It's funny how you say that immediately after I show you a hand where I bet $75 on the turn, 1 player calls with 15% equity and the other 4 players fold.

The turn bet couldn't possibly have been better, even if I saw everyone's cards beforehand.

The guy that called me with 97o was the one lighting money on fire, not me.

Because low stakes live poker is filled with level 1 thinkers who play their hand, and their hand only. They're not battling with you based on perceived range advantages and the slightly lower probability that you can have a big hand based on the handful of combinations they block with the cards that they hold in any given hand. I don't believe in absolutes, so or course you're occasionally going to run into a player here or there that thinks and plays on that level, but it's far and away a rarity at these stakes. So what if you block some potential combos of nutted hands on a given board? When the vast majority of 1/2 through 2/5 players tell you they have a big hand based on their actions, it's because they have a big hand. Whether there are fewer combinations of these hands that they can hold based on what's in your own hand is irrelevant against these players, and more often than not it just serves as an excuse to make a bad call against a player who's actions are telling you the strength of the hand that they're holding.

I think your misunderstanding how I use blockers. Im not interested in ranging my opponents and thinking about what the blockers in there hand would be to then see what they think my hand is. I agree that most players are not thinking on this level and even if they did it would be too much mental energy to think about this and yield any meaningful results. But I just dont see how an opponents skill level has anything to do with the fact that it is extremely useful to know whether a hand is obejectively more or less likely. No matter how predictable you think your opponents are. At the end of the day you dont know what they have and the question of what they have is always a multiple choice one. So by having a mathematical sound process to determine the exact number amount of each "choice" that could possibly exist is invaluable. Even if your gut feeling tells you your positive you picked the right "choice". Its never bad to know from an objective point of view how likely it is in relation to your other "choices". I hope that makes sense. I dont use combos as some sort of player specific exploit but as a way to make good decisions despite my preconcieved notions on a players skill level.
Although i do agree that they can at times be irrelevant almost like they are in this hand.



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Yes yes, and buying 10 million shares of a startup called "Amazon" in 1990 when Bezos was some spazzy kid living in his parents garage in Seattle would have been a thoroughly good idea with great financial merit. Definitely the smartest thing to do at the time to entrust your life savings to a 20 year old with a dream to strike it rich.

I would fold river. So much junk beats us so many ways. Hand is fine until then.