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BalugaWhale : Value Ranges, Bluff Ranges, and why handreading can be so damn hard
49 posts, 32 voices
title: Value Ranges, Bluff Ranges, and why handreading can be so damn hard
from feed: Baluga Bay
published over 2 years ago
Every poker player can remember improvements in his thought process. We know how important the decision-making part of poker is, so we have the tendency to jump straight to it. When we started with poker, it was: “I have an Ace and a Jack, and those are pretty good so i’m going all in!!” Then later it became, “I know hand strength is relative, so I’m thinking about his hand… and I think mine’s better…. so I’m going all in!” Then eventually it became, “Hand strength is relative, and mine’s better, and I think he can call me with worse hands, so I’m going all in!”. Hopefully you can see how the thought process gets filled out and our decisions eventually become better.
Many (all?) players cut short the process of gathering and evaluating information before the decision making stage. Essentially, they reach an amount of information that lets them solve basic situations, they get comfortable using that information, then they get lost whenever a new situation comes up that requires information they haven’t been accumulating. Let’s talk about one of these spots now.
A wise friend, Ben, got in a discussion with me over a hand. Late at night, in a HU live game (the kind we’ve played thousands of for exactly zero dollars) he had made a loose call against my river shove. I was bluffing, and lost. I desperately tried to explain to him how my range crushed his hand and how bad of a call it was. He replied: “That may be, but I’m not playing against a range. I’m playing against your hand. And you either have it or you don’t.”
You either have it or you don’t.
Hmmm.
So what about ranges? Do those not matter? Won’t good players play a number of hands in the same fashion? With different intents?
Damn straight they will, but it’s the last sentence that matters. “With different intents.”
Let’s consider the river. When somebody bets the river, it is invariably for one of two reasons: 1) to get value from a worse hand, or 2) to make a better hand fold. There is no in between, no two-way bet here. It’s only one of the two. And the other guy knows damn well whether he’s bluffing or not. However, most handreaders seem to ignore that obvious question– is he bluffing me or value betting me?– and proceed straight to the “how does my hand do against his range?” question. Well, the truth is that he has two different ranges. One is for value betting and one is for bluffing. If you can figure out which one is more likely, you can test your hand against that range. It’s only if you think that each is equally likely that you have to evaluate your hand against his entire composite range. Guess what? It’s pretty damn rare when it’s equally likely someone is valuebetting you or bluffing you.
I’m going to give you three examples.
First was a hand between CTS and Ike (i think its Ike, somebody correct me if I’m wrong). Both players are 230ish bb deep). Cole (extremely loose and aggressive) raises UTG, Ike calls on the button with 66. Flop comes down As7c6d. Cole bets, Ike makes a raise in position, and cole calls. The turn is a Ts. Cole checks, Ike bets (for value), and cole shoves all in (a little less than 200bb on top).
Second example can be read here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthread.php?t=196036&highlight=punketty. Punketty, extremely loose and aggressive, c/r the turn on a Ad9cQh8h board. Hero holds AhQd.
Third example, and most classic example of all, can be read here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthread.php?t=38&highlight=mahatma. Villain is Prahlad Friedman, extremely loose and aggressive. Prah c/c flop on a KTx board, leads for pot on a blank turn, and shoves an A river. Hero holds AK.
In every single one of these threads, the first 5-10 people who jump in say the same thing: “you have a strong hand against a tricky, aggressive opponent. you can’t fold!” The gut reaction is to address our hand vs his hand range on the whole.
Now, heres an exercise for you guys to try at home– Try to decide in each example, whether or not CTS, Punketty, and Prahlad are more likely to be bluffing or value betting. If you decide value betting, then try to decide how our hand stands up against his value betting range. Voila, you are better at handreading.
PS: nobody said this would be easy. and if they did, i didnt get the memo.
good luck from thailand
A
my brain just dun gone and gots bigger. Seriously, great article. light bulb!
Excellent article.
I'd like to ask you something that's off topic to the main drift of the article...
"Let’s consider the river. When somebody bets the river, it is invariably for one of two reasons: 1) to get value from a worse hand, or 2) to make a better hand fold. There is no in between, no two-way bet here. It’s only one of the two."
Couldn't a player bet the river with say, top-pair weak-kicker, and against certain opponents in certain situations, expect to sometimes get called with a worse hand, thereby making the river bet a value bet, while at the same time expect to make a better hand fold sometimes, thereby making the river bet an attempted bluff?
Let's say I raise preflop with A5 and my opponent just calls with KK. The board comes A-Q-3 with a flush draw. I bet and he calls. The turn is a blank. I bet and he calls. The river is a queen. I bet.
He might call, hoping I had a smaller pocket pair or a missed flush draw. Then my bet was a value bet.
Now let's say my opponent has AT. Sometimes he would fold the river, thinking I must have a better ace than his, or a queen. So now my bet was a bluff.
Both those hands are within my opponents range, given how he played the hand. So, is it really true that "There is no in between, no two-way bet here."?
Tommy
the artical is 2 words to each line for me tough to read is it ment to be like that or supposed to be?
Excellent article.
I'd like to ask you something that's off topic to the main drift of the article...
Couldn't a player bet the river with say, top-pair weak-kicker, and against certain opponents in certain situations, expect to sometimes get called with a worse hand, thereby making the river bet a value bet, while at the same time expect to make a better hand fold sometimes, thereby making the river bet an attempted bluff?
