New entry.

After the discussion of UA hand with set over set ( oops, I am not so sure if it is really set over set yet, I am still waiting for the results ), Droqqa made a short sentence comment concerning the check-raising range of UA (anyone else) in that spot, I believe it is not wide at all there. I doubt that he would CR there with TPGK. So his CR range is like {K9, 99, 22} , no offence, mine probably is too.
I am not sure if it is clear where I am leading to, but I came to formulate a concept. (May be, it's more like a guiding principle and I am still uncertain of its validity, and the best formulation.)

'When choosing among (good) possible lines, choose the one that leaves your range as broad as possible'.

(Don't let your opponents to narrow your range.)

At the moment I think it's quite an interesting concept, and I hope for some discussion.

Basing on that concept a line in UA hand, where he would call instead of a CR, or chose to lead the flop would be a better one, as it would leave his range much broader, i.e. lots of Kx hands, may be even some gutshots with JTs, etc.

Alastor, you make a valid point about slowplaying, but it's not evident to me if it is a good thing or not. In many cases the way we play our draw would be similar to the way we slowplay.

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Let's consider the following 'imaginary hand',
we have or , and we want to play both these holdings the same way.
(For simplicity we consider only nuts and draw hands.)

Suppose that’s 400NL SH, full stacks.
Suppose UTG (MT, TAG) raises preflop to 15, we call OTB and flop comes
Flop (36):
UTG bets 30,

Here comes the decision point, we can play both hands ‘fast’ or ‘slow’.

A)The ‘fast’ way is considered to be a ‘correct’ one, i.e. we raise to about 90 and push if he 3 bets. If he just calls we can bet turn with both holdings if we hit or if we miss.

B) The ‘slow’ way would be to call the flop bet.
There is many possible lines here, let’s consider a blank-blank one, i.e. a blank on turn and river. Another line is blank-hit and hit-blank.

1)Turn (96):
UTG bets 80, Hero calls.
River (276):
UTG check, Hero always pushes with 66, rarely pushes with .

2)Turn (96):
UTG bets 60, Hero calls.
River(216):
UTG checks, Hero bets 140 with both hands.

3)Turn (96):
UTG bets 80, Hero calls.
River(276):
UTG checks, Hero bets 220 with both hands.
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I am a bit lazy just now for counting EV in ‘slow’ and ‘fast’ cases, and I am not sure if it can be done with any accuracy. There is some value to playing this way, though, in case B) line 1) I think that our opponent is going to call our push quite often with a hand like AKo, putting us on a missed draw. We will often collect a second barrel from aggressive opponent playing this way.

P.S. Just some thoughts, probably I’ll come back to this post later.

I think it would be optimal to play hands in a way such that 80% of the time you are playing them 'fast', and 20% 'slow' (percentages may vary, i'm just using examples).

This way it is more difficult for your opponent to put you on a hand - he may think "he flat-called my bet on a draw-heavy board so he can't have a set" and then you push the river and he calls with TPTK thinking you had a missed draw.

It also allows you to raise the flop a lot as a bluff (or maybe with gutshot/one pair type hands). If you were playing your big hands and draws slow too much, your raises would be suspicious if you were never showing down a good hand when you raise the flop.

I think in general, playing hands fast has a higher EV than playing slow - you get to build the pot with your sets and with your draws when they hit. You also may get some folding equity too. With sets you will usually extract more by playing fast as if you play it slow, a scare card may hit which either a) gives your opponent a better hand or b) makes him afraid to put his stack in.

i aggree with what you wrote eventhough i didnt make any EV calculation.
1 comment:
-first you choose an example where villain's hand is pretty much defined (open raise from UTG, TAG ---> rules out most of the draw except KQ of spades).
so i would say its a decent spot for slowplaying.

on a side note : when choosing a line, i usually take the line which will have the less psychologic effect on my session. no sure iam very clear so ill try to explain :

lets say i got , and iam going for the slow play :
Flop (36):
UTG bets 30, Heros calls 30

Turn (96):
UTG bets 60
now this is a spot where i will never choose to just call here,, first because i think the hands that would fold here, would never call a river bet anyway, second because if i just call and river is :
River (216) :
losing such a hand to let say Ax will have a very negative impact on my game.
i realize this is only a 8 outs draw but, i would be really pissed off and that could lead to really bad play afterward.

