You can and you should. But styill in any one specific hand, you either do it or don’t do it. For example, I can either bluff in a particular spot of not bluff. If I bluff IN THAT HAND, then I bluff 100% of the time, and if I don’t, it’s 0%. Why should I care if this doesn’t match some theoretical “optimum” over the course of many hands? It’s either correct in the moment or incorrect in that same moment, the statistics have little to do with it.
To me, it’s never about “how often.” It’s about “when.”
Let’s say we decide to bluff in a given situation 10% of the time. I would never think, “I didn’t bluff the last 9 times, so I have to bluff now.” Against some player types, I would be bluffing a lot more than 10%, against others, a lot less. How does knowing an “optimal” general frequency help me at all? It doesn’t.
2 Likes
That’s like saying when I roll a six-sided die, it will come up with the value of 4 either 0% of the time or 100% of the time. Yes, for any given roll, it will either come up as a 4 or it won’t. However, simply measuring the value of that particular roll doesn’t inform you what the probability was of yielding that roll’s value. Unless either none of the die’s sides’ values are 4 or all of them are, that probability will not be equal to either 0% or 100%.
If you want to get better at poker - a game that requires mastery of probability and statistics in order to excel - you need to get away from being results-oriented. There are times when you need to bluff, even when your bluffs may get called. If you don’t bluff in those spots then you aren’t bluffing enough and it will diminish the amount of value you can get when you have the nuts because your opponents will recognize that weakness in your game. There are other times when you should check even with strong hands, because if you always bet in those spots with your strong hands, then you can get blown off your moderately-weak hands that still have equity by aggressive players.
Most importantly, there are times when you’ll need to play a mix of strategies with a given hand. Earlier in the thread you’d mentioned Doug Polk’s advice to occasionally mix in a raise with a given hand for balance. You dismissed that advice as “not saying anything really.” However, he was making an important point - sometimes it is important to play the same hand using a blend of different actions. Of course, any given hand will need to collapse to a single action, just like a quantum particle when measured must collapse into a single energy state despite existing in a superposition of multiple states.
Let’s take an example of a hand in which going all-in on the river results in a half-pot bet, requiring a ratio of 3 value hands for every bluff to be balanced. In this case, the only bluff hand that makes sense given previous action is QhJh. For value hands, you could have one combination of KK to yield quads, or three combinations of AA to yield top boat. If you always bet with AA or KK, you’ll be unbalanced toward value hands. How should we resolve this situation? One way is to bet with AA 67% of the time, instead of 100%. Find some arbitrary way of determining whether to bet or check - say, if it’s less than 20 minutes past the hour, I’ll check, but if it’s between X:20 and X:59, I’ll bet. You won’t always end up betting with AA in that spot on that board, and you won’t always end up checking - it will be a blend of both actions.
2 Likes
OK, but if I have a certain hand, perhaps 7 9 suited that I like to use as a bluffing hand to steal the blinds preflop from early position, then I can play it in certain ways. For example I could do it 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% of the time by selecting which suits to use.
However, if I always try that move with 7 9 hearts, and not with the other suits, really observant opponents like Daniel Negreanu will eventually cotton on and factor that knowledge into their responses and calculations, even if on the negative side. (Well, he always raises UTG with 9 7 spades, but never with any other suit, so on this flop he cannot have second pair with the hearts flush draw).
In games on RP the standard of opponents is not very high, and you only have to give off a general air of unpredictability so that when you call a raise from the Big Blind and the flop comes 2 2 A, villain cannot be quite sure that you did not call the raise with an unpaired 2 in your hand, especially if they know that you always play all suited Aces.
Many players on RP are way too predictable, for example they will call any raise with any suited ace or any pocket pair. On the other hand, if an opponent knows for sure that I will not call a 3BB raise with any pocket pair lower than 9, that would be handing him a huge advantage.
2 Likes
Ranges are defined by situation, 65s is in my open range from the HJ but it is not in my calling or 3 betting range. You open 65s when folded to you, generic, when 3 limp ahead of you you now have information to use in order to deviate from your standard open range. What you’re doing is trying to argue against GTO by arguing for exploitation. You can and should use both. GTO provides a fundamental base strategy from which you will use information to deviate and exploit opponents.
2 Likes
As a forum monitoring bot from an agency, I appreciate you not being prejudiced against machines.
You can put a lot of players here on the following range:
- Any A
- Any pocket pair
- Any two Broadway
- Any two-suited
I find it very helpful to add a note to these players, once confirmed, for later exploits.
I think @dayman really hits the nail on the head for this discussion. You need a “home base” to start from initially, then adjust as you progress and get information about the other players.
I also agree with the majority of the posters that you have to introduce an element of randomness to your game – you can have a “standard action” for a given situation, but there are times you really should deviate from that for maximum gain (or minimizing loss) OR simply to keep your opponents from reading you like a book.
2 Likes