Two hands which are standard to NOT cbet.. what do you guys think?


Hand 1:

1/2, Hero opens $10 KQhh, BTN calls.

Flop ($23): T74ssd
Hero cbets $12 to fold out Ax and small pairs with a plan to barrel J+ cards.. I know a heart on the flop is better but who cares.. exploitative poker


Hand 2:

1/2, Hero opens $10 A5cc, BB calls

Flop ($21): K99shh
V checks, Hero bets $15 to fold out low pairs, hands with random equity and give up if called.. again no club but hey, exploitative

Heads up this sort of thing is fine occasionally. Even if not super profitable on it's own it's a good balance for your actual value bets. On these sorts of somewhat bad boards where you flopped little to no equity a flop c-bet is often your only chance to win. I prefer hand one to hand two. The smaller sizing makes it less expensive when you do get called and hand two is worse in general.

Paired boards generate a lot of weird bluffs and people tend to not believe on this sort of board. But you can represent a lot of KX here. It's an OK spot for a once and done bluff unless opponent floats a lot.

The issue in these two cases is whether you decide to represent the draw or a made hand. The main disadvantage of cbettting is that it is going to take 2 bets, if not 3 bets to get the villain to fold. That can be expensive if the villain is likely to trap with a made hand.

Repping the draw is cheaper, but if the villain is also on the draw, they aren't going to fold if they hit. They aren't going to believe a bet on the river if you checked it down and the draw didn't get there, especially if the have the ace.

Hand 1 is still okay vs random live-players who have plenty of unpaired hands that missed. As you mentioned you can still barrel some turns and you have 2 overs.
If he flats a reasonable range on the btn or is competent I'd x/f.

Hand 2 you should downsize your bet depending on your opening range/flop strategy.
Again, it's live poker so a small bet should have a higher EV then checking.
People aren't going to x/r aggressively enough.
If villain is capable of x/r hands like Ts8s we have to xb more.

Hand 2 I’m fine with betting your whole range if you want. Just not for this size. Needs to be smaller if we’re going to bet hands like A5


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Who says you're not supposed to bet CBet those flops HU? You can cbet almost 100% HU regardless of the flop. Especially in position. Its hard to make a pair.

Doesn’t betting smaller on hand 2 mean we have to double barrel more? What if we want to be one and done?

cbetting both boards is fine but your sizing should reflect the hands you expect to fold.

H1 I don't think small pairs fold to 1/2 pot, but if they do then it's a slam dunk bluff.

H2 you can bet smaller, pocket pairs make up a very small part of V's range (might not fold to a larger size anyway) and you're never getting Kx or 9x to fold, but all the other high cards probably fold to any size.

This. OP confused me because I think the reasoning for cbetting in both cases is pretty clear.

Is a villain with 66 really gonna peel H1?

Don’t be one and done. People tend to bucket hands into

“I call”

And

“I don’t call”

On the flop. You’re just wasting money against the former group if you want to “bet big” and be done. Your strategy will do better if you go small small on a board like K99tt; then you can continue to bet like KJ+ for value, your bluffs are more effective, it’s just better.


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There are no good barreling cards on the second board though?

For your exact hand maybe.

Study action frequencies. You should be playing a strategy where your value bets on a prior street can remain value bets when the next street doesn’t change the board. And you should corresponding give up on some barrels.

Ex: let’s say we have T8s w/ BDFD on hand 2. We bet and get called. Maybe we decide on a strategy where we only bet again if we turn a huge draw (like a 7 or J of our suit) or turn a weak draw that we don’t mind being check raised off.

On K99tt, you can just bet small and basically say “hey I have KK/99/A9s/AA/AK/etc in my range so you just have to fold a lot”. You bet $7 into $21, it just needs to work 25% of the time and you make money, even if you’re drawing dead. Since you aren’t drawing dead (you beat some gutshots, often have equity with an ace and even sometimes with a 5), it has to work even less to make you money. You bet $15 and it has to work way more often.

Also, when you do turn an Ace, you’ve now bloated the pot a lot more when you bet $15 v $7. You’re adding RIO to your hand.


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The stuff about villain being inelastic with the weak part of their range makes sizing down make sense.

I don't understand why we would only barrel turn when we pick up equity. Picking up equity makes the barrel "cheaper", but it doesn't tell me precisely whether or not I should do it. In other words, if I didn't pick up equity on turn with T8s then how does that mean a turn barrel is lower EV than a check?

Ya but they just don’t fold flop to an absolute amount of $7 lol.

Got into another fancy spot..

Whale with 90% VPIP/PFR opens to $13 (could do it with JTo or 43s), I 3! $40 with AKcc in LP, he calls (never folds).

Flop ($80): Q54ssd
He checks, how do I decide what to do here?

FWIW, $250 eff

So what does he do post flop? If he's playing 90% of hands, you should know.

Thinks I’m tight and just check folds mostly vs me unless I bet tiny.

Yes, they do. And if they are calling 100% of his range that got there, you can profitably barrel close to 100% turns to make em fold the majority part of it.

It’s “frquency control” and “range balance” stuff.

Turns that connects to the Flop on backdoors usually are giving more equity to our range or to V’s range.

So we want to be barreling our big hands as value and protection vs their draws.

In the same time, on the same boards we want to continue barreling our semibluffs. That way we have a balanced 2barrel range with bluffs and value.

Also, if we are barreling any turn, we could be going maniac on our agression and a competent player will begin to exploit us with traps, turn raises or call downs.

Also we will be inflating pots that we have low-to-0% chance to win, as we are doing bluffs with air.

For sure its player dependent and villains that are calling too much flop, will make all good targets for our big 2barrel frequencies.

Ah ok this was the piece I was looking for.

Start of your response was basically "well GTO" and I was thinking "mmhmm but OP is playing 1/2".

Also, barreling when picking up equity seems to be a decent guardrail for making sure you don't go overboard, but it could just as easily not be enough for any given turn from a GTO perspective.

Ding ding ding.

If they call 100% on the flop to 1/3rd pot, that’s great. Means they’ll way overfold the turn and we can just bet like $10-$15 then and win.


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I like range-betting the first hand. Bet small, because we are betting a wide range. Any non-spade Broadway card is going to smash our range, improve our equity, and therefore be a terrific barrelling card.

The board in hand 2 is quite wet, is all big cards, and has missed us completely. This is a good hand to check back with. (Check back with our weaker kings to protect our checking range.) Our value range should be our nines, our better kings, and AA. Our bluffing range should be something like our Broadway cards suited in hearts or diamonds.