No all I'm saying is I'm sick of situations when we don't know where hero stands so everyone clearly thinks we should bet to find out. If I barrel every street I'll know when villain has a set right? I'll get away cheap!

Value betting and the bet/fold line are not necessarily synonymous, but often times a value bet is going to be a bet/fold.

However, imagine a scenario where you have 99 on K98 and the turn is a Q, we have a pretty clear value bet (where we are betting a strong but non-nut hand), but if villain shoves than we are often calling given boat equity and KQ improving. Thus there are situations where we bet/call for value.

Imagine another scenario where you raise 98ss in the CO and a weak nitty player calls in the BB. The flop is Q54dd and the nit checks, you should bet/fold the flop as a bluff. Its obviously not a value bet since we don't even have any equity in the pot, but is still a great spot to fold out a lot of villain's range while not spewing against AQ/67dd/78dd/54s/55/44/A3dd/A2dd.

we'll use your 88 on a T62 example. First of all, its not terrible to bet/fold here because villain isn't folding everything that is behind us (you sure they don't call you with 77, 6x, 55). Second of all, you sure if we check it, they bet it for us with worse?

By betting and having villain fold you also remove his equity share. if you bet the flop here and villain folds KJ, is that better than him calling with KJ? no. is it better than flop going check check? yes.

I totally agree with all of this, I guess I just call one a value bet and one a c-bet. Cool now I get it. Betting to see if I'm beat with a marginal hand tilts me tho.

Why would you want to check/call with two pair in a spot like this assuming an average uNL villain?

When you value bet you are betting into a range of hands, if villain raises you his range becomes weighted to hands that beat you.

Ya but we are making poker easier for villain, we don't allow him to make the mistake of fire KJ on this board. And clearly if we knew he had KJ we would always check to him to try and get money from him, right? Or am I missing something?

I mean I get your frustration, and obviously there's a sh*t-ton of stupid advice posted here daily, but if we're going to try and discuss something seriously, it's better to start off with clear, actual discussions, rather than diatribes about how idiots might tell you to misapply a b/f line.

The point of b/f is not purely "so I know I'm beat." It's primarily, "Villain can't raise without the nuts or close to it, because he is a weak-passive player, but he might just call with lots of worse hands than mine."

And even though you're sort of setting up a straw-man here, I'll bite. The reason maybe some people will tell you to b/f in spots where it's not clear what everyone's ranges are or how they might respond is because, IN GENERAL, most micro-stakes players lean towards the weak-passive side, and IN GENERAL, when an unknown raises you on a T62r board, yes, he probably does have a strong hand. If you know something specific about a player that changes those default assumptions, then by all means, do something different.

But just telling people "b/f sucks cuz sometimes people misapply it" isn't very useful.

if you knew he had KJ why would you check to him?

think about that for a minute.

Do you also check to villains when you have top pair and you know they have a flush draw?

Seriously, you should vary your line by villain. There are some where c/c is awesome here and some where b/f is, and some where c/f is, and a rare few where b/c is.

It's not about betting to find out where you're at,it's about making a bet to bluff villain off better or to get value from worse with the intention to fold if the villain raises.

Here's my last 30k hands. The 30k before that did have a sucky redline, but it was because I was only stealing 25%, not because I wasn't bet/folding enough.

Bet fold depending on the board and the villain. Check fold turnes you in to a passiv donk. OOo i dident hit, time to check fold my hand.

No you charge for a flush draw because people will call it, and in fact you have gained since you probably charged more than the pot odds they need to continue. Think of the EV when you fire into KJ they fold and your EV is 0, but if you check and they try to take down the pot we gain a few bets.

But I see what you are getting at, with KJ you must "charge" them to hit an over, but I feel like a flush draw is different because it is a commonly called hand.

I find that, contrary to popular belief, a whole lot of micro players love to bluff on scare cards in small and medium pots -- and many of them are pretty transparent with their bet sizing.

ok, reread my previous post. When you bet with 88 there, you are hoping KJ calls you, but if they don't, its still better than if it goes check check.

When you bet with top pair, you are hoping a flush draw calls you, but if they don't, its still better than if it goes check check.

Whether they call you or not, in this specific instance, does not mean checking is better than betting.

One last example. you have AA preflop, your opponent in the big blind has something worse than AA, he won't continue on the flop unless if he flops 2 pair +. He folds to any raise preflop. do you raise preflop?

Yeah,that is the case with some villains,and this discussion can't really be taken much further,because these things are situation dependant.

^^^ That's true. And the point of this thread wasn't to say that there is never a place for b/f or that one line is better than another in the abstract, only that b/f is highly overrated and over-recommended on this forum.

I will agree that bad advice is common place itf, but we are all learning players. Its not like anyone pays to read it.

You should no more get to declare a thread over with the brilliance of your own post than you should be able to declare a post as "official" anything.

+1

You know, too many guys here click buttons on the river. They all like to c/call because they are lost and are too focused on their relative handstrength vs. the board. Instead of trying to have a deeper understanding of handranges and tendencies, all u guys just turtle up and try and pot control and play guessing games. When they show up with the goods, it only reinforces your behavior because you successfully pot controlled.

But what most fail to realize is the EV difference between b/fing with c/calling. In the simplest sense, think about what happens when you c/call a potsized bet on the river (and lose) versus b/fing a 1/2-2/3s bet.

b/f is so profitable at the micros because you can get thin value on scary boards where you're only getting raised by better.

b/f FTW!

Go to flop turn river .com forums and in the shorthanded forum click on the digest and there is an article by IowaSkinsFan titled: I've found the biggest leak among .5/1 and 1/2 grinders

He explains the beauty of the bet/fold.

thats one big honking generalisation

nope. more likely is u just dont understand what i said.