WSOP Poker Betting Strategy: Telling You When to Turn Small Pocket Pairs into Bluffs
WSOP Poker Betting Strategy: The WSOP team tells you when to turn a pocket pair into a bluff, the WSOP team organizes the teaching, when you enter a game with a pocket pair, most of the time you miss the flop, but This doesn't mean you can only go the card-fold route, in fact, in addition to directly raising the white flag, you can turn your pocket pairs into bluffs in the following situations.
The WSOP team tells you that today's article is about the right times to turn small pocket pairs into bluffs.
WSOP Poker Betting Strategy: Semi-bluffing Small Pocket Pairs
Before the Solver era, semi-bluffing with small pocket pairs was not a common strategy.
But since the Solver came along, it turns out that semi-bluffing them on the flop or on some turns is actually a pretty good play.
Here's a look at common situations where a small pocket pair can be semi-bluffed (at least occasionally with a bluff).
Example 1 : The button opens with a raise and the big blind calls the flop K ♥ 9 ♥ 7 ♣
The flop has both suits and straights, very wet, and the bet should be larger, such as a bet equivalent to 66-75% of the pot.
With a big bet, the button as the preflop raiser has the opportunity to force the big blind to fold hands like 22-66, in addition to this, some 7x may also be folded, especially that 7x without a backdoor flower draw.
Solver's proposed strategy for the big blind against a 66% pot bet:
It can be seen from the picture that a large part of the 7x combination box is blue, which means that Solver will generally fold these cards in this situation. Although their raw equity is enough to call, most of the time they should choose to fold. , because it's hard to cash out these equity out of position, after all, 7x is difficult to continue on many boards if the opponent bets later.
If the big blind does fold hands like 7x, and most of those two-high combinations against small pocket pairs (such as Q6), the button will bluff the weakest pocket pair in his range It is reasonable to fight.
Let's take a look at Solver's advice for the button. The flop is still K ♥ 9 ♥ 7♣.
The lower right corner of the picture shows how Solver plays when he gets all kinds of 44s.
Here's how 33 and 22 play:
It follows from this that Solver will be more inclined to bet rather than check in this situation with the smallest pocket pair, especially for small pocket pairs with backdoor flush draws and blockers containing backdoor flush draws.
If you look closely enough, you will also find that the smaller the pair, the higher the bet equity, and the highest betting equity with 22, because the smaller the pair, the more protection it benefits from betting, After all, 22 is more likely to be blocked than 55.
WSOP Poker Betting Strategy: Bluffing with Small Pocket Pairs on the River
Suppose, preflop button opens, big blind calls, flop K♣9♣2 ♥ , big blind checks, button c-bets 66% of pot, big blind calls, turn 10 ♥ , two check, 4♣ on the river.
If you were in the big blind, what range would you bluff with on the river?
Almost every draw is made, such as a straight (like QJ or JT), either a straight or a pair, and a flush draw is also suited. The only pure air hand in the big blind range is a very small portion of AJo, which has a backdoor suit on the flop and is used for float.
Since the percentage of bluffs is so low, what other hands can the big blind use to bluff?
This is where the pocket pair comes in handy!
A pocket pair of 55-77 containing a ♣ is a good bluff in this situation. (Ax too, but not part of the point discussed in this post)
Some people will ask, don't these hands have showdown value?
These hands do have showdown value, and according to Solver, these hands have a 25-30% equity rate, and that's where the trouble lies.
When we're thinking about the “perfect” strategy for a situation, we need some bluffs to balance out our betting range in order to have the same outcome no matter what our opponent does.
In doing so, some of the bluff-catchers in your opponent's range (which you can cash out of the equity by checking him without betting) become 0 EV calls if called (also is a flat call).
After entering this situation into the Solver the software will over-bet and bluff in percentage with these small and medium pairs:
Almost every hand in our range has equity between %-100% , but bluffs with the lowest equity.
One thing to be clear though is that bluffing with these hands will not bring any extra EV, these hands have high equity on their own, so when the button has a higher fold equity than turning them into bluffs The EV obtained by playing will be higher than the EV of checking.
That being said, if your opponent notices that you don't bluff with these hands, and knows what it means that you don't bluff with these hands, he will know to fold once you bet, so your value bet Betting will lose a lot of EV, so bluff with these hands at the right time.
Therefore, we should always look at the game with a beginner's mentality in our careers, because once you feel that you have learned enough, your progress will come to an abrupt end!
The WSOP team hopes this article has given you some thought and introduced you to new ideas that you didn't know existed before.
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