River semi-bluff (yes, river) vs. Heisenb3rg

[Heisenb3rg]

I like it... a lot

I know my river range here and if I folded this, I folded a better hand... Cause it basically includes

Occasional 56s type hands (which have a striaght)
AK diamond type hands (which have a flush)
or.. pairs higher to or equal to yours...

You raised the river really quickly too on a card that I thought may have been scary to you as well (the 3rd diamond came in, and I didnt raise you on the flop, but on the turn).

River bluff raising is normally -EV against me, cause im a SD monkey, but here it's a pretty good spot.

BTW RZK, the reason river bluff raises like this are so effective is because people dont play optimally.

The key idea is this: A solid TAG vs a solid tag, is never re-raise bluffing this river.
It's re-raise bluffs that kill strategies such as this... But because they are so so rare in practise, that raising in spots like this is an exploitable, yet effective play.

[Wolfram]

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I did not say that this would be a good play to run vs you. Based on what you said I think it's pretty clear this play would not work vs you.

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Yeah, I suck at reading.

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I like it...
I folded a better hand

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Results oriented, but still...

ZOMG!

[rzk]

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BTW RZK, the reason river bluff raises like this are so effective is because people dont play optimally.

The key idea is this: A solid TAG vs a solid tag, is never re-raise bluffing this river.
It's re-raise bluffs that kill strategies such as this... But because they are so so rare in practise, that raising in spots like this is an exploitable, yet effective play.



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heis,

if you say this bluff-raise is good against you then i believe you. however, the fact that you will never bluff-reraise the river is not the main component of your exploitability that would make this play valid. the main component is that once you bet this river you fold to a raise a suboptimally large percentage of the time (>39% would be required if op's equity is 31% as he estimated).

whether playing exploitably in your spot is correct or not is a different question. it's certainly correct if by playing this way it is actually you who is exploiting your opponent.

[Heisenb3rg]

yeah, ur right.. I guess its more that I have to be folding a high % of my range for the play to be profitable..

I kept thinking that I only need to be folding with 10% of my range... but I have to actually be folding with 10% of my range THAT HE ISNT ALREADY BEATING.
Which, assuming I chose to fold my worse hands before my best hands, it works out to about 40% of my range (using his estimates... not mine [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img])

However, I still like it because I think a lot of TAGs are capable of making exploitable folds in this situation.

ps. great thread

[TheDudeChad]

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Which, assuming I chose to fold my worse hands before my best hands, it works out to about 40% of my range

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This is another interesting thing about this hand. Whether you have JTs or AA, any of your one pair hands are basically bluff catchers when you call this river raise. There's no way you put me on one pair here, so all your pairs are virtually equal in strength.

Of course, its still a lot more likely you call with AA because it looks pretty or because you can post it in the NC thread when you lose. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Glad this thread is generating some good discussion.

[rzk]

ILP,

i think some of our disagreement comes from semantics but some is conceptual.

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"whenever you are considering such a big deviation from optimal strategy, you better make sure your opponent is exploitable."


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i think your disagreement with this statement comes from our different understanding of the word optimal. whenever i say "optimal" i always mean it in the formal game-theoretic sense. with this in mind, i think you'll agree that the above statement is pretty obvious.

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Also your idea of exploitable is flawed. Remember exploitable plays are potentially the most profitable plays of all. Your goal should be to find as many players/spot where you can be as exploitable as possible and get away with it. If you think there is a natural dichotomy between "exploitable" and "expert" you are dead wrong. In other words, If you think these two terms are mutually exclusive you are dead wrong. So when you say "b/f'ing this river wouldn't be an expert laydown, but rather a very exploitable play" you really dont know what youre talking about.


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i think i do. i understand that an exploitable play is not the same as a bad play. when you are playing against a bad player the best strategy is usually a very exploitable one. but for this hand it's important to keep in mind that (a) heis is very far from the type of player who you would want to find "where you can be as exploitable as possible and get away with it", and (b) he himself shouldn't consistently be making such exploitable plays as folding to a river raise with 39% of his range against observant opponents because they will start bluff-raising him to death with any two cards. this second point is what my quoted statement was about.


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" Quote:2) Is the river card unlikely to help your opponent? Yes.
disagree. heisen could have picked up a flush draw."

Just becuz Heisen could have a flush draw doesnt mean the river card is likely to have helped him.

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my point is that his play is consistent both with a top pair type hand and a flush draw, so i think it's misleading to say that a river card that completes a flush is unlikely to have helped him. i guess "unlikely" could mean very different things.

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" Quote:8) Do you already have a calling hand on the river? Yes, you beat JTs/QJs/ and you tie KJ. Thats enough to call. having a calling hand should make you less inclined to raise, not more."

Again this statement is dead wrong. The fact that we already have to commit one bet on the river means we are now getting much better odds on a bluff raise. If we didnt have a calling hand on the river our bluff/raise odds would be cut in half.

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"in general, it is game-theoretically suboptimal to raise with calling hands."

Another statement that is dead wrong.

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these two quotes are really about the same thing and may be our biggest point of disagreement. it is easy to show that (unless you are planning an elaborate b/3b bluff) _in a optimal strategy_ you should reserve your bluffs for hopeless hands. indeed, when you are bluffing, an optimal opponent will fold just enough for the ev of a bluff to be exactly 0. so as long as there exists a play with ev>0 you should make it instead. in our case that play is calling.

the perspective "that we already have to commit one bet on the river means we are now getting much better odds on a bluff raise" is flawed because compared to bluffing with a hopeless hand there are now less _better_ hands that will fold. against a non-optimal opponent sometimes bluff-raising with a calling hand may be better than calling, but in that case bluff-raising with a hopeless hand would be _way_ better than folding.

overall, i wanna say that one _should_ care what optimal plays are, even if the correct strategy is to sometimes make non-optimal ones. if you have a good idea where optimality lies you can make more informed decisions about how, when, and whether to deviate from it and you will also be much better equipped to find exploitable traits in your opponents.

