Anatomy of river bets

[Aisthesis]

[excession]

[Aisthesis]

yeah, I was thinking the same thing, although I'm not sure I fully understand those.

Is it like this: You have TP good kicker, and your opponent keeps calling you. Then the flush hits on the river, where the pot is for simplicity's sake 100. Now you bet 50 or something because villain would bet 80 on this river if you checked. And to your 50, he'll only raise if he really has the flush.

Is that what one is really doing with blocking bets? Or please someone give me a good example! I have kind of a vague understanding, I think, but it would be very interesting, I think, to know what the percentages and betting quantities are for a good blocking bet.

[excession]

Well a blocking bet is used to 'set the price' for the river when you are OOP with a medium strength hand.

Let's say your opponent has called down two streets against you on a board with draws and you have KQ (a K flopped). The draws miss. The pot is 50BB's

If you check he is likely to bet 40BB at you whether he has a missed draw (air) or a hand that has you beaten. He may even bet out with a worse K. That would put you in a very tough spot and you would most likely have to fold.

So you fire 28BB on the basis that (a) a raise means you are beat so you can fold (b) he is much more likely to fold out air than bluff raise and (c) otherwise you get to see a SD more cheaply.

The downsides are that he may have checked behind (or bet less himself) with a better hand (so you could have seen the SD for less) or that you would have extracted more value from inducing a bluff from his missed air.

[iceman5]

[Aisthesis]

I'm not sure about the 99 bet, but I was kind of in the process of revising the necessary "remoteness of a win at showdown" as I wrote the post--such as my hypothetical example, which I call a bluff even though we're ahead 60% of the time.

On your 99 example, I think it's a bluff if your intention is to fold out some winning hands, like maybe JT. I think (?) it falls into the blocking bet category, even if every time he calls you lose, if the intention is to prevent him from betting bigger.

But maybe it will help to look more closely at the blocking bets. I feel like I'm completely clear as to percentages of success relative to bet and pot-size on VBs and bluffs, but totally in the dark on blockers.

So, first let's just see when the blocker is even +EV (which still doesn't mean it's max EV relative to a check, as excession points out with the induced bluff). The purpose seems clear: To keep the pot small with a hand that has some showdown value.

I'll take a stab at it this way: Your hand wins some percentage of the time p. Pot is 100, and villain will often bet 80, which is more than you like. So, you bet 50. We know for sure that if villain raises, we're beat. So, the probability that villain raises is <1-p, since he may sometimes call when we're beat.

Hmmmm... This would make it look like a subcategory of value bet, but I don't think it is. What happens on a check is this: He bets 80, and now you need to call 80 to win 180, so you're making a bad laydown if you can win at showdown a bit less than 1/3 of the time.

So, let's say you win at showdown about 1/3 of the time. By making the blocking bet, you lose only 2/3 of 50 rather than 2/3 of 80. Hence, it's a good bet.

I think that gives us the criteria for a good blocking bet:

1) Your hand wins at showdown somewhere in the 1/3-1/2 range (assuming villain isn't going to overbet).

2) To a check, villain will on average bet larger than your blocking bet. And, if there's any variation in bet size, you don't have a sufficient betting tell to say whether a big river bet is one of his winners or losers.

3) To a check, villain will bet very few if any of the losing hands with which he would have folded to the blocking bet.

More than anything, I think 3) is what makes or breaks the blocking bet. If he's going to bet just about any of the losers he would have folded, then you're better of check-calling, despite the larger bet size.

I do think criterion 1 is often given when you have been betting TP solid kicker and a draw hits on the river. You don't know whether you've been called down with the draw or with some kind of made hand, usually weaker. The drawiness of the flop is certainly a big factor.

Also worth noting is that, given your fairly low probability of winning, the blocking bet looks -EV relative to a check on first glance. But here, the check means that you're going to have to call an even bigger bet. So, EV becomes better than a check if all the criteria are met. That also means that a fairly detailed read of villain is required for a blocking bet to be a good blocking bet--specifically, villain likes to bet big on the river, but these bets are almost never air.

I guess one final thing: I picked 50 in the 100 pot rather than 30 or even 25 because if you bet 30, he can still make it 80. So, in theory you haven't really blocked his bet. That's not necessarily the case from a psychological standpoint. If you show some strength, he may be less inclined to raise you on his weaker holdings.

[Aisthesis]

[redhouse]

I dunno if you can separate types of bets like that. PNLHE made a pretty solid point about how equities are on a continuum and whether we call a bet a value bet or a bluff depends on whether the dominant feature is the pot equity or fold equity (or both in the case of a semibluff).

Say you're betting on the river and your hand has exactly 60% equity against opponents calling range and he never folds if you bet 1/2 pot. Betting for value is +ev. (.6*2xpot - .4*2x pot = .4xpot)

Now if opponent folds 80% of the time to a full pot bet and only calls with very strong hands that beat you the other 20%, its higher +ev. (.8*pot -.2*pot = .6xpot)

Those are the two extremes - pure value and pure fold equity. But maybe betting 3/4 pot gets him to fold all the 60% you beat and call all the 40% that win. In that case, both our pot equity and fold equity are horrible and we're now -ev.

blocking bets are another good example. They are value bets in the sense we feel we're ahead some of the time and want to go to showdown, but they're also a way of minimizing our opponents fold equity against us.

[Aisthesis]

[chuckwhoolery]

[quote] Well, the semi-bluff is definitely a different kettle of fish. I also rarely semi-bluff on the river... [quote]

Is it possible to semi-bluff the river? I was always under the impression that a semi-bluff was when you didnt have a made hand but had draws. I might suggest that the river is black and white, your either bluffing or betting for value (not necessarily with your knowledge/intentionally) Anyone disagree?

[Aisthesis]

yes, chuck, that was a joke!

[chuckwhoolery]

ok cool, I have difficulties sensing sarcasm on the internet. lol btw