The bet from the blind

[peterbirks]

I'm not one usually to criticise other people's play, but here's an interesting quote from Paul Phillips' experience at the WSOP:

I played my second WSOP event yesterday. I won a few small pots to go to about 6000 and then this hand came up. Four limpers to my big blind, I check 4c5c. 250 in the pot. Flop is KcQc3h. I bet 175 for various reasons, information mostly. I am called by two limpers. Turn is 5h. Now I'm in a bit of a pickle.

I see this time and again in NL and in limit. Players bet out on the flop with a drawing hand "for information". What frequently happens is what happened here. You get callers. A tricky card comes on the flop, and it's you to act again, no better off (in fact, worse off) than you were before.

There are frequently times where it is right to put in a raise because you are certain to "know where you stand" as a result of a call, fold or raise from your opponent. But where there is a reasonable chance that your bet "for information" will gain very little information and will actually make things trickier on the turn, I think that discretion is the better part of valour. After all, what is wrong with checking "for information"?

Comments

Re: betting from the blind

[simong-uk.livejournal.com]

DY, agree with you when you get people that are insistent on firing all 4 bullets at you in vain - soaking that up in passive mode with a bag of bollocks that develops into middle pair with backdoor potential to boot can be very profitable and enjoyable because you can send them over the edge because you "appear" to be playing a weak game.

However, there are tables in cyberspace where simply hammering the raise button can show an automatic profit - why try and swim upstream all the time when you can just bet and win?