I’m by no means an expert on this subject, but people have been asking for a COTM on it. Therefore, I’ll give my thoughts, but hope that those who know more will correct any errors in my OP. Let’s start from the beginning.

Definition: A bet/fold (b/f) situation is when you make a bet with the intention to fold to a villain’s raise.

You don’t make money by folding, so there has to be a good reason to make a bet, then fold your hand. A good place to start is to look at relative hand strength. I like Harrington’s approach in HOC of ranking hands.

1. The nuts
2. The near nuts
3. A good hand
4. A hand of some value
5. Air

It should be obvious that the nuts are not b/f hands. Neither are the near nuts. Near nut hands are things like top FH where someone could have quads. Thinking you are up against the absolute nuts is “Monsters under the Bed” thinking. You really can’t fold.

At the opposite end, it should be obvious that “air” hands are classic b/f hands. If you are raised, it doesn’t matter. You are folding. At low stakes, don’t triple level yourself by thinking, “He’s playing back at me, so I can push him off his hand.” The villain will almost never be doing this enough to pay off.

That leaves good hands and hands of some value. The difference between the two is relative and depends on the board and the action that has gone on. For example, a set is a good hand on a board where a straight is possible. Note that the vast majority of boards are connected enough that a set is not the nuts. With proper betting, you can reduce (but never eliminate) the chance a gutshot makes it. However, a set drops to a hand of some value on the river if the board has 4 cards with the same suit on it. It could still be a winner, but anyone with a card of that suit wins, even if it is the 2.

There are a number of benefits to betting, but there are only three primary reasons to make a bet.

1. To have weaker hands call.
2. To have stronger hands fold.
3. To charge draws for seeing another card.

In my mind, hands of some value are not candidates for b/f. In these situations, a weaker hand can’t call and a stronger hand won’t fold. These are hands that have show down value and you want to get to show down as cheaply as possible. One thing many people forget on the river is that the average winning hand at showdown is two pair. Therefore, if you have TPTK on the river, you no longer have a good hand in many cases. By betting, you can create a RIO situation where you can only lose money.

That leaves good hands as candidates for b/f. They are normally going to be winners. You want to get more value for them. Weaker hands and draws can call. Therefore, betting is in order. I believe it is these hands that get many people in trouble. A lot of the reason for this is that the conditions need to be right for a b/f to be the right play.


Necessary Conditions to Bet/Fold

Stack to Pot Ratio
According to Ed Miller, a huge leak for many players is to commit 40% of their stack, then folding. His reasoning is that by time you’ve put that much of your stack in the pot, any shove by a villain is going to give you over 2.3:1 to call. If you are in a situation where you won’t be good at least 30% of the time, you shouldn’t have put that much of your stack in to begin with. Harrington in HOC makes much of the same point. He suggests that you really can’t get away from hand when the SPR is 2:1.

In practical terms if you started with 150BB effective stacks, you should not be bet/folding (b/f) even in a heads up (HU) situation on the flop when you’ve put in more than 30BB. If it is 3 way, that can drop to 20BB.

Therefore, a b/f is only a move in relatively small pots. You will be deep (+200BB), it is an early street, or there has been some checking going on.

Planning
Another large leak for players in low stakes is that they don’t plan what they want to do in advance of the cards showing up. This is how people who go in situation where they think they are b/f and end up bet/calling. They look at it and say, “well, I’m getting good odds and I could be good, so I should call instead.” There’s a name for those type of players: Calling station.

Most HHs posted on this forum have the leak that the OP didn’t think about how they would handle situations that could come up. B/f is for players used to planning their hand in advance. It requires discipline to give up on a hand in advance based on certain things happening. There’s a little devil on your shoulder whispering, “He’s a donk, he can be bluffing, he might think he has a monster, go ahead and call.” If you can ignore him, then b/f can be for you.

