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[spoonitnow strategy] Betting to Protect Your Hand in Poker

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  1. #1
    spoonitnow's Avatar
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    Event [spoonitnow strategy] Betting to Protect Your Hand in Poker

    There have been a lot of times when I have told newbies that they should focus primarily on deciding if their bets are for value or as a bluff. Then I've told them that, for the time being, they should stop betting unless it falls under one of those two headings with the disclaimer that this should only be the case for a short while until they get a feel for what profitable bluffs and value bets look like. In a lot of cases, they forget about this disclaimer and go on for the rest of their poker lives believing that all bets that aren't purely profitable value bets or bluffs are incorrect.

    This is the fine print on that disclaimer: http://www.flopturnriver.com/poker-s...in-poker-20979
  2. #2
    Very good article. Really does push home the point that we bet because it's the most +EV thing to do and there are numerous factors which go into deciding this rather than just "worse calls" or "better folds" which is something a lot of people can't get their head around.

    Only thing to add is in the bit "betting is better than checking by a factor of $2.10." Don't think factor is the right word to say there, doesn't make sense. I'd just replace factor with total.
  3. #3
    Renton's Avatar
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    This is something I've been looking into, so I can provide a few thoughts:

    1) I think a lot of whether a protection bet is optimal has to do with his intentions with the hand we mean to fold out. The two extremes being that either never bluffs or always bluffs.

    2) If he bluffs always with the hand, assuming we can make a profitable call vs his range, then it becomes a clear check for us on the turn.

    3) If he never bluffs, he essentially freerolls us with his equity and we stand to lose actually more than his equity share in the pot due to implied odds. If we cannot call anyway, it still sucks to get freerolled like that, even for a small percentage of the pot. If he bluffs balancedly with the hand we mean to protect against, that's the worst of all.

    4) So in light of all that it seems like we should bet for protection more often in spots where his folding range gets a lot of implied odds or bluffing equity on subsequent streets. This would make it clear that protection is much more valuable preflop and on the flop than on the turn.
    Last edited by Renton; 03-30-2014 at 10:50 AM.

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