I don't think it's that easy to choose an optimal line. The best line will depend on the quality of our opponents.

Let say we are playing against a thinking TAG, and he has AQ or AK on that flop:

If we choose a fast line, raising his CB with good draws and strong made hands, he will fold quite often on flop, and if he doesn't fold on flop he will fold on turn. Sure we don't mind it when we have a draw, but if we count our equity for our whole range, we would prefer to play a bigger pot aginst TPTK type of hand. If we choose a slow line here, we can be almost 100% sure that he'll fire a second barrel. (If it's not Trod who checks every turn .) And overall our EV will increase against that type of opponennt.

If we play against a weak player who won't fold Ax no matter what we do a fast line is obviously better, we will build pot when we are ahead, then we can sometimes check turn with our draws (obv. bet good made hands) and push river only when we hit our draws.

The better our opponent the more I like a slower/tricky line.

New entry. It is mostly, so that I don't forget the idea. I'll put more thoughts into this post later.

Calling with incufficent odds, i.e. with small pairs preflop getting less than 1:8 in implied odds, with a gut shot getting less than 1:13 in implied odds and with straights getting less than 1:5.

The things that fish usually does .

I think it could be a good thing to do, if it will balance my range well. Slightly negative expectaion for these hands will be compensated by additional value that our monster hands will get. Basically we broaden our range by including some slight losers.

I am going to wotk-out this post by editing it.
Here is the hand that helps to illustrate the concept (it's from memory, so I don't remember stacks sizes exactly.)
400NL SH.
Preflop:
UTG (250) limps, I check in BB with .
Flop (10):
I check, UTG bets 8, I call.
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I think it is a mistake if I play here only to hit my gutshot. Even if I hit it it would be extremely hard to put 8*11=88 more into the pot, to compensate for all the times I miss it on turn.
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Turn (26):
I check, UTG bets 16, I CR to 66, UTG folds.

Random thought.

I remember seeing some advice, like one doesn’t need to balance his range at this stakes, because no one pays attention. The same idea often applies to sophisticated plays, i.e. save it for higher stakes.
I think that this advice is correct, but it severely handicaps one’s ability to move up. The opposition gets tougher at each subsequent level and if you don’t have the advanced plays in your repertoire you’ll need to experiment with them while moving up. Which is not a good idea in general.

In conclusion, as always, trying to work on one’s game is a good idea, especially in the long run.

New entry. Checking behind with a made hand on the flop.

In one of the posts I promised to k3nt to elaborate on checking behind with a good made hand on a draw heavy flop.

I’ll consider only one case, i.e. we have overpair to a flop, and I’ll try to give my reasoning with some EV calculations against my opponent ranges. Opponent is assumed to be a thinking one, i.e. he is not going to call down with a draw and bet when hits. We also assume that our opponent is unlikely to stack-off easily with one pair.

As an example of how opponent would play a hand from the last session. (Opponent is not me, he is one of the regular TAGs.)
I raise OTB, SB calls.
Flop:
SB checks, I CB, SB CR big, I push he calls with .

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I will give several scenarios (imaginary hands) and try to outline the logics. I won’t specify the preflop action, assuming it is once raised pot. In reraised pots hand ranges change a lot and it could become correct betting when I would chose to check in a single raised pot. For simplicity I’ll also assume that we are against SB.


Hand1. Extremely draw heavy flop, no redraws.
Our hand ,

Flop:
SB checks, we check.

I think it’s obvious that we don’t want a lot of money going in here, if SB has or we are behind. And there is lots of other possible hands that connect well to this flop, straights, flushes, etc.
If we bet here we hope for a fold and will have to fold to any significant action. The hands that are behind like , and from which we hope to get a bet would call at best and may be even fold, figuring that they are either behind or not so far ahead.
Summarizing: No worse hand is going to call our bet (big draw is a better hand), and opponent is very unlikely to fold a better hand. (A possibility of drawing dead is no fun too.)

