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Poker Video: No Limit Hold'Em by BalugaWhale (Mid Stakes)

As I said, I agree with betting the turn, but BW calls it a "valuebet", and I don't think we can consider it a valuebet if we never see a showdown that we win.

I believe the correct logic behind the turn bet is to get dead money in that we can take away on the river - and this does not depend on us having 88.

Edit: the protection you're discussing is certainly a bonus that we get from the turn bet, but I don't think it's the primary reason we should be doing it.

yeah, I actually aggree with you.
I think also it is on the turn a bet, not for Value, but to capitalize the deadmoney with the bonus of making him some possible PotEQ to fold.

As I said, I agree with betting the turn, but BW calls it a "valuebet", and I don't think we can consider it a valuebet if we never see a showdown that we win.

I believe the correct logic behind the turn bet is to get dead money in that we can take away on the river - and this does not depend on us having 88.

Edit: the protection you're discussing is certainly a bonus that we get from the turn bet, but I don't think it's the primary reason we should be doing it.

Totally with you here.

Great idea... DC Shorts, 20 minute in depth look at an interesting hand. That will get it done! TY Baluga

My mind boggles at the idea of valuebetting a street when one's hand will never get to showdown without bluffing. Taking the villain's person, for ease of language:

If we bet the turn, and get called by worse (value), and he always folds the river with any worse hand he called the turn with (I take it from the video that we do always bluff the river?), then our holding doesn't matter: we could just as well have had air.

Because we could just as well have had air on the turn, there is surely no sense in which we can think of ourselves as having "got value" on the turn: we were simply getting dead money in on the turn to be taken away on the river.

Is this essentially what was meant in the video, and just a matter of the language used, or am I missing something?

this is a really interesting post.

whether or not we get to showdown without bluffing doesnt affect whether or not you can v-bet a street. I.E. i might v-bet AA on a KQ4 board and see a J on the turn and not be able to get to showdown without bluffing, doesnt mean my v-bet with AA on KQ4 board is bad. In that sense, I'm left with the same basic choice-- do I turn AA into a bluff on a KQ4J board, or am I v-betting it, or what am I doing if I'm not c/f or something?

I think the lack of clarity in the language is because of the way equity works, which I believe I'll be discussing in an upcoming short. Basically, it would be possible to bluff against KK on the turn here AND to v-bet agaisnt Ad2d at the SAME TIME. whoaaah crazy.

hopefully that helps a lil

Hey Baluga,

I'm not really following the line of vbetting the turn and bluffing the river on brick cards. I understand if you're vbetting one street, but the following street changes board texture significantly where you can rep a draw that got there or something like that.

If we vbet a street, we want worse hands to call us. Then on the river, what makes us think that he'll have enough better hands that he might fold? If he has that many better hands that need to fold by the river, why were we betting for value on the turn? If you just said, "we're gonna set up a multi-street bluff with 88 and get this guy off an overpair because our line looks so strong on this board" that would make more sense.

Can you clarify a little bit? (btw, I read the previous posts about other people being confused on this topic but I'm still a bit lost on this concept)

Thanks so much Baluga

understood that this is a particularly nasty/difficult topic

1) thinly v-betting means we expect him to have both worse AND better hands that will call us.
2) if we thinly v-bet the turn, its because we expect all hands like 7x are still going to call us. We also expect JJ+ to call us as well (obv).
3) we might be able to thinly v-bet the turn with TT here, but then on the river, we can't get value from anything worse BUT we might be able to fold out better hands. So now we'd bluff.

hopefully that clarifies!

(Quick note- one of my students crunched some numbers and found that it probably is too thin to v-bet TT on this turn. But, in his analysis, he concluded that its actually still possibly an ok bluff on the turn, provided that we can move him off things on 3 streets)

One last thing-- We need to consider hands both 1 street at a time AND in the context of 3 streets. So, I don't love the idea of making a bad turn bluff (or v-bet) with the intention of making a good river bluff. However, it's also bad to ignore the added value that making a good river bluff adds to our hand. Basically, I'd like to have some kind of equity/value on the turn to go into a 3-barrel bluff type situation.

