Quote:
Originally Posted by OnTheRail15
What hands would you raise for value here? If the answer is zero after this action with a card that smashes our range either we are doing something wrong or our opponent is.
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I didn't mean to imply that we shouldn't raise this hand in this particular spot, it may be that raising is best. I just think we should be careful about describing the manner in which we arrive at that decision.
I agree that when a river card is better for our range that it will move range vs range equities further into our favor than they had been up to that point. When that happens, our opponent should tend to take more passive actions and we should tend to take more aggressive actions than if the river was a brick.
However, remember also that because of the action on previous streets, our range will be capped on this river card and our opponent does not necessarily have a capped range -- especially if the OP's read is accurate that the villain will tend to delay his whole (or a lot of his) range to the turn here. When that happens, our opponent can be more aggressive about reraising us if we do decide to raise on the river so we may not be able to get value as thinly from our raises as we could if our range was still uncapped.
With respect to bluffing, I understand the sentiment that when a card hits our range we can more credibly represent some decent hands when we bluff. However, in my opinion this only matters if doing this exploits some specific tendencies of our opponent such as if he folds too often when we raise on a scare card and calls too often when we raise on a brick. If we are facing a strong opponent (such as in the OP) who is likely to retain solid frequencies against us or will be trying to exploit us over time, then we should attempt to maintain a balanced strategy regardless of the particular river card that falls. My understanding is that we do this by first determining our value range based on our estimation of how each hand in our range is doing against our opponent's range, and then we balance these with however many bluffs we need.
In my game, this particular spot is a snap raise against some opponents and is a crying call at best against many other opponents. In the OP, the opponent in question is deemed to be an expert who is delaying a lot of his range to the turn (for whatever reason, perhaps he is trying to exploit us with this strategy, who knows). I guess the key question then is: What SHOULD this villain's value range be when he bets the river?