[spoonitnow strategy] Thinking About Your Ranges When Continuation Betting

Originally Posted by DoubleJ

Here's another one...

to me, checking the Flop with a strong range sounds a lot like Slow Playing, which i'm always being told not to do

what am i missing?

Slow playing in general is extremely good under a particular set of circumstances. Reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_play_%28poker%29 for Sklansky's treatment from Theory of Poker.

The key criterion that applies to what we're talking about here is, "The player must believe that he will drive out opponents by showing aggression, but can win a big pot if the opponents stay in the pot."

The idea that I'm presenting that you're asking about is that if your opponent is extremely unlikely to put money in with one line, that's an indicator that it could be better to put good hands (ie a strong range) in another line. So if your opponent is folding something crazy like 75-80 percent to a continuation bet in a particular spot, then it can easily be [though it won't always be] better to check with a strong range.

The premise of all of this is pretty simple: Play in a way that gets the money in when you have a good hand.

I'm only advocating a ton of slow playing as a hyper-exploitative measure in very specific situations like the ones ImSavy described. If your opponent is folding a ton when you bet and betting a ton when you check, then you get a fuckton of value by checking a strong range and betting with a weak range.