STOP SAYING you are raising or betting for information!

[NYWalker]

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NYwalker, no offense or anything, but based on your posts you are one of the worst when it comes to 'raising for information." The most recent example being the AK hand.

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Let's not get gobbo's thread going into sideline. I've explained my thought of that hand in details in my main thread. I don't treat this as offense. Let's move on on this thread.

[LearnedfromTV]

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If you're betting because you think your opponent has a draw and you have more than 50% equity, you are VALUEBETTING. It does not matter what the draw is. But regardless, in the 99 hand you are NOT 'protecting your hand,' you're bluffing because you do not expect worse hands to call but it turns out if you get called by a draw that you were in fact valuebetting. If you happen to bet J9 on the flop but get called by 98, were you trying to 'protect' your jack high? No, you were bluffing and your opponent happened to have a hand that could call a bet and you were still ahead.

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You're making it hard to distinguish when you're referring to your opponent's calling range and his checking range. Also, different people's meanings for terms used in describing these bets overlap in ways that people don't parse very well, which yields definitional confusion. By the definition of bluff and value bet used to describe river action, it is fair to say that all pre-river bets are semi-bluffs, because no piece of the equation has fixed equity (except for very rare cases like flopped quads); the equity of your hand, your range, your opponent's hand, and your opponent's range all will change with each card.

Anyway, to curtains post,

a) If you have >50% equity versus his calling range, it is very easy to call a bet a value bet.

b) If you have >50% equity versus his checking range, but <50% equity against his calling range, it may still be reasonable to bet. But this bet as not as similar to a river value bet as a) is. You are making it because your equity in the pot when he checks has value that you need to protect, whether he calls with a worse hand or not. The question then becomes whether this bet is better than checking, assuming that checking inducing bets or calls from a wider range (a range against which you have even better equity) on future streets, in exchange for giving up the piece of your current equity (via a free card).

A bet with <50% equity against a calling range on the river can only be a bluff. This is not true on the flop.

[baltostar]

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Value or bluff is too simplistic.

What about pot control bets, sometimes known as blocking bets, especially on the river? How is that either a value bet or a bluff?

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blocking bets are value bets

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Blocking bets are typically used when you are unsure if you're ahead/behind, but leaning towards behind and want to keep the pot small. How is that a value bet?

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no

in fact, lol

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If you are sure you are ahead, you have no use for a blocking bet (you want to maximize the pot, not minimize it).

If you are sure you are behind, you have no use for a blocking bet (you have no reason to spend any more on the hand).

Therefore, by process of elimination, blocking bets are used when you are unsure if you are ahead/behind.

Let's say you're oop and figure you're 55/45 ahead/behind on the river. But because of stack size considerations w.r.t. tournament context, you don't consider 55% to be good enough to risk calling an overbet (bluff or not) and so you might block.

And if you're oop and figure you're 45/55 ahead/behind on the river, but expect villain to always bet/bluff if you check you might block bet to preserve your pot equity.

Of course, the "never pass up EV+" guys will shoot this down on that basis. But "never pass up EV+" is wrong.

[g-p]

gobbo,

there are cases when raising for info is fine.

its a fact that by raising, you give an opponent another action on whatever street you are on, which does define their hand more. this is information. if without this new information you would make a bigger -ev mistake on a later street than the ev mistake you are making by raising in current street, then raising for info is good.

for some notsogood players, raising for info can be good, because they will often make huge -ev decisions without the info they get from their initial -ev raises.

[Sherman]

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I actually think a c-bet when you miss is a bet in which you have no idea if it is for value or as a bluff.

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That's a copout. Your opponent has a preflop calling range, and the flop texture makes him likely to fold a certain piece of that range to the bet, call without another piece, and raise with a third piece.

You decide to cbet based on how your hand compares with those pieces, and for the most part (insofar as any pre-river bet can be classified a value bet or a bluff, rather than varying degrees of semibluff), your cbet isn't a two-way bet. When it's a good bet, it usually is so because it falls into one of three categories

- folding better hands*
- getting called by worse hands
- preventing bluffs (that you can't call) from worse hands.


If it's none of these, it's a bad bet. If you aren't sure which one it is, or which one is dominant, you're being sloppy.

*including situations where most of the bluff value comes from setting up a profitable two barrel rather than getting an immediate fold.

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But if against 1/3 of his range you are ahead you might bet for value or to protect your hand against his outs.

If against another 1/3 of his range you are behind, but think you can successfully bluff, you might bet as a bluff.

Finally, against another 1/3 of his range you might be behind and he isn't folding.

Should you bet? I would say yes since 2/3 times it is good to bet. What is your bet for?

Sherman

[Ben86]

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FOR THE LOVE OF GOD IF YOU WANT ME TO KEEP MY SANITY STOP MAKING RETARDED BLUFFS WITHOUT REALIZE YOU ARE DOING SO.

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love it

[ASPoker8]

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Value or bluff is too simplistic.

What about pot control bets, sometimes known as blocking bets, especially on the river? How is that either a value bet or a bluff?

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blocking bets are value bets

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Blocking bets are typically used when you are unsure if you're ahead/behind, but leaning towards behind and want to keep the pot small. How is that a value bet?

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no

in fact, lol

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If you are sure you are ahead, you have no use for a blocking bet (you want to maximize the pot, not minimize it).

If you are sure you are behind, you have no use for a blocking bet (you have no reason to spend any more on the hand).

Therefore, by process of elimination, blocking bets are used when you are unsure if you are ahead/behind.

Let's say you're oop and figure you're 55/45 ahead/behind on the river. But because of stack size considerations w.r.t. tournament context, you don't consider 55% to be good enough to risk calling an overbet (bluff or not) and so you might block.

And if you're oop and figure you're 45/55 ahead/behind on the river, but expect villain to always bet/bluff if you check you might block bet to preserve your pot equity.

Of course, the "never pass up EV+" guys will shoot this down on that basis. But "never pass up EV+" is wrong.

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Or instead of making retarded posts you could think about his range and choose the best line against his range.

[jlocdog]

I feel like a tape recorder half the time on these forums because most of my posts always contain some part of, 'know why you do what you do. Your motives will dictate what your bets intentions are...' and so on.

[Todd Terry]

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Todd,
As I said earlier a cbet is mainly for metagame so you can get value out of your big hands.

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So the withholding of information can be the primary purpose motivating a bet. Why is it that the gathering of information cannot? If chips can be spent in the name of information, withholding and gathering should both be legitimate aims.

Additionally, isn't significant information often gathered by a continuation bet? Can we avoid the natural, and often primary, information-gathering consequences of our c-bet via the doctrine of double effect by claiming we did not intend to bring about a result even though it was the probable consequence of our action?

[baltostar]

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gobbo,

there are cases when raising for info is fine.

its a fact that by raising, you give an opponent another action on whatever street you are on, which does define their hand more. this is information. if without this new information you would make a bigger -ev mistake on a later street than the ev mistake you are making by raising in current street, then raising for info is good.

for some notsogood players, raising for info can be good, because they will often make huge -ev decisions without the info they get from their initial -ev raises.

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Very well put. Betting/raising for information is one mechanism by which we can minimize risk of digging ourselves into incremental black holes.

Another mechanism is thinking hard before pursuing an expected win for a hand that is well outside of the reasonable pre-flop expectation for that hand.