See also
Versus passive players
Passive players will show up on the turn with a range skewed towards draws, top pair and second pair type hands. That said, they may choose to slow play sets sometimes.
When our c-bet gets raised
If our perceived strength is good or better we are folding top pair hands very often when we get raised. We are looking at their value range straight in the face and that range dominates TPGK (Top Pair, Good Kicker). We are crushed. Their raising range is inelastic, which in this case means that we can't re-raise and make him fold.
When our c-bet gets called
Passive players can still have very strong hands in their range on the turn, so we should treat a turn raise from them as the pure nuts. He might be bluffing, but without a read we cannot assume that he is bluffing the turn often enough for us to be able to continue without a very strong hand. As long as they just call we are treating SPTK+ (second pair top kicker) as the pure nuts meaning that we are betting the flop and the turn for value and protection. The turn bet is mostly for protection.
Guidelines for bluffing
In general, since we are betting hands like second pair top kicker on the turn for protection (we have a large value range), it is a bad idea to try to get passive players to fold their hand once they have called on the flop. We can have a wide value range because the passive players have a wide calling range. So against them we are stabbing at boards where our perceived strength is good or better, but if we are betting the turn we are very often also betting the river.
Versus good players
A good player is defined here as a player that can adjust to our game. The typical adjustments that he will make to us if we are playing an aggressive game are:
- Not raising marginal flush draws on boards where we should not be c-betting as a bluff too often, but still sometimes raise as a pure bluff since it will be very hard for us to continue out of position.
- Bluff raise board textures where we c-bet too much.
- Slow play big hands and mix in delayed semi-bluff raises on the turn; we are betting a fair amount of turns since we would expect him to raise big hands directly on the flop. He is punishing us for mistaking him with an overaggressive player who would mostly just be calling or folding to our turn bets.
The good player is truly letting us feel the pain of position and punishing us for opening a very wide range in late position. Without reads there is little we can do but play pretty straightforwardly. So the sad conclusion is that we should try to develop reads and be very aware of what lines he has seen us take as a bluff and for value.
That being said we can go far if we balance our flop play as we discussed under aggressive players.
One thing we wants to stress is that if the player is good our winnings are not going to come from us trying to outplay him when we are out of position. There is a four letter word for being out of position against a really tough player, and that is: PAIN.
