Balancing Bluffs vs Balancing Strategy

[gaming_mouse]

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One obvious example of this is the "arms race" on the turn in high limit LH games online. What developed there was a tendency after the sequence rc; kbrc; b? on two-flushed boards for people to semi-bluff raise liberally on the turn (including all flush draws, straight draws, and other weaker draws such as small pair+gutshot and the like).

The exploitive response to this that I observed was for original bettors to three-bet liberally, including hands as weak as middle pair in this sequence, because the number of semi-bluffs was just far too high compared to the number of value raises (as these players wouldn't adjust their value raise thresholds to balance).

jerrod

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Jerrod,

I love this post. I've been trying to think about different situations like the one above (sequences of moves that occur regularly and help define your opponent's strategy) for some time, and your approach above is what I've been looking for.

In your book (I just ordered it tonight), do you list and analyze what you consider the most common betting sequences in limit and NL holdem? If not, do you do this as a way of improving your own play? How systematic are you? It seems that one approach to the game (not necessarily the best, but an instructive one at least) would be to exhaustively list these betting sequences, how often they came up, what their frequency should be and therefore how to exploit opponent's whose frequencies deviate from the optimal ones.

Thanks for any further thoughts,
gm