The guest on the Thinking Poker podcast this past week was Andrew "BalugaWhale" Seidman, who is the author of the very good Easy Game series of poker books (click here to see the latest edition of the book). During the discussion, Seidman made a comment that caused me to literally stop walking (and therefore get bumped into by a guy who was walking too closely behind me at the Reagan International airport in Washington D.C. on Friday). I didn't write down his exact words, but here's the essence of what Seidman said:
We always hear that value betting should be where you make the bulk of your money at poker. Bluffing is definitely part of your earn, but value should be the lions share. Why is this? Partly because fish tend to call more than they fold... but there's a deeper mathematical reason. When you make, say, a pot-size bet as a bluff (e.g., with pure air) on the river, the most you're going to win is what's currently in the pot. But when you make a pot-sized value bet on the river (e.g., with the nuts), you're going to win at least as much as what is currently in the pot. If your opponent comes back at you, you're going to win that additional money, too. Bluffing profit is capped at the current pot size. Value profit is capped by the effective stack size.
A-ha!
All-in for now...
-Bug
I need to stop betting half pot
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