Andrew

Maybe my logic is flawed but lets say I'm the villain and donkbet the flop. im going to have sets, and overpairs and my likely range is QQ-77 and 33-22 on this board ONLY because im burning money if I bet anything else. Likewise, when I get a call by the preflop raiser, I have to believe that he has a hand like 22-33 and 77-AA on the flop because he wouldn't raise preflop with anything less than 22 - AA, maaaybe a7x .

So villain bets barrels the turn! his range is still the same as it was on the flop but it can and should change because you called him so you have to have at least 88+ and sets. but since the hero has kings, that trumps the villains range by a LOT as shown in poker stove.

Board: 2c 3d 7h 5d
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 74.476% 74.48% 00.00% 1278 0.00 { KdKs }
Hand 1: 25.524% 25.52% 00.00% 438 0.00 { QQ-77, 33-22 }


Now, if I was the villain, i'd bet TT+ because if I bet 88-99 then I'm essentially bluffing and im going to get called by better so often that I'm burning money. At least with TT+ , you can bet for value on the turn. with 88-99 on the turn, you should just c/f because the hero has your range SMOKED.


but back to the hero here, if I was the hero in this hand, I'd call the turn and usually call the river but I can't say for certain because in this hand, we didn't see the river.

conclusion: call the turn because we beat sooo much of his range.

If we decide to bet the turn and river vs the reg, once we donked out for value, we'd be risking our stack by the turn (200-9-20=171$) to win a final pot of 68+42=110$, so it needs to work 61% of the time.

Say the BTN's calling range on the flop is: sets, overpairs, A7s,K7s, 87s, 76s,97s, A2s-A5s (that's 9+ 7*6+ 5*3 3+3+4+4= 80 combo's. So he may only go to showdown with 32 combos: 9 sets and 4pp's, so he has to fold TT and worse by the river.

What would be a reasonable cutoff for him considering our range?
Our range is tighter than his, since we're trying to get value from the fish in the first place. Our range could look like: sets (9),88-JJ (24 or less if 3bet JJ-TT, say 18), our 7x is more restricted that his (say 12) (K7s may or not be in there), and there's probably no A2s-A5s. So we have a range of about 45 combo's. So if we're barreling that whole range, he actually needs to call TT, since on the flop, he's facing the situation where he has to call down his stack to win ours + the pot (TT has 55% equity vs our range, but 99 has only 41%.

Calling down TT is not easy at that point, unless BTN is completely immune to A/K scare cards (which he should be since they're not in our range). Also he's assuming we donk and barrel that whole range. In reality he'll put us on a tighter range, as OP did here, not feeling comfortable even with KK.

So it looks like a good spot to bluff.

As for 88, it's basically a bluff, unless the turn card gives us a value bet by providing equity to villain's 7x (gutshot or FD). Checking 88 puts us in the spot where we now have villain.

understood that this is a particularly nasty/difficult topic

1) thinly v-betting means we expect him to have both worse AND better hands that will call us.
2) if we thinly v-bet the turn, its because we expect all hands like 7x are still going to call us. We also expect JJ+ to call us as well (obv).
3) we might be able to thinly v-bet the turn with TT here, but then on the river, we can't get value from anything worse BUT we might be able to fold out better hands. So now we'd bluff.

hopefully that clarifies!

(Quick note- one of my students crunched some numbers and found that it probably is too thin to v-bet TT on this turn. But, in his analysis, he concluded that its actually still possibly an ok bluff on the turn, provided that we can move him off things on 3 streets)

One last thing-- We need to consider hands both 1 street at a time AND in the context of 3 streets. So, I don't love the idea of making a bad turn bluff (or v-bet) with the intention of making a good river bluff. However, it's also bad to ignore the added value that making a good river bluff adds to our hand. Basically, I'd like to have some kind of equity/value on the turn to go into a 3-barrel bluff type situation.

Andrew

That works a bit better, but I'm still a little uncomfortable with a particular aspect, specifically the turn "thin value" even if we have, for example, TT or JJ.

