Thanks Duggs for your comments as well. Would you mind expanding on your comments quoted above? I'm pretty new so I don't really understand everything. The portion I'm really confused about is:
"and hands that block front door flush doors to bet before we bet"
Totally lost me there dude.
Thanks!
Ok im going to go a bit off topic then circle back to your question so bear with me.
right so when we bet we want some value hands and some bluffs, value hands are pretty obvious, but when we select our bluffs there are a few criteria to consider.
A) their respective fold equity (usually this is the same for most hands excluding big blocker effects)
B) their equity when called, ie their ability to retain equity.
C) their equity if we dont bluff with them. in laymens terms their showdown value.
easiest way to explain C) is with an A K Q minigame. you get dealt either A/K/Q and i get dealt the same (assume our hands are independent ie both can have A or K or Q), you can either bet, and if get to call or fold, or you can check and high hand wins.
obviously, you always bet A, because there is no downside to betting it. thats the value betting part. K is too weak to value bet since it has exactly 50% equity when checked down and has less when called.
If you are given the choice of betting K or Q as a bluff, then you prefer to use Q as it only has 16% equity to begin with (it only chops v other queens, which happens 1/3 of the time). this is the basic logic that leads to polarised ranges.
On the river, all bluffs have the same equity when called (0% and often have close to that against villains entire range). So A) is the only factor that determines which hands we bluff
but on the turn hands that hold their equity well are clean draws, such as flush or straight draws.
So basically what im saying is that my bluffing range will firstly contain all the frontdoor flush draws Axxcc xxcc in my range, and also all backdoor flush draws, Axss xxss etc, before i include AK in my double barrel range.
I think AKo in this spot has quite a high amount of C) but a low amount of B) and no A) on the turn, so i wouldnt want to bet it.
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