Quote:
Originally Posted by wolli2013
does a higher size (as a steal and/or 3bet) mean we (should) have more bluffs in our range?
Sort of, but it depends on how deep you are and how your opponent reacts. When you get to (or are on) the river (or are shortstacked, so your "commitment level" is reached sooner), you can bluff more if you use a larger size (or jam) (because bigger sizes force more folds), but the effect is less pronounced pre-flop, because your opponent can still see a flop and play some poker even if you go large.
To some degree, the terms "value bet" and "bluff" don't make perfect sense pre-flop, because every hand has equity. To take an extreme example, you might 3-bet 72o, and refer to it as a 'bluff', but then flop quads. A "bluff" pre-flop can easily turn into a value hand post. (Conversely, you could 3-bet TT for "value", get called by 65s, and be drawing almost dead on 743).
To use a more realistic example, if you're in a tourney with 10bb, you might open jam with something like A2o (and a lot of other hands) in the SB. The shoving range is so wide that you might think you're "bluffing" very often. But if you get called by KQs, you're actually ahead. It's the fact that you're going all in that allows you to jam light and wide. Villain can't "rebluff" if you're already all in.
If you're 3b/4-betting large, but
not all in, you don't want to be light too often, because you've giving villain a chance to shove on you. When you're 4-betting, you don't want to go massive if you'll be forced to call a shove with the worst hand. If you choose a very
small 4-bet size, then villain will hardly ever fold to it, so you obviously don't want to have many 'bluffs' if you go particularly small. You'd prefer to choose a "happy medium" size that gets enough folds to make your light hands to be profitable, but doesn't lose stacks if villain jams, but also gets called enough by worse to maximise the profit of your best hands. Exactly the optimum size and the balanced range that matches it is something we're all still trying to figure out.