Thank you for comments, on turn I lost all my time bank it was very difficult decision for me. We were slighly deeper 120bb effective and I've already sat at the table so I decided to fold, but later it turned out that, he plays in very aggresive way, so I regret that I didn't call here. What does raise on turn in 3 bet pot mean nowadays for you?. I noticed that, many players on this stakes, raise as semi-bluff for example with flush draw, after watching some high stakes games.
Most of average regulars and professionals are raising for bluff in some spots where they gain some
equity. The problem is that many players are imitating this style of play and most of them imitate in a wrong way:
Let's look whales for example. A whale truly believes that any two suited cards are good enough to be fighting for a 100 blinds pot or even more. So, they elect to play "garbage" from any position, and begin to open J3s from EP, to call 32s from the BB and SB and when they hit a flush they put all the chips in, regardless of any reading or concern.
The Aggro Donkey is another type of whale, but the Aggro Fish it is going to start to bluff any two suited cards+flush draws, any type of gutshot, and all of the OESD.
If we consider the ammount of combos we are
gambling, if we do elect to invest everytime we pick up some equity, we are going to get broke very soon:
First, our bluffs are not passing through everytime, sometimes we are going to lose a lot
bluffing, because when we do bluff based on mathematics, there is a probability of, let's assume 70% of chance that Villain would fold if we do push OTT or OTR, but this is just a number and sometimes Villain will call our missed draw OTR, and this is not wrong for any of the players.
If we do not bluff anything on the river, we are so boring and tedious and experient players are going to take all of our
bankroll for them very easyly. So we pick up some logical bluffs, such as missed OESD+FD to put up all-in on certain rivers, because Villain could not call with 'anything', but with a decent hand at least.
We go all-in with our missed draws OTR, not because we are very good, because it looks good for our image, but because we also do it when we own 'the nuts', when we have TPTK, Two Pair, Sets and Straights in boards, where, OTR it didn't complete a scary monster.
However, fishes and aggro donkeys have no ideia at all of how to use this logic: they are going to bluff you either more often than they should or they would simply never bluff (classic passive fish example).
The passive fish we expect it to be never bluffing, so when this guy comes raising preflop, in a 6-MAX table, IP, to 4x, I am folding quite a great deal of hands and 3-betting only with KK+ and AKs. Why? Because this passive fish plays "faced-up", it is showing for us it is hole cards by the sizings of its raises and for its overall behavior/perceived range at the table:
You look for a passive fish after played more than 1 thousands hands with this guy that its VPIP is 30 and its PFR is 5! This is preposterous and almost always the Aggression Factor is going to vary from 0,1 to 2,5.
You are going to find very good players with Aggression Factor of 2.5 but a lot of passive fishes as well.
So, VPIP 30, PFR 5, AF 1,5, we know that when this guy raises preflop, it is raising at most 5% of hands (only the sweet premium hands), and when this guy limps it has a lot of suited hands and connectors, not 'absolute trash' as many regulars want to believe.
Now, the Aggro Donkey, I don't have many hand history with this guys, I guess that an example would be a player with 640 hands played with, for a 6-MAX table with VPVIP 28, PFR 25 AF 4.2 (guy is bluffing way too much).
Remember, both the aggro as the passive fish have no ideia how to bluff, so be careful with their sizings, it is a great tell. Besides, never forget the basics of poker, the fundamentals, we need to be thinking about pot
odds always, so when a fish raises to 5x preflop, I am not simply calling down from the BB because the opponent is a fish, I am folding sometimes even very good hands such as AJ, AQ, KQ, KJ, because I know this guy has no bluffs on its range when it raises so large.
Now, the perceived range, the behavior of some player in a table for a short period of time is very dangerous and tricky: a real good player knows how to play like a NIT, like a FISH, like a TAG and like a LAG.
For a short period of time (let's suppose 100 hands), a player can have lots of luck and run very hot for a period of 10 minutes, 15 minutes, sometimes even 30 minutes that the player simply hits everything. This is variance, this is going to happen and all players are going to take advantage of this temporary luck.
For example, I was dealt pocket aces (AA) 3 times in a row, once playing a regular table.
It is impossible right? We got dealt AA 1 out of 220 hands? So, how it is possible that we get AA 3 times in a row?
Yes, we can also hit 3 full-houses in a row followed by a Straight Flush and a Quads, because anything is possible.
So, sometimes we see a player raising too much, betting too much and we start to assume the player is overplaying/bluffing and we begin the leveling wars. The problem is that we don't have enough hands played to say for sure if Villain is overplaying or if Villain it is is a hot streak, a very luck moment.
So, after all of that, we are bluffing, but we are not bluffing a 100% of our combos as the aggro fishes, and we are never trying to emulate what players do at the High Stakes.
High Stakes is a completely different story and we should completely forget it when discussing the micros and the mid stakes.
IMO, High Stakes (Cash) are just entertainement and show business, not real NLHE Poker.
Regards;
Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa