? The situation on the turn is more complex than on the river. On the river, deciding whether to call or fold against a bet is straightforward: you simply need to know how many bluffs your opponent has with their particular bet sizing. 

For example, if they bet half-pot, they need to be bluffing 25% of the time for you to break even. If they bluff more than that, your bluff catcher is positive EV and you should call. If they bluff less, your bluff catcher is negative EV and you should fold.

However, on the turn, knowing the number of bluffs your opponent has is not enough to decide whether to call or fold a marginal bluff catcher. 

Consider this game, which illustrates the classic polar versus bluff catcher scenario over two streets.

Action starts on the turn with the polarized range being able to either bet pot or check. On the river, the polarized range has the same options: either a pot bet or a check. If the polarized range has six value combos, the optimal solution for the IP (in-position) player is to bet the turn with a total of 13 combos, six combos of value and seven combos of bluffs, resulting in a 1.25 bluff-to-value ratio.

Now, what if the OP player is forced to under-bluff the turn, reducing their bluff combos from 46% to 30%? You might expect that the OP (out-of-position) player would start folding everything, similar to the river situation. But that's not necessarily the case. Even if your opponent is under-bluffing on the turn, it’s still possible that you should over-fold, as the simulation might show:

To understand this, you need to know how calling turn bets with bluff catchers generates profit. On the river, you break even by calling if you win at showdown with the same percentage as the pot odds you are given. On the turn, however, you make money by not facing a bet on the river. This means that your expected value from calling the turn bet comes not only from the showdown frequency but also from the fact that sometimes your opponent will check behind on the river.

In the context of the game we discussed, facing a pot-sized bet on the turn means we’re getting 33% pot odds on a call. Therefore, to break even, we need to win the hand 33% of the time. Given that our opponent’s betting range should theoretically make us indifferent to calling or folding, this implies that we need to see a river check 33% of the time to break even. If we can get to the showdown by facing a river check a third of the time, then the money lost by calling a turn bet and facing a river bet will be offset by the money won when reaching the showdown.

This means that to make a turn call profitable, we rely on how often the opponent gives up on the river. Even if the opponent under-bluffs on the turn, as long as they continue to check too much on the river with their air, we can still reach showdown more often than needed to break even. This allows us to profit from calling the turn bet, even against an opponent who under-bluffs.

In summary, to determine whether you should overfold or overcall against a turn probe from your opponent, analyze how often they give up on the river after betting the turn. If they give up more frequently than expected, you should likely adjust by overcalling the turn.

More Poker Examples

Let’s examine the numbers for real players in the big blind versus button scenario to understand whether overfolding against turn probes is beneficial. 

To determine how often a solver gives up on the river after betting the turn, you can use an AG Gator report. This feature, available in most solvers, processes solved hands to extract critical data such as equity, EV, and strategy frequencies. By analyzing these frequencies across all possible runouts, you get the average rate at which the solver checks the river. In this case, the solver checks the river 45% of the time.

For instance, you can use poker tools like Hand2Note, a powerful poker tracker that not only offers standard HUD and stat features but also allows you to study population tendencies and maximize your EV. According to a range research report from H2N, regular players bet the river 56% of the time after making a small bet on the turn. This means they check the river 44% of the time, which is 1% less than the solver's frequency.

At first glance, this might suggest that you should overfold in this situation because the money lost by calling a turn bet and facing a river bet isn't compensated by the opportunity to get to showdown. However, this isn’t necessarily the case.

The key insight is that other factors also matter. Unlike balanced players who make you indifferent to calling or folding on the river, regular players often have imbalanced strategies. This means their river betting range might not make you indifferent. In fact, against such players, you could actually profit from facing a river bet because their poker strategy could create significant EV opportunities for you.

To summarize, while regular players give up on the river slightly less often than solvers, this doesn’t automatically mean you should overfold. Their river betting strategy might still generate EV for you, and understanding these nuances in your opponent's strategy can be crucial for making the most profitable decisions.

This tendency can create significant opportunities for you to profit with bluff catchers. When facing bets from these players, you will often win at showdown more frequently than what would make you indifferent in that line.

For example, consider a situation where regular players bet small on the turn and then 3/4 pot on the river. They typically have about 45% bluffs in this spot, with 4% of those being low pairs. If we exclude these low pairs, it means that any pair you hold will win a showdown around 41% of the time. 

