$5 PLO 6-max: How much do you bet as a bluff on this river?
That’s another reason I like betting razor thin for value. Something I’m blown away by is how frequently villain is folding to 20-25% pot river bets because they look like value bets with monsters, I can’t imagine an Omaha hand with ANY showdown value that shouldn’t call a 20% pot river bet, particularly if they’re closing the action by calling....
I’m pasting the text of the write up I mentioned previously below for reference. This has affected my WR more drastically than anything else I’ve studied or worked on since making the leap from NLHE to PLO.
Here goes, what I think is the number 2 leak of all players and what truly separates solid thinking players from the zombie player talked about above.
I could write for pages about this subject so I hope this isn't too TLDR.
Bet Sizing!!!
Alright so let me preface by saying, a little about what I think of "balancing your ranges". I think this is pretty useless at any stake below 2/4 depending on the players of course. Ideally you should be playing super exploitable so you can exploit your opponents.
I am sure a good % of you have heard this before but because excellent players like Phil Galfond and some others preach having balanced ranges, we can get confused what really should be doing. So ultimately the majority of what I am going to say is going to apply towards weaker players specifically, the loose passive weaker player (fish).
In order for someone to exploit you they must be very observant and even more unlikely, they have to understand how to exploit your exploitable actions.
So I am going to talk about one player this time that you can use bet sizing to actively exploit and should be the most obvious.
Loose passive weak player (Fish)
The thing to realize about most fish is that they rarely bet thin for value themselves and do not bluff near as much as you might think, we are assuming this player is very passive and loose, both pre-flop and post-flop for the sake of this discussion.
One of the easiest ways to increase your winrate without really doing much is v-betting very thin, razor thin against fish. Instead of just checking back hoping your good with marginal made
hands, you should be getting value from the fish, he will call with worse I promise you. In fact if you are never getting called by a better hand I would guess you missing insane amounts of value when you could be value betting thinner against fish. Another application is to use bet sizing for maximum value against a fish's weak hand range.
This seems fairly obvious, except I see students of mine play hands where they bet really large on a turn or river not remotely thinking of the hand range that could call a bet in that situation. Generally for lack of a better term, fish, are not thinking players. If they like their hand they hate folding but if you bet 3 times into them with a very large sizing you will probably get more folds then you expect unless they are a very special fish.
So generally when a fish gets to the river when he calls a flop on flop and turn, his hand range is very weak, lots of made weak hands and lots of weak draws that might have some SD value. Rarely does he have a very strong hand to call a large bet, this will vary from situation to situation but usually his hand range is very weak.
So why do I see players and students make a huge PSB on the river when they expect to almost never get looked up? Again they are not thinking of what their opponents hand range is or they are worried they will notice you bet small with strong hands and vise versa with bluffs. Also depending on stack sizes if the fish can raise over bets depending on his aggression level you rarely have stack sizes large enough to where there is more than a pot sized raise to call.
However, what if you bet large with your bluffs because you know their hand range is weak and small with your nutty hands?
He would call most if not all weak made hands instead of folding this weak hand range when you bet very large.
Ill end with an example that illustrates this concept of bet sizing against weak passive players.
[converted_hand][hand_history]Merge, $0.25/$0.50 Pot Limit Omaha Cash, 4 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite. View Hand
#10921182
BB: $37.49 (75 bb)
Hero (MP2): $53.99 (108 bb)
CO: $25.77 (51.5 bb)
BTN: $57.17 (114.3 bb)
Preflop: Hero is MP2 with A[emoji815] Q[emoji814] 3[emoji813] A[emoji813]
Hero raises to $1.50, CO calls $1.50, 2 folds
Flop: ($3.50) 8[emoji813] 8[emoji814] T[emoji815] (2 players)
Hero bets $2.62, CO calls $2.62
Turn: ($8.74) 2[emoji812] (2 players)
Hero bets $5.70, CO calls $5.70
River: ($20.14) 3[emoji812] (2 players)
Hero bets $4, CO calls $4
[spoil]Results: $28.14 pot ($1.40 rake)
Final Board: 8[emoji813] 8[emoji814] T[emoji815] 2[emoji812] 3[emoji812]
Hero showed A[emoji815] Q[emoji814] 3[emoji813] A[emoji813] and won $26.74 ($12.92 net)
CO showed Q[emoji815] Q[emoji812] 2[emoji815] J[emoji814] and lost (-$13.82 net)
[/spoil][/hand_history][replayer=10921182][/replayer][/converted_hand]
Play until turn is standard, given this player rarely folds flop I still feel I have the best hand a high % and he cannot raise a worse hand here or a bluff given my history/reads.
So I decide to bet again for a small amount expecting to still be called by worse a really high %.
River, same exact idea, yes we could be crushed by a bunch of 8s but his hand range is much wider than that, and we can surely be called by all worse over pairs and even top pairs if we bet a small amount.
Sure enough I bet 1/5 pot, which is a blocker bet but I know this opponent will not raise this unless he has a better made hand. I could bet slightly larger but I expect to have him call all his weak made hands. If we check, we miss over 20 big blinds on the river which is a great addition to our winrate.
So more or less, instead of thinking about the 10%-15% of hands that are strong and how you want to stack them or being afraid of them when you have a marginal made hand. Think about the other large % of his hand range that is much weaker and how to get max value from it.
Last Edited by jacktensuited13 10/28/11