Day 12: Ask Yourself This Question Every Time you Bet the River
What I gathered from past videos in the series is you value bet the river when you think you have the best hand but you don't bet the river when you have some type of showdown value.
Video Tidbits:
Slide:
If I bet or raise, what better hands will fold?
If I bet or raise, what worse hands will call?
You need experience with flops like being able to read a board and putting folks on a range by what they're playing and showing down with to get this lesson. This stuff with you having any 2 cards and you don't look at a flop might make this lesson seem like Charlie Brown's teacher saying "Waaa wwaaa waaaaaaa", lol.
Collin says "You bet to get worse hands to call (ie a value bet) and you bet the river to get better hands to fold (ie a bluff)". I got it.
equity Denial Bet- "Betting with the purpose of getting a worse hand to fold".
So your "Equity" is the possession of a pot shown by the
odds of you winning the pot like the percentages on TV during a poker hand. In the example you have 33 with a flop of T 8 2 rainbow. Its a hypothetical, so lets ASSUME you're in the SB with 33 and the BB has any two random cards which are over 33 and that's reasonable.
Collin pulls up Equilab to get an idea of players "equity" in the pot and throws in Q7 which gives you the hero with 33 a 72% of winning the pot vs 28% odds for villain. The important part is your opponent has a percentage of the pot with RANDOM CARDS so they have a chance to win but you bet to get them to fold that "equity" in the pot and that's what an Equity Denial Bet is.
A Bet for Protection is another bet that denies a straight or flush draw.
In stud variations I can really see this concept in action because you can see opponents cards but it would be a lot harder in holdem or omaha unless you could put them in a range from watching previous hands and how they play and/or like in the example of holding 33
Collin emphasizes opponents combined equity is something to be aware of in the 73 example. We can play around with the odds calculator at Cardschat to get a better of understanding of this by plugging in villains hands or even adding more villains into the hand to see our equity go down.
The thinking Collin demonstrates while going over the hands is what everyone should be doing during a hand. The first five minutes of the video goes over Equity denial and it can be a little over whelming but then he spends like 10+ mins going over examples and it goes fast.
For the review question I just said the hand had showdown value so just check it. but the real question is why doesn't the AQ raise preflop? But its just a hypothetical to highlight a point so that doesn't matter, lol.
Ebook Tidbits.
"Equity Denial Bet: A bet to get worse hands to fold, because those worse hands still have descent equity against us."
The ebook emphasizes Harrington "If I bet or raise here, what better hands will fold, and what worse hands will call?" The 83 example highlights the concept.
And we're done. I need to study river play some more but I understand what's going on here or I think I do, lol. Another good lesson.
Need to do 10 and 11 to finish off the 2nd week.
Key Take Away is I want to work on my post flop game after finishing this course.