Not a hand history post really but some discussion today in threads has got me thinking about this issue. Up until this point, I've focused almost solely on equity over blockers, with the exception of holding the ace of the suit on a 3 flush board. My bluffs are always semibluffs, with me being concerned over things like outs rather than blocking calling ranges.

I'm going to invent a random hand here. Imagine stacks are 100BB. UTG reg raises 3BB, Hero calls on the BTN with JJ. Everyone else folds, flop is heads up.

Flop comes: Q, 9, 8

UTG makes a 5BB continuation bet.

Now in this above hypothetical scenario, I'd call the JJ pretty much 100%, reasoning that our equity is still good (we're often ahead), and we do have some outs if we're behind. Raising has always seemed to me to be a waste of our SDV. I'd sooner raise hands like AKdd, AJdd, ATdd, 76dd and maybe some dubious backdoor nut flush heart draws.

However - looking at it from the blocker point of view, is it better to turn our jacks into a bluff here? We block JT for the nuts, and also block QJ. So we should be able to cut down a lot on villains calling, much moreso than with an Ax flush draw which only really blocks AQ in villains calling range.

Just starting to think about all this so if I've got the wrong end of the stick feel free to tear me to pieces, I'm going to try and start thinking about blockers more from now on and figure this woud be a good place to start.

Better hands with which to bluffraise: AcJc, AsJs

Sent from my VS870 4G

Good hand to bluff, just not on the flop and probably not on the turn.

Why AcJc and AsJs? Wouldn't you prefer to bluff with the hands that have flush potential?

By this do you mean - our SDV still rates pretty highly to be the best hand on the flop, but once villain has fired 3 barrels it's not looking so great anymore so it's fine to turn it into a bluff?

The smaller the ranges get, the more the blocker effect matters.

Like blockers don't matter that much in 3b bluff range, more in 4b bluff, loads in 5b bluff. The same can be extrapolated to postflop situations, you always want to have equity when bluffing OTF as you'll almost always have hands that can still make a strong hand by the river. Same pretty much applies OTT, although there can be few scenarios where bluffing prettymuch 0 equity hand OTT could be +EV even against good opponent if we are blocking like super hard.

And OTR the blockers is the ****.

If your read is that villain will call a flop raise with QJ*, shouldn't your raising range start with KQ?

*otherwise why would you care about your blockers unless you're subtracting the QJ and JT hands from his cbet range, in which case you should fold JJ more often?

I'd imagine not, since we valuecut ourselves against the greater part of his range even though he calls with some hands we beat.

I.e. I'd expect villain to call a flop raise with the nut flush draw, but that doesn't mean I'm sticking in a raise with any pair hand.

The main idea is to block hands in villain's calling/value 3betting range, which in this case is the straight.

all of this

blockers matter way more on the river than on the flop

So I should focus pretty much on equity alone OTF (for instance, on a Q75dd board, raising 6d8d is better than raising AKdd, since the 68dd has more outs to nut/near nut hands, even though the AK blocks hands like AQ and KQ in villains continuing range?)

But if I wanted to bluff the river on 2 complete bricks from here, the AKdd is the nuts to bluff, the 68dd is crap?

Not entirely or you won't have good bluffing hands on the river. But mostly yes, you don't need many bluffs on the river.

Both are crap and AdKd is the worst.

I don't get why the 68dd is crap? We can surely fold out lots better and our equity is massive anyway?

To be honest right now I'd probably raise them both, but my mindset really isn't too far beyond 'herp derp gots me a flush draw let's raise'

I may be missing something but our equity is 0 on a brick river. 6d8d is crap because it blocks a few busted fd's and doesn't block his value range. AdKd is worse because it blocks more flush draws as well as KQ that villain should probably fold otr.
Well, draws are usually excellent hands to raise.

Oh, I thought you meant they were crap bluffs OTF. Misread the post.

Trying to figure out what would be a good 3 barrel bluff here, given we want equity OTF but blockers OTR. Something like AK would be a good bluff OTR (blocks AQ and KQ), but would be a ****ty bluff OTF given all we have is a backdoor straight draw and 2 overs.

Here's where I'm struggling - flush draws OTF should make up a large portion of our bluffs, since they have decent equity. But we don't want to block busted flush draws OTR, we want to block top pair and the like. So what would be an example of a good candidate to raise OTF and barrel on turn and river (assuming 2 relative bricks, let's say the 3 and 2).

76s with bdfd

You don't want to block TP hands because they should be a big part of villain's folding range depending on positions.

Why 76s? Not sure what we block there other than middle set? And OTF we turn our middle pair of 7's into a bluff?

Not saying it's wrong just interested in the rationale behind it.

We certainly do turn our pair of 7's into a bluff . It's not like we're giving up "bluffcatching value" since bluffcatching is around 0 ev against an optimal opponent.

We indeed block middle set that villain should never fold. And I believe we pick up a gutshot on the turn.

Keep in mind that blockers matters the most when ranges are narrow. Raising the flop and betting the turn does something to villain's range.