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Double Barreling
One of my biggest leaks, in my opinion, is giving up after c-betting flops with the bottom of my range (usually air or hands with marginal showdown value). Sometimes this is probably fine, but I know I'm missing a ton of profitable double barrel spots. Another concern is exploitability. Some people love to pounce on the bet-flop/check-turn line. Some of the better regs might even recognize on their HUDs that I'm c-betting a high percentage of flops and slowing way down on later streets. Floating me on most flops is a very +EV play, and I'm sure at least a few guys are consciously doing it.
So for the last few days I've been thinking about how to recognize good opportunities to double barrel. Sometimes the tendencies of certain opponents are such that double barreling is the nuts. For example, an opponent whose fold to flop c-bet is abnormally low, but folds considerably often to turn c-bets. Basically, floaters that get honest on 4th street. Here's kind of a meh example:
Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $0.50 BB (7 handed) - Full Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com
Villain is 22/17 and quite aggressive. He pretty much auto-bets IP when you decline to c-bet. His ATS is in line with typical regs, about 40%.
Button ($53.60)
SB ($34.50)
Hero (BB) ($50)
UTG ($52.75)
MP1 ($65.80)
MP2 ($50)
CO ($52.30)
Preflop: Hero is BB with 9, A
4 folds, Button bets $1.50, 1 fold, Hero raises to $4.50, Button calls $3
My 3-bet is kneejerk because he steals so much. In hindsight it's probably a mistake because he calls 3-bets a lot (29%) and also 4-bets somewhat wide (7%). I should probably be 3-betting a tighter depolarized range against him and flatting hands like this.
Flop: ($9.25) 8, 4, 2 (2 players)
Hero bets $5.50, Button calls $5.50
Villain's fold to flop c-bet is only 38%. I think straight-forward players have this stat in the 60s range. So he floats a ton. On the face of things, this might seem like a bad spot to c-bet. But his fold to turn c-bet is 62%. If the turn bricks, and I double barrel, he probably continues with overpairs/sets and folds almost everything else. And he shouldn't have many big overpairs in his range because he would have 4-bet them. But I think a K/Q/J turn might be even better because then he'll fold out all his 2nd pair hands, which means he folds more of his range overall. Furthermore, I have a little equity. And if I check to him he's betting a huge % of the time which puts me in an awkward spot and I'd probably fold.
Turn: ($20.25) 3 (2 players)
Hero bets $11
If the above reasoning is flawed, please feel free to correct me.
Another thing I"ve been thinking about is c-betting certain board textures with the intention of double barreling on a scare card. Predominantly dry flops with a lot of lowish cards; T and below. I touched on this in the HH. This is mostly for people who play straight-forward ABC. Most of these opponent's calling ranges on that board texture is TP, overpairs, and sets. Sometimes big overcards. So I reckon they should be folding very often on A/K/Q/J turns (which should happen about 1/3 of the time?), especially if you can discount JJ+ from their range based on preflop action.
Again, if my reasoning is flawed, please enlighten me. I would also be interested in learning about other conditions to look for to double barrel.
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