Range Balancing Based on Bet Sizing
Join Date: Apr 2017
Posts: 49
I've been reading some articles on Upswing poker and I have a simple mathematical question regarding amount of combos of bluffs and value in relation to the size of the bet. According to Upswing, if you bet the size of the pot, you must have a value to bluff ratio of 2:1. This is because the villian is getting a price of 2:1 calling a pot sized bet. Therefore, 66% of the hands must be value and 33% of them being bluffs.
However, does that mean that if I bet less, I actually need more combinations of value? For example, If I bet half of the size of pot, the opponent is getting 3:1, therefore I need 3 valued combos for every bluff. It just doesn't feel right that I need more value hands if I bet less.
Please correct me if I have any misconceptions.
Join Date: Dec 2014
Posts: 13,256
Yes. If you bet smaller, you're more likely to get called, so you should be bluffing less often.
The bigger you bet, the more bluffs you can have in your range, since big bets create more fold equity.
It can be a little bit counter-intuitive, but just imagine you bet 10% of pot on the river. You'd hardly ever do that as a bluff, would you? (Because you expect villain to snap off such a small bet). When you bet tiny, you should be heavily weighted towards (thin) value hands.
Join Date: Aug 2017
Posts: 345
The reason it seems weird is because we could bluff ALOT for a small sizing and they only need to fold a little for us to make money with our small bluff. However, this strategy is not gto but to exploit villains who overfold to a small bet.