Why is it correct to drop weaker pairs and draws from the turn betting range?

What did you think his check raise range was on the flop?

So what does that mean? Against a good player, on this board texture, you only bet when you hit?

And where does A7o fall on that spectrum? Is that a shrug and give up hand unless you bink an A or a 7 on the turn?

That's it. Bets saved are as important as bets earned.

There were multiple questions in the original post. I should have tried to answer it this way.

Possibly profitable, but possibly depends on what you’re opening range is compared to BB’s defending range and his check raise range. Based on range you provided earlier, I think continuing at 7.5 to 1 (direct odds flop to turn) is good.

Possibly profitable at 5.25 to 1. Again depends on your opening range, his defend range, BB’s check raise range, and whether or not you ever 3-bet the flop ever.

IMO depends on the ranges on how you got here like above…but I’m guessing possibly profitable at 6.25 to 1.
Board run out is Flop: Broadway / Wheel / Wheel (no flush draws unpaired), Turn: pair Wheel card (no backdoor flush draws), River: Broadway (unpaired).
[B1 W1 W2 W1 B2]
You have an Ace and a Middle card [A M] which blocks some straights, and the hand began as a button open vs BB defend. (Wide range vs wide range).


I don’t know what “Seems to me that the profitability of the bluffcatcher isn’t neutral as some may believe” means. If you mean that if you determine a hand as a possible or likely bluff catcher on one street, and then once you get to a later street you start to see that the value (or it's location in your range) has changed, then I agree.

But the way I think of it is that because what is a bluff catcher on at one point in the hand (in isolation or without any future cards) could change as more cards come. By that I mean if the game was hypothetically pre-flop and flop only, then, A7o might be a bluff catcher on the flop. BUT as soon as the turn is dealt, that could change things in that an Ace or a 7 on the turn or river might make A7o a value hand.

I don’t know if I’d phrase it this way. My understanding/thought process is once additional cards are dealt on each new street, the spectrum and range of hands you have changes as does the rankings or order of the hands that remain. What was once a bluff catcher could turn into a value hand, or what was once a value hand could turn into a bluff catcher, or a bluff. In the initial example provided, maybe 4x is a bluff catcher on the flop, but when the 4 pairs on the turn then maybe 4x becomes a value hand. Or, in the example provided, maybe 88 is a value hand on the flop, but becomes a bluff catcher on the river. Or maybe if another 8 hits on the river it becomes a value hand. I’m not saying it is one or the other, just that as a hand progresses things change. Also I wouldn't think if it necessarily that a bluff catcher loses (or could lose) profitability on subsequent streets—just that a specific hand might have moved and might be a different section or category of your range of hands.

I think you addresses this in some of the earlier posts and responses, but that seems like a vague generalization that I don’t know how to answer. I would imaging the answer is yes, but you’d have to know how often is your opponent buffing? How big is the pot? Are there other hands that could be a bluff catcher in that spot? I think other people have given examples.


IMO your question of how to play "buffcatchers" on the flop, and then what do you do from street to street on various turn and river cards seems like an odd way to phrase it or think about it. But that just might be me. I’m happy to hear otherwise .

I would think that another way of thinking about a specific hand in our range, and then what to do going forward on various type turns and rivers might make it easier to develop a thought process going forward. For example, thinking at the table “given what the prior action was and what I would have gotten here with, based on this river card certain hands have moved from value to bluff catcher, and other hands have moved from bluff catcher to nuts, or semi-bluff to bluff…you get the point.

I agree trying to get a better heuristic model to use at the table would be easier than trying to memorize PioSolver so I like this thread.

Almost forgot. IDK one of the prior posters suggested starting on river and moving backwards. Maybe that is the better way to think about it I've just never heard clear way to go that route.

This is what I meant for last point of that long winded post. The question posed is what are the multistreet considerations of a flop call. If I'm reading this correctly the suggested solution is to determine what happens on various river cards and actions, and then work back.

But how do you know how you respond on King river cards, if you don't know how many Kx hands are in your hand range going from turn to river when you check-called the turn? Or how many Kx hands are in your range going from turn to river when you check raise the turn? Or when you previously bet-3bet the flop?

Why is it easier to start the analysis on the river?

