Was Villain Right?

[Monty Cantsin]

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I think mixing the thoughts of free cards and pushing people off a hand is inconsistent.

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I agree. You should only raise for one reason or the other.

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I think you're both fundamentally wrong about this.

/mc

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Expose the error in the thinking then please.

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It is often correct to "mix the thoughts" behind your plays. You don't always raise because either you have the best hand or you could make a better hand fold or you could get a free card on the next street. You often raise because all of these things are possible to different degrees. Same goes for folding when there's a possibility that you are currently behind and a possibility that you are currently ahead but will be behind by the end of the hand. You are folding for a blend of reasons.

Just like you put opponents on a range of hands instead of a single hand, your plays often have a range of functions. This is a necessary part of a game with large amounts of hidden information. I don't see anything inconsistent for this, and I don't think you should only make a play for one reason or another.


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(sammy g I do like having a plan for later streets when I act on the flop, though.

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Yes, this is essential. But your plan needs to have a lot of variables and conditionals in it, and it needs to maximize your earn across the whole spectrum of possibilities hidden behind the veil of partial knowledge.

WA/WB is a good example of this. WA/WB plans are designed to maximize your earn (minimize your loss) across both cases. It doesn't matter, really, which case is currently true, because you can't know and therefore don't care.

Plans also need to be flexible and adapt to new information as it comes in.

An example of inflexible thinking is when you see people complain about someone calling the turn and folding the river. The argument goes: Either you are ahead on the turn (and should therefore call the river) or you are drawing (and don't have sufficient odds) therefore it's a mistake. The counter-argument goes: Some percentage of the time I'm ahead on the turn and some sub-percentage of those times my opponent won't bet the river. When he bets the river, that's new information that increases the likelihood that I'm behind and I can fold correctly.

For me one of the coolest things about poker thinking is where it diverges from normal thinking. One example is the ability to disengage your actions from the immediate reward/punishment effects that usually govern our behavior. And another example is what we're talking about here - the ability to see situations as a cloud of simultaneous possible states instead of a concrete, either/or set of facts.

/mc

[chief444]

I agree with most of what you're saying. However, in this case you really can NOT use both arguments of "may get a free card" and "may push him off a better hand" to justify the flop raise. You're not pushing him off a better hand by putting in zero turn bets. You're not getting a free card by putting in more than zero turn bets. It's one or the other.

I do agree on the point about turn calls/river folds. The difference though between that and this is that the opponent does something other than check/call there.

That being said, I think the turn could go either way if the opponent here just called the flop raise and checked the turn. I'd personally take the free card mainly because I don't think AK/AQ folds on a fairly non-threatening board. But I can certainly see the argument for betting.

[Monty Cantsin]

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I agree with most of what you're saying. However, in this case you really can NOT use both arguments of "may get a free card" and "may push him off a better hand" to justify the flop raise. You're not pushing him off a better hand by putting in zero turn bets. You're not getting a free card by putting in more than zero turn bets. It's one or the other.


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But the turn card may determine whether you want to take a free card or fire a second barrel. So you could say that the flop raise sets you up for both possibilities.

I'm not saying I agree with the flop raise, btw.

/mc