Equity and value betting

[SeanC]

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Pot equity is not the main point. As PhlegmWad said, you have to think about the chance of being called by a hand that you can beat. You also have to know what you will do to an all-in reraise.

It's the texture of board that matters, along with the betting to date and style of the other player. You almost never want to bet into a hand that might be sure it has you beat. You also almost never want to bet if you have the weakest likely hand given your betting so far (and if you do bet, it's a pure bluff). You almost always want to put in a sizeable bet if it's a wide-open hand such that the other player is not likely to have nuts, and you have something signficantly better than your weakest possibility. You can't really figure out the EV in that situation, but you can force a hard choice on the other player. When you can't do something right yourself, give someone else a chance to do something wrong.

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Well put, and I agree. I guess my original question is better understood in context of how it came about. I was watching one of Townsend's videos and on the turn of one of his hands, he remarked how he still had a lot of equity against his opponent's range, and that he could've pushed instead of calling (he was analyzing a hand in PT).

I was just curious how he concluded that. I guess he was looking at his equity versus this vil's range and also the probability of the vil calling his shove with an underdog hand.

BTW, what did you mean by a "wide-open hand"?