Semi Bluff Mastery is the Key Thing

[Zetack]

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Z,

Thanks for your couple posts on this thread

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Ability to make tough laydowns. Generally I'm semi-bluffing on the turn. On the flop I'm either betting my draws for value, continuation betting, or outright bluffing. If its a semi-bluff on the turn there aren't very many tough laydown situations. You call one more bet with your draw (maybe lay down to two more bets)

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This is an insight from your expertise in Limit Play. I am talking no limit, and I apologize as I was not explicit in stating this.

In no limit, every street is a potential good-laydown opportunity.

Your point about starting hands I have a question on.

If you hold suited connectors in a middle seat, you may choose to play in part because others are in the pot that you know you can semi-bluff successfully. There are many other such play-the-player scenarios and positional plays that inform hand selection and thinking about possible post-flop play options for those starting hand selections.

Your reply seems absolute. Are you saying starting hands are pretty much a non-issue in all cases, in both Limit and NL with respect to the possible playing of semi-bluffs?

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Starting hand selection. Mostly irrelevant to whether you have a semi-bluffing hand post-flop.


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Ok, I'll buy that you have to laydown more often after a semi-bluff in NL. My point is, are these tough laydowns? If its a semi-bluff you don't think you have the best hand right? (Or you don't once you get raised.) Isn't it then just a simple pot odds question on your draw and thus a pretty easy call or laydown?

My tough laydons in NL tend to be of the I have a hand that I like but don't love and my opponents just come over the top of me for a lot of money, variety.

In your other question, I think you've confused your points about starting hand selection and opponent selection. To have a hand that is a semi-bluffing hand generally depends upon how the board has hit your hand and how it may have missed other people's hands. So if I play 7-4 off and the flop comes K-5-6 I may have picked up a pretty good semibluffing hand. I don't know that I'm crediting that to my superior hand selection skills. Anyway, I number that one as mostly irrelevant, not totally irrelevant. To the extent your hand selection influences what your opponents think you might have when you semi-bluff and thus whether they are more or less likely to lay down is relevant.

Your point about opponents is well taken, but I again, I'm not playing against opponents because I think I can semi-bluff them. I may play against opponents because I think I can outplay them post flop. And that includes a range of techniques and I would put the ability to straight-out bluff them ahead of semibluff them, because I'm much more likely to find myself in a bluffing than semi-bluffing position.

I hope that clarifies. I think the semi-bluff is an important tool, but it's simply a matter of recognizing the situations when they come, of utilizing the tool as appropriate. The factors you've listed, I just don't think are that directly relevant to mastery of the semi-bluff.

--Zetack