Why bet/fold so much?

[mack848]

I personally feel that I don’t use the bet/fold line enough. At Small Stakes I believe that we should, if anything, find it easier to bet/fold, than we do check/crying call.

The logic that ‘folding the river for one bet is the biggest mistake in hold’em’ is the root of a lot of player’s anxiety. Unless your judgement of the likelihood of holding the second best hand is drastically out, this is simply not the case.


For example.

You have middle pair on the river HU against a weak player who has bet. You judge that you are good about 10% of the time and the pot is 7BB. If your judgement is correct the EV is (0.10 x 7) + (0.90 x –1)= -0.2 : a fold.

But let’s say that your actual chance of winning was twice what you guessed. The EV of calling now is (0.20 x 7) + (0.8 x –1) = 0.6 : a call.

Folding after misjudging your winning chances by 100% is a 0.8BB error; a sizeable one, yes, but hardly ‘the biggest mistake in hold’em’. I think that some players instinctively believe that they have made a 7BB error here.


At Small Stakes I think that a bet/folding mistake is likely to be smaller than a check/crying call mistake, as river bluff raises are so rare. Just think how often you bet/crying call and find they were bluffing – I can’t remember many at 2/4 or 3/6. Our PT stats will also give us a fair indication of whether the opponent is capable of this play.

Interesting discussion going on the Mid-High Stakes Shorthanded forum somewhat relating to this.

[jedi]

Does check/crying call help induce a bluff if you have been leading out the entire way and it looks like the villain might have missed a draw somewhere along the line? Sometimes I'll do it against a tightish opponent, possible draws that did or didn't hit, and just 1 pair. Against the typical player I'll bet out for value, but against better players who won't pay off with a missed draw (but might bluff) or will simply raise if the draw hit, I'll check/call in this spot.

[flair1239]

I have not read through yet, but I share this opinon a bit especially on turn play.

Only because of this. I believe bet fold lines have become very popular. As a result, check/raise with light hands/draws has also become more popular.

I think what happens on this forum is we get focused on lines. Some months back the Way Ahead/Waybehind line was quite popular; that got overused as well.

The way to avoid this type of thing is to be opponent aware and adjust accordingly. Which seems like an extrodinarily obvious statement. But with all the multi-tabling we do, it seems that many of us are just interested in default lines and fall into the default mode way too often.

I have recently dropped a table back to three... just because I noticed in my play, that I was doing too many default lines in situations where they were not apporpriate for the particular opponent.

PA HUD is a great thing, your powers of observation are a great thing. Work on using them. To develope and get used to using this skill might come at the expense of hands per hour. Each player needs to decide whether a higher BB/100 WR is worth it; in relation to what you are giving up in hands per hour.

I for one feel that I am improving again and feel that increasing my skills will pay more future dividends than playing the extra 70 hands an hour in a mediocre fashion.