make them guessing by doing the same
Join Date: Oct 2016
Posts: 5
Hello, I am re reading harrington 1 e 2, and I hadn't played for about 5 years. Many tines he says that good players vary the bet sizes to keep others guessing. i.e.: with the continuation probe bets, etc
I was considering the way I used to play and was good at the time; I used to do just the opposite: every time doing the exact same play. Almost always making bets of half the pot; almost always making c bets.
by the time, or the player would keep folding the majority of the time (rare today), or he would come back and I would fold and keep repeating the same thing until I had something.
Is this reasonable? Doing the same thing can have the same effect as varying it all the time (at leas with the bet sizes I think yes; with c bet frequency I think it depends if the opponents call a lot the first flop bet, as it seem to me is more frequent today than it used to be 5 yrs ago)
I appreciate any comments and thoughts.
Join Date: May 2012
Posts: 4,707
good subject......
i don't see any reason not to change things up a bit......
you could argue that you don't play with people long enough for them to notice that you do X with strong hands, Y with weak hands.....
but i think it's a risk. and i think it's decent discipline anyway.
but if someone is going to call your 7BB pre-flop bet with aces - non super deep stacks - i wouldn't worry about people knowing you have aces.
and you can certainly vary between 2 and 3 bb for small pre-flop bet and 3.5 and 5 bb for your pre-flop bet i.e. vary a bit within the small and large bet ranges.
Join Date: May 2012
Posts: 4,707
i should add you never want someone to know exactly what you have and/or what you are doing. it's like playing with your cards faceup
Join Date: May 2012
Posts: 4,707
i should add that i think you want to randomize actions some (80-20 on non-obvious moves) even more than betting size. i think people will catch on to "action patterns" much more quickly than "betting size patterns"... not sure if harrington talks about that. probably
Join Date: Aug 2016
Posts: 331
You can do exactly the same thing when you have the same board texture (regardless of your cards).
C-bet example:
Dry flops: always half pot
Wet boards: always 2/3 pot
But you should do this for both value and bluff. So villain will never know.