When you use a small pocket to enter the game, most of the time in the flop is not a hit, but this does not mean that you can only go through the card -fold road, in addition to directly raising the white flag, in some cases you can turn the small pocket in your hand into a bluff.
Today's article discusses a few of the right timings to put small pockets on when spoofing.
01
Do half-bluffing with small pocket pairs
Before the Dawn era, semi-bluffing with small pockets was not a common tactic.
But since the appearance of PlayIng Solver, everyone has found that it is actually a pretty good way to play in the flop or in some turns to use them to do semi-bluffing.
Here's a look at a small pocket pair of common scenarios where you can do semi-bluffing (at least occasionally).
Example 1: Button bit opening bet Big Blind Call Flop K97
The flop is both flowery and smooth, very wet, and the bet should be on the larger side, such as placing a bet of 66-75% of the pot.
If you place a big bet, the button bit as a flipper has the opportunity to force the big blind to discard cards like 22-66, in addition to this, some 7x may also be discarded, especially the 7x without a backdoor flower.
Here's a diagram of Solver's proposed strategy for the big blind level to face a 66% bet on a pot:
As can be seen from the figure, the 7x combination square has a large piece of blue, which means that Solver will generally discard these cards in this case, although their original win rate is enough for calling, but most of the time it is still time to choose to fold, because it is difficult to make these win rates monetize when in unfavorable positions, after all, if the opponent bets later, 7x is difficult to continue on many cards.
If the big blind does give up cards like 7x, and if it does give up most of the combinations that belong to two high cards when dealing with small pocket pairs (such as Q6), then it makes sense for the button bit to use the weakest pocket pair in his range as a bluff.
Let's take a look at Solver's suggestion for the button bit, the flop is still K97.
In the lower right corner of the picture is Solver's play when he gets various types of 44s, while the following two pictures are the 33 and 22 playing styles:
As can be seen from the figure, when getting the smallest pocket pair, Solver will be more inclined to bet down than to cross the card in this case, especially the small pocket pair with backdoor flower listening cards and containing backdoor flush listening cards.
If you look closely enough, you will also find that the smaller the pair, the higher the bet rate, and the highest bet rate when holding 22, because the smaller the pair, the more it benefits from the protection of the bet, after all, compared to 55, 22 is more likely to be blocked.
02
River circle with small pockets to bluff
Another type of bluffing situation is when there is a lack of natural bluffing card balance range, for example.
Suppose, flip forward button bit opening raise, big blind call, flop K92, big blind card, button bit c-bet pot 66%, big blind call, turn 10, two people over, river card 4.
If you were the Big Blind, what range would River use to bluff?
Almost every kind of listening card becomes, such as straight (like QJ or JT), which is either in the middle or in the middle, and the same-flower listening card is also in the middle. The only pure air card in the big blind range is a very small part of the AJo, and the flop has a backdoor flower so it is used for float.
Since the proportion of bluff cards is so low, what cards can the big blind position still be used to bluff?
That's when the little pocket pair comes in handy!
55-77 and the included pocket pair is suitable for bluffing in this case. (Ax is also, but does not fall into the point discussed in this article)
One might ask, aren't these cards worth a showdown?
These cards do have showdown value, according to the data given by Solver, the winning rate of these cards is 25-30%, and the problem is troublesome.
When we are considering the "perfect" strategy for a certain situation, in order to make the opponent make no difference no matter what the result is, then we need some bluff cards to balance our bet range.
In doing so, some of the grab-and-slash cards in the opponent's range (you can monetize the winning rate of these cards without betting on his follow-up), and if you choose a call, it becomes an EV-for-e call (that is, a flat call).
After entering this situation into Solver, the software will do a hyper-pool bet bluff when holding these small and medium pairs:
Cards in our range have a win rate of 20%-100% for almost every hand, but will be bluffed with the lowest win rate.
However, one thing to be clear is that using these cards to bluff will not bring any additional EV, and the winning rate of these cards themselves is quite high, so when the fold rate of the button bit is higher, the EV obtained by using these cards to bluff will be higher than that obtained by playing.
But having said that, if the opponent notices that you will not use these cards to bluff, and knows what it means that you do not use these cards to bluff, then once you bet he knows how to fold, so your value bet will lose a lot of EV, so you still have to use these cards to bluff at the right time.
03
Conclusion
In the beginner stage, it's okay for us to deal with problems with black-and-white thinking (showdown value = passing cards), but the deeper you understand the game, the gray thinking in your cognition (small pockets = suitable scare cards) will start to grow.
Therefore, we have to always look at the game with a beginner's mentality in our careers, because once you feel that you have learned enough, then your progress will come to an abrupt end!
Hopefully, this article will give you some thoughts and let you learn about some new ideas that you didn't know before.