Re: \"Outplaying\"
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The majority of poker players nowadays think folding T-high after someone w/ 9-high pushes and shows his bluff is getting outplayed. Hardly.
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Good post. This bit stuck out to me because it emphasizes a variation on the theme of results-oriented thinking. It is exceedingly likely that 9-high played the hand wrong and 10-high played the hand correctly, given the information each had at the time.
The question is whether 9-high's push is correct versus 10-high's range (doubtful) and whether 10-high's fold is correct versus 9-high's range (almost certainly, unless the pot is huge relative to the bet).
The point is that what actually happened is that 10-high outplayed 9-high. The hands they happen to hold aren't material. Assuming that the pot odds weren't there to justify the bluff (which is equivalent to assuming that 10-high gets to the same spot with a real hand frequently enough) if 9-high makes that play 1000 times, he loses a lot of chips overall. Outplaying him means calling with the hands that are ahead of his range enough to beat the odds he lays you, which includes folding the hands that don't. Folding the best hand isn't a glamorous way to outplay your opponent, but that is often exactly what you are doing when you fold the best hand. This becomes clear if you think in terms of ranges.
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