The Villain
You want to b/f against villains that have folding/calling/raising ranges that aren’t strongly polarized. This means that given the board and his range, he’s going to fold his hands that are clearly no good, call with his hands that have a chance to win and raise with his monsters. For example, let’s say you make a non-nut flush on the river. You bet. You know that this villain is never going to raise without the nut flush, but could call you with sets, two pairs or even a pair. Therefore, if he raises, you know you’re beat.

At low stakes, it will be rare that a villain will have a balanced polarized range. For the most part, they will play ABC. Once in a great while they’ll bluff, but not nearly enough to make it worthwhile to consider a call. On the opposite end are those that will be unbalanced trying to bluff everything situation possible. Against those, you shouldn’t be considering a b/f.


Examples

Let’s look at a couple of threads in our forum.

1/3 NL
Hero has $335 in the BB

4 limps, Hero raises to $20 with KK, only the UTG+1 calls(and covers).

Only read is that someone told the Hero that the Villain is a fish.

Flop ($50): J72x

Hero bets $40, Villain calls.

Turn ($130): T

Hero bets $80, Villain raises to $205.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...d-turn-948587/

So let’s look at the situation. The Hero has committed 42% of his stack with the bet on the turn. So we’re at the point where putting 40% of their stack and folding is a leak. Hero is getting almost 3:1 to call. Even against a shove, Hero would be getting over 2:1 to call.

So for the SPR section, Hero put himself in a situation that is destined to be ugly. He clearly didn’t plan. His bets are fairly big and haven’t left him room to get out. If he had bet smaller ($30 on the flop and $60 on the turn), he would have left himself room to run a b/f. Finally, as mentioned in the thread, we don’t know what kind of fish the villain is. A lot of low stakes players are calling stations. If this villain is, Hero will have a swallow his mistake and fold. If he thinks TP is the nuts, he’s got to call. We don’t have a good grasp of how the villain will react.

Combined, we have the limon syndrome.


2/5NL

Live straddle, 3 limpers, Hero has KQ OTB and raises to $60. The SB, Straddle and two of the limpers call. Effective stack is $550.

Flop ($300) K63x

Hero bets $125, villain raises to $250.

Read on villain is that he appears to be an on-line young player that did well at a 1/2 table and moved to 2/5 recently. Not aggressive.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...ltiway-949400/

Hero has committed 33% of the effective stack but the pot is so big to begin with that there is no room to b/f. In a MW pot, you have less room to b/f than HU. Hero in this case has to either commit to the hand (SPR is less than 2) or just fold.


Summary

Being able to bet/fold is an effective tool to use as a player. Being able to fold when beat is critical to being a winning player. That said, it is a tool that should only be used when the situation is right. In short, the situation is right when

1. You have a good hand, but not the nuts.
2. The SPR is relatively high.
3. You’ve planned your hand so that you can execute a b/f without leaking.
4. The villain is playing a non-polarized and/or unbalanced range of hands.

Let the discussion begin.

Good stuff. Thanks for the post.

I b/f against most villains when playing QQ+ in EP or flopping two pair in a limped pot from the BB.

great stuff, thanks for the organized write up.

one comment i have is that, i think live villains, especially at 1/2, often fit the villain requirements for a bet/fold, even if we don't have any reads on them. because their tendencies are usually so passive, their raising ranges are often completely unbalanced and make for easy bet/folds. so you can often execute bet/folds at 1/2 live with reasonable confidence even if you have virtually no reads on villain. in my experience anyway.

FYP? i think. cuz multiway limped pots actually make for good spots to bet/fold if we have top pair, an overpair, or even 2pr. one of the reasons being that villains' raising ranges are tilted even more towards the nuts because we expect them to play more honestly in a multiway pot.

so i think maybe a better statement to make is that we have less room for a b/f in bloated pots, due simply to SPR, rather than the number of villains. thoughts?

