Semi bluffing and slowplaying

[Troll_Inc]

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Also, you mentioned how if you do this once, it will stick in your opponents' minds forever. I agree with that, but I think that in this particular example, it would be very counterproductive if it did just that. Your opponents may well give your checks more respect, but they're also going to give your bets last to act with the betting lead a lot less respect, noting that you checked with the nuts in that spot. That's not a comfortable spot to be in. One of the easiest ways to make money in small to medium stakes PLO (the original hand was from a 2/4 game) is taking uncontested pots when checked to on the button. This metagame check is making your opponents unwittingly play more correctly against you and will be -EV outside of the hand as well as inside it.

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I agree with everything you said except this last part.

Scroll up to my x,y,z posts. You set up your strategy such that your one "bad" check pays you off more precisely because they DO call you too much in certain games.

You would be correct if you are in a loose passive game where it is easy to steal, then you will be betting and never checking. It's only once you start getting called "too" much do you revert to checking a made hand every once and a while.

[Silent A]

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You would be correct if you are in a loose passive game where it is easy to steal, then you will be betting and never checking. It's only once you start getting called "too" much do you revert to checking a made hand every once and a while.

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Is it me, or is this completely backwards? You have a made hand, in position, against players who are prone to call you because you bet so often, so you ... check?????

I'm trying real hard to think of a single meta-game reason to do this even once. The only reason I can think of: to convince your opponents that you're a complete idiot.

[morphball]

Cool thread. I have a question about this from the perspective of your opponent.

You have a regular TAG in your games and after a few thousand hands, you suspect that he may be randomizing his plays to reduce the value of your reads.

So what to you do? Do you alter your play if he checks to you and 1/6 of the time he will c/r your bet (either with air or a very strong hand) but fold the other 5/6 of the time?

While your randomization reduces your opponents' long-term expectation, does it alter his or her play?

[Silent A]

I think OP's mostivations here are fundamentally misguided, and his suggested strategy inappropriate.

First, OP says that he leads so many pots that he feels he has lost the option of a bluff/semi-bluff check-raise. The obvious remedy to this is to check-raise with good hands more often. But slowplaying on the button (as in the example)? How does this help you?

OK, so the OP also doesn't want to have pots stolen from him on the turn after he has checked the flop in position. By definition, this situation means that you think your opponent is bluffing with air when you have not much more (otherwise, he wouldn't really be stealing). If you think he's doing this too often then the obvious solution to this is to re-raise him with marginal holdings or bet the flop even more often. You don't need to be able to represent the nuts - after all, you're saying that he's stealing many pots so you think he often has squat.

Either way, forgoing a massive +EV opportunity now so that you might gain some small EV opportunities later is not a good idea.

[LA_Price]

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OK, so the OP also doesn't want to have pots stolen from him on the turn after he has checked the flop in position. By definition, this situation means that you think your opponent is bluffing with air when you have not much more (otherwise, he wouldn't really be stealing). If you think he's doing this too often then the obvious solution to this is to re-raise him with marginal holdings or bet the flop even more often. You don't need to be able to represent the nuts - after all, you're saying that he's stealing many pots so you think he often has squat

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Silent A,

I think you have misconstrued my post. First of all if you read the language that I wrote you will see that I considered this an EXPERIMENT, not a final strategy change.

I firmly believe in semi-bluffing and bluffing as well as rarely slowplaying. The general measure of all of these things is poker tracker aggression factor. My aggression factor is higher than 99% of players. Meaning I bet far more hands than they do and also that I can at times fold too much. My opponents sometimes notice this and will appropriately resteal, although I don't really know if they're doing it because the hand never goes to showdown. I also sometimes call down lighter, or reraise without the nuts as well, but this requires excellent guesswork. I think PTO does ok for this but could be far better. It would be great it had a stasistic like "BET OUT WHEN FLOP WAS CHECKED" sort of thing.

My point was that I can at times take it too far and bet too often. Sometimes I bet with hands that I am going to fold if they reraise me, hands that hate getting reraised(such as in Hand 1). I can often only guess as to what they are doing in response. This post was really me thinking how to better balance my strategy.

more specifically you said about the solutions to being bet into on the turn
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is to re-raise him with marginal holdings or bet the flop even more often

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Ahh yes but who to reraise and with what? How do you know who to call down with two pair and who to fold it too? Even seemingly passive players will start to bet aggressively against me at times. To most players though they should never think about doing these plays because players don't respond to them in the same way they do to me.

The hand in question(which may not be the best example) as well as others is an opportunity to see who will bluff into me without having to resort to guesswork. I am blocking most a lot of the hands which most opponent would c/r, bluff with, or call with. Things like J9, TT, T8, QJ9 are all less likely to be out given my holding. Although it is mostly meaningless, the BB hit a lower straight in hand 2 and bet into me on the turn. I raised him and he put his stack in with 2 outs, not believing I would check behind with the nuts or any nut draw for that matter. That being said that doesn't necessarily make it the right play overall(He may have called the flop and gone broke on the turn anyway), and he may never even remember me making this play. I also didn't find out whether he will fire into me with pure bluffs.

I agree to some extent with what Iggy is saying that the value of betting in this scenario is high, and that most opponents just aren't observant enough, and you don't play them often enough to ever make not getting value here worth while. For the most part I am sticking with my old strategy, which is to be very aggressive and never slowplay. I think this thread has focused a bit too much on whether one particular hand was a good slowplay.

That being said I am going to use strategy 2 in some scenarios. I'm going to reread Mathematics of Poker and think about exactly what those scenarios might be.

I also said that for the majority of opponents they don't bet enough and thus they shouldn't possibly consider betting less. For the vast majority of players they just need to semi-bluff and bluff more and never slowplay.

[Silent A]

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First of all if you read the language that I wrote you will see that I considered this an EXPERIMENT, not a final strategy change.

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The hand in question(which may not be the best example) as well as others is an opportunity to see who will bluff into me without having to resort to guesswork.

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OK, this clarifies things tremendously.

I thought you were trying to add slowplays to enhance your bluffs/semi-bluffs, which doesn't make sense. It also seemed like you were trying to develop a strategy where you get all the benefits of aggression (lots of uncontested pots) without the costs (being forced to fold the best hand by a check-raise or a turn bluff). I don't think this is possible against competent players.

As for the effectiveness of this experiment, I suspect that it would require so many hands to get reliable info that it's probably not worth it. What you need is a new PTO function that allows you to customize statistics.

[LA_Price]

Silent A,

That would be nice. Poker tracker aggression factor is good for knowing someones relative aggressiveness, but has seemingly failed me miserably when trying to figure out if I should call, raise, or fold to someone with a marginal hand in spots like this. I'm going to go data mining for some good examples. It may be that my perceptions have been wrong. The stat seems simple enough.

(Raise % + bet %)/(call %)

Maybe I just don't have a big enough sample size for turn bets on most people? Anyone else have any thoughts?

I have tried relying on it, but have mostly just gone back to making general notes like "weak tight postflop" or "Semi-bluffs alot", "occasionally call down light".