River concepts - is he bluffing?
on the river we are faced with a bet or a re-raise/shove over-bet, mostly the opponent is either -
1. betting for value
OR
2. he is bluffing
forget theoretic arguments for now about merging ranges, afterall most opponents you play will not be doing this.. or at least may not be aware of the WHY"S
there are going to be board textures where the choices on the river come down to whether or not the opponent is value betting or bluffing..
WHY is it then that imho the hero tends to forget this concept and jumps straight to assigning ranges for the villain and only think ""HOW STRONG IS MY HAND COMPARED TO VILLLAINS""
here i am scratching my head wondering, WHY? on various forums you will see discussions on river decisions and a bloody lot of replies where it"s obvious they have simply skipped this simple question one should ask first -
IS MY OPPONENT BETTING FOR VALUE OR BLUFFING?
without asking this question first BUT then skipping to assigning ranges, this makes it very difficult to put the villain on a hand imho......... this is when you see threads littered with the words ""COOLER or YOU HAVE TO CALL"" etc etc BUT the fact of the matter is that there whole thought process is flawed, IN MY HUMBLE OPINION.....
IF you ask this simple question first your opponent has two different ranges, value or bluff, then you can decide which it is and then you can decide how your hand compares to whatever range - vilains value range or his bluffing range..
then all the other factors can be thrown in, any read, tendencies, gut instinct, skill level, image, perceived ranges, the board texture [is it scary looking for example] if you showed strength at any point pre or post only to be re-raised or shoved on by the river then most likely villain is not bluffing
in threads across all the forums where HERO has a strong non-nutted hand time and time again the initial responses will be ""YOU HAVE SUCH A STRONG HAND, YOU HAVE TO CALL"" the mistake is to address the heroes hand versus the villains hand range on the whole...
the concept is easy but when it comes to assigning ranges, that is the tricky part, BUT if you decide villain is value betting, then trying to decide how your hand stands up against villains value betting range becomes wayyyy much easier....
meh i"ve read the above and it makes sense to me but just in case i"ll attempt to explain again how
I see this concept...
let"s start with a simple reverse probability problem
there are 2 bags with 100 balls in each -
bag 1 has 75 white balls and 25 black
bag 2 has 75 black balls and 25 white
10 balls are drawn from 1 of the bags, the sequence comes out as - W W B W B W B W W B
what are the odds that these 10 randomly drawn balls have come out of bag 1 ?
the above is the same tough decision we are faced with in poker when trying assign value or bluff ranges....
so in poker you should NEVER treat the whole of villains range as equal when looking at only his last action....
instead of deciding the % of hands hero beats in villains whole range on the river, it is a lot easier to view/weigh it from what we think villains value range is, likewise his bluffing frequency... then we should think about what strength we represented, villains tendencies, game flow, image etc and decide HOW OFTEN vilain would bluff in this spot with a hand that missed or he has turned into a bluff... only then can we think about how many times villain has got there with a made hand and how often he got there without a real hand according to the range we assigned previously...
there will be many times for example when for instance the board texture is in such a way that the villain will only represent a set or a nut flush on the river, his range until then is much wider, and if the vilain is known to bluff a lot, then on a basic thinking level we should call thinner than normal, but there will be cases that the spot/situation for vilain is terrible for bluffing, and so even if villain is very polarised we must forget about the ranges and give him credit....
meh this has took forever to write out due to watching the mighty ENGLAND lol , 2 - 1 and our forward line in the 2nd half were YOUNG AND BENT , lol lol lol, it reminded me of a gary glitter joke
hope the above will make sense, i cannot be arsed if you disagree... lol
