Q: I have a question about your article “The Last Bet“.
It is a very interesting article and I want to thank you for that and for your website. I read a lot of books about poker and learned a lot, but since I read your articles and blog I start think about poker (honestly “Mathematics of poker” help me too).
My question is :
Is it correct to think that we can vary the amount of our raise in order to leave our opponent with 6 times the size of our raise if we want him to move all in or 10 times if we don’t want to. Can we manipulate the size of our raise, or is it too predictable ?
For example, we are at the button with a stack of 20000, big blind with a stack of 10000 and the blinds are 250-500 without antes. Is it correct to raise to 1500 with all hands that can call an all in and leave our opponent with 6 times the size of our raise and to raise to 1000 with a mix of hands that can fold or call an all in and leave our opponent with a tough decision ? Or is it correct to raise always the same amount and to be cautious of the stack on our left ?
Q: If you knew that your opponents would not read anything into your bet sizing, then you’d rather give them the perception of fold equity when you have a very strong hand and make the last bet yourself when you want to maximize your own fold equity. Unfortunately, it’s up to you to make a judgment call about when your opponents will and won’t have be able to tell the difference. The example you give is a pretty obvious one and a spot that I’d avoid against anyone competent.
The number of players who will have the opportunity to shove on you should influence how wide your pre-flop opening range is, even if you are raising the same amount no matter which hand you raise. You should raise fewer hands that can’t call a shove when there are 3-4 players with restealing stacks than you would if everyone behind you had an awkward stack for shoving.
It is possible to structure the betting in a more balanced way, particularly post-flop. Generally if I bet say the turn and leave approximately a pot-sized bet in the effective stacks, I probably have a polarized range: bluffs/weak made hands that will lose very little by folding to a shove, and strong made hands that welcome a shove (in some cases a nut draw could count as good enough to induce, if I believe that much of my opponent’s shoving range will consist of dominated draws). Granted this can leave my range draw-heavy when I make the last bet in some spots, but really there is only so much a guy can do about that. Is he going to call a turn check-shove with K-high because he puts me on a draw? When you have a high-equity draw, you generally don’t need a lot of fold equity to make a play +EV. And if I know that a particular player likes to hero call when my hand looks like a draw, well there are ways of punishing that!
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Andrew I see some a tendency when you analyze hands.
Generally you seemed to never raise against a very polarized range on flop and turn.
I suspect because this strategy seems to cause that all better range calls, all worse one folds.
Could you give and analyze an example where opposite is true? – you raise aganst polarized range because you can induce opposite outcome.