Let's say I raise preflop with A5 and my opponent just calls with KK. The board comes A-Q-3 with a flush draw. I bet and he calls. The turn is a blank. I bet and he calls. The river is a queen. I bet.
He might call, hoping I had a smaller pocket pair or a missed flush draw. Then my bet was a value bet.
Now let's say my opponent has AT. Sometimes he would fold the river, thinking I must have a better ace than his, or a queen. So now my bet was a bluff.
Both those hands are within my opponents range, given how he played the hand. So, is it really true that "There is no in between, no two-way bet here."?
Tommy
If I understand correctly you're saying that a bet can be both a bluff and valuebet because sometimes people will fold better, and sometimes they'll call worse depending entirely on their state of mind at the moment, right?
But is it really a two-way bet, then? Or is it one of those bets where you bet because you hate the other options and being aggressive is often a good thing? If it's that, I don't think you could call it a two-way bet. You could call it a bet for the sake of betting, I think.
@Baluga:
You're saying that we should basically factor in the chance he's bluffing. Isn't that something we always do when determining a river betting range? At least it's something I always do. Depending on the hand I'll either see if I think it's likely he's bluffing (and I'll look at if my hand even beats his bluffs, of course); sometimes I'll usually set up a range he's valuebetting - and then determine how often he needs to be bluffing for a call to be correct and see if I make that against how often I think he's bluffing.
I might be missing something, but this article reads as 'people's bluff frequency can be independent of their valuebetting range'.
Tommy-
first, its a pleasure to dialogue with someone as respected and thoughtful as you.
That said, two-way bets don't exist. Let me try to explain concisely using your example.
If have A5 on an AQ32Q, there are times when I can bet for value. There are other times when I can bet as a bluff, even vs the same opponent. However, in any one instant, it is impossible to bet and expect him to call KK and fold AT. If I have a wild, aggro image then bettubg for value is probably right. If i have a tight, in-line image, then betting as a bluff is decent. However, there will always be one right intention.
And in this respect, your example is right on point with the article--it doesnt matter as much what can happen in a variety of hypothetical spots, what matters is the cards our opponent is holding and the way they're going to play them. Hes either calling KK and AT or hes folding them both, and we need to be good enough to have a pretty good idea which is which.
Tommy-
first, its a pleasure to dialogue with someone as respected and thoughtful as you.
That said, two-way bets don't exist. Let me try to explain concisely using your example.
If have A5 on an AQ32Q, there are times when I can bet for value. There are other times when I can bet as a bluff, even vs the same opponent. However, in any one instant, it is impossible to bet and expect him to call KK and fold AT. If I have a wild, aggro image then bettubg for value is probably right. If i have a tight, in-line image, then betting as a bluff is decent. However, there will always be one right intention.
And in this respect, your example is right on point with the article--it doesnt matter as much what can happen in a variety of hypothetical spots, what matters is the cards our opponent is holding and the way they're going to play them. Hes either calling KK and AT or hes folding them both, and we need to be good enough to have a pretty good idea which is which.
BW,
Everything you said makes perfect sense. It seems that what we've isolated here is that lots of times when I make a bet like in the example I gave, I do not "have a pretty good idea which is which," in other words, my intent, in my mind, is unclear. That's because I am oftentimes uncertain what my image is in my opponent's mind at any given time, and also because I oftentimes have no idea what my opponent has. But it's not for lack of trying to know these things!
Tommy
Nice article. I think my head just managed to explode.
Now, heres an exercise for you guys to try at home– Try to decide in each example, whether or not CTS, Punketty, and Prahlad are more likely to be bluffing or value betting. If you decide value betting, then try to decide how our hand stands up against his value betting range. Voila, you are better at handreading.
Wait, I'm confused. Take the first hand. How can you decide if CTS is more likely to be value betting vs. bluffing if you don't assign ranges? I thought the way you figured out which was more likely was by enumerating the ranges, like "he'd value c/r with hands {1, 2, 3, 4, 5} and he'd bluff c/r with hands {6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20} so he's 4x as likely to be bluffing."
I mean, when you say "he's more likely to do X than Y" don't you mean exactly "his range for X contains more hands than his range for Y"?
So, let's say villain gets to the final action with range {R}, which we can split up into value + bluffs: {R} = {V} + {B}. I think the point of this article is that vs. good tricky villains, people often think |B|/|V| is bigger than it actually is. And you want us to think something like "well, villain has a decent idea of where *we* are, so if |B|/|V| was really that big, he'd be a spew monkey" and then re-adjust our idea of how exactly {R} gets split up into {B} and {V}. Is that right?
If that's right, it seems like (even after we think about how often they *should* be value betting vs. bluffing), we should still actually try to spell out {B} and {V} explicitly, because no matter how much villain might want |V|/|B| to be big, he still has to actually *have* the value hands often enough, and he has to have the bluff hands infrequently enough.
Am I right, or am I way off base here?
poin-
thats a super, super complicated way of trying to deal with this. what's samo's range for bluffing in the AQ98 board? its basically nonexistant, yet, people make the mistake of comparing samo's TOTAL range (stemming from his loose preflop play) with his actual range in that scenario, which is almost entirely composed of hands that beat AQ.
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