wtf is a value bluff?

robinlacey

been slacking on both my playing and reading recently,so i was trying to catch up on the goings on at twoplustwo and i've noticed this expression being used a few times,but i couldn't find any thread explaining it and i thought it might be easier to get a straight answer over here.

from what i can gather its some trendy new idea that might have something to do with durrr,but other than that i've no idea,i don't even know if its a joke or a serious idea.

anyone encountered this term before?

ocallagh

something to do with meta game maybe?

BigCityBanker

Robin,

I think* there may have been an article in a recent Bluff/Cardplayer/other poker mag lately where Phil Gordon talks about a value bluff on the river. I can try find it for ya but it will be tomorrow evening b4 im bothered to do it.


*Disclaimer - i may well be very very wrong

valor

basically its the idea that some bets have a dual benefit - you might get called by a worse hand but a better hand might fold

Raise 67, button calls

833, you bet he calls

turn k, you bet he calls

River, 7, you bet he...

he might fold 1010 99, A8 etc but he might not believe you and call you with 66, 55, A high etc.

phantom_lord

big topic of debate lately, there was a big thread about it in the high stakes forum, the basic idea is that it's a thin vb that merges your range, it may fold out a better hand or get called by worse, so in a sense it's a bluff and a value bet.

i don't think much of the idea tbh,

BrokenArrows

its basically a bet that makes it look like you want a call. so the villan thinks you have a better hand and folds thinking he is saving himself money.

robinlacey

oh,i was wondering did it have to do with this "range merging" carry on i've also been hearing about

robinlacey

nice one,think i found the thread,is this it?
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=10144378&an=0&page=0#Post10144378
i'm a little cynical about the idea myself,although i have very occassionally found
myself making a bet that i think might get a worse hand to call or a better hand
to fold. however whenever i think that,i presume i must have made a mistake
in my thinking somewhere,and usually get confused and bet anyway.it only
happens very occassionally anyway.

maybe i've been working on a whole other level all this time without even knowing it!

i'm so ahead of my time my parents haven't met yet.

phantom_lord

there was another thread on it i think. I'll go have a look around for it.

this is it

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=10167797&page=0&fpart=all&vc=1

ocallagh

valor wrote:

basically its the idea that some bets have a dual benefit - you might get called by a worse hand but a better hand might fold

Raise 67, button calls

833, you bet he calls

turn k, you bet he calls

River, 7, you bet he...

he might fold 1010 99, A8 etc but he might not believe you and call you with 66, 55, A high etc.

But surely if he doesn't believe he will call with A8 TT 99 anyway?

Are they (the people who came up with the theory) suggesting people might talk themselves into "not believing" and make a heroic call with a very obscure hand like an underpair to the board, wheras with TP they will be on auto pilot and wont think that deep about the hand? IMO the amount of variables required for a value bluff to work is ridiculous. And another thing, how can they ever prove a value bluff worked?

phantom_lord

and i think it popped up in another thread where grimstarr had a4 and rivered tp, mdma and action jeff had a bit argument with some guy, if i remember correctly.

robinlacey

cheers!

my head already hurts from reading half of the first one,but i'll get through them eventually.

i love the way when this sort of thing comes up on twoplustwo a load of saps start falling over each other to pretend that they do this all the time and that its "standard",as you can see in this thread:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=10463537&an=0&page=0#Post10463537

ocallagh

ok so their theory is as follows:

A Value Bluff is when you are not sure what your opponent has so you bet. It could be a value bet or it could be a bluff. You don't know.

He proves this is +EV because:

aejones@2+2 wrote:

So then, when you're merging your range, sometimes you will end up "value bluffing." I believe this to be true, whether or not people agree in terminology. Sometimes you are betting for value, and sometimes you are bluffing. You don't exactly know which you're doing- but if you feel like you beat the majority of his range, you bet (in this case, it is primarily for value). However, since we've already established we don't know his exact range, there are going to be times that we bet and he's got a better hand and folds, and there are times that we bet and he's got a better hand and calls, and there are times that we bet and he's got a worse hand and folds, and there are times that we bet that he's got a worse hand and calls.

It's really that simple.

So we lose 1 time in 4 according to aejones. theory proved.............:rolleyes:

Is this the guts of it?

robinlacey

haven't read the aejones thread but the other one has posts from strassa,durrr and jman and so is probably worth reading ahead of the aejones one

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=10144378&an=0&page=0#Post10144378

ocallagh

robinlacey wrote:

haven't read the aejones thread but the other one has posts from strassa,durrr and jman and so is probably worth reading ahead of the aejones one

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=10144378&an=0&page=0#Post10144378

cheers

robinlacey

a lot of the discussion seems to be more about semantics than anything else.

i'm going to throw my hat into the ring with the term "confuso-bet"

Bandana boy

i always thought it was when you bet a hand you thought you where bluffing with and a worse hand called you so your bluff became a value bet

LuckyLloyd

This post has been deleted.

bops

valor wrote:

basically its the idea that some bets have a dual benefit - you might get called by a worse hand but a better hand might fold

Raise 67, button calls

833, you bet he calls

turn k, you bet he calls

River, 7, you bet he...

he might fold 1010 99, A8 etc but he might not believe you and call you with 66, 55, A high etc.

i think this explains it the best - i use it alot & find it a very useful tool - i think it only works well with people with a laggy image tho - tags & nits tend to only get called when they are behind obv

RoundTower

ocallagh wrote:

But surely if he doesn't believe he will call with A8 TT 99 anyway?

