NLHTP#32 Concepts&Weapons: 27-28

[wallenborn]

Concept #27: When semi-bluffing before the flop, usually do it those times you have one of the best hands that you'd otherwise fold. However, when you are in the blinds in an unraised pot, you should usually do it when you have one of your worst hands.


This concept might be formulated a little imprecise. When you are betting from the blinds with junk, you are planning to fold to resistance. Hence you are bluffing, not semi-bluffing, and the two situations are different strategically. But the pattern looks similar. You are among the last to speak preflop, the pot is limped to you. In position with a hand like JTs, while you would usually fold to a reraise, you don't mind it that much when your raise gets called. You might hit the flop and extract in position. You might miss completely and take the pot down with a c-bet. You might flop a draw that can be profitably played. You'd have to pay a full blind to see the flop anyway, so the raise doesn't cost you much more.

From the blinds, you are going to be out-of-position for the rest of the hand. With a hand like JTs that's very difficult. So you're not raising for a lot of value, you're mostly on a pure bluff, which you should rather do with junk. With JTs in the big blind, if it is limped to you, you want to see the flop for free. If you raise, you reopen the betting and might have to let your hand go. So: "Don't turn a good hand into 72o."


Concept #28: With strong hands, generally raise either a small, pot-building amount or a large, hand-defining amount. Don't raise an amount in the middle that both tells your opponents that you have a good hand and offers them the right implied odds to try to beat you.

Say you're playing a $5-$10 game with an $800 stack. Two good players limp in, and you have K[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]K[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] on the button. A raise to $30 is small enough, you would do that with a wide array of hands, so your opponents will likely call. With a raise to $120, on the other hand, you are unlikely to get action unless someone has a very good hand, too. You would deny drawing hands the proper odds to call, so even if you went all-in on the flop every time, pocket pairs could still not call your hand.

If you raised $80, however, you'd have the worst of both worlds. It's an uncommonly large size, so your opponents would expect an excellent hand. But you still give some hands the odds to call you.

Don't tell your opponents what you have and then turn around and give them the right price to try to beat it.