The wetness parabola
The sizing-schemes lesson mapped board classes to sizes; this lesson explains the ENGINE underneath, following a published solver analysis (GTO Wizard, July 2024). Its core distinction: range advantage decides how OFTEN you bet, while nut advantage and the value of fold equity decide how BIG. Two questions dominate the sizing decision: who owns the nutted hands, and how much equity do the hands that would FOLD have against your value?
- Count the nuts on both sides.If villain holds many nutted combos, big bets run into check-raises; if they hold few, you can fire freely.
- Price the folds' equity.Folding out 25% equity is routine; folding out 60% equity hands pays for oversized bluffs.
- Audit your middle.Middling hands anchor sizing — many of them force your nuts down to small sizes for protection.
- Place the board on the parabola.Dry sits left (small), wet sits center (big), soaked sits right (small again).
Worked example: the parabola, end to end
The analysis walks button-versus-big-blind flops across the whole curve, and its findings invert the folk wisdom that "wetter means bigger":
| Board class | Scheme | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Dry, paired (e.g. Q-Q-6 rainbow) | ~33% pot, high frequency | Folds come from under-25%-equity trash (low-value fold equity); villain keeps sets and queens; ace-x and underpairs need their nutted hands betting SMALL to protect them. |
| Wet, two-toned broadways (K♥J♥7♦) | 75–125% pot, overbets | The analysis shows 62% folds to the overbet — including top pairs near 60% EQUITY and gutshots — while the calling range carries almost no nutted hands. Fold equity is rich and nobody can play back. |
| Soaked monotone connectors (Q♦J♦T♦) | Small again, half betting | Nutted hands everywhere — nearly a THIRD of continuing combos are straights or flushes — so only dominated trash folds and middling made hands need protection. Big bets run straight into the top of the caller's range. |
That U-shape — small, big, small again as boards get progressively wetter — is the parabola. It exists because fold-equity value rises then collapses, and because nutted hands migrate from rare to common as boards soak.