Are they (the people who came up with the theory) suggesting people might talk themselves into "not believing" and make a heroic call with a very obscure hand like an underpair to the board, wheras with TP they will be on auto pilot and wont think that deep about the hand? IMO the amount of variables required for a value bluff to work is ridiculous. And another thing, how can they ever prove a value bluff worked?

I agree, I don't think the value bluff on the river really exists as people suggest. The most it can do is make you harder to play against, i.e. you can make a bet which has $zero expectation but which puts your opponent in a tough spot against your range.

There are some strange cases where you have the blockers or something and your opponent thinks your range is pretty much nuts or nothing. For example if you have bottom set on a flush board and you 4 bet for a lot of money, you might get looked up by AA with the lone A but fold out top set. I think there's an example like that in one of those threads, it comes up very occasionally in Omaha.

Blip

How about those occasions pf betting / blind play, where flop is checked, turn checked, high card appears on river and you represent with a bet holding air, fairly lame I know but surprised about how many times villain will fold. “value bluff”?

RoundTower

Oh and I think it is at least partly a joke.

Marq

jman28 over on 2+2 wrote:

The reason the bet is good is becuase you're putting pressure on your opponent (keeping him from putting pressure on you) and making your range less polarized. It isn't to magically fold out better hands while getting value from worse hands.

That's my main problem, the way it's interepreted by some people because of its name.

It should be called a pressure bet.

I think this post summed up how I feel about this nonsense. River bets in situations like this might be good from the point of view of making your own game more difficult to read, or simply because you will get players to lay down stronger hands than yours.
But to say that a logical opponent is folding hands that beat you and calling with hands that don't, and that your bet is an attempt to exploit this madness, is pretty retarded. As far as I can see it boils down to:
"I don't have a clue what my opponent has, so I might as well bet and see if I get lucky"

ocallagh

yeah the whole thing is nonsense

BigCityBanker

Marq wrote:

"I don't have a clue what my opponent has, so I might as well bet and see if I get lucky"

Finally, people are starting to come around to my line of thinking!!

Marq

stopped clocks and all that

Mr.Plough

BrokenArrows wrote:

its basically a bet that makes it look like you want a call. so the villan thinks you have a better hand and folds thinking he is saving himself money.

i like this explanation

bops

...i also think it's a type of blocking bet?? - your hand has showdown vlaue, but you don't want to be faced with a big bet on the river - therefore putting in a bet that appears to be a value bet will stop a marginal hand comming over the top and if you are reraised, you know your hand is no good and get away from it relatively cheeply

...how about a blocker value bluff?? :rolleyes:

Marq

BrokenArrows wrote:

its basically a bet that makes it look like you want a call. so the villan thinks you have a better hand and folds thinking he is saving himself money.

I don't think that's what it means at all.

phantom_lord

what broken arrows described is a post-oak bluff.

RoundTower

phantom_lord wrote:

what broken arrows described is a bluff.

?

Hectorjelly

I dont think its totally nonsense, I think its useful because you are becoming harder to play against and harder to read. A lot of times a tight player bets the river and you know he either has a monster or a total bluff, so you go through the other streets and see which makes more sense. But if you have a guy who sometimes pots it on the river with very marginal hands its very difficult to play against - provided he doesnt do it too much!

ocallagh

Well marginal value bets, or thin value bets are not nonsense. These are required against LAGs and very good for meta game etc, but I think trying to describe them as value bluffs is nonsense and most of the tripe discussed on those 2+2 threads is nonsense, eg: trying to get get called by a worse hand but forcing a better hand to fold in the same instance. I think they have taken the original thin value bet theory too far and as a consequence all this debate over a very small part of river play in NLHE has been ignited, with people jumping on the band wagon posting HHs of merging ranges where it is clear they have no idea what they are doing. They seem to be refining their theories over and over again in an attempt to understand how durr makes so much more than they do. Most of these advanced theories are 100% player/situation dependant and cannot be fully discussed in hand histories or on threads. Knowing when to apply a certain theory or play is by far the most important thing here and is what makes you a great player, understanding the theories only gets you so far. The more they refine, the more prone they are to making mistakes. As a consequence of making weird plays based on theories they don't fully understand it will of course confuse their opponents which is a good thing, but it might not be +EV.

Hectorjelly

I agree that a lot of what they said is nonsense, but its not totally without merit. I think Jason Strassa has a good line on it.

Marq

Hectorjelly wrote:

A lot of times a tight player bets the river and you know he either has a monster or a total bluff, so you go through the other streets and see which makes more sense. But if you have a guy who sometimes pots it on the river with very marginal hands its very difficult to play against - provided he doesnt do it too much!

all well and good but what people are suggesting is that there are times when on the river you have the opportunity with a marginal hand to make a value bet that will fold out better hands and get weaker hands to call.
It's just a ridiculous concept. I'm not saying that these are bad spots to bet, I just think it's silly to talk about them in such wishy-washy terms.

I do think that there are spots for "combo-bets" or what have you, but I don't think they occur on the river. perhaps the best way of summing this up is actually:"I don't know what my opponent has, but aggression wins more pots so bet"

robinlacey

Marq wrote:

all well and good but what people are suggesting is that there are times when on the river you have the opportunity with a marginal hand to make a value bet that will fold out better hands and get weaker hands to call.

no,they are saying the bet might fold out better hands and might get weaker hands to call.
the signal to noise ratio in that thread is pretty bad,but there are a few interesting points buried in there.
a lot of it is people trying to look cool though,and i agree that this is only a tiny tiny subsection of poker theory