[Jerrod Ankenman]

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Jerrod,

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Playing optimally or in a balanced manner isn't about equalizing all your opponent's actions -- just the ones that are on the borders.


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What does this mean with regard to your example? It's important to make sure your opponent can't profit by 3betting all of his hands (or close) at a certain point in a sequence?

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Yeah. Imagine the other guy's strategy as like a series of regions (the value raise region, the value call region, the semi-bluff region region, the drawing call region, and so on). Now if there weren't card removal effects (like this were some kind of idealized game), the only hands that would be mixed strategies would be hands on the border, which are mixed to make the overall frequencies right.

In real poker there are card removal strategies and in order to balance for new public information (like the community cards to come) there is probably a little mixing for several hands around. But almost certainly many hands use pure strategic options. (this means they do one thing or another 100% of the time)

In general, when a player deviates from a strategic option that is pure, he will often lose value.

jerrod