NLHE Theory and Practice: Week 2.

boog is my hero

Awesome input BooG, I was planning on doing a big rant on this section today but you've covered so much relevant stuff there in yours that I don't even need to - Yay grinding time imo.

Just to stress one thing again because I feel it's a common mistake new players make when learning things for the first time. Please don't get so caught up in these concepts that your entire focus of play depends on cutting your opponents implied odds or playing solely against the draw portion of his range. Villains have different ranges in different spots so try to keep these concepts solidified in your head in a broader sense. Study them in HH reviews, analysis and discussion and implement them at the tables. Don't obsess over them and try to learn them from scratch at the tables, because the rest of your game will suffer.

We commonly see posts in the BC that go something like this:

Hero is in a 2 way pot with 1 villain BU vs BB. Hero holds AQo and the flop has come down Qs2h7s. Hero c-bets and villain who is a basic tagfish calls. On the 9d turn (a blank basically) hero argues "I bet pot because i wanted to proce out his draws because I'd notcied he can't fold a flush draw before the river.

This is likely a mistake vs this guys calling range because the majotiy of his range on the turn consists of weak/medium pairs that can't stand too much action. Also, there really aren't very many flush draws on this board that he has when he flats out the bb. Therefore, instead of obsessing about cutting back his implied odds as much as possible, we should be trying to work out how we can get the most value from his entire range while still making it a mistake for him to call on the rare occassions he does hold a draw. A psb will likely fold out 88 66 87s etc etc and these hands make up a large chunk of his range.

So yeah betting smaller is probably better for these reasons even though he wont fold a flush draw to a psb, because he simply doesn't have a fd that often and we can still cause him to make a mistake with one for a smaller bet that serves other purposes better (gets more value mainly.)

Just an example to illustrate the important point of not getting obsessed with these concepts so that the rest of your game suffers. They are very important, but study then away from the tables and implement them as part of a good balacned game, not an obsession to do what Sklansky says at all times.