You know the spot I'm talking about. Your opponent makes a bet or raise when holding a particularly weak range. I'll give a few different examples:

limit holdem four handed:

co raises, I 3 bet on the button, blinds fold, he calls.

flop AA9r

he bets.

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no limit holdem four handed full stacks.

co raises, I call on the button, small blind folds, big blind 3 bets near pot, co calls, I fold.

flop AA7r

big blind bets 1/2 pot, co shoves between 1 and 2 pots on top.

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2-7 no limit single draw.

I raise 3bb on the button, small blind folds, big blind calls.

he draws 3, I pat.

he bets pot.

-----

question time:

how much ev are these players losing, if any, by taking these aggressive actions?

how safe is it to assume that unknowns taking these types of lines don't have properly constructed betting or raising ranges? ie can we assume they're value heavy until proven otherwise?

how safe is it to assume that known good players taking these lines do have properly constructed betting or raising ranges? ie can we assume that our bluffcatchers are near 0ev?

ok I'll stop with the questions. Any responses and or meandering rambling tangents are welcome.

Hey Bob, you know I enjoy meandering tangents!

I think it is more likely to assume villains are demonstrating range construction errors, given a player pool that contains enough of those types of players.

If it is high stakes players that are known to construct ranges, then an estimate of the different EV would be to estimate the value of the aggro line versus the standard line.

If the players have the option to raise, but should never do so, then the previous action would have to leave the raise range empty, or that every EV of raise is equal to the EV of call and those ranges are merged.

But, this is just thinking value. What about bluff? In the nlhe example, there are lots of combos that do not contain an Ace, and bluffing the worst of those should happen at some frequency.

All of the money from your potential bluffs on the future streets.

It doesn't matter. Just call all hands you were value betting and fold your bluffs.

We shouldn't have any bluffcatchers in this spots. We're the ones that are polarized.

in a lot of cases it can be ok to raise because people are often over c-betting and then overfolding vs. the raise in these situations.

So whether or not the player should raise is entirely a function of how the aggressor reacts to that raise and although it is potentially a function of the board texture, the former of the two things stated is what creates the dynamic in which the player should or should not raise.

I think that vs unknown opponents and good players the betting and raising ranges are a function of the starting ranges for this street.

Brokenstars noted exceptions above are correct.

Zkesik I’m not sure if I agree with the “no bluffcatchers” comment.

Nice. Because they cap their checking or calling ranges more and more with every weak ranged bet or raise, we can exploit with bluffs vs the checking or calling range. I wonder how much of the pot this is worth in addition to our already relatively large share of the pot provided by our showdown ev.

This seems overly simplistic for different reasons given the different example hands from the op.

limit holdem flop spot? I'm getting 8.5:1, so I can and should call with bluffcatchers that intend to fold the turn on certain cards, as well as stronger bluffcatchers that can continue to the river. The only hands I'm folding are these combos without backdoor flushdraws: JTs, QTs, QJs, KJo.

no limit holdem flop spot? This is where Zkesic's above quote is correct, exaclty because the big blind is polarized.

2-7 single draw? Here we should have fold/call/raise ranges. I don't know what good snow frequencies are for this game so I'm not sure how polarized I should be on the button. Getting 2:1 closing the action post draw with my pat range I think I have many hands that could be considered bluffcatchers that can only beat a bluff.


This isn't true in the limit holdem example because the co should never fold for the single bet closing the action preflop; the button 3 bets a linear range.

In the no limit holdem example we are polarized, but there will be a number of combos in our calling range that will have near 0ev and the same goes for the single draw example. I think these are bluffcatchers.

lol word.
This was my first instinct as well.
We also need to consider the ev loss for the checking and calling ranges that occurs when you take non optimal aggressive actions.
It's too early for me to figure out the proper conclusion to this.
I bluff raise from the top of my folding range, not the bottom.

“the players have the option to raise, but should never do so, then the previous action would have to leave the raise range empty, or that every EV of raise is equal to the EV of call and those ranges are merged.”

I think the last sentence should read...ev call > ev raise.

agreed. Or at least >=

^^ I don't think that's true fwiw. If you shouldn't raise in a certain spot ever then the EV of raising must be lower than the EV of calling and not equal to it. It may work because of Baluga Whale but that doesn't mean it's correct theoretically and would lower the EV vs a call in equilibrium.

If they never raise you, your bluffs and medium value hands get to see the next card for the price you set. So raising is not as bad as it looks.

If you allow Pio to raise, it will almost always find some or a lot of raises on every street. Boards where Pio would likely not have any raising range are super nut lock down boards like AAK.

Depends on range amd cbet frequency if our opponent. (And our own range)