I disagree with low SPR's meaning we cannot b/f. Theres no reason to minimize our bet sizing when we have hands that usually slaughter villains calling ranges and just occasionally have to be folded to their raises. For that reason I disagree with H1 and think that if villain calls 80 with Jx's etc then the 80 bet is better than 60.

i guess you can bend the SPR requirements for a bet/fold if villain has particularly stationy tendencies. it would be a judgment call as to whether villain pays off a larger bet often enough with lesser holdings to make up for the times he raises and we have to fold with a lower SPR.

b/f is so important at LLSNL because their tendencies are to call and not to raise and only raise pretty much when they have it. This is a very important lesson, ty venice.


the point of the matter is if you are betting bigger on the turn then bigger on the flop and make it an easy game. You want your SPR to be High or Low, depending on your hand type, eg. Good top pair hand, Overpair hand or drawing hand. High or low, not in between. In between is really messy and ugly and that is where the mistakes will be made.

The thread where the effective stacks of 10bb and 40bb respectively and hero opens to 4.25x with T9s in the CO... you are gonna have an SPR of between .5-5 this is with a middling sc... that was just horrible, you are looking for SPR's of 13+ at least with these types of hands, we want more than 10:1 when we are holding an underpair to try and get correct set odds. 13+ is for hand that you want 3+ streets of value with. With AA, KK,AK, AQ, etc. your hand by the river will most commonly be one or two pair and an spr of less than 4 is good for that because it means you can get your stack in on the flop or turn.

This.

I agree that at 1/2 you can just assume that the villain has an unbalance line from hand 1. I've seen villains playing that low with a more balanced line at 1/2, but they are so few and far between that it isn't worth assuming it is possible. They stick out like a sore thumb, so if you do run into one, you'll know it within a couple of orbits.

I agree that SPR drives the action more than the number of villains. In a limped pot, a b/f is going to be easier to achieve on the turn, for example. One thing I'll note that I see as a leak in this forum is that the more people seeing a flop, the stronger your hand has to be to win it. HU, TPMK is a decent hand on the flop. In a six way pot, it is rarely good. I had this aspect in the back of my mind when I wrote it, so that's why I put it in (and probably should have just kept it at SPR).

I was tempted to fix the OP, but I've decided to leave it as it is. Poker is about putting the work in. If a lurker won't read past the OP, then they'll miss an important piece of the discussion.

There's no "nevers" in poker. In a ridiculous example, suppose you have 1BB left on the river and the villain shows his hand and you're beat. Of course, you fold even for 1BB.

It depends on his calling and raising ranges in H1, which we have little idea of what it is because the read is only that he's a fish, not what kind of fish he is. If the villain called the bet, Hero would have had $195 left in a $290 pot. Is Hero c/f if a blank comes on the river?

Betting a bit less on the flop and turn doesn't cost you because you can make the final bet on the river to make it up anyway against anything but a FD and a FD is as small a part of his range at this point as his passively played 2 pair and set hands.

Villain is a typical reg. calls a little too much/doesn't fold enough and has a very narrow raising/3betting range

Hero is a little LAG'gy (especially PF) cbets a lot (but not as much as some regs.) and will bluff on later streets *** Villain and Hero have history ***

150bb eff.

Hero is in MP w/TdTh
Hero raises to 5bb, BTN/Villain calls 4.5bb

Flop: Qc3c3x
11bb (2 Players) Hero bets 8bb, Villain calls 8bb

Turn: 6x
27bb (2 Players) Hero bets 15bb, Villain calls 15bb

River: Qx
57bb (2 Players) Hero bets 20bb

This hand is a b/f on every street imo

On the flop we often have the best hand, get value from draws and smaller PP and fold out hands that have an equity share of the pot (we also prevent the villain from bluffing us off the best hand and keep the initiative.)

The turn is much the same situation. Our value range is a little thinner but if we don't barrel here we make it correct for our regular opponents to call our flop bets as they know they will see the turn and river for free (except from our strongest holdings.)

On the river we get value from 99, 88, 77 and A high, we lose to JJ and any Q raises.

We put in just under 1/3rd of our stack and we can fold at anytime.

Is my thinking flawed? Aren't bet-folding and thin-value betting first cousins? Comments?

*** this is a hand that took place last night and I got looked up by 99 btw ***

I think baluga said something along the lines of "If holdem was a 7 street game and I had an overpair against a fish I'd b/f ever street."

in one of his videos.

