River bet - AK unimproved

[imported_leader]

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Actually, I think that there's a bit more to it than just playing in an unfamiliar style, though that is certainly a big issue in my mind.

Another aspect is that our opponent may not be familiar with this style. This might sound like an entirely good thing, but I think that there is a drawback, at least against some opponents. If our opponent is confused, it really is going to make it harder to read his actions.

To put it differently, representing our hand in the "standard" way, with an appropriate amount of aggression, I believe, leads us to relatively predictable options (for better or worse); underpresenting our hand might create more options, but the additional options create additional issues and quandaries.

Maybe it sounds weak to argue that we should take certain actions because it makes life simpler. But aren't we often making the very same type of argument, when we suggest, for example, that someone should have raised, c/r or reraised one street because if helps define the action for the subsequent street?

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I agree that there maybe a slight bit more randomness added in to our opponent action, but I think this is largely mitigated EV-wise by a few things. First, most of our opponents are confused anyway and therefore have a tendency to make weird plays. Second, with experience we should be able to quantify this randomness just as we do after a PF 3-bet. Finally, a confused opponent would tend to be to our advantage in the vast majority of cases. Sure sometimes he'll think we're FOS when we aren't and maybe we make a bad fold, but there will also be times when he calls down or puts in many more bets with top pair because we "couldn’t possibly have an over pair or TPTK." In the end as SW said, it should not be a matter of one strategy OR the other, but rather a mixture of the two that will force you're opponents out of their comfort zone and into more post flop mistakes.