hurtadoak
Enthusiast
Silver Level
This is something I have been thinking a lot about it.
I was just playing a HU match against an apparent reg.
After playing around a 100 hands fairlly standardish with normal size cbets that fluctate a bit in size depending on the board. I decided to randomly increase the size to 95% on a dry board, and followed up with big turn bet and bombed the river , both bricks.
I did this because I though this opponent would interpet the sizing change for strength and perhaps make a biggish fold. The idea was to get him to think I was thinking his calling frequency on the flop was not dependent on my size and thus I would only cbet big and barrel through with made hand.
Thus I gave up some information about my hand (something was clearly up) but I did so as a fake tell inorder to exploit what I thought he would be thinking. The risk of course is that he goes to the next level.
Then 60 hands later I might increase the size again either again as a bluff or this time for value if I thought he now would interpet it differently.
Obviously I can come up with tons of other spots where one could use a potentially exploitative play in order to level your opponent into a wrong decision. Basically make more decisions based on psychology rather then GTO math.
I have feeling getting plays like this to work is what seperates a slightly winning grinder to huge winner and is what makes extremly high level poker very hard to teach.
The alternative is to strive for balanced unexploitable play against tough players and look only to exploit fish and weaker regulars. I definitely need to work on both aspects of the game but does anybody have any thoughts or advice on this topic?
I was just playing a HU match against an apparent reg.
After playing around a 100 hands fairlly standardish with normal size cbets that fluctate a bit in size depending on the board. I decided to randomly increase the size to 95% on a dry board, and followed up with big turn bet and bombed the river , both bricks.
I did this because I though this opponent would interpet the sizing change for strength and perhaps make a biggish fold. The idea was to get him to think I was thinking his calling frequency on the flop was not dependent on my size and thus I would only cbet big and barrel through with made hand.
Thus I gave up some information about my hand (something was clearly up) but I did so as a fake tell inorder to exploit what I thought he would be thinking. The risk of course is that he goes to the next level.
Then 60 hands later I might increase the size again either again as a bluff or this time for value if I thought he now would interpet it differently.
Obviously I can come up with tons of other spots where one could use a potentially exploitative play in order to level your opponent into a wrong decision. Basically make more decisions based on psychology rather then GTO math.
I have feeling getting plays like this to work is what seperates a slightly winning grinder to huge winner and is what makes extremly high level poker very hard to teach.
The alternative is to strive for balanced unexploitable play against tough players and look only to exploit fish and weaker regulars. I definitely need to work on both aspects of the game but does anybody have any thoughts or advice on this topic?