[Closed] 2/4 BvB balanced ranges on nothing flop

Interesting spot.

I think it depends on the villain - how likely he is to barrel the turn again, how aggressive, how showdownbound he is, etc. On this board I think I would more often call flop/raise turn more with value hands, because he often has air here (60%+ range) and could secondbarrel with it but would b/f the flop.

Of course it's very villain-dependant, against low-WTSD guys I'd rather raise the flop with value hands as the turn raise looks too strong and they often b/f with Ax on the turn. Against passive SDbound guys I think call flop/raise turn is better.

Vs aggressive guys I might raise every value hand on the flop hoping to get rebluffed.

I'm not sure if there's a good "default line" for this situation, I would try to use my reads on the villain as much as I can and then make the decision.

Also I could try to balance it differently against the same villain - sometimes raise the flop, sometimes raise the turn both with bluffs and value hands. Bluffraising the turn is quite expensive so I think I would almost never do this, which leaves my turn raise quite unbalanced - but I definitely have some 2x in my turn raising range, and against aggressive thinking turn barrelers it's nice to bluffraise it once in a while.

maybe it helped a bit, it's quite messy

Hi taavi,

Thanks for your answer.

Now basically my question was a balanced (or semibalanced) range against regs. I mean if I know someone is too SD-bound or too fitfoldy I'm not gonna balance my ranges for sure, or if I still think I need that, I'm gonna play the better version for sure, but my question is here against unknowns, or good regs that are not extremely on the one side or the other. So exploitatively speaking I completely agree with you, but against those you described I don't seek a balanced range in that spot.

Also balancing 'differently' against the same guy seems kind of iffy to me, since if you set up a good mixed strategy then you'll need some kind of RNG to tell you which way to go on every decision basically, that is too much energy (or otherwise you won't be balanced) and seems like a waste of resources really.:)

Also I don't get turning 2x into a bluff or semibluff here. Are we really expecting him to fold 33 on a paired board in a blind battle on any particular turn card? I don't.:) However you raise a good point about what hands we should be semibluffing on the turn, and that's the thing that relates to my second question: what hands do we fold on the flop. Since I feel if we fold out the 'weaker' part of our range (like 54, 64 etc), we just won't have any semibluffing opportunities on the turn when certain cards hit. But now I kinda spoilered my own thoughts on the question, so I'm gonna say no more before I get some answers.:)

Your play in this spot is going to depend heavily on your pre-flop strategy as well.

If you're taking an "always call" line in the BB preflop then you're going to have 50-60 combos of pocket pairs to add to your flop raisinging distribution along with AK and maybe AQ (my favourites ) which allows your to present a more credible threat of a value hand on the flop and thus give your bluffs more weight.

However the default strategy for most players here is to 3-bet and I imagine it is yours too and in that case I would flat everything on the flop in position because you are bascially representing trips or nothing because you haven't 3-bet preflop and who in the name of god flops trips?

If your opponent bet/folds A-High constantly on the turn then that's awesome, float the hell out of him. But I imagine most players won't be and your range on the flop for the most part is going to be too weak to represent credibly whereas the turn brings the fact that many cards can come which will either

a) Give you a credible bluffing card

or

b) Give you a card which LOOKS like it's easy to bluff and thus give your turn range a bit of extra balance despite the fact it's now a "split" range.

In terms of balance on the flop it's quite simple, fold the bottom 16% of your range and then play on from there, you should be peeling
very wide in these spots, you have position and a board that is virtually impossible to hit. You can use a Combo Counter to give you an idea of ranges.

Hope that little stream on consiousness helped