Quote:
Originally Posted by bucky104
You talk about river situations where it can be right for us to make a bet OOP when we are behind villains calling range. I understand the logic that we don't want to allow him to bet his own balanced range of strong hands and bluffs on the river so we are taking the lesser of two evils by betting and hopefully taking the slighter higher EV line.
Can the same logic be applied at all on streets before the river?
Pretty much yeah. Also hands you bet that are strong but not that strong (so "value bets" you don't want to get called) are also usually pretty vulnerable so denying the opponent her ability to realize her equity is pretty important too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bucky104
When we decide to take a check call line on the flop as the preflop raiser, or decide to check back hands that are too strong to fold/give up with OTF, but not strong enough to be multiple streets with, we automatically put ourselves into a multi street bluff catching situation. So when we open a hand like AQ, get called by the button, and decide to check call on an 842 flop, I get that we really don't get a lot of value from worse hands when we bet, but we will also get bluffed off our equity later in the hand a good percentage of the time when we check. Is this reason enough to try to balance a large leading range on the flop, or check behind less in position?
The problem is all of this happens vs good opponents when you bet too. You just often (especially vs weak opponents) bet the flop and win so you think "Awesome!" without realizing that if your opponent would have called you'd likely be pushed off the hand.
So let's say we bet AK on a 8
4
2
board (which can of course be fine). If we bet and he calls, what do we do on most turns? If we check-call, we'll be bluff catching. If we check-fold, we likely folded a reasonably high equity hand (we probably had 6 outs) and could have easily even folded the best hand. If we bet the flop and get raised, then now we have a bluff catcher and have already made the pot bigger.
My point here isn't that betting AK on a 8
4
2
board is bad, it's just that betting won't allow you to avoid most of the problems people complain about when they explain why they don't want to check. In reality many lines here might be fine and in theory it might be a mixed strat (I can see good reasons for c/c flop, good reasons for bet flop and c/c turn, and good reasons for bet flop and c/f turn..... depends on positions and turn card, and again might be a mixed strat in theory so a few lines have equal EV).
Whether you bet a lot on the flop or little will mostly just depend on how strong your range is relative to his. Kind of how you mostly CB as the 3-bettor in a 3-bet pot and you mostly (sometimes always) check as the 3-bet caller.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bucky104
The way I'm looking at it to give an extreme example would be something similar to the nuts/air game, where on the turn villain can bet 5/9 bluffs and 4/9 nuts. So on the turn if we have KK, and believe are up against six combos of AK and six combos of AA, we have to fold even though we are ahead of 50% of his range getting 2:1 on our call. This is basically due to the fact that we need to bluff catch the river to realize our equity, and he will be able to continue on the river w/ a balanced range more than 2/3 of the time on the river? So because of this factor is there any merit to trying to avoid line that will put us in more of these bluff catching situations over multiple streets? What am I missing here?
I think you are more or less just realizing "Bluff catchers suck when facing a bet, especially when out of position." The problem is there's not much you can do to effectively avoid it as I just explained.
So what do you plan to do with KK in this spot then? Bet it? Now he can RAISE you with his entire range (if he has enough stack depth) and you're still holding a bluff catcher but you have now invested more dead money into the pot.
So in your example, if you find yourself with KK vs 6 combos of AA and 6 of AK on the turn, you have to check. It sucks you have so much equity and it's so hard (maybe even impossible) to realize, but there's just not much you can do. And in reality you are going to get yourself in spots where you have bluff catchers on the turn or river even if you've played perfectly up to that point. The key of course is to win more with your good hands and lose less with your mediocre and bad hands on average than your opponents, but it's very important to understand that you'll often be put in undesirable positions even if you are playing well.
From what I've seen the general progression seems to be this:
Stage #1) Play awfully as you're learning poker and get into terrible and easily avoidable spots all the time.
Stage #2) Realize you can avoid getting into most of these awful spots by better pre-flop and flop play, so you get excited about this and overdo it. In other words, you now fold AJo when facing a 3-bet because "it's hard to play" or you won't 3-bet K9s OOP because "you won't know what to do with a pair of kings or nines."
You often need to play these hands even though they're marginally profitable and you'll often end up calling with the worst hand or folding the best. Remember, you're usually getting great odds when you call (even a pot sized bet gives you 2:1 odds).
Stage #3) Accept you'll often have to play many hands where you'll end up folding the best hand or calling with the worst hand. Start playing every hand you think is +EV, even if you're not looking forward to calling that 4-bet OOP with AJo.