The biggest leak among .5/1 and 1/2 grinders

The indepth discussion on the bet/fold and the check/call:

I’d like to discuss a really simple concept that is killing your winrate. I discovered it not to long ago. It’s really not that hard, but truthfully for the 1/2 grinder who just can’t seem to move up, and the .5/1 guy who wants to improve his winrate, I think this is it. If low stakes players understood this single concept, then they’d become ten times better players. Here it is…. are you ready?

…..

Bet/fold.

Yes. The concept is bet/fold. Some of you may be thinking right now, " Wtf is he talking about? I know about bet/fold."

Oh, do you?

You have ATs in CO, at 1/2nl. You raise it to 4xbb. BU calls and everyone else is out. BU is typical nit reg.

Flop comes T42, two spades. Unfortunately you have two clubs. You bet out standard 14 into a 17 and BB calls. The turn is a J of spades.

"OH NO!" you think to yourself. "WHAT A FUCKING COOLER CARD. I’m probably behind…. but ergggg! I could be ahead! Wtf should I do!" I bet your first instinct here is to check, but it really shouldn’t be. Bet it. Well, what do we do if he raises? FOLD. It’s that simple!

But what do most of you do? You check and convince yourself to call one bet, and then you check the river, and may even convince yourself to call that bet.

What’s the reasoning behind bet folding here besides c/c? Pretty simple. If we bet here we get him to call with a lot of worse hands with possible spade draws. If he raises it’s pretty obvious we don’t have the best hand and we should fold (there may be one player that we shouldn’t fold against here, my guess is he’s the best reg at your stakes).

If we check/call, not only do we allow our opponent to play his hand perfectly, we also have no idea where we are at. He can check behind about 14 outs and hit for free. Or he can bet his made flush in which we probably have to call one street, but then the river makes us forced with a suck ass decision if his bet size is small enough.

Which brings me to another point, an extension to my rant.

You should bet/fold a lot more than you should c/c, especially at 1/2 and under.

Well….. when should we c/c? I can think of one answer. That is when we feel like our opponent is going to bet a lot of hands worse than ours, more than he is willing to call with.

I can hear you going LOL right now, and if you’re not you should. How many players at 1/2 are ACTUALLY betting more hands that they are calling with? Almost none, and I can guarantree that.

Clearly, there are more reasons to check/call and bet/fold. I can think of a lot of them, but I can’t think of a ton I can easily put into words, those you can figure out.

Conclusion:

-You should bet/fold more than you should c/c.

– In a situation where you have a marginal hand, where you will call a bet when you check, you’re much better off betting.