Can somebody explain what the criteria are for analysing a post-flop scenario as the pre-flop raiser and deciding whether it is more suitable to either

(A) bet or check our entire range

or

(B) polarise our betting range (so say betting the top of our value range as well as semi-bluffs, check calling our medium-showdown value and check-folding our trash)


I presume it is dependent on the flop texture, villain(s), position and SPR but I don't really know who those variables influence it.

Mostly dependent on overall equity between the two players, nut %, and how much the equity from one player or the other can shift from flop to turn to river.

Also, ip/oop and stack depth does matter too.

Thanks for the reply. Can you you outline how any one of those criteria would influence the decision one way or the other?

If you know of any good online resources for learning more about this then that'd be cool too. I tried googling it and got nowhere.

The decision when to bet or raise on any street is determined by the current and to a certain extent future distribution of strong hands in each player's range.

The more strong hands in your range, the more often you should be betting. The more often your hands have significant equity, the larger you should be betting.

Then, the more often the information you have favors your opponent having the stronger hands, the more you should be inclined to check and or give up.

Note this can change based on information you receive from the board changing or your opponent's betting or drawing behavior meaning it's possible starting out that your range is the weaker but based on the chance nature of the game it becomes stronger than your opponent's.

This is a great summary. The higher the equity or your range, the more nut combinations in your range, and the greater the frequency those hands stay the nuts the more frequently you should be betting and with a larger sizing.

If you're ip checking becomes more profitable because you can take your equity where as oop you can't check to see a showdown.

Stack sizes effect the different lines that are viable in a hand.

thx, but not always the case.

Sorry that read wrong. What I was saying was when your range has higher equity, when your range has more nut combos, etc. you should be inclined to bet more frequently and with a larger sizing.

What do you mean by this? I always thought you bet smaller when you have high equity because villain would not be able to pay you often if you bet large with high equity.

The more often your range contains very high equity hands (i.e. nuts or very close to it) the closer you get to a pure nuts vs bluff catchers scenario.

That means you can bet very large to maximize the payout to your value hands. This allows you to bluff more frequently as well.

Are you talking about only my betting range or my whole range. I get it if you are only talking about betting range, I can add more bluffs and bet larger. Otherwise, I don't understand why when my overall range has high equity, I can still have enough bluffs to bluff.

I was talking about your whole range containing individual hands that are high equity (i.e. the nuts or close to it) and you choosing to bet with those hands and bluffs with a large sizing to maximize the number of bluffs and the payouts to your value hand.

You may also choose to bet when over all your range contains hands with decent equity but aren't the nuts. Then you would probably choose a smaller sizing. It all depends on what you expect the composition of your opponent's range to be given then information you have (i.e. betting sequence, board cards or cards drawn, position, history etc.).