Blocking bets

What's the general purpose of a blocking bet? As far as I know, it's to get to showdown cheaply when we're OOP and to stop villain from bluffing us off of our hand. Are those the correct reasons to put out a blocking bet? And are there any other reasons I've missed?

In my last session I had AA on a two spade flop and then the third spade hit the river. should a 1/2 pot blocking bet be used here?

why can't we c/c and let villain try to bluff at it? what about when our blocking bet gets min raised?

As I understanding it, blocking bets are basically a way for you to "set the price" for yourself on a draw. For example, say you had a flush draw on the turn in a $10 pot and felt strongly that your opponent was going to bet. You do the math of pot odds versus some extra implied odds you'll get if you hit and come to the conclusion that it's worth it to call up to, but no more than $2.50. You think your opponent will bet anywhere from $2.00 to $4.00 if you check. You go ahead and beat him to the punch and bet the $2.50 you were prepared to call, thus taking away his ability to bet in the $2.50 to $4.00 range that he may have done if you checked, thus pushing you off your hand.

What you described sounds like a value bet. You want to bet for value when you have to best hand and if you think your villain is on a draw, you want to set the price somewhere ABOVE where he should fold, but an amount you also think he will call. Remember that you always want your opponent to make a mistake. If your villain is on a draw and you bet too small and he should call and calls, you lose. If your villain is on a draw and you bet too much and he folds, you still lose, even if you win the pot.

No this bet you describe to give yourself odds for draws isn't what the OP is reffering to. A blocking bet is a bet you make on the river when a check is going to invite bets you can't profitably call. IMO here's a few reason why we blocking bet.

1. Villains range is still wide enough that it puts in a difficult situation should he bet after we check. We are unable to profitably call in one of these (whatever I do it will likely be wrong) situations.

2. Villain may also have a hand with showdown value but worse than ours. In this case he will likely check behind if we check. However, our blocking bet can also serve as a value bet when villain has this sort of hand as he may feel he is getting significant odds to call vs our range. We hence make ourselves an extra few bucks on the end where as we would normally have shown the hand down for free.

3. We plan on calling a bet on the end by villain if we check however, this is more due to pot odds than expecting to be ahead over 50% of the time. With our bet we can give ourselves better odds so that we don't need to have the best hand as often to be +EV in the hand.

4. The opposite of 3. We are plannig to fold to a bet by villain on the river so we lead out by significantly less than what his bet will likely be. Here we are still able to showdown our hand as we don't need to be good as often.

All of these reasons are relliant on the premise that we don't think villain with bluff raise our blocker bet very often at all.

Carroters, just wondering what you mean in point 3?

Do you mean, bet, so that when our opponent raises we'll have the right odds to call with our hand vs his range?

I'm playing with the maths and i'm pretty sure you can't give yourself pot equity by betting (because you lose what you put in).

Will post in forum.

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Carroters, just wondering what you mean in point 3?

Do you mean, bet, so that when our opponent raises we'll have the right odds to call with our hand vs his range?

I'm playing with the maths and i'm pretty sure you can't give yourself pot equity by betting (because you lose what you put in).

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Originally Posted by carroters

All of these reasons are relliant on the premise that we don't think villain with bluff raise our blocker bet very often at all

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Ok sorry I maybe worded that crappy, defo did not mean give ourselves odds to call a raise. We are never calling a raise when we blocking bet because we only do so when we think villain will only raise us with stronger hands.

Point 3 - we are planning to call a bet by villain if we had checked instead of blocker bet. However, we are planning to call this bet more because of pot odds than thinking we are ahead. We will get say 2-1 and we think we're good here like 42% of the time - so we have odds to make a profitable call. However, since we're behind more often than not we can make the pot odds even better for ourselves by making a smaller bet than what villain would have made had we checked. So we decide to bet half pot knowing villain will never raise us as a bluff. we now have 3-1 with a 42% chance of being good so we increase our EV.

So one reason to blocker bet is to manipulate our EV to be better on the river when we are going to call a bet anyway but exepct to lose more often than we will win.

If villain ever does raise us we can simply fold and count this as part of the 58% when he has us beat. We can do this because we have already determined he will only raise us if we are beat in the hand (wont ever bluff raise)

Hope that makes sense.

nice explanantion carroters...

I think you might wanna edit this part though: betting half the pot gives us 3-1 pot odds

Btw, betting to set your own price on a draw is a blocking bet, just not the example of blocking bet referred to in OP. Its really any bet where you're trying to set your own price instead of allowing your opponent to do so.

Ah I'm a donk, numbers edited!

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Btw, betting to set your own price on a draw is a blocking bet, just not the example of blocking bet referred to in OP. Its really any bet where you're trying to set your own price instead of allowing your opponent to do so.

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Yeah not denying this. I was just responding to the nature of river blocking bet OP was referring to instead of leading the thread elsewhere.

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Originally Posted by Carroters

No this bet you describe to give yourself odds for draws isn't what the OP is reffering to. A blocking bet is a bet you make on the river when a check is going to invite bets you can't profitably call.

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This is incorrect. A blocking bet, as defined in No Limit Hold 'em Theory and Practice, is small bet made by an out of position player designed to keep the street "cheap." The whole idea is that, hopefully more often than not, when you lead out on the flop or turn, your opponent will call rather than raise, but on top of that if you had checked, your opponent would have bet more than your bet. On top of that, betting has the added bonus of possibly inducing a better hand to fold, although that probably won't happen too often.

Blocking bets can also be used on the river with a mediocre hand that's barely worth a c/c. If you think you can bet less than what you'd be calling if you c/c'ed and you don't believe your opponent will raise often, you can get to showdown cheaper with a blocking bet.

:/ Anyone read my post? The one right after the original one ;)

Isn't a blocking bet just a very thin valuebet?

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Originally Posted by minSim

Isn't a blocking bet just a very thin valuebet?

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yes, but we make it only if we're not willling to call a psb

ive been using some basically as a blocker lol, ie i rly like my hand but dont wanna be bluffed thus bet 1/5 pot