Quote:
Originally Posted by dissection
Lets use an example u provided. I raise AK pf and I fold out J8. But wouldn't it be better to be called by this hand instead (so we bet for value)? Does this depends also (if I prefer villain to fold or to call with this kind of a hand against my AK) on sizing of my raise? Where is the borderline between us wanting villain to fold his worse hand and us wanting villain to call with his same worse hand?
Yes, in a vacuum, you want villain to call with J8 when you have AK, but then when the flop comes J8K, you wish he'd folded pre. :/
In the long run, very few hands make more than 1.5bb per hand, so pre-flop at least, you'd
almost always prefer to have everyone to fold to your open. (The exceptions are something like TT+, AK, AQs, depending on position and skill edge.) If you have the nuts (aces), you definitely prefer to get some action, because the EV of aces can be over 10bb per hand, and you clearly don't win that much if you just pick up the 1.5bb of blinds. This concept carries over to post-flop and it's explained very well in Matt Janda's latest book, in a chapter called something like "Why you don't want action". Essentially, the math shows that if your long term average EV is greater than the current size of the pot, you want to get action, but if your EV is less than the size of the pot, you'd prefer to take it down immediately and win 100% of the pot now, instead of X% of a larger pot.
e.g. If you have top set on K72 in a pot containing $10, your EV is likely to be greater than $10. You can extract more value by getting called (or by inducing bluffs by low equity hands) than by taking the pot down straight away. You might have 93% equity in a $10 pot, but if villain bluffs for half pot with 98s, and you call and see a turn, you'll "own" at least 80% equity in a $20 pot. (On some turn cards, villain will be drawing dead, so you'll have 100% equity in a $20 pot, which is clearly better than 93% of $10).
With a hand like 66 on K72r, however, you "own" a smaller equity proportion of the pot. In some cases you're already way behind (vs Kx), and in others you might have 70% equity (vs QJs for example). If you allowed villain to realize his 30% equity for free (by checking), you risk villain hitting a 6-outer or going runner-runner, and you'd thus lose a 70% share of the pot. So in some spots it would be correct to bet your 66 and
sometimes collect 100% of $10, instead of checking and only winning 70% of that $10 pot. It's kind of impossible to work out the EV of every hand, because ranges are wide and there are thousands of possible runouts, but with experience you can estimate whether betting to protect equity will have a higher EV than checking to keep the pot small.
Generally speaking, however, when you're not at the absolute top of your range you'd prefer villain to fold, because 100% of pot is better than 90% of pot or 60% of pot. This doesn't mean, however, that you should get mindlessly aggressive with weak hands. If villain has many better hands (or has a range advantage), the last thing you want to do is bloat the pot, because then you're increasing
his EV. You can bet more often when you have the equity advantage and you expect a lot of folds.