My bet-sizing depends on the opponent and the situation. LAGs need to be outlagged, TAGs need to be intimidated and fish need to be value towned. You can't play this way blind. I keep my bets on the small side against most opponents because the bluffs are more profitable that way and it's not so hard to get them to pay off big on the river a lot of the time.

I have a 'balanced' strategy for every line I take post flop. I am betting any A or full house like this, and also semi-bluffing a lot of hands like this. I donk-bluff with outs because I can stack a naked A on a club river. This line is about fold equity (profitable on it's own) and about getting paid off with big hands more often.

My showdown winnings are terrible and very swingy, but my non-showdown more than make up for it.

This hand was more about setting up some profitable situations vs this villain and a couple of the other better players on the table. It doesn't matter if you get looked up here. Villain folding is just a bonus - betting the river here shifts some blue line losses into red line wins, that's all.

The bet isn't weak.

This isn't a tricky spot.

You keep on contradicting yourself, earlier you say, "I'd be happy with smaller (but not this small) bet-sizing against fish and TAGs, but not against a possible LAG." Yet you're betting against a possible "sLAG", and extremely small based on the situation.

The bet opens you up for a re-raise, and if the villain was better he could have raised much more on that less than 50% pot bet, and taken it down. It seems like you got very lucky here because your only FE on the river is to another busted FD, or pair turned into a bluff...

This is a completely different hand against a LAG! I'm not protecting a vulnerable hand, I'm trying to convince him to to rebluff me, then conclude that I have a monster.

I bet small here for several reasons:

- because if I have it flush draws are getting **** implied odds and terrible reverse implied odds

- if I don't have it, the bluff is more profitable

- I can get 3 barrels in whilst still leaving the LAG deep enough to try a rebluff and fold the river

- I can push the river if the flush hits, whether I have a full house or a flush, and get paid off by plenty of worse hands

Remember that this is part of a balanced strategy. I play AT+ and sets this way too.

ymu, a lot of what you say is waaaaay off

the stuff that is correct is widely known

you havent discovered anything

ymu you say your playing a balanced strategy, but the two hands you showed early prove you are definately not playing a balanced strategy.

Can you explain exactly how they prove that I am not playing a balanced strategy? From what you've written, I'm not entirely convinced that you know what a balanced strategy is, but I'm happy for you to prove otherwise if you care to write more than two lines and include some actual reasoning rather than simply asserting something as true without explanation.

Fold

lol if you really are trying to play balanced at 25nl

I think it's a bad idea to test out a new strategy at buy-ins where losses would matter.

"It would be better to try out a new strategy at a buy-in where the losses matter?

I completely understand that this is way beyond what is needed to win at NL25, but I see the lower buy-ins as a place to learn a new game and earn your way up. I'm really strict on this. I don't jump into the maximum my bankroll can stand until I'm confident that whatever it is I'm doing is probably working.

I understand why the cash forums are split between stakes and why buy-ins are so important in hand threads. I'm not saying that it is necessary to play like isildur1 to win at NL25. But the downside of this approach is that reads and overall strategies can get a bit neglected at buy-ins where ABC wins the money best on average."

Where you err badly is to assume the same plays work at NL60K and NL25.
You can't "practice" some "he's a sLAG, he knows that I know that he knows.." stuff against opponents who in reality are thinking: "I have toppest of pair, I call" or "I have a set, I minraise".

It is not only unnecessary to play like Isildur1 to beat NL25, it's suboptimal and almost certainly losing style. Obviously he wouldn't play the same style against 31/19 NL25 fish that he would against Dwan.

But the problem is that You seem to be constantly leveling into thinking that your opponents are 4th level thinkers and you need to play on level 5 to outsmart them. Secondly balancing against opponents who aren't playing attention or don't adjust is not only unnecesary, it's bad. Balancing has some role even at NL25 but you don't need to balance in every spot and definietely not against all opponents.
Against better opponents balancing some preflop spots and OTF is mostly enough.
Balancing rare river c/r spots is unnecessary.


AND BTW Antonius v Galfond hand, there is no way he c/r all his air and monsters OTF. That would be horribly unbalanced and will be noticed even at NL25.
And I also doubt he leads all his aces OTR.

That was Galfond's analysis, not mine. If you want to go and tell him he's wrong, the HSNL forum is <-----thataway.

He's either wrong or you misquoted him. My guess is the latter.
Where's the original thread?

let me rephrase

lol if you are trying to play balanced

Okay, the two 3bet pots where you bluffed someone, (you rep nothing incidentaly, just lucky noone at nl25 can handread)

On one of them you rr 33 ott of a board where you have zero equity. If you're reraising 33 there, you're reraising pretty much every hand. So you can be easily exploited if people just become a station against you. so you are completely unbalanced because you have so few value hands that play that way and so many bluff hands.

also, HU4ROLLZ?

Thread. I've certainly massively simplified it. He has a different perspective on the hand in retrospect than he did at the time, and it develops through the thread based on what people know about Antonius' game (he thought he was playing Roland de Wolfe when the hand played out, so this was based on a four hour session with someone he thought was unknown to him).

He made a thin value bet expecting to get called by some worse hands and realised he'd blundered when the c/R came, and then figured that there was value in the call, given his read. In retrospect, he thinks it was the right move made for the wrong reasons, IIRC. A good way to counter the hyper-aggro all-ins on the river.

beat me to it

None of these plays are read-independent. I've danced with these villains before, and I have an idea of what they will do with the different bits of their range.

The point of developing balanced strategies for various types of hand and board texture, against certain villains, in and out of position, is to try and play optimally over both our hand ranges, and to make it very difficult to read my hand. There are no spots I always bluff at and there are no spots where I am always getting value. My bet-sizing depends on the board and the line I've chosen against villain, not my hand. Etc etc.

That's not so simple to achieve, but if you bluff convincingly at a lot of boards where monsters lurk, you will be more likely to get paid off big when you have a monster, as well as winning a lot of smaller pots where no one else really wants to fight for it. This makes up for the 50-60bb pots you lose on the way to setting up these situations. If you start getting called down too much, choose the line with more value hands. If you stop getting action, shift the ratio back to bluffs.

It's a very stressful strategy in many ways, but it does help you to let go of the tilt on losing a big pot. And it's fun. Especially if there's another LAG and between you you're raising 2/3 of the hands preflop and playing half of them against each other.

I don't go in for overly macho time-wasting crap like that. I play for a living. Soz.

Ya pretty much 100% sure you don't know what being balanced means. Or if you do please let me know specifically what your doing to make sure you're balanced on that 33 hand (and not just well I can show up with anything here, and its read-dependent, etc.) since like Queen6suited said, unless you have some really really weird strategy for it your definitely not going to be balanced there.

Let's keep the focus on strategy pls. FWIW, I'm not folding in this spot.

Lol.
you 1 table nl25?
Great living.

you preface your second paragraph defense of your balanced strategy with your first paragraph explanation of why you're using unbalanced strategies....

what you don't seem to be getting is if you're bluffraising 33 on that flop, it could be good exploitatively (almost certainly not) if say villain only continues with AKcc/QQ because he has massive monsters under the bed syndrome, but it simply does not come even close to fitting into a balanced strategy. we are bluffraising way too many hands, and hence our range is super unbalanced

just to clarify, vs random NL25 regs it's certainly possible that taking in vacuum lines in every spot and not caring about overall gameplan and range interaction might work out to some degree; i'm only ridiculing the 'balance' defense of your play because it's not true

Call-Bet/Call shove any turn.
fold 2 3b 17%....I won't fold.Find the best way to stack him IMO.
Hope u didn't fold.