Exploitative strategy matters. there are many ways to do it.
First a bit on postflop game theory. If you are going to "exploit" you are going to do it by deviating in a direction away from "equilibrium" The more aggressively you "exploit" the more vulnerable you become to counter exploitation.
A very basic and not entirely correct, but close enough rule of thumb on post flop game theory to establish close enough to equilibrium to be effective (if you intend on an exploitative strategy) is:
1)half the time you check, half the time you bet.
2)half the time you check, do it with a hand you can check raise with.
3)half the time you make a decision to bet, do it with a hand ahead, the other half do with a mixture of semibluffs and bluffs.
4)Make sure that the group of hands you check with are on average equally strong.
5)adjust decision according to the flop on over 60% but less than 80%. (i.e. check more often with nothing and monsters on flops condusive to slow playing since you may get opponent to check behind).
ALSO
1)When facing a bet of the pot size, assuming equal hand ranges, you can call half the time to keep opponent honest. (inverted amount of odds he's laying you or 2:1 =1/2 in this case).
2)When facing a bet, you want to call OR raise half the time, including with not much of a hand and the intention of potentially bluffing on some flops (and giving up on others).
3)On the turn you will also make this decision about half the time.
4)The introduction of the option to raise, call, or fold makes it a bit different than half the time, and I will stay in a bit more often than half, and of the percentage I stay in I will raise a bit more often than half the time I stay in and bet or raise a bit more than half the time on the turn. As a result I want to start with a better hand range than my opponent.
5)Given that you raise, the bet size should be mixed up often enough (min raises with both big hands and junk, larger raises).
AND
1)Your BLUFFS in equilibrium should be breaking EVEN if your opponents do everything right as well.
2)You should BLUFF according to the percentage of chips you risk relative to the pot relative to stack sizes and percentage you have a hand. If for example you have a hand on the turn that will hit on the river 10% of the time, and you will want to bet the full pot or 1:1, you will want to have it so your BETS are composed of a bluff that is equal to 1 divided by the ratio plus 1 of your raising range. In other words 1/1+1=1/2. In the case that you will hit a GOOD hand on the river 10% of the time, that means you should BLUFF 5% of the time for a total BETTING of 15% of the time. If you plan to bet 9 times the pot, you should bluff 1/9+1=1/10=10% times the amount you bluff If you have 10% chance of having a hand you can bluff like this, then you should bluff only 1% of the time.
ALL in!
Minus the all in strategies for equalibrium we have covered all we need to know about equilibrium. As equilibrium you can really gain an edge from opponents that do not acheive equilibrium. But the strategies after the flop are pretty complicated since there are so many different types of flop structure, different hand ranges playing each other based upon different positions and such that at the moment I don't have a real good rule of thumb. A few different times I constructed BASED upon certain ranges how I could come up with a strategy that basically broke even that involved pushing with draws as well as monsters. I made one where I push the flop and another the turn but it dependend upon stack sizes. But the strategy changed so much based upon hand ranges, and as I learned more, I realized it was too tight of a strategy in that it would have bennefitted more from pushing more of my decent to good hands in which I had made a top pair or middle pair, and as a result loosen up just a bit more on the draws. It also would have been best to add in some sort of randomness in which sometimes I would not shove all in. Even so, I learned it better to be on the turn.
I don't still have that work saved, or if I do I havent found it. so I will postpone the "all in" portion of equilibrium. There are some great tables on the book "kill everyone" and the book "The Raiser's Edge" that can help you get more specifics of various "close to equilibrium" strategies based upon different stack sizes.
NOW... finally with that out of the way we can talk about exploiting opponents.
Maximal exploitation is as far away from equilibrium as you get and aim at a specific thing opponent is not doing according to the above. The hand range preflop depends on how big the players weaknesses on and after the flop are. If your opponent folds more than 50% to a flop sized bet or less you can exploit him by being the first one in to bluff. If he folds more than 50% on the turn, you may even actually want to build up a pot in order to make a more profitable bet on the turn. Same thing on the river.
If he bets on every flop, you should almost ALWAYS check to him UNLESS you feel there is a greater hole in his game such as how he responds to a bet. You can control the pot on a draw if he is the type that won't raise when faced with a bet, or will fold too much. You can overbet the pot if he calls or raises too much once you have a hand. But normally you check to him. This way YOU have positional advantage and can check raise him, or check call with the intention of check raising him. or can call 80% of all flops and then start the game on the turn. If opponent folds at any stage of the game too often, you exploit. If opponent fears a raise too much, you exploit. If opponent is loose and bluffs a lot but avoids all in, you exploit!
Maximally exploiting may in some cases mean ALWAYS betting to obtain the profitable expectation if opponent folds too much.
BUT I don't go for "maximally exploitative strategies" Instead, I seek to find a somewhat aggressive balance between equilibrium and exploitative play so that I have a balance. More occasionally than not (say 20-40% of the time I am playing for an extended period of time) I will swing back the other way and be too tight but still aggressive to protect against the possibility of my opponent counter exploiting and also decieving my opponent as to just how aggressive I am being, vs the potential of just picking up a good run of cards. Too aggressive too often and it may be too obvious. But switching to play tight to much tighter every so now and then can really help.
Certainly there are times when I will go for maximal exploitation, but usually only after an extended run of building up an image of playing tight on top of thinking my opponent has shown no capability of adjusting... or perhaps if he is playing a volatile strategy and I think he may leave soon I want to try to exploit him to the max until he leaves. Other times when I will not. But the key is to be seeking out a strategy that will hold up in the long run. If that strategy is too aggressively exploiting opponents, there is a good chance your opponent will notice and play much differently against you than he does against everyone else.
The good thing is an equilibrium strategy leaves people thinking you are a bit of a maniac because of the nature and ability to push all in with a wider range as discussed in the last post. But when you shift to exploitative, you are even more loose aggressive, and can usually tighten up or loosen up on the all in front where needed. Some opponents you build up a huge pot and rob blind, and others you play small pots with and only go with the major all in bets when you have a monster hand and the occasional monster draw where you are better than 50% to win. The KEY to playing this strategy is often being very aggressive in the right spots in terms of bet frequency, but bet size should be such that it much more often than not corresponds to the strength of the hand. In other words, the decision is much more often than not consistent with how you can get the most chips possible in the middle when you have the nuts, and how you can win on a bluff or semibluff with the minimum amount of risk when you do not. Equilibrium would suggest that the strategy has an ideal amount of percentage of times you should be bluffing with that same bet, but when exploiting it should probably be less than HALF of the suggested amount.
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