Bluffing with the best hand

Playing medium strength hands without the initiative is something that has always boggled me. When faced with a bet while holding a hand that is likely best now but is extremely vulnerable I'm not sure that I ever know what the correct play is.

Here is a hand I played earlier today which illustrates what I am talking about:


Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (6 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB ($28.30)
UTG ($25)
MP ($82.71)
Hero (CO) ($26.78)
Button ($14.74)
SB ($31.49)

Preflop: Hero is CO with ,
1 fold, MP bets $0.85, Hero calls $0.85, 3 folds

Flop: ($2.05) , , (2 players)
MP bets $1.75, Hero???

Now, I know a lot of winning players on this forum will advocate almost never raising in this spot and I do see the logic in this. Even though we are probably best, raising will fold out all worse hands and turn ours into a bluff. However, its not as if this hand gets any easier to play on the turn. Virtually any turn card can be a scare card and we may end up folding the best hand later on.

If we know that villain will always fold worse hands to our flop raise and continue only with better, then why can we not raise here with the intentions of folding his air and taking it down now? Is 88 on a 664 board really a spot where we want to keep ranges wide and attempt to maximize? As stated before not only are we at risk of getting outdrawn, but we are at risk of making a huge mistake later on by laying down the best hand.

I have noticed that the concept of betting/raising for "information" (which is essentially what this is) is looked down upon by a lot of players on this forum and up until now I have generally agreed that in most cases it is probably not the optimal line.

However, I read one of Todd Brunson's columns in a Card Player magazine a while back that really made me ponder over the validity of raising/betting for information with made hands. He described a hand similar to the one I have posted except for in his case he was out of position. I do not remember the exact details of the hand but it went something like this:

Brunson sitting in the small blind calls a late position raise with a small SC and flops top pair shitty kicker. Brunson checks, villain bets Brunson calls. The turn brings in a non paint overcard and Brunson again check calls. The river brings in another overcard to Brunson's pair and he reluctantly check-calls only to find out that villain had rivered top pair for the pot.

In the column Brunson then goes on to say that after analyzing this hand with a good friend, they came to the conclusion that check-raising the flop to "see where he was at" (taking down the pot in the process) would have been the superior play to check-calling.

I want to know what you guys think about this. In general what are your thoughts on protection/information raises with your weak made hands? In my opinion I feel that these type of plays may be more valid in tournament settings rather than cash games but there are probably times where you can benefit from these plays in a cash setting as well.

I would love to hear thoughts and insights on this from everyone. Posts from more experienced players at higher levels wouldn't hurt us either

-cleanup

What matters is his cbet/double barrel tendencies. If he has an unbalanced range on the turn then call in this spot if not then you can raise more often than not in this spot depending on villain's pfr/cbet/continuing to a flop raise range. In most cases it's +EV no matter what you do. I'd rather have more outs though to actually raise so I'd prefer KQ, flush draw, OESD, gutshot, or even A4 here.

It doesn't hurt to turn your hand into a bluff, but you need to make that decision early in the hand.

When you called the preflop bet -- what range do you put your opponent on? Are you ahead of his range with 88, or behind?

If the villain is playing very tight, you are probably up against something like 77+, AJ+, KQ, which means you are probably playing your 88 for set value, and maybe for some steal value if villain is known to be weak/tight on the flop.

But if the villain is very loose and willing to bet with air or garbage, your 88 has a good amount of value against his range preflop and will probably hold up well postflop, too. Why scare him away if he will shove all his money into the pot for you with a worse hand?

For example, if his preflop range is any pair, any suited, any two broadways, any suited connector, 56o+, A2+, (that works out to be 50% of hands preflop) you have 70% equity on the flop. If he cbets with 70% of that range (all pairs, most hands with an overcard, any 6 or 4) you still have 67% equity!

as far as betting for info goes, i dont like it. true, that is most likely because my poker knowledge is derived almost exclusively from this forum, but i seriously think you would be better off working on understanding ranges and opponent tendencies so that you dont have to be scared to, say, c/c the flop in case you get bluffed on the turn, or c/c the turn incase you're going to get bluffed on the river or whatever. if you are confident and accurate in your perception of his ranges and how he plays them, you already have the info that you might otherwise checkraise 664 w/88 out of the blinds without initiative to find out.

Well, the thing is, our hand falls into a middling range of hands that aren't strong enough to raise for value happily but too strong to fold, thus we call. If our hand were stronger or weaker, we would be more inclined to raise for value or as a bluff respectively. Now bluffing would imply that we are trying to get the villain off a stronger hand, in which case, on this board, villain is very unlikely to fold a better hand, and therefore, we should be less inclined to bluff. This would make calling a more optimal play.

