hypothetical situation.

Yep, that's the downside. That's why I qualified it as against players who cbet close to 100% of the time. If your cbet% is close to 100% it means your range is not affected by the flop and your range on the flop is the same range as what you would raise preflop with. The majority of these hands are not hands that will call a turn bet. That means my play against someone who cbets almost all the time will yield a profit. This is similarly why we don't want to be cbetting 100% of flops. In fact imo we should be cbetting the top and bottom of our range. The middle-strength hands like TPWK/mid pair/pair with an overcard I will often not cbet simply because I don't want to build a pot and it has showdown value (hence most of the hands I fold out with a cbet would lose to me at showdown anyway).

Obviously it depends on reads though, if he folds close to 100% to cbets I'll cbet this just because I know it'll fold out the overcards that can outdraw me. My main point though was that cbetting 100% of the time is a bad move and easily exploitable. I think in general one of the biggest mistakes I've seen from decent players online is cbetting too much. It's easily exploitable and if we cbet both our big hands and bad hands we still are not readable (ie when we cbet they don't know if we hit or not) but we gain a lot more value with our JJ type hands like this.

I'll agree and I think I may have indeed misused the term in this thread. After using Pokerstove against a top 20% range JJ was barely ahead. TT was behind. So I guess what Harrington and you are saying is that the lower our equity is in the hand the more we should be cbetting in these situations (basically bluffing that we have the Ace). I think what Tygran is trying to get at is what's the right mix of cbet to check-call for these hands and how much does it change as our equity changes?

Well, yes, but no.

The gap concept applies to him in this case. He needs a better hand to call with than to bet with, therefore if we have to put in $5 on the flop, it's better if he bet it, than if we did. See what I mean?

We got sidetracked here. OP stated villain was unknown. Against unknowns, fancy play results will be unknowable.

With this marginal hand, and a called PF raise, a more straightforward approach, of c-betting is called for. And in this case folding to resistance of a significant nature.

IMO

Right, that's how I meant it: HE needs a better hand to call. But I don't follow as to why that makes it better for him to be betting in the context of gaining information.

As I said, I'm willing to sacrifice equity here in order to end the hand with the pot. I DON'T want a smaller middle pair betting the at me and putting me in a guessing situation where I just want to see the river as cheaply as possible. In other words, I don't want to induce bluffs with a marginal hand such as this.

And why not? Your hand beats 100% of bluffs. Look at it this way, let's group the hands into 2 groups, one is hands that beat us, aces, sets, 2-pair, etc. other group is hands we beat.

#1: if we take the cbet line we (a)win the pot, or (b)he floats us, steals on turn, or he (c)pays us off thinking he could be good and plays for pot control

I think that (a) is by far the most common scenario and that (b) and (c) will cancel each other out


#2: If we take the cbet line we lose our bet 100% of the time, because either way if we're called I'm assuming we're done with the hand.


#1: If we take the C/C line we (a) win the pot with no more bets, just as (a) above, whether we check down or bet a later street, (b) he double barrels us and we lose the bet, same results as (b) above and equally unlikely. (c) We induce a bluff and win a bet.

Note that the difference in the 2 lines for #1 is that (c) in the C/C line is SOOOO much more likely than (c) in the cbet line.

#2: if he bets the flop, we lose a bet

So #2 is the same. If we're beat we pay the same amount of money, one bet, whether it's from us or him. For #1 though, when we are winning, our opponent will put in much more money if we just check and let him bluff at it. Note that the increase in value comes from the gap concept, that our opponent needs some kind of a hand to call a cbet, but not any hand to bluff after we show weakness. This is a tougher hand OOP than in position no matter which way you look at it, both ways the river decision if we get a checked turn is going to be borderline. If you cbet then check the turn and river did that flop call really guarantee you're beat? If you check/call the flop and then check the turn and river does that mean you're beat? I'd be inclined to call river bets in both scenarios simply because of the weakness we've shown on the turn and river (since we're OOP and have to act first on the river). If you think cbetting is the correct play please tell me which part of my logic you disagree with. It's definitely opinion, and I'm making estimates. Just wondering what the difference is in my estimations and the estimates made by the proponents of cbetting here.

Also, I agree that always checking this is bad, but I think our default play, especially against an unknown, should be to C/C. A cbet isn't terrible, and it's not bad for a play to mix it up, so no opponent can rule out a middle strength hand when you cbet, but with these kinds of hands I definitely prefer the C/C line as the default line that we take the vast majority of the time.

Sorry zach, but your logic makes little to no sense to me.

really?

ok let's look at an extremely similar hand. Yes it's a tournament, but it has a ton of relevance. I was railing aloevera in the $3 rebuy, and this hand happened. She had QQ.

PokerStars Game #17255072159: Tournament #87045215, $3.00+$0.30 Hold'em No Limit - Level XI (400/800) - 2008/05/06 - 22:46:59 (ET)
Table '87045215 30' 9-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: TheBigT96 (40530 in chips)
Seat 2: posseven (23244 in chips)
Seat 3: UvBnFelted (18815 in chips)
Seat 4: phrozen3 (2210 in chips) is sitting out
Seat 6: 6BLUFFMANIAC (5881 in chips)
Seat 7: HOTTCRDS (44674 in chips)
Seat 8: XBarbaPapaX (14700 in chips)
Seat 9: aloevera (24869 in chips)
TheBigT96: posts the ante 75
posseven: posts the ante 75
UvBnFelted: posts the ante 75
phrozen3: posts the ante 75
6BLUFFMANIAC: posts the ante 75
HOTTCRDS: posts the ante 75
XBarbaPapaX: posts the ante 75
aloevera: posts the ante 75
posseven: posts small blind 400
UvBnFelted: posts big blind 800
*** HOLE CARDS ***
phrozen3: folds
6BLUFFMANIAC: folds
HOTTCRDS: folds
XBarbaPapaX: folds
casaspimp is connected
aloevera: raises 1600 to 2400
TheBigT96: folds
posseven: folds
UvBnFelted: calls 1600
*** FLOP *** [Ad Jd 3h]
UvBnFelted: checks
aloevera: bets 2400
UvBnFelted: calls 2400
*** TURN *** [Ad Jd 3h] 6♥
UvBnFelted: checks
aloevera: checks
*** RIVER *** [Ad Jd 3h 6h] 2♦
UvBnFelted: bets 2400
???



How much information did that cbet get her? Is this just weakness from the turn check? And this is a pot in position, being OOP as we are in the actual hand we're discussing makes it even worse because we've also checked the river in front. How much credit can we give to a river bet in this situation? How much did that cbet really tell us? Do you really mean to tell me only the A calls a cbet?

A really bad comparison:

1. she has position
2. there is a flush draw that can call