Three B's, balancing, blockers, and bluffs.

Balancing - Am I right in saying that in some ways "to balance your range" essentially means "to make it less predictable"?
If we need to balance our range by playing good and not so good hands, if we fold before showdown doesn't it render the whole thing meaningless if they don't see our cards?

Blockers - If we're worried our opponents have a Queen, and we have KJ, does having KJ block our opponents having a Queen as it makes it less likely for them to have KQ or QJ? Or if we have KK and Ace comes on the flop do the Kings block them having an Ace, as it makes it less likely they have AK.
One thing I don't really get is the clash between blockers and being dominated. If we have Ax then that makes it less likely our opponents have an Ace, yet we should simultaneously not play something like A6 in case we're dominated by a higher Ace.

Bluffs - I see people saying "you want to throw in some bluffs there" when talking about lesser hands pre-flop, does this mean you go into a hand with the primary intention of bluffing?

Thanks for any replies!

My two cents from a non/limited GTO live cash guy ...

Balancing .. This is a huge aspect if you play against lots of Regs. Mixing up both your holdings and bet sizing in 'similar' situations definitely makes you less predictable. It's not even so much that they don't get to see you cards. It's 'when' they get to see your cards and also the 'mystery' of you not continuing on 'typical' Boards.

In your long term generic play, you don't want to 'always' make a certain action because your opponents aren't playing by those same rules. So you will be missing out on a portion of opportunities .. How valuable are those spots? That's the rub and only you can determine what may work best for your Player pool.

Blockers .. While a welcome portion to your overall thought process, IMO you can over do it as well, especially in NL. In this era of ranging, this is a great way to reduce a Player's range even more by elimination of certain combos. IMO this is nothing new to poker, it's just found a name for itself lately.

I think the 'domination' thought process shouldn't highly influence your actions until you have 'extra' evidence .. like a 3 or 4-bet PF, or a double/triple barrel. It brings you back to ranging with a mindful eye on position (and even balance). Unless your opponent has an extremely tight opening range should you really be worried about your Ace being kicker dependent until you get 'more' push back?

Bluffs .. As with balance, without a certain portion of the game including bluffs (or just aggression in general) you will miss out on those opportunities to take down chips without a showdown. As with balance, you have to consider Reg v long term non-Reg conditions.

I don't think you ever want to go into a hand thinking 'I'm bluffing', but it could be that you've got a high VPIP MP Player and 'when it folds to you OTB' you now have an opportunity to push back with a light 3-bet IP. Or if you are in the BB in the same spot and the B flats MP open you can squeeze from the BB and try to take it down. While LOTS of Players get caught up in this as a 'bluff', I see it as 'playing poker'. GL

Thanks so much!

Balance - No. Imagine we never folded flop, never folded turn, and then folded 99% of hands otr. Villain would still be able to know things about our flop + turn range and exploit those things despite seeing very few showdowns. Being balanced is more about being difficult to play against and having ranges incorporating calls, raises, and folds in every spot without obvious things to exploit.

Blockers - Yes, blockers absolutely work like this. Having QJ blocks our opponents from having KQ, AQ, AJ, etc. Having KK does block AK. I don't see why the domination effect is confusing, though. Yes, A6 has good blocker properties, but it has bad domination properties. With that said, a hand like A5s has bad domination properties but still makes quite a good bluff 3bet (in part because it retains equity even vs hands like KK, QQ and it blocks hands like AA, AK).

Blocking strong hands is good, but being dominated is bad. These are both true things about poker and don't contradict in any way. Poker is a complex game and you'll have to decide (/study) which factors are most important in given spots.

Bluffs - Nobody actually good would say this if you really pressed them. It turns out that part of a balanced strategy includes sometimes 3betting hands like weak suited connectors, weak Axs, weak pocket pairs, and so on. This is kinda just shorthand for acknowledging that it's not really a value hand. AA is crushing our opponent's range when we 3b pre, but a hand like 76s is clearly not though it's ok to raise sometimes.

Re: blockers, it depends on the opponent’s range and how the blocker interacts with it. If the opponent’s range is any two cards, having KJ makes it less likely the opponent has specifically KQ or QJ, but more likely the opponent had Qx overall. If the opponent’s range is KQ, QJ, 22, then having KJ makes it much less likely he has a queen.