200/400 bellagio vs v good player

[elindauer]

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If this does somehow get to showdown the villain will likely start 4 betting most everything she steals with to take back the initiative, or she will start playing back harder post flop. Is this good or bad for you? Do you then 5 bet sometimes to sieze the initiative again?

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All this confusion over "the inititive" stems, would argue, from the fact that players have come to view "having the initiative" as meaningful the way "having position" or "having pocket aces" is meaningful. They feel that the initiative somehow makes it more likely that you will win the hand.

I agree that in practice, there is some truth to this. People tend to play suboptimally when they do not have the initiative, in that they often check to the guy with the initiative. Also, most players prefer to play their big hands very straightforward preflop, leaving their only deceptive option the "raise with crap" option. In this sense, having the initiative is the only way they can win with mediocre cards, because they will always have the initiative when they have big cards.

Open your mind to the idea that you don't have to 3-bet your big hands every time. You don't have to check to the raiser when you flop top pair. Imagine how your opponents are going to respond to that. You'll find that there are only two possibilities:

1. they give you so much action on your good hands that you don't need to win with the weak ones

2. they start respecting your bets even when you don't have the initiative. Suddenly, you don't need the initiative to make a bet and take down the pot.


There's another possibility, which is that your donk bets don't respect early and you know this, so you only donk your good hands and crush them. Then they start catching on and start folding, so you change gears and crush them even more. With the constant turnover in typical games these days, being a player who goes against the tide and does a lot of donking with good and bad hands alike could be very profitable. Your opponents will not have a lot of experience with this strategy.

good luck.
eric