I just find the term on the magazine yesterday even though I heard the term a long time ago but I haven't really known how to use it. Does anyone has clue of how to make a blocking bet and why u should make a blocking bet in a tournament?

Cash or tournament chips, you set the price for showdown. You might get thin value from worse hands and lose less against better hands if you were otherwise calling.

So u are saying blocking bet only applies on the river??

No. It's mostly used on the river though. You can bbet on early streets to keep the pot small with a small hand, or try to force good odds for your draw.

But a lot of players will catch on to this and exploit you for it. You don't want to be balancing this by also betting small with monsters, because against most people you lose more value from that than you gain imo.

With draws I rather make a proper semibluff than a bbet, unless I'm against a station, because a big bet will only be a little more expensive, but also has more folding equity.

I'm not really a tournament player though. I like to make small bets on the river in cash, but not only as a bbet. Curious what other ppl think about this.

Blockingbets is for Donks/Weak players and Phil Hellmuth. So easy to exploit and hard to balance with your big hands, loosing value. Just as the post above me stated.

Blockbets are weeeaaaakkkk.

Blocking bets need to be in your arsenal against aggressive players. If you check to a lot of aggressive players they may bet the pot or go all in. You can set the price and it puts some doubt into the other players mind that you may have the nuts and looking to get paid off. I say like 30-35% of the pot may be a good blocking bet. If you don't do a blocking bet then you may have a tough decision if they bet back at you. With the blocking bet you put the decision on them. If you do throw out a blocking bet and they raise, you should probably throw away your hand (depending on odds). You can probably call a min raise and throw away to an all in. Depends on the player as well.

I agree that blocking bets are mostly nonsense. If you want to prevent your opponent from bluffing the hands you beat while paying to his big hands anyway you're better off check/calling. If you fear he is going to mostly valuebet, and valuebet big, so that you are worse off check/calling that just blocking betting, then you should rather check/fold. Doing a blocking bet is basically cutting your leg to avoid a footache ...

Good blocking bets are good because they are in fact valuebets ...

aggressive players will raise your block bets. its too obvious now when people are making them, so its almost more worth while to do a fake block bet with the nuts

After reading the section of MOP where they describe blocking bets (or preemptive bets as they call them), I guess my point of vue was wrong. I still have a bit of trouble to conceptualize this anyway.

I still think blocking bets is usefull it depends alot of how you play your weaker hands, draws and monsters.

Say you tend to bet 1/2-1/1 pott on the flop and vary the size a bit randomly then you should be able to get away with a 1/2 pott blocking bet pretty often. and betting 1/2 pott and getting called is better then check/call a 2/3 pottbet if you want to keep the pott small.

If you on the river bet less then half pott sometimes for value (or as a bluff trigger) then you ofcourse can blockbet to.

But the min bet or 2xmin bet blocking bets used by some is horrendous.

In todays game I feel a 33% block bet is a bit smallish and is often interpreted as just a blockbet. but a 45% block bet should be possible to get thru. I usually just semibluff early streets and check call/river or check/fold.

Then again against really aggressive players you be better of just check/call to the river every hand you think might be good and fold the rest. No use to bet at all because you really dont want him to fold his bluffing hands.

Most important when decide to blockbet is the villains tendencies. A tight passive player is good to blockbet but a lagtard is baaad.

You people are ridiculous, thinking that blocking bets have to be small. Sometimes a 2/3 pot bet on the river can serve as a blocking bet.

so really by definition, any bet where you have to fold if you're raised, could be considered a blocking bet?

I don't get you, space station. Obviously, if you want to play a blocking bet in a given situation, you have to bet exactly the same amount with your bluffs and also with your value bets. Basically you will lose some bluff equity, as your game theoretic bluffing frequency decreases as you decrease your bet size, but your opponent will lose a bit of buffing equity as well. And possibly you will call with some of your blocking bets as well as your valuebets if you get raised, depending on game theoretic considerations.

but if you're going to call the raise then what exactly are you blocking?

does anyone do a min raise over a blocking bet just to get full value out of the hand?

i'll be doing it all day long if hellmuth does one of his $1 into $10k bets

there was a good thread on blocking bets in may on P5's. Wacokidd basically schooled everybody telling them the concept of blocking bets is a myth. It got kind of funny because he started abusing some posters, but his points were valid.

http://www.pocketfives.com/poker-for...90?PageIndex=1

finally

this is what i have been getting at, and why no one could answer my questions.

I can understand if blocking bets aren't a big necessity in the game you're playing in, but calling the concept a "myth" is getting a little carried away.

Blocking bets (especially when they apply to river play) generally have to be balanced sensibly with very good hands to make sense. While the obvious downside is that you may have to fold to a raise after committing chips, there is also the upside of inducing a villain raise when you have a strong hand. Another less-apparent (but important) benefit is that often times it will force villain to abort bluffs that you would not have been able to call & there's a value to that.

Flip it around to other player's perspective: your opponent just made a blocking-style bet to lead river, and you know his range is pretty well balanced between strong and marginal hands. [Contrast this to a SSNL player who only does this with marginal hands, and is transparent.] A bluff raise on your part requires more thought when you know that those small bets could be designed to induce your raise as well.

It's also a question of context. This level of balancing isn't happening at NL25.

There's more to it than what I have time for here, both NLHE:TAP and MoP (page 277) talk about this.

OK, here

Question 1: Usually, but not necessarily. There are circumstances where you can get raised a small enough amount not to price you out. Remember that some of these blocking bets are pretty small, so a villain (for whatever reason) could be able to raise you a small figure relative to the overall pot. By and large, with PSBs or whatever though, yes, you fold.

Question 2: Very often, you are blocking bluffs (that you would not have been able to call). I went into this a little above.

i mean, i get all the points that people make about why betting out in this manner is good for certain reasons. but i think that many plays are made for an amalgam of reasons that don't often fit into the category of fulfilling the total of all these specific purposes that people mention.

i want people to consider more variables than just these when determining what to bet, and certainly even all the variables associated with "blocking" aren't but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the variables that apply to a situation.

i do think it's a important to incorporate the idea of learning the effects that a bet can have, and one of those effects would be "to block." but a bet can and should have many effects, not just this one.