BUT WHAT'S YOUR RANGE

Firstly, great post Carroters. I think this is totally relevant to the BC and increasing your EV at microstakes. I will be revisiting this thread before I start playing again. Juts to clarify I understand what you're tying to say though I'll use an example.

E.g. In a heads-up pot on the river you're going to have a range. For the sake of simplicity let's assume we're IP and it's checked to us. Naturally, we are going to want to make all our profitable value bets in this scenario. We can also increase, decrease, or remove our bluffing range entirely in this spot based on our reads on villain.

So we have a read villain is going to be calling a tonne. So we want to be value betting more and bluffing less, obviously. We can work out using the alpha value what a perfectly balanced betting/bluffing range looks like in this spot. (Unsure if it's exactly perfect, but it's pretty damn close.)

So imagine we are on the river with the stone-cold nuts vs a villain who is calling a high percentage of his range. (More than the bet/(bet+pot) from his perspective.) Whilst there may be a small amount of EV to be gained by bluffing a very small percentage of the time in this spot, the situation is going to come up so rarely that it's kind of insignificant. I.e We are going to arrive at the river with the rock-bottom hand(s) in our range so infrequently that it's far more important to just make all are profitable value bets and not bluff. This will be exploiting the hell out of his calling tendency. If we start thinking, "shit I should be bluffing some of the time here, I could be exploited by just value betting." This type of thinking could lead to us bluffing too often and reducing our overall profitability vs such a station.

So it is actually more practical and profitable to value bet only and never bluff.

Am I understanding the gist of what you're trying to say Carroters?

Originally Posted by seven-deuce

Firstly, great post Carroters. I think this is totally relevant to the BC and increasing your EV at microstakes. I will be revisiting this thread before I start playing again. Juts to clarify I understand what you're tying to say though I'll use an example.

E.g. In a heads-up pot on the river you're going to have a range. For the sake of simplicity let's assume we're IP and it's checked to us. Naturally, we are going to want to make all our profitable value bets in this scenario. We can also increase, decrease, or remove our bluffing range entirely in this spot based on our reads on villain.

So we have a read villain is going to be calling a tonne. So we want to be value betting more and bluffing less, obviously. We can work out using the alpha value what a perfectly balanced betting/bluffing range looks like in this spot. (Unsure if it's exactly perfect, but it's pretty damn close.)

So imagine we are on the river with the stone-cold nuts vs a villain who is calling a high percentage of his range. (More than the bet/(bet+pot) from his perspective.) Whilst there may be a small amount of EV to be gained by bluffing a very small percentage of the time in this spot, the situation is going to come up so rarely that it's kind of insignificant. I.e We are going to arrive at the river with the rock-bottom hand(s) in our range so infrequently that it's far more important to just make all are profitable value bets and not bluff. This will be exploiting the hell out of his calling tendency. If we start thinking, "shit I should be bluffing some of the time here, I could be exploited by just value betting." This type of thinking could lead to us bluffing too often and reducing our overall profitability vs such a station.

So it is actually more practical and profitable to value bet only and never bluff.

Am I understanding the gist of what you're trying to say Carroters?

Yeah exactly. The longball vs shortball thing is very closely linked; I think I just ran out of ranting steam too much earlier to explain my thoughts on it. I think you're 100% right though. There are a lot of spots where we might want to err on the side of just making a +EV play because we know the situation vs that opponent just ins't presenting itself often enough for us to factor in a longball game plan and expect better longterm EV from doing so.

EG. I decide a river bluff is shortball +EV because villain should be folding enough combos to make the amount we risk work often enough in this one spot. We then decide that if we bluff with a hand this far up in our range then we are bluffing too much longball and are going to be exploited for doing so if this spot keeps occurring. However, this spot we're in is fairly unique and we don't expect to ever really play it again vs villain let alone play it so much that he figures out that our range has this technical weakness and can be exploited by him calling much more. Therefore we go ahead and bluff this hand even though it doesn't fit as a candidate hand into the range we'd like to be bluffing longball. However, we've actually made the correct longball decision because in reality where we get nowhere near to playing this spot very much vs this guy, we just make more money overall by grabbing a rare chance to at least make a +EV bluff in this spot.

A hand from today.

