Poker

Terms, Exploits and Plays

If an opponent has a capped or too condensed range, you should

• attack that range with big sizings because that’s how you extract the most value from such a range.

If your opponent has a too polarized range, you want to attack them with

small bet sizes because polar ranges struggle to call, so a small bet will force them to raise or over-fold.With the caveat that if they are perfectly polarized (they only have the nuts or a pure bluff) you do not want to attack them. Instead, you should bluff-catch against them because otherwise, they will only continue against you with the nuts

Board Coverage

The ability to make strong hands across a wide range of possible board textures.

A board coverage error is made when

a line is over- or under-saturated with certain types of hands. When a player never c-bets with Ace-high on the flop, they should generate fewer folds when they barrel on a turned Ace. When a player never checks back a pair, they can more easily be pushed off a hand when the turn pairs the board.

Board coverage imbalances give

attentive players a form of clairvoyance that allows them to tell when a card has (or has not) improved their opponent.

When your opponent is very out of balance

the need to carefully curate your own range to maintain a delicate balance disappears as well.

Equity management

How a player manages all their possible hands, which come from a varying set of equity buckets.

Exploit vs. over-bluffers

Checking with your value to slow-play or to check-raise.

Exploit vs. over-callers –

1. Betting thinner for value and sizing up with nutted hands.

Exploit vs. over-folders –

1. Sizing down or checking with nutted hands to avoid scaring them away too quickly and thus missing out on value. Bluffing performs better now too, due to the increased fold equity.

Betting volume

The aggregate amount of money that is bet in a certain node or series of nodes (line). A betting volume mistake is simply when someone puts too much (or too little) money in on a particular betting (or raising) line