I imagine he's getting in quite a few big blinds doing that.

well in its essence bet/folding isn't a particularly complex or special line. it's just scenarios where we're betting but fold to aggression (i.e. a raise). so all it means is our hand is good enough to bet, but not good enough to call against villain's raising range. and we don't have a strong draw, so we don't have odds to call either. (when we bet our draws, we're probably not bet/folding a lot of the time because we will have odds to call a raise.)

so ya, when we thin-value bet, we're usually bet/folding at the same time.

Did you mean 50BB here? More than 30BB is only 20% of starting stack given 150BB.

Minor FYP. We should typically be bet/folding when making thin-value bets, but a leak for many is calling raises after betting thin.

I'm clearly confused by this. From what I understand being "strongly polarized" means basically ABC. Fold poor hands and raise monsters and call middiling hands. If that is so, why do you state that we want to b/f against villains with ranges that AREN'T strongly polarized. Isn't that exactly the situation we want, a villain who HAS a strongly polarized range?

agreed.

i think there's so much value to be had in considering any given villain's range when we are raised post flop, and having the discipline to not call just to see what happens on the next street when we have no real draw and know with near certainty that villain's range is an unbalanced nutty range that crushes our thin-value range. certainly a leak i am working on. which is why i was eager to see a bet/folding COTM.

I think it was Limon who made a good point about how in the live game it often becomes easier to narrow a villain's range as the hand progresses, but you have to have the discipline to follow through with your read.

Actually, that's not what it means. Polarization isn't a new concept. Sklansky discusses the concept (if not the term) in "The Theory of Poker." In a simple example, suppose you shoved AI pf every time you had AA or KK. Your range is extremely narrow. If you wanted to expand that range, you have two choices. You can pick QQ. You've opened your range a bit, but it is still concentrated at the high end. TT still doesn't have much of an incentive to call (19% equity)

The other alternative is to add 32s and 32o with two black cards. From a frequency point of view, I'm shoving the same amount of time (1.4%). However, my range is now polarized between mostly monsters with some utter trash hands. TT's equity is 40%. However, this knowledge does you no good. You can't call me because it is -EV. At the same time, I'm now getting value from 32s that otherwise would have no value. QQ is still a great hand, so it will continue to have value. As long as it remains -EV for you to call, I've come close to balancing my polarized range.

More information can be found in the link below.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/78...zation-802045/

I'll note that most low stakes players who try to do this over do it, thinking they're the next durrrr. If I simply add all 32o and 32s hands, TT has 56% equity and can call 100% of the time. I've become unbalanced. If you watch durrrr on TV, you'll see that most of the time he's playing hands conventionally. He's spent a tremendous amount of time working out how often people will bet/call/raise/fold in situations and then adjusted his ranges to maximize his win rate. It doesn't take much bluffing to have a big effect.

right. so, Wishful, we want to bet/fold against villains who don't have polarized raising ranges because it means we are almost always folding worse, which is optimal. villains with well balanced polarized raising ranges we may want to occasionally call or reraise, depending on our hand strength and reads, because a reasonable portion of their raising range we now are ahead of.

Some thoughts...

Planning

Watch your villains closely. Against some villains, any hand you open and they call regardless of your (or their) cards or position, you are b/f because they are so "fit or fold" in their style and so limited in their thinking. E.g. think of a limit player now playing NL because they don't spread his game anymore and will call with any pair but will fold if he doesn't hit his set.

Some will call any flop bet because they have it their head everyone c-bets rather they have it or not, so they are in PF mode. A b/f on the turn with these types will often take it down.

Image (yours)

The more your perceived image runs towards LAG or FOS in your playing style the less likely a b/f is going to work on the flop or turn, but will be about equal on the river, especially with very wet boards. Think of the guys that will call you down with ace high on a paired, four flush, four str8 board.

The more agro (towards tight) your image the more likely a b/f strat will work for you. The typical rec player does not want to play multiple streets with heavy agro betting/raising, it forces them into a fit or fold mind set.

