NLHE Theory + Practice: Week 5

The whole section on information betting seems useless at face value.

He has an example on pg 79 about it being cheaper to bet 30 witha mediocre hand and give up when called than it is to bet 15 and get called then to bet 60 on the turn into an unknown range. This seems silly though, since we may actually take it down more often with that 60 bet in the first place making a double barrel using a small initial bet being more profitable than a larger single barrel anyway.

In addition, these lines in general seem to be identical to lines we'd take when we were bluffing...ie betting larger to get more folds or double barreling to fold out weak parts of a range. But the whole point of betting a medium strength hand anyway is to get value from weaker hands and not fold them out. So its pretty confusing that our goal with that type of hand is to generate folds rather than calls just because we get a better picture of villains range.

But then again, making small bets with small hands seems folly anyway since that gives out information that our hand is weak anyway. So i dont necessarily disagree that betting larger is wrong...just that his reasoning seems off.

One thing i did get out of that section though is that we should almost never play in a way that allows our opponent to narrow down our range precisely. He talks about this somewhere else in the book where its more dangerous when we have a narrow range since our opponents play better against it...but basically if we play aces in such a way that kings can fold then we clearly messed up somewhere. I guess this leads into the idea of polarized and merged ranges to counter giving up information and allowing opponents to play perfectly but i think that should be for another section...idk.



As to nuts on the river: im not convinced. its been shown earlier in the book that when our opponent calls a super large bet a small amount of the time then that bet might be better than a much smaller one that gets called much more often. However we dont actually know how often hes gonna be calling a shove. He lists hands like TT, J7, 77, and 33 that could be here and would call a shove...but that amounts to 10 combinations, and hes gonna be folding 98 and Jx a bunch where as they might have called a large bet that wasnt a shove.

Basically his reasoning seems to be that in a multiway pot when flopping the absolute nuts, its better to just check it down to allow someone else to hit a 2nd nut type hands with some unlikely combination. However as carroters said, 98, kq, jx, tx and other hands will gladly put in a bet or two...and with a 100bb stack as typical of an online game, itll make the spr go down pretty quickly. Surely the value we get from shoving the river in a low spr pot and getting 98 and jx to always call in addition to the extra bets from kq and such exceeds that we get form someone making an unlikely 2nd nut hand.

Also it would seem that we'd only take the c c shove line with a nut type hand anyway so we'd give information about our hand and allow our opponent to make hard laydowns easier...seemingly going against the advice in the previous section which seemed to be not giving info about our hand.

His general point of raising super large when our opponent is never calling a raise except with a monster seems valid though...just not in the case were we're multiway on a somewhat wet board.

Originally Posted by JKDS

His general point of raising super large when our opponent is never calling a raise except with a monster seems valid though...just not in the case were we're multiway on a somewhat wet board.

this.

like i said before i do not think that was a guide on how to play a monster hand, more a hand that was the absolute nuts that had been checked down and what should be done on the river in that situation. But i agree there are def pieces of the board that will give us value like you said 98 and shit like that.

anyway as i said i would do before, here is a hand where i was faced with a river situation similar to what he was describing (i think).

this hand is against a complete unknown, he had not played in the 3 hands before this, but looking at his stack size and his minbet preflop, i assume he is pretty fishy


Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $0.05 BB (9 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (CO) ($4.93)
Button ($5.24)
SB ($1.77)
BB ($5.20)
UTG ($2.53)
UTG+1 ($5)
MP1 ($5.12)
MP2 ($5.79)
MP3 ($3.86)

Preflop: Hero is CO with A, K
4 folds, MP3 bets $0.10, Hero raises to $0.25, 3 folds, MP3 calls $0.15

when he calls i have his range as Axs,ATo+, 34s+, j9s+,kts, kj+,22+, although i think he would 4b aa kk qq aks.

Flop: ($0.57) 5, J, A (2 players)
MP3 bets $0.57, Hero calls $0.57

not sure how to interpret the donk, against any thinking player i would assume it is for value but with someone who is a potential fish who knows? i think his donking range is probably diamond flush draws, Ax, TT, AJ, JJ, JT,JQ, 55, maybe J9s 88, 99, KQ, KT, KJ. So obviously i am ahead of that range so i call for another street.

Turn: ($1.71) J (2 players)
MP3 checks, Hero checks

when the Jack falls i feel like the turn check is a trap. In hindsight i should have bet to price out all the draws out there but i felt like checking behind to keep the pot small.

River: ($1.71) 2 (2 players)
MP3 checks, Hero bets $0.80, MP3 raises to $3.04 (All-In)

Total pot: $7.79 | Rake: $0.51


I actually am having a lot of trouble analyzing this river. When he checks i should probably have checked behind, i get value from Ax, and maybe 99 or TT, but thats it, all his missed draws fold for sure, and he maybe bluff raises. When he checks the river i take all the jacks out of his range.

As you can see, i bet .80, a little under half pot, and he raised me all in. Here i figure his range is pretty polarized by monsters and air. Monsters less likely because given the course of the hand i do not seem too likely to call much of a river bet at all and he checked it twice after the second jack hit. Seems more like missed flush draws to me so i called, he shows AThh and i win, but still it was a tough call, and id like to hear some more thoughts on the river if anyone would be so kind.