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Old 10-17-2005, 06:19 PM
Fillamoore Fillamoore is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2005
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Default Question about the fundamental theorem of poker

I was rereading sklansky's Theory of Poker last night and was reading his fundamental theorem. In doing so i came across something that puzzled me and perhaps you gentelmen (and ladies) can help me out.

Lets look at an example from Texas Holdem. Say that you're in the Big Blind with JTo. One limper and its folded around to you and you check. Heads up to the flop. The flop comes giving you a gutshot straight draw on a board of:
Q - 8 - 2.

Lets also say that we check the flop and make an incorrect call and see the turn, which brings an ace. (as some of you have probably already noticed this is from a very simial example in the book). Lets also say that we KNOW our opponent has KQ, he's passive, and that we KNOW if we bet he will call. Does this make it correct to bet? I ask this because in his fundamental theorem he says any time an opponent plays differently than he would if he could see your cards, you gain. If we bet here, our opponent will just call. Therefore we gain 1 bet because he should have raised. However, our mistake of betting with the worst hand cost us 1 bet MINUS the roughly 9% that we improve to the best hand...so therefore our mistake isn't as great as our opponents, and we therefore gain over him. So back to the original question, is it correct to bet even though we KNOW our opponent will call and NOT RAISE?
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