Hi forums,

I'm coming over from the PLO forums and don't play much NLHE these days but have an interesting question that just came to mind.

If overbets are supposed to be generally polarised between bluffs and strong value hands, is it possible to include some middling-value hands in our overbet range to lower the ratio of pure bluffs to value as an exploit against players that are otherwise going to assume overbets are polarised?

I understand that an observant player will notice this quickly and will start bluff-catching less against these less balanced overbets turning it into an exploitable play but I still think it's an interesting question.

Not sure if I know what I'm talking about, this came to me in a dream last night.

Interested to know what you guys think.

I think there are spots to merge your range and overbet against a player that just assumes polarization. I've made this play a few times with players I have history with. Image is very important of course; I recall a 5/10 session I played where my image was very LAG and I tripled JJ for value as the PFR on KK8ss4x3x. Flop and turn I bet half pot, but river I bet about 1.5X and V called with 8X. Said he thought I had KX or nothing of course. He was the type of player that would never C/C KX twice and never C/R the river with missed spades, so I thought I could look bluffy/polarized and possibly get him to be a hero with worse pairs.