Defining your hand: is it ever a good idea?

[Paul Thomson]

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There are definitely but rare times where it's good to define your hand. These usually occur in satellites or in some situation where due to the prize structure you would like everyone to fold, and it's also in their best interests to fold. In cash games, where its more of a zero-sum game, it probably never makes sense for you to simply announce to your opponent what your hand is.

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[Cornell Fiji]

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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.

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I disagree with this statement.

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care to explain why?

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note: if the villain knows me from twoplustwo or by reputation then all bets are off. My post is for situations where either we are unknown or the villain is unknown.

I would rather play optimally than unexploitably. I would rather play each hand in a manner that maximizes my EV

You are discussing randomizing your play. That means taking a line that is not maximizing your EV some % of the time for the sake of what? table image? I contend that the long run value of someone seeing you play a hand in a manner that is not optimal, and a similar situation coming up (before a table change), and that player remembering how you played the last hand, and whatever else needs to go right for you to play a hand poorly X% of the time is not worth the short run price you pay for it.

Are there exceptions to this? Of course. Against an observant but nonthinking player we might play a big hand the same way that we played a bluff (that showed down) 10 minutes ago but most players do not have an attention span longer than that so there is no reason for us to randomize our play. Obviously I am not talking about playing against good players here, but the simple fact of the matter is that there are not enough good players out there for me to change my overall strategy.

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Curtains - satellites are a good example of when defining your hand could make sense... but then again you should also be folding AA X% of the times in satellites so...

[WarDekar]

We aren't talking sats here.

Also I agree completely with maximizing EV and not worrying about playing exploitable (in general vs unknowns)

[Pudge714]

Making a play for the purpose of defining your hand sucks, but it can be an unintended consequence of vbetting. There are certain people who will call three bets with like any pair, sc's, etc, but will only 4bet QQ+ AK so three betting hands like JJ vs. them and folding to a 4bet is fine, your bet is designed for value, but you end up defining your hand in the process.

[d2themfi]

cornell fiji- I get what ur saying about when to play exploitably, vs when to try to balance but Im having a hard time with a few things

One thing Im a lil fuzzy on, is that you seem to distinguish between short term and long term EV. Im a lil confused here, isnt EV, just EV, we are always looking at the longterm, and therefore balancing is a primary concern because if we become predictable/exploitable, our EV decreases therefore making the balanced frequencies better anyways.

Idk If i made sense with that question or not, Im having a hard time wrapping my mind around all this. I mean someone was an online hsmtt reg, presumably there are quite a few players that you see everyday twice a day in tourneys like the 100r, where balance has got to become pretty important.

Idk I mean I feel like this should be for a separate thread almost cause were kinda drifting away from the OP

One thing im still confused about is if Op was asking if we are defining our hand vs villains range, or if we are defining our hand in a way that makes what we have transparent. Im beginning to think i misinterpreted the original question and have shot off into a completely different tangent