two general questions

[jstill]

both involve drawing hands with less than 50% equity.

1) villain raises, sb calls, hero calls in bb. u flop a draw, sb checks, u check, villain bets, sb folds, u ... call or raise?

how do we determine if raising is better than calling? whats the calculation? is it just if we gain enough fold equity to increase our overall equity to greater than 50% we should raise or am i missing some factor in all this? does investment relative to the size of the pot figure into this as well some how?

2) u raise, bb calls

u flop a draw

bb checks, u bet, bb raises, u...

whats the calculation for determining whether 3betting for a freecard here is better than calling? when should we 3bet the flop and bet the turn UI if ever?

[bobhalford]

Q1: I just call because when I miss my draw on the turn I will not feel obligated to bet the turn (where I risk getting raised). If I check-raise the flop, then I will feel compelled to bet the turn when I miss, risking getting raised. So I probably either donk the flop or c/c. Actually c/r the flop might be the best play depending on the texture of the flop. You can get villain to fold a hand on the turn that can draw out on you on the river.

[captain_swing]

Q1. Board texture and how that interacts with villain’s range is really important. Kxx or Qxx are going to be the best boards to bluff at. Villain’s tendency are important. Of course, if he folds more, you bluff more. But other things like how often he will bet the turn matter. If he will check a lot of turns and give you a free card, than the prospect of getting to the river for 1 sb looks pretty sweet.

Next your table image and recent history with villain—if you have been c/fing a lot from the big blind ui I would want to play back at him. It is better to make potential steal raisers uncomfortable so semi-bluffing vs. c/cing down is going to be better for meta-game.

The extra 2 small bets in the pot is obviously a factor. I think a pretty important one, actually, but you have to weigh all these factors.

Q2. The aggressiveness of the opponent is really key for a free card play. Will he be likely to give a free card or not? Also, how big is our draw—if it is massive like flush draw plus overs we don’t mind more bets going in just on value. As for firing again on the turn, it is once again going to depend on a lot of the above factors. How the board intersects with the villain’s range, how villain perceives you and how he thinks you perceive him. However, I would fire again on the turn more often if a scare hits and a lot less if a card connecting with the board hits.

[Carmine]

Hey J, I belive this is your second tread asking almost the same question. Are you looking for just EV calculations of a semi-bluff Vs. calling(hand #1)or something more.

If it's EV calcs then in your example I think they should look something like this:

Realize that there will always be variables dependant on opponent, board texture etc.

Calling Vs. Semi-bluffing (assumption is opponent will fold a better hand 15% of the time)

EV of Calling flop and turn: (.32 x 11sb)+(.68 x -3)= +1.48

EV of semibluffing: (.15 x 8)+(.85 x .32 x 12)+(.85 x .68 x -3)= +2.73

So we earn and additional 1.25sb by semi-bluffing

The assumptions I made for bluffing are:
We make our hand 32% by the river (I think this is correct)
Opponent always calls flop raise and folds turn 15%
Opponent calls down 85% and we make our hand 32% by river
Opponent calls down 85% and we never bet river thus losing additional 3sb on flop and turn.

Warning: The above calcs may be incorrect. Hopefull someone with superior math skills will chime in. Also I guess we should be adding calculations for when we get 3-bet on the flop or C/R on the turn

Again J, I'm not sure if this is what you were looking for.

[jstill]

yeah this was pretty much what I was tryin to get. I just wanted someone real quick to show me how to quantify it roughly.

SweetJazz gave me a great response also I forgot to reply with a thank you for, so hopefully he reads it here at some point. He went over how he views the decisions I was mentioning in varying circumstances. What factors shift the decision for him in whether to semi-bluff or not, when he 3bets in position and bets the turn again or doesnt ect with examples.

I think I realized the problem with my question shortly after I failed to get many responses. These spots are very intuitive. Even to do the calculations and have them hold any weight we need to be able to make fairly accurate estimates of the factors that will be our assumptions in the calculation for EV here. Being able to do that comes with experience and even then very often we wont know enough about our opponent in one variable or another to make a very well informed decision (what range of hands he ll fold on the given board when and how often). But we can plug in different values and see where the play becomes break-even ect.

So Im not sure this methodology for viewing the decision is ultra practical but that probably doesnt mean its not worth checking every now and again to see if the numbers match up with some reasonable range of the varying assumptions we make for the calculation (adjusting the variables).

I just wasnt sure if there was some math tool I wasn't using at all, I still feel like there are many secrets I have yet to come across in this game people have just failed to mention to me. I think there are some spots in poker where mathematics is absolutely applicable and can be directly and riggedly applied without question (many examples where hand range combinatorial analysis dictates our action in very black and white terms; again though I think people may over apply these at points where there are other factors worth considering or we shouldn't be applying such a tight or undiscounted range ect).

These semi-bluffing spots are a bit more ambiguous since they are dependent on so many intangibles that are hard to quantify.

I'm not sure but I think to do the calculations u would have to account for whatever %s u think hed 3bet the flop ( i duno if we can just overestimate this somewhat and it will suffice for those times we dont improve on the turn and he raises there or if we have to add that as another component to the EV calculation of semi-bluffing)

[sweetjazz]

I don't think the math is particularly hard, it's just that the calculations would be tedious to do and depend heavily on the assumptions of the opponent's playing style. That's why it is more practical to think in terms of winning SD unimproved and folding out better hands (and of course things like pot odds, estimated number of outs, implied odds, etc.).

I've certainly played hands where my assumptions were off and that could have led to me a different action. The calling UI of the QJ hand on a 982 flop that bricked the last two streets is funny because the example was motivated by a hand a long time ago which was similar situation. (May have been a T83 flop but same idea and I definitely had QJ.)

Anyway, I called the river UI, opponent had K7o for a complete air bluff. The ensuing chat went:
Him: lol
Me: doh
Him: lol u suck
Me: yeah

[sweetjazz]

In case anyone's interested, I'm gonna paste my previous reply in the other thread here. I know these kind of situations took me a while to figure out and to be honest I still make mistakes, so hopefully this is helpful stuff to think about:

"jstill,

The things you need to consider are can you get your opponent to fold a better hand, can your hand win UI at a showdown, how likely it is that your opponent has a hand he considers strong enough to raise again if you get aggressive somewhere.

Some examples to illustrate what I mean.
Situation 1: You have 8c 6c, flop is Kc 7h 3c. You should definitely check/raise here. You can't win unimproved, but you will often fold out a large number of your opponents hands.

Contrast that with having Ac 6c on a flop of 4c 3h 2c. Here a flop check/raise does not accomplish a lot. You get 3bet fairly frequently, when your opponent is behind he usually has 4 outs. I would play this hand passively and might even c/c all 3 streets UI depending on my opponent.

In situation 2, suppose you have 7d 6d and the flop is 9d 8h 3c. If you are check/raised, I would consider playing this hand aggressively and bluffing the turn and river if the straight draws brick out. For example if the turn is the Ah and the river is the 4c, I would bet twice and expect to lose to a 9 or 8 a lot but also to fold out better missed draws enough to profit. On the other hand, if the turn is the Jd I am definitely checking behind the turn and folding the river unimproved.

But suppose I had Qd Jd instead of the 7d 6d on the same board. I would often just call the flop, just call the turn UI, and then consider calling UI on the river if all the draws missed. (But I would fold, if the board came 8c on the turn, 7s on the river.)"