[sweetjazz]

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I'm also finding that straightforward is super exploitable when they decide to bet/threebet as a pure bluff in spots where i have something weak like bottom pr.

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Why are you raising bottom pair intending to fold to a 3bet? The weak pair / A high hands are the hands you should be using for bluff induction.

I think variance is causing you to misjudge the value of straightforward play. The trick is to play straightforward most of the time, and make the occasional zig or zag in the right spot. You should hand reading against this guy, but once the pot gets big, your hand reading is primarily deciding between calling down or raising for value. You don't want to be bloating pots with bluffs against such a player. If he runs good, you're going to showdown a lot of second-bests and that's life. But when he's running bad, you'll see him putting lots of bets into small pots trying to run over you.

And just because you are straightforward doesn't mean you don't have options. When you flop a good hand OOP, you can sometimes go for check/raises when he bets. Other times you can bet out to try to induce action. When you flop a top pair weak kicker hand, you can sometimes check/call it to the river (and either check/call or check/raise the river depending on what falls), even though you will usually raise earlier to induce more action. If the guy bluffs a lot, you can mix up check/calldowns with a hand like 85 on a Q83 flop with some more aggressive play (say a turn check/raise if the turn is a 7) trying to induce a bluff 3bet.

Basically, you want to sometimes overplay marginal hands to try to get more value out of your opponent, but obviously you want to avoid overplaying it most of the time (or else you set yourself up to be pwned by an observant opponent). By sometimes overplaying marginal hands, you give up a little EV in the hand [usually, sometimes his frequent bluffing adds EV] but you induce more action when you make strong hands [so your overall session EV goes up].

I can't really say more w/o specific knowledge of the opponents. Some of these tricky players are pretty good HU; others look good when they run well but give it all back really quickly when the cards fall the other way.