[milesdyson]

river semibluff hehe

[Heisenb3rg]

RZK, the reason these exploitable folds can be made,
is my range isnt very strong compared to his on this river and very few opponents are capable of bluffing the river with one pair to fold out top pair.

Since the worst hands in my range are top pair right now
and the worst hands in his range is bottom pair, all of those factors must be true..

It's just not something people do, so I thought an exploitable fold was correct in this situation.

Ive also debated in many threads about optimality with ILP... it'll go no where [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

My opinion is that we should play as to exploit the opponent to the best of our abilitites.
If we are unsure of what our opponents are capable of, or if they may be better than us, we should strive to play as optimal as possible.

I also think its very important to be aware of the "optimal play" in most situations, because it gives you a starting point to figure out how much you wish to deviate, in order to exploit your opponnent.. How much you should deviate from the optimal strategy can be derived from how much they deviate from the optimal strategy.

[ILOVEPOKER929]

"ILP,i think some of our disagreement comes from semantics but some is conceptual. i think your disagreement with this statement comes from our different understanding of the word optimal. whenever i say "optimal" i always mean it in the formal game-theoretic sense. with this in mind, i think you'll agree that the above statement is pretty obvious."


Perhaps your right that this could be a semantics issue. When I play poker I dont resort to a game theory perspective. I simply try to make the best play possible at every stage of the hand given my reads and my accumulated knowledge of the game. I know all the "standard" lines. Figuring out when and how to deviate from any putative line is what makes this game fun and challanging.


"i think i do. i understand that an exploitable play is not the same as a bad play. when you are playing against a bad player the best strategy is usually a very exploitable one. but for this hand it's important to keep in mind that (a) heis is very far from the type of player who you would want to find "where you can be as exploitable as possible and get away with it"

I disagree. Heisen is exploitable, youre exploitable, I am exploitable. Almost all players are exploitable. The trick is figuring out how one is exploitable and using that information to your advantage.

"and (b) he himself shouldn't consistently be making such exploitable plays as folding to a river raise with 39% of his range against observant opponents because they will start bluff-raising him to death with any two cards. this second point is what my quoted statement was about."

This sounds like an appeal to fear. Ive never worried about people bluff raising me in the future just cuz I made a good fold. Heisen make this river fold becuz he felt like it was the right play against this opponent on that board in this situation. It doesnt matter if you call such and such play exploitable, if Heisen think's its the right play given the information he has at his disposal then he should go with it.

"my point is that his play is consistent both with a top pair type hand and a flush draw, so i think it's misleading to say that a river card that completes a flush is unlikely to have helped him. i guess "unlikely" could mean very different things."

No unlikely means unlikely. This river card is much more likely to help OP than Heisen. I know Heisen can have a flush but this hand type should still be significantly discounted cuz we cant assume Heisen will check/raise with a turned flushdraw 100% of the time in a spot where it appears he has very little fold equity.



"these two quotes are really about the same thing and may be our biggest point of disagreement. it is easy to show that (unless you are planning an elaborate b/3b bluff) _in a optimal strategy_ you should reserve your bluffs for hopeless hands."

No, you should reserve your bluffs for those times you think bluffing is the right play.

"indeed, when you are bluffing, an optimal opponent will fold just enough for the ev of a bluff to be exactly 0. so as long as there exists a play with ev>0 you should make it instead. in our case that play is calling."

I have never played against an optimal opponent before.

"the perspective "that we already have to commit one bet on the river means we are now getting much better odds on a bluff raise" is flawed because compared to bluffing with a hopeless hand there are now less _better_ hands that will fold."

Um, Hiesen is gonna have the same range here whether we have a hopeless hand or a calling hand. The fact that we already have a calling hand does mean we are getting better odds on a bluff. The range of hands were trying to fold is the same whether we have a calling hand or a folding hand.

"against a non-optimal opponent sometimes bluff-raising with a calling hand may be better than calling, but in that case bluff-raising with a hopeless hand would be _way_ better than folding."

This statement cannot be correct. There will be times when bluff/raising with a calling hand will be more profitable than bluff/raising with a folding hand.

"overall, i wanna say that one _should_ care what optimal plays are, even if the correct strategy is to sometimes make non-optimal ones. if you have a good idea where optimality lies you can make more informed decisions about how, when, and whether to deviate from it and you will also be much better equipped to find exploitable traits in your opponents.

Yes I agree with what you are saying as far as knowing all the standard lines is a very important prerequisite for learning when to take the nonstandard lines. I prefer to skip this tedious conceptual step of thinking in terms of "standard/nonstandard and optimal/nonoptimal" becuz these terms can belie what were trying to accomplish at the table, and that is simply to make as much money as possible. That's why I just divide all hands into money lines and non-money lines. There is only one money line for every hand you play and the key or fun is in finding it.

[sethypooh21]

This is so table flow and image dependent. Heis IS a candidate for this play because he CAN both have and fold a marginal 1 pair hand here given the action. I think I have done something like this to him on occasion but only if in the course of the session, I'd taken a similar line with the hand I was actually representing here on several occasions.

As an aside, this is a spot where your actual hand matters almost zero%, because if you have evaluated the situation correctly, he's calling your raise with a worse hand almost never. If you've evaluated the situation incorrectly, just type "SHANIA" in the chat box and move along...