Defining your hand: is it ever a good idea?

[Cornell Fiji]

D2themfi,

I believe that by having a balanced game plan you are trying to say that you want to play in an unexploitable fashion; is that correct? I posit that we do not want to play unexploitably, we want to play optimally and there is a fundemental difference between the two.


Betgo,

I do not believe that we should intentionally ever define our hand (as was suggested in the other thread) but that there is not necessarily something wrong with playing in a transparent manner against 95% of opponents.

[d2themfi]

balance does not equal optimal or unexploitable. It is impossible(to the best of my knowledge) to solve holdem and create an unexploitable gameplan or perfectly optimal

What I was trying to point out is that OP is asking whether it is correct to ever "define" our hand. I took that to mean in a hypothetical situation we make a bet or raise where we can only have one specific hand aka the nuts. And the way I was disputing this was pointing out that for every bet we make for value in a spot we should be bluffing a certain % of the time as well, thus never allowing our opponent to "define our hand" to one specific hand. He may knw our frequencies and thus be able to make optimal choices. but theoretically our opponents should never be able to say that we will do "x" action with only one hand and one hand only

[Ben86]

i always say no and try not to do this but im starting to believe that sometimes it just saves chips.
For example:

I flat a button raise with J [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]T [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] lets say 60bbs deep.


Flop A [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]J [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]9 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

check call 2/3 pot.

Turn: 2 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

Leading the turn or flop, even though its not really for value or as a bluff makes the hand so much easier to play that im starting to believe maybe its okay.