I believe that the idea of assessing streets independently doesn't really work. The standard way of analysing multi-street action is via a tree-diagram based EV calculation, summing all paths to give a final result. Here are basically the four possible paths in this hand, from the turn, where we bet the turn with the intention of shoving the river:

1) We bet the turn, he folds, we win $X

2) We bet the turn, he shoves (we fold), we loose $(X + our turn bet)

3) We bet the turn, he calls. We shove the river, he folds. We win $Y.

4)We bet the turn, he calls. We shove the river, he calls. We win $(Y+ our riverbet) 5% of the time (when we hit our set), and loose $(Y + our riverbet) 95% of the time.

Each of the scenarios 1), 2), 3) and 4), have an EV: EV1, EV2, EV3, EV4. and they each occur a particular fraction of the time: %1, %2, %3, %4., where

(%1) + (%2) + (%3) + (%4) = 100%

Our Total EV = (EV1)*(%1) + (EV2)*(%2) + (EV3)*(%3) + (EV4)*(%4) = The weighted sum of the EV of all paths

The important thing to take away from this is that we only see a river in scenario 4), when our river shove is called. We only win when we hit our set.

So my point is really that value is about showdown. If we only win when we hit our set at showdown, it doesn't matter if his range was behind us OTT: Our river line negates the "turn value", and it won't make a difference to the EV of the play if we have 88 or JJ.


For me, the example hand you posted, where we have AA on KQ4, is different to the video hand in this critical way: we will often see a showdown that we will win vs a large number of hands in villain's flop calling range that are behind us on the flop, making the valuebet valid, and showdown-oriented. The Jack is a crappy card OTT, and we may have to re-evaluate our line, but most turn/rivers don't force us to do this. In the video hand, however, we never see a showdown against a hand we were ahead of on the turn.

Thanks for taking such an interest in this point, I've been brought up on your vids, so it was great to have a response from you :-)

I'd stress that value is NOT necessarily about what we see at showdown and that things like value and bluff have to be evaluated in two elements-- static on a given street and dynamically throughout the hand. your flow chart above is great but it's also limited. I.E. it's based on some assumptions (we assume its good to bluff every river card, for example). Let's say that we think he has a lot of cards with A's in them, so we decide not to bluff a river A. Or perhaps, we decide that an A increases our FE vs this villain, so we decide we would. It's late and I'm tired so this could v well just be a ramble.
I would say, though, that we v-bet MANY times in spots where we find we can't get to showdown later.

Andrew

@ baluga, and DC producers for these in general: could we get links to the forum threads in these? it would make it easy to go back and see if i was right. i remember this hand . would make it nice to let people see where people where.

@ baluga, and DC producers for these in general: could we get links to the forum threads in these? it would make it easy to go back and see if i was right. i remember this hand . would make it nice to let people see where people where.

http://www.deucescracked.com/forums/34-Small-Stakes-Shorthanded-NL/topics/237131-NL200-6max-how-to-treat-h







I understand the crossing the bridge when we get there, but shouldn't we also be thinking about what our opponent will do on the next street? If we're villain, with our theoretical 88, would hero ever be bluffing/going for an even thinner value bet w/A7 on the turn when we check? I would think hero would bet everything better and check back everything worse. And how often would he then bet river with worse or as a bluff? Pretty much never I would think.

great video, hope to see a lot of more videos like this one

HI Baluga,
I love your thoughts on changing between valuebetting and bluffing. This is a situation I find myself often where initially I am value betting then realise (usually on the turn) that actually to continue then I need to be bluffing OTT and and OTR. It made sense to me but its the first time I have heard someone discuss value betting and bluffing (the same opponent) in the same hand.

A question on pre flop. you mentioned Hero should be calling TT-JJ here to keep in the fish, while I agree I'm interested to know at what point in starting hand strength you switch your strategy to 3betting to try and value bet the fish and bluff the reg? are you just doing this with a bluff heavy polarized range that it is still ahead of fishes range?