Poker Copilot 4.11 is now available to download.
What’s fixed
(And if you don’t own it yet, click here to buy Poker Copilot, securely and instantly.)
Poker Copilot 4 introduced a new “squeeze bet” statistic. Brad Lampman explains the squeeze bet in this article.
A squeeze bet occurs when you re-raise pre-flop when another player has already called the raise. You are “squeezing” the calling player out of the hand.
There are two basic reasons why we use a squeeze bet in poker. I will go into detail about them both and why the squeeze bet is an effective tool in today’s games.
We have a premium hand. This is a pretty simple concept. A player open-raises and another calls behind him. We show up with a hand like KK.
Let’s talk sizing briefly. The standard is to raise an extra 3BBs for every call. So if we 3bet a standard 3x sizing of a 3x open (9BBs), with a squeeze bet with one caller we would raise 12BBs. with two callers 15BBs, etc…
Out of position, we have the option of going a little bigger, by maybe one or two BBs. Raising bigger out of position is standard for the sake of representing strength to make up for our lack of positional advantage.
The other reason we squeeze bet is to take down the pot pre-flop with a hand that does not do as well against the villain’s ranges or as a pure bluff. For example, we can squeeze a hand that doesn’t play that well out of position, such as AQ, which will help define our opening villain’s range, thus making it easier to play him out of position. On the other hand, we can squeeze a much weaker hand such as 8T suited as a bluff, so when we get called, we can get away from it easily when we flop weak, or potentially when a big hand when we flop a monster.
Although I am not looking to get it in pre-flop in the above example with AQ offsuit, I am still far ahead of the villains’ opening and calling ranges from the button and small blind respectively. The small blinds call can essentially be considered dead money, especially if he is a fish, due to how wide his range will be here. Having position on him makes this a much stronger player as well.
This leads us to another reason for squeeze betting. When the caller in the hand is a fish, we can squeeze wider for value. If we know the opener is a regular that will be folding a lot to our raise, we can effectively squeeze a range of hands that is weighted towards value versus the range of the fish. We expect him to call more often, and with a wider range of hands, so squeeze betting is a good way of pushing out the regulars and getting heads up in a pot with a weak opponent.
The next two pictures demonstrate using a squeeze bet in this way. We isolate the fish and win a decent sized pot at showdown. Had we just called, we would have likely been pushed out of the hand on the flop, possibly even by worse hands by the regular.
Poker Copilot 4 introduced a new “donk bet” statistic. Guest blogger Brad Lampman explains the donk bet in this article.
To make a donk bet, two key things are required. You must be the caller pre-flop or on the previous street, and you must be out of position. The name comes from the fact that fish (or “donks”) tend to donk bet (hence “donk”) often. They will call a hand pre-flop, and if they like the flop, will simply bet instead of checking to the pre-flop raiser. This is generally poor play and tends to tilt regulars who miss their chance to c-bet and take down the pot.
Fortunately for us, we can use the concept of donk betting to create new lines, improving our table image and causing us to be harder to play against post-flop.
As a standard, I generally don’t donk bet into an opponent heads up. The only time it is very necessary is against fish when we’re strong, or against regulars when we want to look the opposite of our hand strength. The latter is hard to pull off profitably, so the addition of the “fold to donk bet” stat is required, and must be a large sample to be accurate (5,000+ hands on villain to be sure).
The best concept I have learned on donk betting came from a video on this exact topic by ViniVici9586. It can be found in his video library on LeggoPoker.
The concept he explains in great detail, and with a lot of examples, is that we want to donk a wider range of hands multi-way when the original raiser has a wider range and is more likely to check behind. We can do this with hands that are either A) is strong, or B) has equity on later streets, or C) ahead of the range of the fish in the hand.
This makes it easy to create a donking range, and will also help gain value from the weaker players. We can donk hands like sets, top pair type hands, and an assortment of draws. Since we will be calling more out of position when fish enter the pot behind the original raiser, we can effectively build our range around this wide variety of hands.
The goal of this is to isolate the fish from the regular, as well as give us an opportunity for three full streets of value against the weaker opponent.
In this hand, I flop top set on a monotone board. Since there it is likely to get checked through, and there are a bunch of bad turn cards, I decide to take the betting lead with what is likely the best hand. The fish called, the original raiser raised, I went all in, the fish called behind (with the nut flush draw) and regular folded. I held!
Here we flop TP2K with the 2nd nut flush draw. The original raiser is likely to check back a ton of hands, so I bet to isolate the fish. he folds and I am able to triple barrel for value against the fish (he folded river).
We can also donk bet when we likely have the best hand, but one that can also easily lose showdown value on future streets. Bet when you’re ahead, makes sense right? Here’s an example:
Here we have TP2K after a regular opened UTG, followed by a fish who called out of the small blind. We have position on the fish. By betting, the regular now has to float with overcards to gain any equity. If we check, he may turn an ace or queen, or even a draw. Theoretically, seeing a turn card will almost always diminish our hand’s value in one way or another. By betting we can isolate the fish and give ourself a chance to win a pot with a non-standard hand. In this case, the regular folded, and the fish called. I barrelled the ace turn, and he called again. We checked back the river for showdown value and I won a decent pot against 78 suited!
Hopefully this gives some insight into the concept of donking. The myth that you need to donk a percentage of the time against regulars to be tricky is misleading, and can easily be -EV for a lot of players who do not understand what they are doing in reality. We want to effectively use donk betting when give the reason that it will be more +EV than the other options given to us.
Yesterday we released Poker Copilot version 4.09, which made some database modifications in preparation for Omaha support. It may be that subsequently Poker Copilot was showing some of your regular villains as having played 0 hands.
If this happened to you, then you can fix it by selecting from Poker Copilot’s menu, “Tools” -> “Recalculate Statistics”.
I think some historical hands were inadvertently marked as being “Limit Hold’em” in Poker Copilot’s database, when they were actually “No Limit Hold’em”. Recalculating the statistics fixes this.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
This screenshot reveals what we’re currently working on:
Some answers to anticipated questions:
To all blog readers and Poker Copilot supporters,
I’ll be in Denver and Las Vegas in the first half of October 2013. Want to meet the owner of Poker Copilot? Know of a fun event or house game happening? Let me know via email (steve@pokercopilot.com) and we’ll make it happen.
Poker Copilot 4.08 is now available to download.
What’s changed
What’s fixed
(And if you don’t own it yet, click here to buy Poker Copilot, securely and instantly.)
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Winamax has a new 3-max turbo Sit & Go tournament format they call “Espresso”. I played one today and won on the first hand. Watch my 30-second tournament victory here:
According to this blog post in The Economist, exercise is the best way to improve your cognitive functions:
…exercise is number one, diet number two and then social interaction. These are the important things for brain function….
So take a daily break from your multi-tabling, go for a walk, swim, bike ride, or jog, and then return to clean up the fish on the poker tables.
The next update of Poker Copilot adds the ability to view and edit notes in the hand replayer:
Click with the mouse on a player’s panel to get the “Player Notes…” menu option. If a player has a note, you’ll see a small pencil icon next to the player’s name, as with CoPilot_1 in the screenshot above.