Quote:
Originally Posted by sisyphusonroids
Instead all we need to think is... does this hand make good sense to bet now or not?
That's basically what I do, but I'm not very good at poker.
If you run some (dry) flops through solvers, you can get very complicated solutions that are pretty difficult to make much sense of, because unfortunately the majority of combos don't fall into the categories of "obvious value bet" and "obvious semi-bluff" or "obvious protection bet". The combos that
do fall into those categories are clear enough (e.g. bet your sets and two pairs, usually bet your OESDs), but only a solver can tell you which of your other "air" hands have a higher EV as a bet or a check. When there's no OESDs or flush draws, it's pretty hard to work out which hands
are the "obvious" bluffs.
For instance, it might feel natural to bet all your gutshots IP (and that's probably fine on K93r, because the gutters also block top pair and middle pair), but a solver
might suggest checking back the gutshots that have BDFDs, or conversely it might say to mostly bet the ones with BDFDs, but check the ones without. Meanwhile, the solver might say to bet some combos that appear to have whiffed completely, in preference to some hands that clearly have more equity vs villain's continuance range. Some ace highs will get bet as bluffs, while others can get a modicum of thin value. Poker is hard.
Tbh, as long as you make the correct decisions with the "obvious" combos (e.g. you always bet with the obvious value hands and sensible bluffs, and you don't bet with hands that
clearly do better as check backs), what you do with everything else doesn't matter massively, as most combos will have a similarly low EV whichever action you take, and your results with them will get lost in variance. (Solvers often use mixed strats for all the "meh" hands, sometimes betting, sometimes checking).
e.g. You could bet A7 or 55 on K93 (hoping for a fold) and it will be fine, but you're not making a huge mistake by checking them back, because those combos only have a low EV whatever you do. If you checked back 99 (middle set), however, that would be a
huge mistake, because it's a slam-dunk value bet.
You just want to have
some kind of balance between your value bets and bluffs, such that villain won't realise "This guy is so value-heavy" or "This guy bluffs way too much". You don't have to make it 2:1 or 1:1 on every flop/turn, but try to be conscious of how good a flop is for your range. If you know you have loads of strong value hands in your range (which you'll bet for value), then you can/should also bet a lot of weak stuff too to balance. You certainly don't have to literally count
all your combos on every flop and then use a ratio. In a single-raised BTNvBB pot, you're gonna have 400+ combos in total, but probably less than 50 are value bets that should be c-bet 100% of the time. On some boards you'll easily find 100+ "decent bluffs" to also bet (you'll have more OESDs and FDs, overpairs etc), but on boards like K93r or 772r, it will be trickier to find them, because so many hands have little to no connection, and can arguably do well as either bets or checks.