Pooh Bah Post. Flop min-bet Theorem

[ActionStan]

Of course.

Back of the envelope. Say for example, you bet the pot on the flop and 20% of the time you get a call and fire again on the turn. Given a 3x pre-flop raise, your investment will be between 12.5 BB on average. After that, you give up. If you get raised, you give up. To make 12.5 on the bet, it only has to be successful around 50% of the time when you fire either on the flop or the turn to make that 13 back. Now, it is a little more complicated than that because sometimes you have the best hand and win the showdown and also the flop and turn bluff success rates probably aren't the same. But from our point of view, if we feel the read is more than 50% reliable, then it benefits us to fire even if we know that 10-15% of the time we are going to be exploited. Even when we're exploited, our cost doesn't go up. We're going to give up when we're raised. If we use a 4x pre-flop raise it works out more or less the same. There's plenty of margin for profit in there, I think. So let's be conservative and say we need to be successful 60% of the time to break even. Mike is saying his data shows the read is more reliable than that. From my experience, I think this is probably true. To frame the question another way, is there a region between 60% and the "exploiters"? Do 40% of players exploit this? I think probably not. Does that make sense?

[Mike Kelley]

Yes. I would bet $50 that the tell is accurate atleast 85% of the time at NL25 and NL50

[subandi]

when I just started online poker, I did that (minbetting to prevent a bigger bet to protect my draw) all the time and I was pretty proud of this self-thaught-tactic.
until I realised that this was SO obvious.
nowadays I agree with you, of course.
minbet=drawprotecting or even 2nd pair protecting by unexpirienced players most of the time so I almost always reraise.

[Landlord79]

[ QUOTE ]
Please do your pooh bah post on how to flop the nuts.


[/ QUOTE ]

This made this Pooh-Bah post worth reading by itself!!

I'll agree w/ you Mike, the times that you are picking up the PFC and the extra BB will more than make up for the times that you get reraised. Some may call it exploitable, I call it profitable. I mean, how often can someone flop the nutz or represent the nutz before you pick up on it and rebluff?

[threads13]

[ QUOTE ]
I didnt like your reply either (nothing personal)

micro NL is all about playing exploitively rather than optimally. The whole point of playing that small is that youre noticing your opponents tendencies and they arent noticing yours. And they make donk moves.


[/ QUOTE ]

Poker is always about exploiting opponents mistakes and, as a corollary, not making as many mistakes as they are making. If your opponent makes bigger and more frequent mistakes than you do then you win. It isn't that you stop playing good exploitive poker when you move up, it just becomes that your opponents can exploit you more frequently as well. At that point some game theory type strategies start carrying more weight, but you still are trying to exploit your opponent but you cannot be as aggressive doing this as it leaves holes through which you can be exploited(although I think many players overestimate how often they are exploited and conversely underestimate how much more exploitive they could be).

[Albert Moulton]

[ QUOTE ]
I've always treated minbets as checks

[/ QUOTE ]

This makes sense. It is essentially a check. So, if you want a "free" card, "check" behind by calling. If you would have bet if checked to, then bet.

The point of the theorem seems to be that it's almost never right in these spots to take the "free" card. It seems to hold out in the games Mike's used as an example. I don't see this kind of thing much in live games.

I'm not a fan of all the EP and MP AQo preflop raises in the examples, but that wasn't the point of the posts. Most of these hands didn't go to show down and ATC would have won by raise+raise-the-min-bet.

Nice post, Mike. This does appear to be a pattern at this level of online play that seems to be fairly common, and therefore exploitable.

[Mike Kelley]

I feel very strongly that they are more valuable than a check.

A check/call is 10x more threatening to me than a minbet/call.

[VegasRunner]

[ QUOTE ]
I think the larger point is being missed here. It just doesn't matter if someone is using a weak lead to exploit this. The break even is around 50%. So if less than 50% or so (putting aside the cases where the villain backs into the best hand, etc, etc) of people are using the weak lead to exploit, the play is still profitable and far, far less than 50% of players are going to use the weak lead that way. The play against the collection of all players and all hands played this way is going to be successful whether or not a small set of people a capable of exploiting it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good point. I agree. A weak lead can be used deceptively, BUT it's more likely to be a blocking bet.

Mike,

You're right. I thought about it a little more, and now I'm starting to see how a min bet and a weak lead (20-30% of the pot) are two different things. My attempt to exploit the people using your theorem falls apart if my lead is too small.

Example: If the pot is $15 and I put my opponent on an overpair, leading $1 OOP into the raiser with my set isn't going to do me any good. It's not going to make him raise anymore than if I had checked and now, he might smell a rat. However, if I bet $5, he might push harder than if I had just checked.

As long as we can draw a distiniction between a weak lead (30% of the pot) and a min bet (pointless putting in exactly 1 BB), you've won me over.

Good post. The more I think about the theorem, the more I like it.

[coordi]

do you guys think i bluff alot? I get crazy floated and called down light constantly...

PokerStars Game #12669157250: Hold'em Pot Limit ($0.25/$0.50) - 2007/10/16 - 20:09:05 (ET)
Table 'Geometria IV' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: SAV1999 ($48.50 in chips)
Seat 2: Los Zockos 3 ($21.60 in chips)
Seat 3: gillb06 ($43.85 in chips)
Seat 4: MagnusTT ($49.25 in chips)
Seat 5: sukoutartist ($53.30 in chips)
Seat 6: Coordi ($50.30 in chips)
Seat 7: numba1rook ($2.65 in chips)
Seat 8: DePokerSmurf ($52.30 in chips)
Seat 9: Jammeista ($31.25 in chips)
Los Zockos 3: posts small blind $0.25
gillb06: posts big blind $0.50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Coordi [8h 8s]
MagnusTT: calls $0.50
sukoutartist: folds
Coordi: raises $1.75 to $2.25
numba1rook: folds
DePokerSmurf: folds
Jammeista: folds
SAV1999: folds
Los Zockos 3: calls $2
gillb06: folds
MagnusTT: folds
*** FLOP *** [Ts 4c Qd]
Los Zockos 3: bets $0.50
Coordi: raises $4.50 to $5
Los Zockos 3: calls $4.50
*** TURN *** [Ts 4c Qd] [7c]
Los Zockos 3: bets $0.50
Coordi: raises $14.50 to $15
Los Zockos 3: calls $13.85 and is all-in
*** RIVER *** [Ts 4c Qd 7c] [6s]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Los Zockos 3: shows [9c Tc] (a pair of Tens)
Coordi: mucks hand
Los Zockos 3 collected $42.05 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $44.20 | Rake $2.15
Board [Ts 4c Qd 7c 6s]
Seat 1: SAV1999 (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: Los Zockos 3 (small blind) showed [9c Tc] and won ($42.05) with a pair of Tens
Seat 3: gillb06 (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: MagnusTT folded before Flop
Seat 5: sukoutartist folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: Coordi mucked [8h 8s]
Seat 7: numba1rook folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: DePokerSmurf folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: Jammeista folded before Flop (didn't bet)

[Mike Kelley]

LOL, You are pretty aggro, but I'm not calling you down with middle pair.

You would like to think the guy would fold middle pair for his whole stack wouldn't you?

This spot came up in the bottomset NL50 video also. Guy minbet the flop and the turn.

I play this hand exactly the same Coordi.