Grind Time

Originally Posted by seven-deuce

Honestly, I don't think I need one. I'm not trying to play balanced or anywhere near it, I'm trying to exploit this guy's weak-ass raising range. In my opinion villain isn't raising here to balance his value range, he has just whiffed the flop with overs and decided to semi-bluff the flop because he doesn't want to call. Why would I want to raise any of my value hands into such a weak range? It would be a lot more profitable to call and let him bet again, whilst 3betting a weak range on the flop to get value from his folds as well. His range is so unbalanced here it makes him super exploitable. At least that's the way I see it.

This is totally fine for the situation. And also, your exploitative thought process is good and you understand how ranges interact on this board. However, be careful not to use this as an excuse to ignore working out what a good solid range would look like here and what hands you would choose to bluff in accordance with those you are raising for value.

Eventually you'll have to work this out otherwise you'll get destroyed playing against good players, so those that can get a good feel for balanced ranges early will progress faster. Another benefit to working out balanced strategies is when you begin to get to know them, you start spotting people's leaks faster because you train yourself to recognize what solid play is.

FWIW in this spot, without using any software, I think range vs range each player is close in equity on 882 blind vs blind but I could be wrong. People open and defend such different ranges its hard to make too general of a statement here. In these games I'm guessing regs don't defend more than 50%? Reason I ask is at higher levels this used to be the case but now defending 65-85% of hands is the norm, so against that sort of defence the BB will have quite a few more total 8x combos, though proportionately, it may be the same since other 7x or Tx hands will be defended as well.