By Bond18 on October 7th, 2007 (more posts by author)

This post will seem a little repetitive of some of the things Gobbo covered in his ‘Stop saying you’re betting for information!’ thread but I’ll also be hitting on some concepts he didn’t go over.

I used to post a lot of hands where people’s basic response would basically be “What are you trying to do here?” The common mistake I was making in my post flop play, is I wasn’t thinking through my decisions and understanding my motivation for my actions.

Here’s the basic concept: Every time you make an action in a poker hand (outside folding) you need to know what you’re trying to accomplish by taking that action.

For example, one play you see people making all of the time is raising on the flop, then when they get reraised tanking forever because they don’t know what to do. If you’re going to raise a spot like this you need to know whether you’re doing it as
A. a pure bluff
B. a semi bluff
C. a value raise that hopes to get reraised
D. a value raise that will fold to a reraise.

Most of the time, if you’re value raising it should be hopes of getting reraised, but there are spots, especially on the river, where raising for value but folding to a reraise is the most appropriate play.

If you make a bet, then realize you have no idea whether you want villain to call or fold, you’ve fucked up because you’re bet doesn’t have a clear purpose.

You need to have a plan for every action. It’s okay to make a play, then have your opponent react in a way you didn’t anticipate and think over your decision, but because so much of tournament poker is at a short stack a lot of your decisions, especially pre flop, should be pretty straight forward. When you raise in the small blind vs a player in the BB who has 15 BB’s, you shouldn’t have a tough decision when he shoves. You should be able to anticipate that a player at this stack will be shoving somewhat often on you and act accordingly by calling with an appropriate range.

The bet/raise for information is rarely a viable option because bets should fall into the category of bluff or value bet. There are other ways to discern the information given to you in a hand than spewing chips for simply that purpose. I’ll get into that a little more with the next segment about hand reading.

If you want to practice this concept the easy way, play only a couple tables for a few days so that you have time to make your decision. Then, every time you have a decision that isn’t incredibly obvious sit back and ask yourself “What am I trying to accomplish with this hand?” It sounds like a sort of lame suggestion, but I promise it will help to think over what you’re doing.