The question is, why does a hand perform well as a check, why does perform well as a bet, and why does it perform well as a raise?


I'm pretty sure that still fits on the scale of bluffing and value betting. And I agree with aner0 on that one.

yes so if a category of hand exists that doesn't fit into bluff or value you could say, well mostly there are bluffs or value bets and some exceptions, or you could realize that the exception is the rule, and the distinction into bluffs or value bets is a byproduct of that rule, and not the other way around.

Practically it doesn't matter that much, but if your goal is to learn GTO effectively and efficiently, holding on to ideas like bluff/value bet will slow down your progress imo

Bolded is what matters of course. Every situation is different and coming to the right conclusions isn't helped by classifying hands into bluffs or value (imo)

It fits on the scale of bluffing and value betting because we've looked at the result of and labelled the hands as such, after the fact, instead of determining the root cause.

I think the terminology of bluff/value is really useful and solvers separate these much more than human players did before the advent of solvers

There are some exceptions, but as a generalization solvers are much more polarized to high equity hands (value) and low equity hands (bluffs), while humans who haven't studied with solvers tend to bet more linearly with the top part of their range.

Compared to watching an old youtube video of a 500z reg playing in 2013, when a solver bets flop it is much, much more clear whether it is "hoping" for a fold or a call from it's opponent. And of course, hoping for a call = value, hoping for a fold = bluff.

Every category is manmade and is only a model of reality and not reality itself, but that doesn't make it less useful. In fact, raw information is pretty much useless to humans unless you give it an interpretation, which in of itself limits the scope of that information.

Yes, every decision in poker is just a math equation that outputs an EV, but you can't think like that.

One problem with that is that some hands that quite clearly fit in the category of what people call "value" actually make more EV when they get a fold than when they get a call on play before the final street. This becomes especially true in fixed limit holdem.

What tends to happen with your pre-river "value" range is that the bottom of it is hoping for a fold, the middle of it is hoping for a call, and the top of it is hoping for a raise. Basically the same thing on the river too, except the bottom of your range hoping for a fold is only true for the OOP player because of its disposition to block-bet.

I also think that bluff/value as meaningful categories does not exist before the final betting street. But I do think they are completely perfect categories for final street play strictly for the IP player, or for the OOP player when facing a bet or raise. In some narrow range scenarios on the river, some hands will get a lot of EV by betting and getting both better to fold and worse to call, but it's not that they're not value or bluffs so much as they're both value and bluffs.

Well said

Actually, can you please provide some examples as to when one might bet entire range on river? Are these extremely polarized spots? I think have seen such spots but i don't think i ever understood why that was the case.