Hey guys, have been playing 5NL on Ignition for about 25k hands, quick question about play.

Should we be double and triple barreling a decent amount ? I know conventional wisdom is we should always have bluffs in our range, but player pool just seems like it doesn't really allow for that. On one hand, I never bet again unless with some equity, but also, I feel like I am always 1) face up, always checking back turn, basically getting bluffed on river more often than I'd like, and 2) Feels like this is a huge turning point in game, like if these are spots that I am unsure about, may as well lose a couple of buyins to see if shoving river for stack actually works ?

I actually find that I don't always get paid off (ott,otr) often when I do make hands. But playing straightforwardly has also worked for my wr. Seems almost trivial, like I know the answer to this question already, but just can't get over the idea of not betting at least balanced range, which should, almost always be fine I think.

How often are we betting into aggro, passive kinds of players ? Are we just always getting called/played back at ?

I just keep giving up spots. But seems like there's no way around that ? I think my cbet % is at an all time low, but am defending very well against raises ofc.

I'd look at your DB, if using PT4, look at the cbet flop/turn/river success stats. This will indicate how often people are folding to these bets, and give you a pretty good indication of whether you should be bluffing in these spots - my guess is you should be. Clearly, when you bluff, you will get called sometimes, that's just the way it goes.

Having a relatively low cbet stats isn't a bad thing (I don't think it should be lower than 50% though). As a rule of thumb, unless you have reads vs pop that suggest otherwise, you should be playing the vast majority of your strong hands straightforwardly (except those that block a large part of villain's call range, such as top set or top two on a dry board or a flush with AKs, or when you have a huge hand that isn't too concerned about any card which may come, such as a flopped full house). If you are not getting called as much as you want, this means that you should be bluffing a fair bit in these spots. I'd recommend trying to bluff too much over not enough, as it will be much easier to move from a style where you bluff too much towards slightly less (better chosen) bluffs, than going from a low bluff frequency towards a higher one. In conclusion, just go for a it a little more with those bluffs.

imo you should not try and deviate to have a higher winrate at 5nl. Just focus on strong play + you'll win anyway, no point in trying to pool exploit at 5nl

Thanks for the responses. I filtered through PT4, and found that my flopcbet success % is at 37%, turn cbet success is 33%, and river cbet success is at 44, over the 25k sample.

I agree, I think that strong play is probably good enough, and this is probably overkill, when I see players stacking off with hands like TPWK/any pair.

This has given me much insight into my game. My flopcbet, turncbet, and river cbet are 61, 45, and 61, respectively. These are higher than I initially thought.

Might try to bump up river to 70.