worsdt mistake in poker

[Jdanz]

is folding to a river raise (in terms of magnitude of mistake).

I find myself calling A LOT on the river because folding too much is soooo easily exploitable.

This leads me to calling where i'd normally fold (via EV calc) because i don't want people trying to bluff raise me on the river.

How far do most people take this concept.

I feel like it's leading me to call way to many river's but i'm incredibly wary of giving anyone reason to exploit my play

[Spicymoose]

Definetly not the worst mistake in poker. Many times it should be apparant whether or not a fold or call (or raise) is needed after you get raised on the river. The times where you are unsure, usually the EV only swings a bit one way or the other, and the situation doesn´t come up that often.

The big mistakes in poker are those situations that come up fairly often, yet on its own doesn´t seem that big. Not raising K8s from the CO seems like a fairly big mistake to me.

[sthief09]

more specifically bet-fold is the worst move in shorthanded hold'em. i have said that a lot

i dont think id worry too much about people thinking they can make you fold. if youre playing well, theyll think youre an idiot anyway and probably didnt have anything. and with the amount that you are probably getting to SD with A high they cant help but think you never fold anything good

[naphand]

how can bet-fold possibly be the worst mistake in poker, esp. on the River?

bet-fold is an essential part of value-betting.

if you are in a spot where check-calling results in villain only betting hands better than yours and checking behind hands that are worse you must bet. where the board is scary and opponent is not a bluffer bet-fold extracts value on the River when he calls with worse hands, and you can fold safely when he raises better hands.

maybe at $10/$20 where you have habitual bluffers you are right, but not at $5/$10 and below, no way.

[Jdanz]

it most certainly is the worst mistake (i specifically said magnitude) though just as certainly not the most common. Folding a winner on the end is real bad, folding a winner on the end after aggressively putting money in on the river is the worst single mistake you can make. This can be discounted as the worst mistake as it is fairly uncommon, but it is also incredibly costly.

Simply speaking it's a pretty dangerous move to fold for one bet on the river, and therefore to do it you have to be pretty confident. My question is how confident, specificially do you also have to add a little bit more to the calling % to prevent exploitablity.

Point: if you commonly bet fold, because their calling range is larger then their betting range, and you're very willing to fold to the raise, a good player is going to start raising you A LOT, and force you into incredibly difficult situations.

[sthief09]

you are right. what i said really only applies to 10/20+

[ArturiusX]

Thinking players that adjust at the table are rare, so I don't think its a huge leak until you hit the high levels.

[mtdoak]

Huh? I think the worst mistake in poker is folding to a river raise heads up against a player who has the capability of bluff raising the river. If your firing one last shell with your whiffed 87s, you should fold to a raise, because, chances are, you can't beat a bluff. If your firing one last shell with your top pair and peter sir passive pants check raises you on a 3 flush/straight/ or paired board, muck without thinking. But, if the same situation vs Bobby Mc Bluffs raises a ton, you should almost always pay him off/call his bluff.

[Monty Cantsin]

[ QUOTE ]

This leads me to calling where i'd normally fold (via EV calc) because i don't want people trying to bluff raise me on the river.


[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, I guess there's some extra value in a river raise call because it (theoretically) makes your opponents' future actions more predictable. Then again, if you're not planning to fold in the future, either, then that value goes away. (Why wouldn't you want them to bluff raise you on the river - it's free money.) So when are you going to fold? (You have just moved the problem off into the future.)

A key factor of the EV calc is % of time opponent is bluffing.

To determine that % you include how often has he seen me fold to a river raise.

I don't think there's a profitable way to avoid doing this math by applying a universal rule.

/mc

[sthief09]

[ QUOTE ]
Huh? I think the worst mistake in poker is folding to a river raise heads up against a player who has the capability of bluff raising the river. If your firing one last shell with your whiffed 87s, you should fold to a raise, because, chances are, you can't beat a bluff. If your firing one last shell with your top pair and peter sir passive pants check raises you on a 3 flush/straight/ or paired board, muck without thinking. But, if the same situation vs Bobby Mc Bluffs raises a ton, you should almost always pay him off/call his bluff.

[/ QUOTE ]


naphand, this is a much better way of saying what i was trying to say

[naphand]

Exactly, safely folding aghainst the right opponents will induce more River bluffs from others.

Of course you must have reliable reads and NO you won't garner all the required information from PT.