A)
Turn: heart, 4, 8
These are all bad cards, and I would just give up.
(3 and 9 are also bad, but I would put them between cases A and B)

B) all other cards I would consider a blank.
SB leads, we raise
SB checks, we bet.

We are going to check behind on the river.
If you take the same range, i.e. made hands + draws for SB, now we are ahead of his range (marginally behind), because all his draws have significantly deteriorated. 15 outs draw on flop from a favorite on the flop become a 34% dog.


Hand2. Board with draws, no redraws.
Our hand ,

Flop:
SB checks, we bet

On this board bet is better than a check. Now opponent could call with lots of worse hands, AK, KQ, 88-QQ. It’s less likely that he has a made hand that beats us (these are mostly sets, while in hand1 it is also lots of 2 pairs, straights and flushes.) And it is also less likely that he has a very big draw.

Hand3. Draw heavy board with redraws.

A) Nut redraw.
Our hand

Flop:
SB checks, we bet.
Now if we are behind we have nut redraw and possibility of having the best hand + possibility of drawing on out opponent if we are behind makes it closer to a bet.
Though I could see a check here too, it would depend on the quality of opposition and their tendencies. (Here we need to reclassify the better opponents ). Even against the same opponent the better way to play it could depend on the dynamics of the game.

B) Non nut redraw.
Our hand

Flop:
SB checks, we ?

Obviously we are in a better situation than in hand1, as we have some good redraws, and it’s unlikely that we are drawing dead. It’s also worse than situation in hand2, when we had an obvious bet, as there is a lot of very strong possible draws. (Lots of combo draws, like pair + flush, pair + straight.) The situation is a bit worse than in hand3A), as our redraw is not a nut one, and we really don’t like to see KQ here.

Though having thought about it, if we take a range for our opponent of combo-draws and made hands, a bet could be a good play, but if we get CR we will have to push. We will be small favorites against 2pairs, ok against sets and 87, and big favorites against pair + draw type of hand.

Honestly, here I am not 100% sure which play is best. The more broad our opponent range, i.e. the more there is pair+draw hands, which he choose to play fast the better bet is. The more nitty our opponent, i.e. the more made hands are in his range the better would be a check.

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I hope it’s clear what we want to accomplish checking with made hands on draw heavy flop (Hand1 is an extreme case). There are some cases when we obviously want to bet and charge draws (Hand2). And there is lots of situation in between when we need to take other factors into account to decide which play (bet/check) is better.

I think this is pretty interesting, thanks for posting it. What do you think the best play is on a monotone flop with an overpair but no redraws? So something like hand 1 but not as extreme: you have black aces and flop is . SB checks, do you favor a check behind on this board?

Also wondering if you would mind posting the reasoning behind a line you took in a hand you posted in the NL forum. I asked for clarification, but it got overlooked. Here is the hand:
Hand1.
UTG is marked as a fish. It means that I played with him previously and he did something stupid. Not much of a read as I just sat down. I have a full stack.

Preflop : UTG(800) raises to 12, MP(250) calls, CO(450) raises to 36, I have in the SB and call, MP calls, UTG calls.

Flop (148):
I check, UTG bets 150, folded to me and I call.

Turn (540):
I bet 400 (AI)?

Random thought. Just so that I don't forget, I recently come up with the idea about making moves and bluffing. (Hopefully, no one understands anything, as I don’t want to get bluffed and 3bet according to my own ideas. )

It seems to me that the frequencies and right moment are much more important that the actual cards that one holds when he decides to bluff.

For example when 3 betting preflop, it’s more important to know the opponent tendencies, i.e. how often he raises preflop and how he reacts to 3bet than what you hold. Moreover one shouldn’t overuse it, giving the opponent a chance to adjust. If you 3bet him too often you’ll see 4bets or light calls. While if you keep the frequency right , i.e. making a long enough pause between your 3bets it will look much more legit, and it’s hard to adjust to it.

The same applies to postflop play, I’d rather make a move with a weak hand (bottom pair) when there is a high chance that my opponent will fold (i.e. I have a read on his play and he has shown weakness in some way), than with a hand like TPGK (straight draw) when the chance that opponent would fold is low.