You mentioned that there would be many scare cards left in the deck, but wouldn't that make it better to call since villain would likely bluff more often?

i hate a flop raise here :/

I'm just learning about assigning villain a range but I think we're far enough behind here to make an informational raise very costly for us unless villain is fairly loose.If there wasn't a bet in front of us it might be a different story.

Originally Posted by Imthenewfish

i hate a flop raise here :/

Why?!?!

Originally Posted by supahaole

Why?!?!

betting for information isn't a reason to bet, and we aren't really getting value out of many worse hands or getting many better hands to fold + our hand has showdown value

Originally Posted by supahaole

Why?!?!

why not

Originally Posted by Micro2Macro

why not

I agree that a raise here is wrong,I was asking for more information from fish because he tends to reply with short answers that don't seem to have much educational value(ie:i hate a flop raise here :/) when I think he has more to bring to the table.

Read or reread ABCD theorem.. it'll help with these spots a bit.

You have to put your opponent on a range.. you didn't supply any info on this specific hand but go through some deduction, ask some questions, think about tendencies.

1. Raising here folds out what part of his range beating me?
2. Raising here gets value from what hands in his range that I am beating?
3. If I call here, how likely is his range to improve?
4. If I call here, how much of his range will barrel?
5. Taking all of the previous into account.. we now know the flop, we have the opponent on a range and now we guess how he would play each part of that range.
6. Now knowing all that we know.. how do we maximize? How much money do we want to put in this pot knowing how we stand vs the villains range.

There are a ton of other things we could comment on.. but we need specifics on specific hands.. all opponents are different and the way to play that flop could vary tremendously based on what we know and how the villains views us.

By the way. the above hand could be a medium strength hand, a monster, or very weak depending on our opponent.

this is not the time and place to do this

I'm sorry, Villain was a tight player who I had like 50 hands on. I didn't think he would fire the turn all that often with air but then again I was not 100% sure. Even so If he only fires the turn when he improves or is beating me and shuts down otherwise, what more value am I getting from this spot besides his flop c bet?

Also, if I call the flop and he checks the turn to me I would assume I'm ahead. Should I bet now? And if so, isn't this basically the same thing as raising the flop? My turn bet surely will not get any worse hands to call and better hands will almost always continue. Should I not bet then? Is a turn bet here purely for protection?

It depends.. we need more info on that specific hand.. reads/etc

lol i swear i didn't see this thread before i made my remark about raising the flop with 88 in the other thread.

i don't know how to put this in a way that isn't confusing, so i'll just say it how it is in my head now:

assuming that everything worse folds AND that raising is +EV, one of the following needs to be the case for this to be a good play:

1) screw balance and we're raising absolutely any two cards that are 88 or worse in this spot because it is +EV to run a bluff here with a two outer (we have no more than two outs to any hand that beats us on this board) in a vaccuum.

2) we're merging our raising range to compensate for a wide bluffing range so that villain can't simply call down with 77/A4/AJ for the times we hold a bluff. in other words, shit we shouldn't be worried about since this isn't a 400nl HU match.

so, in short, on the assumption that villain never calls with worse, we might as well raise with 72o here if we're going to raise with 88, and the only reason you singled out this hand to raise is because of the fact that we can profitably call with it, which is SUPER counter intuitive from a theory standpoint.

i would also like to point out that this REALLY isn't a good example of a spot where things are made tough if we simply call rather than raise, seeing as how we're in position and facing a player that we don't expect to fire many double barrels, on a board that is bone dry. just call, and sometimes he'll hit his 6 outer, but whatever

Originally Posted by surviva316

lol i swear i didn't see this thread before i made my remark about raising the flop with 88 in the other thread.

i don't know how to put this in a way that isn't confusing, so i'll just say it how it is in my head now:

assuming that everything worse folds AND that raising is +EV, one of the following needs to be the case for this to be a good play:

1) screw balance and we're raising absolutely any two cards that are 88 or worse in this spot because it is +EV to run a bluff here with a two outer (we have no more than two outs to any hand that beats us on this board) in a vaccuum.

2) we're merging our raising range to compensate for a wide bluffing range so that villain can't simply call down with 77/A4/AJ for the times we hold a bluff. in other words, shit we shouldn't be worried about since this isn't a 400nl HU match.

so, in short, on the assumption that villain never calls with worse, we might as well raise with 72o here if we're going to raise with 88, and the only reason you singled out this hand to raise is because of the fact that we can profitably call with it, which is SUPER counter intuitive from a theory standpoint.

i would also like to point out that this REALLY isn't a good example of a spot where things are made tough if we simply call rather than raise, seeing as how we're in position and facing a player that we don't expect to fire many double barrels, on a board that is bone dry. just call, and sometimes he'll hit his 6 outer, but whatever

Thanks Surviva, I found this very insightful.