A bluff 400NL

[jlkrusty]

[ QUOTE ]
MDMA is right, feltbelt you are retarded, and mdma, only like 1/3 of the posters in midstakes understand poker.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ahnuld,

The problem is that many of us midstakes players understand the game well enough to beat the stakes we are playing, but probably not well enough to beat the higher limit games. So, if I am missing something in my posts, please help me understand. For the record, I agree with MDMA, but my reasoning for agreeing with him might be off. If it is, please help me know where I am wrong in my thinking.

I for one am constantly trying to improve my game, and I appreciate the advice that players like you and MDMA have to offer.

[Walter]

Krusty: chess is not a good analogy because the pieces are not randomly distributed like cards, so a chess master could hypothetically wait for mistakes and be assured of victory. Also, a win is a win, there is no equivalent to pot size.

As applied to poker, your reasoning is directly contradictory to the idea of "trading mistakes" in which you play suboptimally in order to take greater advantage of your opponent's suboptimal play.

[KRANTZ]

you want your opponent to be faced with the toughest decision he could possibly face. all-in is the move, it's not even a question here. this debate seems mindless to me.

[TheWorstPlayer]

i think you're very wrong. c/f is the move. when they have the choice to call or fold, they always choose to call. it's not a hard choice for them.

[KRANTZ]

something worth debating, however, would be whether or not to actually bluff the river or give up.

[KRANTZ]

[ QUOTE ]
i think you're very wrong. c/f is the move. when they have the choice to call or fold, they always choose to call. it's not a hard choice for them.

[/ QUOTE ]

i meant all-in is the bet size, not necessarily the move. i agree with you about c/f, but on some occasions, i would shove against the type of villain OP describes.

but ultimately i think the fact that villain is the button, and could possibly hold something surprisingly strong, would dissuade me.

[punter11235]

[ QUOTE ]
You just simply want him to FOLD in this very hand, and do not care how this decision effects your overall strategy, or how well it goes along with it. You do not care about getting paid when you have a good hand.

[/ QUOTE ]

MDMA I dont agree with you. I realize that you are sarcastic here and you are suggesting that quoted way of thinking is bad but its not. In fact the only thing you care about playing a poker hand is making a perfect play vs particular opponent. You dont care about about game theory, proper bluffing frequencies etc. You only job is in fact make a play with the highest EV in this particular situation in this particular moment. Of course while pondering your decision you have to take into account history vs this Villain and try to evaluate how he is going to play against you in THIS hand. If you can do the job of evaluating the situation better than the Villain which mean you can predict the way he play you just punch the perfect play which simply exists over your assumptions and have nothing to do with game theory.
Now when you make this play the situation changes (regardless of the result in that hand) and next time when similair situation arises there will be another factor to consider - Villain remembering you making 150 or 300 or whatever bet the hand before and maybe the perfect play will be diffrent. If you think that Villain is better than you then you have to use optimal game theory solution to negate his advantage and of course optimal bet size for bluff (and value bet) is simply allin (if your range have enough weak hands for every value hand but its minor factor).
The thing I am getting at is that there is in fact perfet play for particular situation against particular Villain and our job while playing is to find that play and execute it without worrying about future image, metagame etc. of course these things will change with plays we make and thats ok because we believe that we will evaluate them better and will be able to trigger another perfect play in the future.

[TheWorstPlayer]

This is a nice post. For every villain who will look at a smaller bet as being an obvious bluff because you just don't want to commit your chips whereas with a strong hand you would put him to the test to get max value, there is another villain who thinks that a small bet must be a value bet and you didn't push because you put HIM on a marginal hand and were hoping for a loose call that you wouldn't get if you pushed.

But the basic point is that BLUFFING IS BAD AT SSNL/MSNL!

[cts]

TWP: It just feels dirty when you say it [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[TheWorstPlayer]

That was Mr. Hyde.