Quote:
Originally Posted by DougL
Some people's 3 betting range can't bluff enough on most boards. Rodeo? He's balanced
I'm kind of on the fence about this explanation. I used to agree but now I think it's not about our bluffing range; now I think it's about not getting bluffed by being able to hit many textures.
Perhaps these qualities go hand in hand? Let's think about the ev of strategies with or without such hands included as preflop 3 bets:
Quote:
Player1 raise UTG2, Player2 3b MP, I 4b 5❤️6❤️ BTN, blinds fold, P1 call, P2 call
I think the pot will be distributed like this:
Largest share goes to the button, maybe 40%?
MP gets slightly less, maybe 35%?
UTG gets the least, maybe 25%?
Now, how often do we actually flop a hand that wants action? Some may think it's quite often, but really the number of hands in our strategy that earn > (pot) when called is a small number. The rest of our hands are simply reducing the profitability of our opponents ranges when we bet. This means that our strategy as a whole will never approach an ev of (pot) unless we only bet the strongest of hands, which can't be correct imo; reducing the profitability of our opponent's bluffcatchers and draws is an important part of a betting strategy, particularly with medium strength hands that benefit from protection more than other stronger hands.
So what happens to the ev of our strategy if we add a few near 0ev preflop 4 bets? It doesn't really change much unless we add way too many of these hands; they represent a very small fraction of the preflop 4 betting range when included at low frequency. That is unless our opponents will then make big mistakes vs us because "he could have 65s." Vs good players? I don't think they will make these big mistakes. Vs bad players? I think they will make glaring mistakes, but not of the folding variety; they will most likely overplay value hands and continue more often with weak draws and bluffcatchers. Is this good for our strategy as a whole?
Remembering what I learned from "Theory of Poker": if someone is making money at the poker table, they are taking it from you. (with exceptions as always). If these opponents are making -ev calls with bluffcatchers and weak draws in response to our low frequency suited connector preflop 4 bet? This is good for our strategy, but this means that it's unnecessary and likely -ev to 4 bet 65s preflop anytime in the near future if they have already witnessed us making this play. On the other hand, if we 4 bet 65s at too high of a frequency preflop? We are actually making our opponents bluffcatching and drawing ranges MORE profitable as their adjustments are now correct.