Poker Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
In the above example, in a full ring cash game
In the above example, in a full ring cash game with effective stacks of 100 BBs, it's folded to you in late middle position (MP2) with QdTd and you raise 3 BBs. The action folds to the button who 3-bets 10% of his hands from the button and he 3-bets to 10 BBs. The action folds back to you, and you 4-bet to 23 BBs.
Is this a profitable 4-bet bluff?
Is this a profitable 4-bet bluff? 1. He's 3-betting over 8% of his hands, so whether it's profitable or not is going to come down to 4-bet sizing and how wide he will 5-bet jam or call. Most opponents at micro and small stakes are going to play 5-bet jam or fold poker. 2. What your opponent’s 3-betting range is in a spot like this is actually irrelevant, unless your opponent is calling a lot of 4-bets. Since this isn't the case a majority of the time, you can take any range, polarized or depolarized with quasi ranges in it, and just plug in what you think a reasonable 5-bet jam range is for your opponent. We'll say something like roughly 3% of his hands or slightly less which equates to: QQ+, AQs+, AKo. Swap JJ for AQs, and it won't make much difference since you are not calling a jam. It will just slightly alter the fold percentages. 3. If your opponent is opening 10% of his range, and jamming only 3%, then they'll be folding roughly 70% of the time to a 4-bet. 14.5(.70) - 23(.3) = + 3.3 BBs