KK river sizing logic check

Poisonous thought incoming. Careful.

Ready? K

Im fearful that bets smaller than 1/2pot are considered "weak" and get raised often. Therefore, i hate using this size when my intention is to bet/fold.

Originally Posted by JKDS

Im fearful that bets smaller than 1/2pot are considered "weak" and get raised often. Therefore, i hate using this size when my intention is to bet/fold.

This usually doesn't happen at 10nl, although i don't find myself betting small on the river pretty much ever this hand is one of the only instances i have done it.

But if he starts raising our small river bets say ~1/3 of the pot when we hold hands with SD value, we can just start betting a polarized range of strong and weaker SD hands then with the same sizing. He is then raising for no reason whatsoever if he raises he's either raising into a strong hand that has him beat or folding out a hand he may beat by simply calling (but thats less likely), without risking any more of his stack by raising into a strong hand. Obviously he will still be raising his nut hands too.

The weaker part of our range should't be super weak though hands that will show a profit when called such as in this example KK QQ A9s

then the strong range we could bet 1/3 pot with something could be something like AK AA AQ

This just seems to be a good way to passify his river aggression we are on some level manipulating him into playing passively, that is folding or calling instead of raising and when he raises we can be sure he's not bluffing nearly enough to be exploiting us so we can fold decent hands and be happy about it.

I think the point im trying to make here is that we shouldn't decide not to play a certain way because we are "fearful we might get raised" what if villain never raises small river bets and we get cheap showdowns when we want them?

If we notice villain has a tendency to raise small river bets we can then make an adjustment to exploit this such as bet only strong hands or a mixture of strong and weak hands etc. But only if we have to, your not going to bet 1/3 pot with a nut hand if villain is simply calling most river bets.

Also i don't think implementing this strategy in 100% of HU river spots vs a guy who raises small river bets would be optimal either. Play ABC 1/2 the time at the river then implement the small bet strategy 1/2 the time at the river this would probably be better and cause him to make a lot of mistakes.

That's a long one.