Poker Stars, $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 6 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

BTN: $26.26 (105 bb)
SB: $12.10 (48.4 bb)
Hero (BB): $58.18 (232.7 bb)
UTG: $19.06 (76.2 bb)
MP: $40.35 (161.4 bb)
CO: $71.04 (284.2 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 5 K
UTG calls $0.25, 4 folds, Hero checks

Flop: ($0.60) 2 A 6 (2 players)
Hero bets $0.50, UTG calls $0.50

Turn: ($1.60) 7 (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG bets $0.75, Hero calls $0.75

River: ($3.10) 8 (2 players)
Hero bets $17.50, UTG calls $17.50

Results: $38.10 pot ($1.71 rake)
Final Board: 2 A 6 7 8
Hero showed 5 K and won $36.39 ($17.39 net)
UTG mucked 2 A and lost (-$19 net)

I don't have a bluffing range here either.

Originally Posted by BorisTheSpider

A hand from today.

Poker Stars, $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 6 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

BTN: $26.26 (105 bb)
SB: $12.10 (48.4 bb)
Hero (BB): $58.18 (232.7 bb)
UTG: $19.06 (76.2 bb)
MP: $40.35 (161.4 bb)
CO: $71.04 (284.2 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 5 K
UTG calls $0.25, 4 folds, Hero checks

Flop: ($0.60) 2 A 6 (2 players)
Hero bets $0.50, UTG calls $0.50

Turn: ($1.60) 7 (2 players)
Hero checks, UTG bets $0.75, Hero calls $0.75

River: ($3.10) 8 (2 players)
Hero bets $17.50, UTG calls $17.50

Results: $38.10 pot ($1.71 rake)
Final Board: 2 A 6 7 8
Hero showed 5 K and won $36.39 ($17.39 net)
UTG mucked 2 A and lost (-$19 net)

I don't have a bluffing range here either.

The best way to analyze this hand is not to biased by the result.

Look at his entire preflop range that will call the flop and then look at the portion of that range that will bet the turn when you check. Probably some combination of 6x, FDs, two pairs/sets (that don't raise the flop - which realistically should discount some), strong Ax and a turned A7 and some air.

Now of that total range, what portion will call the river. I'd estimate two pairs/sets/flushes.

So that represents a certain % of his turn betting range. So X% of the time when he has the two pairs/sets/flushes you will win the $17.50 and (1-X)% of the time you will win 0%.

Now do the same thing for like a $2.5 bet and see what proportion of his turn betting range calls?

Even though it worked here I really don't like this hand and I think the fact it worked is just going to act as a catalyst to do it more in the future. I also don't like the turn c/c especially, and then the river overbet shove makes me sad haha.

Originally Posted by griffey24

Even though it worked here I really don't like this hand and I think the fact it worked is just going to act as a catalyst to do it more in the future. I also don't like the turn c/c especially, and then the river overbet shove makes me sad haha.

Don't get me wrong, I definitely really will do the analysis you suggested next time I'm at my PC, but I was also being only semi-serious in posting it, I think it illustrates a point though - even if my read was wrong 6 times out of 7 it would still break even with a $2.50 bet. Sometimes an outrageous adjustment can be golden, I would never try it readless, and I've probably only done something this outrageous once every 10,000 hands or something like that.

u guys r completely missing the point

no shit you play a 30/5 differently than some reg

Originally Posted by Carroters

Yeah exactly. The longball vs shortball thing is very closely linked; I think I just ran out of ranting steam too much earlier to explain my thoughts on it. I think you're 100% right though. There are a lot of spots where we might want to err on the side of just making a +EV play because we know the situation vs that opponent just ins't presenting itself often enough for us to factor in a longball game plan and expect better longterm EV from doing so.

EG. I decide a river bluff is shortball +EV because villain should be folding enough combos to make the amount we risk work often enough in this one spot. We then decide that if we bluff with a hand this far up in our range then we are bluffing too much longball and are going to be exploited for doing so if this spot keeps occurring. However, this spot we're in is fairly unique and we don't expect to ever really play it again vs villain let alone play it so much that he figures out that our range has this technical weakness and can be exploited by him calling much more. Therefore we go ahead and bluff this hand even though it doesn't fit as a candidate hand into the range we'd like to be bluffing longball. However, we've actually made the correct longball decision because in reality where we get nowhere near to playing this spot very much vs this guy, we just make more money overall by grabbing a rare chance to at least make a +EV bluff in this spot.

I get it. This makes perfect sense.