Intuitively it "feels obvious" that narrowing opponent ranges is easier going chronologically but range partitioning is easier going in reverse. On the river poker is similar to the (0,1) game in partitioning our own range, although it still requires judgment to figure out what range we're partitioning. On earlier streets we have to consider equity when called as well as ranges so in that sense it's more complex.

But narrowing down our own or our opponent's range from turn to river makes no sense if we can't say what hands were possible before the turn, etc. So it seems like a good process would work iteratively in both directions somehow.

It might make a little more sense if you think about how EV is calculated. Your EV on the turn is an average of all the river EVs. That is, you look at all the possible rivers, figure out how much you stand to win or lose on each one, and then average those results (and multiply by 1/46, the probability of each card).

So for any strategy you imagine, you're going to have to calculate it this way. You can't compute the EV on the turn without knowing the EVs of all the possible rivers.

There's a hint of forward-backward propagation in neural networks happening here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backpr...orithm_in_code

So what’s our range on the river in the example provided? How do you know that’s your range?

This is a good general practice to develop for just the two cards in front of you (before trying to also think about the other cards in your range). It's initially overwhelming, but it doesn't take long to start to develop some mental patterns that speed things up.

I had earlier suggested a simplified version of this:

A long time ago (when I was first starting to play poker), I would just try to identify the best and worst cards that could come on the next street. This helped me to develop a habit of thinking ahead to help inform your present decision. Over time, it expanded (though not to the point of making completely defined strata of hands).

So even if you don't go all the way into re-classifying your hands into more descriptive categories (bluff, bluff-catcher, whatever), these types of exercises will definitely help develop clarity about your hand and what you're doing with it.

A few questions that I've been meaning to answer:

What does a good big blind's check raise range look like on the flop? I don't know. I know what mine looks like though: J6 or better but not KJs nor AJ, and it's capped at 55 because I 3 bet JJ preflop; as well as any straight draw including Ace wheel draws, though not at 100% frequencies. I check call sometimes with 63s, 32s, 73s. There's also a small range of hands that I check raise and fold to a 3 bet with like Q3s with a backdoor flushdraw, but at low frequencies.

Why should the big blind check the turn with some value hands and some draws? Usually because you make an underpair to go along with your draw or to check fold. For example if I had check raised with 63s and I paired the 3 on the turn, I'd check call. Other times I get caught with no pair no draw on the turn = check fold near 100%. I'm not sure if that explains why the big blind "should" check the turn sometimes, but I think there are hands that are more profitable as checks on the turn. However, there are some turncards that I will bet near 100%, like the J turn. My value hands are very strong on that turncard, which allows me to bluff more than on other boards.

I don't 3-bet anything in the BB; not head-up. Because I play aggressively after the flop (because out of position) I find it very useful to have an uncapped range.

This point aside, yours is a good analysis and important to the larger question.

Didn't ignore this question; was actually hoping that better LHE players than me would weigh in on our range. I'm glad a few people have.

The second, epistemological question is interesting. I'd love to hear examples of how people answer that.

You don't ever know their range. Often, they don't know their range.

You assume a range and do calculations. Then, you assume a different range and do it again. The amount that the outcome changes is called the sensitivity. You'll then want to focus on the most sensitive parts and really pay attention to get a good read.

My ranges for these spots look something like this:

* On the turn as the big blind I continue to bet with J6+, any non Ace wheel draw, and 76, 86, 87.

On the turn as the button, I call with A2, A3, A8-AT, 22, 33, 5x, 66-88, Jx except I raise QJ and any 4x+. I also call many draws at high frequency; I only raise the strongest draws a fraction of the time here.

** On the river King as the big blind I would continue to bet with J9 or better, and I'd bluff with 32s, 63s, 73s, 76s, which may look like a lot of bluffs but I check call 32s, 63s, 73s most of the time on the flop so they're only in my river range at low frequencies.

On the river as the button facing the bet I would fold any busted non Ace draw. I'd call any AT+. With the rest of my Aces, I tank and then probably call, but I think the answer is to fold some of them.

I think it’s interesting that the thread features just a few confident folds, when our hand is a bluffcatcher from the flop through the end of the hand. Of course as pointed out earlier in the thread, there’s the possibility of improvement, which adds a bit of ev to the flop and turn calls, but on the river A7o can only beat a bluff.

Also I think that a closer look at the modern game might reveal many players that are value heavy on the turn and play well on the river, which would cause the turn to be a fold.