A 3/4 pot river bet should have around 30% bluffs to be balanced, so regular players are over-bluffing by at least 11%. This means that calling such a bet with a pair, given that the pot is about 8.8 big blinds on the river, will net you more than two big blinds per call.

So, every time you face a river bet from a regular on this line with a pair, you're making more than two big blinds per hand. Unlike situations with balanced players where you might break even, facing a river bet from an over-bluffing player can actually be very profitable.

This brings us to the main point: you should massively overfold the turn with your bluff catchers. But there’s more to it. The title of this article is about getting exploited without realizing it, not just leaving money on the table by not exploiting an over-bluffing behavior.

EV Loss Mistake

To truly understand if you’re being exploited, you need to distinguish between a frequency mistake and an EV loss mistake. An EV loss mistake occurs when you choose a strategy that is not the highest EV option at equilibrium. For instance, betting small with a hand that should always bet big is an EV loss mistake. 

The difference between the EV of your chosen action and the EV of the optimal action represents the size of your mistake. This is money you should have won but didn’t, as poker is a zero-sum game.

What this means is that your opponent is directly benefiting from your inability to correctly manage frequency mistakes. 

A frequency mistake, on the other hand, occurs when you play a mixed strategy hand at incorrect frequencies compared to equilibrium. For example, in the case of our K-6 hand from earlier, you might be making a frequency mistake if you always check this hand on the flop instead of checking it 53.8% of the time as the equilibrium suggests. While checking and betting might have the same EV in this specific instance, frequency mistakes generally involve playing mixed strategy hands at the wrong ratios. 

If you make a frequency mistake against a fixed balanced strategy, your EV remains unchanged. However, if your opponent adjusts their strategy to exploit your frequency mistake, that’s when you start losing money.

In the situation we’re discussing, you’re over-folding to turn probes primarily because you’re incorrectly managing your mixed strategy hands. A significant reason for this over-folding is that most players construct their flop check ranges incorrectly due to oversimplified check ranges, risk aversion, and inadequate randomization. Many players end up checking too few of their complete air combos. 

To put it simply, when was the last time you over-bet a hand like 10-9 suited or 9-8 offsuit on an Ace-King-7 board? You probably haven't done this very often. Most players in real games check more often with their complete air hands on the flop, which weakens their checking range and contributes to the tendency to over-fold.

Additionally, players tend to check too much with mixed strategy air hands and not enough with mixed strategy strong hands. This imbalance further exacerbates the problem, leading to frequency mistakes and the resulting over-folding.

To understand this, you need to grasp how we profit from calling turn bets with bluff catchers. On the river, we break even with a call if we win at showdown the same percentage as the pot odds we’re given on the turn. 

Essentially, we make money by not facing a bet on the next street. In theory, our opponent’s strategy should make us indifferent to calling or folding against their river bet. This means it doesn’t matter whether we fold or call when facing a river bet; our expected value (EV) would remain the same against a fixed strategy. Therefore, facing a river bet after calling a turn bet costs us money every time. We simply lose the amount we called on the turn. 

Thus, the only way to break even with a turn call is by compensating for the money lost by facing a river bet with the money won when not facing a river bet. In other words, we need to get to showdown and win against our opponent’s check. 

In the GTO solution for the previous example, when facing a pot bet on the turn, we get 33% pot odds on a call. To break even, we need to win 33% of the time. Since our opponent’s river betting range should make us indifferent, we need them to give up 33% of the time on the river. If we can get to showdown by facing a river check one-third of the time, the money lost from calling the turn and facing a river bet is balanced by the money won from getting to showdown.

So, if your opponent gives up more often than this, you should likely consider over-folding the turn. But if they give up less often, you may still find profit in calling a turn bet with your bluff catchers, despite their under-bluffing tendencies.

I wish I had a magic formula to stop this bleeding instantly, but unfortunately, I don’t. Improving at poker requires dedicating time and energy to study and practice. It involves sitting in your chair daily, studying intensely, and repeating the process over months and years. Sometimes, it might feel like your efforts are not yielding immediate rewards, but persistence is key. I’ve been there myself — struggling at low stakes before eventually achieving my dream of making a living from poker. With enough effort, I believe you can do it too. Thanks for reading and have a nice week!