You dont ever c/r Ak as a bluff!!!

Get past that thought now!

If you c/r AK you do it because you want to get value from worse - well at least in most online games. I suppose in some live games you cant raise AK as a bluff on some boards

Playing 3-handed you should always have at least one terrible player in the blinds. Therefore you should play more hands from the button. Ldo.

Ok. I thought that when you are playing 3-handed, the game is much more of a struggle for the blinds because of the fact that the blinds come around sooner.

If you are playing 40% from the Button and 50% from the SB, that's only 9 out 20 hands (on avg) in 10 orbits, that you're competing for the blinds in those 2 seats.

That's almost 50% of the time, so I guess that it is often enough.

But it's not good enough to simply state it this way when more information is available. We have to weight ranges against specific boards to decide which times we are likely ahead and which times we are not. So while 223r is good for us, J98 double tone is not.

There are so many players in the lower games that you just aren't going to get enough hands on most players for the majority of stats to ever converge. It's true that individual notes can tell much more than frequencies that may take thousands of hands to converge. For instance, you see a 33/25 guy open limp the CO several times, then probably != a solid LAG. Similarly, an apparent TAG regular seems to have a low BTN steal% at 35%, but you observe him stealing with J7o and 65s.

ok i think i get it now.

you said c/ring pairs or better and air was polarized and that it would be easy for opponent to call down with KT. but i thought "if opp is calling down with KT, that just means we have too many bluffs in our range so couldnt we just throw out some of our bluffs and then we'd be balanced again. he cant just call down KT easily anymore." i was thinking we dont have to add AK/AQ/AJ in order to have a balanced c/r range. i thought we could still have a polarized range (pairs+ and air) but still be balanced.

but if we raise AK/AQ/AJ, he now has reason to play back with 87. This is the part I didnt understand before. by encouraging him to play back with 87 and similar hands, we now get a lot more value for our monster hands like overpairs or trips. before when we were polarized, the opponent had no reason to play 87 and KT differently since they were both essentially bluff catchers. 87 is obviously better than KT but against a polarized range, 87 would do best by inducing bluffs. Overall this is bad for us b/c if hands as strong as 87 (which is maybe top 15% of his range) are correct to just call down against our range, then our monsters rarely going to get a lot of action.

so by adding AK/AQ/AJ, our monsters benefit a lot because we should get more action from 87 and and our bluffs benefit b/c he's discouraged from trying to bluff catch with A or K high. futhrermore, the cost of adding AK/AQ/AJ (if there even is a cost) is pretty small b/c these hands already have great equity against a button open range on a 722r board. another potential cost is that we also expose ourself to semibluffs and potentially folding AK/AQ/AJ when its the best hand, but this also gets us more value for our strong hands that just call down after c/ring (mid PPs, 7's).

and even if we dont get more action from 87 to benefit our monsters, that just means the cost of raising AK/AQ/AJ is cheaper since he doesnt punish us by getting more value from his stronger hands. and if opponent still decides he wants to pick off our bluffs with KT, then we are now getting even more value vs his bluff catchers b/c we've added some thinner value raises with AK/AQ/AJ.

this couldn't have happened when we had a polarized range b/c then hands ranging from 87 to QT were basically the same hand strength. he cant value raise since with 87 since there's too many better hands in our range (7's higher PP's and 2x), and he cant semibluff QT b/c only worse hands (air) fold. so opponent's best strategy is to call down with a lot of his range, which hurts our monsters and bluffs. adding AK changes all that b/c now he might fold bluff catchers, he can semibluff to try to get us to fold, and he can value raise lighter, and all of these actions that hurt AK will help some other part of our range.

good post Steve

Bump.