Is this a natural tendency?

[creamfillin]

To bluff with air/very little rather than bluffing with a premium hand that is obviously no good.
Is it a natural tendency to be in a more defensive/careful mode with a premium hand, and be in a more offensive/wreckless mode with suited connectors/small pairs?

Player A holds AQ
Player B holds JJ
flop comes Qd8c5c
player A bets 100, player B calls 100
turn comes 9c
player A bets 300, player B folds

Player A holds AQ
Player B holds 66

flop comes Qd8c5c
Player A bets 100, Player B calls 100
turn comes 9c
Player A bets 300, Player B raises to 1000

Why does it seem like the second situation is more likely to occur? Are there mathmatical reasons why we should tend to be bluffing with whiffed connectors/small pairs rather than KK on an A746 board?

[alphatmw]

people are less willing to turn their value hands into bluffs. i think its psychological more than mathematical.

[JaredL]

cream,

In your example the alternative to bluff-raising is folding. If you are discussing folding versus bluff-raising then there is no reason for them to be different.

A big difference is when you are discussing anything other than folding (checking behind, calling, even checking with the intention of folding). If you have a hand that has a fair shot at winning then you are often better off trying to get it shown down instead of bluffing.

So if the example was board: A237J and you are first to act with some decent pot. If you have KK then you get some value from checking and folding if he bets. If you have 56 then you have none. Suppose in the example that if you bet the opponent will only call with a pair of aces or better. In this spot the EV of betting is the same whether you have kings or the nut low. If you check, however, the kings are more valuable because sometimes your opponent will check with something worse than a pair of kings.

In other words the EV of bluffing with each hand is the same. The EV of checking the premium hand is higher. That means that you will be bluffing less often with the premium hand because sometimes there are situations where the EV of checking will be greater than bluffing for a premium hand but not for a total bust.