[Aaron W.]

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Here's a simple example: Suppose you have two opponents on the turn. They have a combined 10 outs against you. This means 78% of the time, you're going to win the pot. Suppose further that they will only bet the river if they make their hand AND you will always call them (even though you know you're beat). To make things worse, they will NEVER call missed draws on the river, so you can't make any more money off of them.

EV = 78%*(2 BB) - 22%*(-2 BB) = +1.12 BB

So even in this bad condition (smart river play by opponents, dumb river play by you), you are still quite profitable. The size of the error of *NOT* betting the best hand on the turn is about the same as the size of calling the extra amount on the river (within 1 SB of each other), but you see more turns than rivers, so failing to make this bet is more costly than calling those extra 10% of your hands on the river.

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The point of this example seems to be that if you value bet the TURN with what you think is the best hand, you're pot-committed on the RIVER, and I think that's equally dangerous thinking, especially in micros. There are too many variables blah-blah-blah to make any kind of hard and fast rule about this. (Not the least of which, a good player who notices this behavior will start calling you down on the turn to set you up on the river.)

That said, OTOH, I agree that there are a lot of "Was this a good fold?" posts flying around these days, and some additional thought needs to go into it before making the big laydown.

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I've only got a couple minutes, so I won't go into much detail here. That wasn't the impression I meant to give. The point was the building up pots with the best hand early is important, and more important than learning how to make good folds on the river. Obviously, you would do better if you knew how to fold the river when villain bet his better hand (you do better by a mere .22 BB). But failing to bet the turn is a huge mistake (a 1.56 BB error).

Edit: I should be leaving, but that last statement was wrong. The size of the error is actually 1.34 BB.

Edit continued: Thanks, Jaran. I hope to see some good discussion when I get back.