[colgin]

[ QUOTE ]
it most certainly is the worst mistake (i specifically said magnitude) though just as certainly not the most common. Folding a winner on the end is real bad, folding a winner on the end after aggressively putting money in on the river is the worst single mistake you can make.

[/ QUOTE ]

Folding a winner to a river raise is a HUGE mistake only if you have grossly misestimated how often your hand is good given the board, your opponent's hand range and his bluffing frequency, etc. For example, if you fold to the river raise getting 8:1 because you correctly evaluate that your hand isn't good even 10% of the time then your fold is a good one. (And that is regardless of results; if your evaluation was correct but your opponent were to show you his worse hand (one of the few wrose hands you thought he could have had) after you folded then your fold would still have been good.)

However, if your assumptions and judgments are way off and your hand is good 30+% of the time then you have made a sizable mistake by folding. I think it is fine when in doubt to lean towards calling; but don't assume that your fold, if it is a mistake at all, is necessarily huge one. It may, in fact, be very close EV-wise one way or the other.

[sthief09]

[ QUOTE ]
Thinking players that adjust at the table are rare, so I don't think its a huge leak until you hit the high levels.

[/ QUOTE ]


i would think calling to not be too exploitable is mainly an excuse for being curious and hating to get bluffed/fold a winner

[wheelz]

[ QUOTE ]
calling to not be too exploitable is mainly an excuse for being curious and hating to get bluffed/fold a winner

[/ QUOTE ]

[Monty Cantsin]

Yeah, I tend to be suspicious of any strategy that just happens to coincide very nicely with my psychological desires.

/mc

[Jdanz]

i really should have made it more clear that i understand it's not a mistake if you call and are wrong, or fold when you would have won, supposing your EV calc was correct, and your decision correct, but unlucky.

What i'm saying is, if you folding here, makes your opponents bluff more, therefore making you make more mistakes later in the session, then it is possible that you should be calling more often.

I know many will say if they start bluffing more they're throwing away money, but in reality it is very diffiuclt to get a quick bead on how one decision effects their bluffing frequency. All things considered i'd generally prefer to be bluff raised less as it makes the river very difficult to play, and makes it even harder for me to fold marginal hands and i usually end up mpaying off too many value raises afterwards.

If i'm against an opponent that clearly bluffs too much on the river, i'm all for making him bluff more, but vs your average opponent an increase in river bluff raising is going to put me in a pretty difficult position.

[LearnedfromTV]

Someone else pointed this out, but it's worth emphasizing. The problem with calling to prevent future bluffs is that you have to fold later to take advantage of the fact that you've discouraged bluffs, which, if you do it too often, will encourage bluffs.

This is a game theory problem; both never folding to a river raise and always folding to a river raise are easily exploitable. The goal has to be to fold with a frequency that isn't exploitable, given the frequency of your opponents river raises and the ranges of hands you and he hold in those situations.

[naphand]

Jolly good.

I just wish I had been the one who said it... /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[StellarWind]

[ QUOTE ]
This is a game theory problem; both never folding to a river raise and always folding to a river raise are easily exploitable.

[/ QUOTE ]
True. But note that excessive folding is much more exploitable than excessive calling because the latter always have negative EV of less than a bet and your opponent is required to have the better hand despite your value bet. Excessive folding can become a multi-BB per instance leak that also occurs much more often.

Game theory says you better not fold very often in big pots because otherwise Villain will have the pot odds to bluff either time he has a weak hand. The exact computation of odds is complicated because there are two kinds of bluffing hands:

1. Worthless hands that risk 2 BB to win the pot.

2. Bluff catchers that have or nearly have pot odds to call in case the bettor is bluffing. These hands can be raised at an additional risk of 1 BB to try and fold out made hands.

Reliable reads on river bluffing are hard to get in online play. You need to watch a very large number of hands to establish that a player is not bluffing with correct frequency and with multitabling and constant player turnover that is rarely possible. My practical approach is to consider the range of my hands that are consistent with my previous play. Unless my actual hand is near the bottom of that range I payoff. For example, if my range is set (5%), two pair (10%), TPGK (40%), second pair (20%), MPGK (15%), bluffing (10%), then there is no way I should be folding top pair in a medium-sized pot against an unknown opponent. That would mean I'm folding over half my hands and that is ridiculous from a game theory perspective.