NLHE Theory + Practice: Week 4

[Carroters]

This week's section from page 58-75 will run from "The Hammer of future bets" and cover a lot about bluffing and bluff sizing.

At one point in the chapter, the author actually has a sort of disclaimer to state that this section is aimed at games where your opponents can actually lay down marginal hands. This is pretty damn neccessary and this cahpter is obviously in no way a gospel on how to successfuly bluff stations and the average 5NL whale, because most of the time this just isn't good.

So if we do bluff at the micros and against poor players, i.e in the games that most of you guys play how should we go about it. Well, in general we should target very weak ranges. Our c-bets are bluffs of a sort and we expect these to work a lot because our opponents are defending wide preflop and therefore just have nothing a large amount of the time on the flop, especially dryer boards that are harder to connect with. So bluffs can work in this way and thec-bet is a very primitive form of bluff in a spot where it takes close to 0 analysis to realise your opponents range is weak and fold equity is resultingly high.

Here are some of my thoughts about this section to kick things off.

This hammer of future bets which the author talks about here is basically his way of showing that fold equity may increase in some situations where you are reasonably deep, if you can threaten a large bet on the river by betting turn for instance. While stronger players may well fold more turns if they know you will bet the river with a lot of bluffs yet also havce a ton of made hands in your range too, weaker players will pay far less attention to this and gaining three streets shoulds be your primary goal. Therefore, I think his advice about checking some turns when deep with a strong hand because they are more likely to pay off a river (when there is no hammer of doom or w/e) is pretty rarely applicable and often very costly. Espeicially on drawy boards, when betting for value it's far better to bet the turn and not the river a lot of the times rather than the other way round for obvious reasons - assuming there is likely only 1 street of value left from villain's made hands.

Also, It's just a great idea to go for 3 streets in vs bad players online because as you know, so many retards call down pathetically light for no apparent reason. Going for that extra street of value is usually far more important than checking a turn, just in the off chance that they fear your river bet enough to fold the turn. Most live players have a serious problem extracting enough value from a passive villains range and I think the author with his advice in the final thoughts section here is compounding this error. At micros bet bet bet for value unless you have a good read telling you otherwise.

Anyway, sort of drifting off topic but just wanted to stress that this concept should never cause you to bluff recklessly vs stations when wielding the hammer nor should it cause you to miss a street of value by overestimating how often villain will fold due to fearing the hammer.

The main focus here is obviously bluffing and bluff sizing. So we'll do both analysis of what the author writes in this chapter, and I'd once again encourage y'all to post example hands including times you bluffed or felt you maybe should have on the turn and the river. Hands where we bluff raise c-bets and stuff are also very relevant.

I'll post a few relevant hands later in the week after I've got some volume in.

Gogogogogo.