Short stacked

If you are relatively short stacked in the game your bets will have more weight. Think of a situation where you have ~100BB and the other players average ~400BB.

Solid thread and discussion here, if not exact hands.

I think the three golden rules we can take from this is

1) limon's post. We have to plan this in advance, and cant just barrel into pots with no plan about if they raise.

2) Discipline. Thin betting and b/f arent just cousins, im pretty sure they have been doing the nasty together for years. If we decide to bet say, the nut straight when the 3rd diamond drops on the river, and then our villian, who is a lifetime loser and very straight forward raises the river, we cant change our mind and decide that they know that we know blah blah blah **** it I call, whats that the rivered nuts, nh nh rebuy... A comment a while ago asking about the art of b/f, someone said it is a discipline, not an art. +1 to that

3) Be aware of our image. If we gather a rep among regs that we b/f a massive amount of our range, we can be exploited. As such, against players playing very hard to outplay us or people who are tricky and we have really figured them out we need to get to showdown more often. As such, either c/c or b/c can be better then b/f in certain spots, particularly if you are someone who wants to second guess themselves, and possibly will play worse having the "was I right to fold" mindset on our minds...

Cheers venice, good read...

Good stuff. It's something I need to get better at myself. I have the bet part down pretty well. And like it was said, there are no "nevers" in poker. The 40% stack rule should be used as a guideline and adjusted as game situations dictate. In my opinion, and I think from a few others here, this can be a bit higher against a lot of our super weak passive 1/2 opponents. They never raise, so when they do, you need to get out, stack sizes be damned (within reason).

All good stuff in here- anybody know bart Hanson or limon well enough to get them to chime in here- Hanson's podcasts constantly advocate bet/folding and if you listen to his "hands from a cash game" you'll begin to understand wh

I bet/folded my way into my 2 biggest months live, then ran and played bad and started bet/ folding but talking myself into calls against weak passive fish who raised me on turns and rivers- so beware- if you intend to bet/fold you must make said fold and not level yourself into a call

2/5 200$ eff stacks
Herod image is whiney/tilted guy who's taken bad beats
Villian is young Asian tag who just sat down

Hero is bb w k q off

V is utg and limps, 4 other limps, sb calls, hero checks

Pot (35)

Flop k 4 6 rainbow

Hero bets 25 w intention of bet/ folding

V raises to 80

Hero tanks and....Talks himself into a jam with final thought being well I only started hand w 40 bbs here and i have toppest pair..... So I'll just jam

Moral: if you are going to bet/fold.... Then follow through- live passive tags bluff raise so rarely we can allow ourselves to be exploitable by all but the best few

Is this river a b/f, a c/f or a c/c (if it's a reasonable bet?)

Hero (UTG) is most active at table, not quite a LAG though and has a winning image

Villain (MP) is a classic TAG, selective PF (playing few hands and mostly in LP) and bets strongly post

250bb eff.

Hero is UTG w/AdAh
Hero raises to 5bb, Villain calls 5bb, BTN (decent w/100bb) calls 5bb

Flop: Jc3d3c
16.5bb (3 Players) Hero bets 12bb, Villain calls 12bb, BTN folds

Turn: 2s
40.5bb (2 Players) Hero bets 30bb, Villain (tank) calls 30bb

River: 6c
100.5bb (2 Players) Hero?

If we put somebody on a FD I believe this is a c/f in b/f's clothing. Does Jx really get here and then call a bet on the river (especially when we hold 2 aces?) Villain may turn that hand into a bluff (if that's what he indeed has) but if u don't fold the winning hand every once in awhile ur not folding enough. Making a small v-bet here might induce a shove we can't call (as it won't be air enough) and a bigger bet pretty much commits us.

Not meaning to hijack this thread; I'm just trying to give an example of when a hand is not a b/f and is more of a c/pray. Now 500bb deep it's a different story, no?

In LLSNL isn't the turn almost always a b/f when stacks are semi-deep and we have TP or an overpair?