Bluffcatching: Hand Review and Useful Heuristics
Posted by Francesco Lacriola
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Hey Francesco thanks for the video I enjoyed it. I have spent all time working through your elite catalog of videos. I find your style of coaching suits my needs and I think we play in the same type of games. I play in a geographically segregated player pool.
I would like to pass on that your previous video about playing against weak opponents. lead me to an aha moment when it comes to bluff catching rivers. In The past I used the heuristic that weak players bluff more on earlier streets and(don’t) bluff rivers. The video playing against weak opponents there was spot on river spot where you called a small bet, I believe it was approximately 16bb into a pot of 100. I realized I would have folded in that spot. This led me to build filter of all my river bluff catching opportunities in PT4. After analyzing these hands, I found that there were many spots where I should have been calling.
Here is an example where If I am calling and losing 75% of the time, I am printing money.
Cheers and please keep making videos
Thanks for the feedback, glad to hear my content has helped you!
Here it's even possible a recreational player might bet a weaker Jack with that bet size to get a cheap showdown, so I think it's not even a pure bluffcatcher against a weaker player, but it can be a value catcher (we're beating some of our opponent's value range).
Great video. I learned quite a lot.
I like the framework you laid out for deciding to bluff catch or not. I have also developed a script I run through my head to help me in these spots.
13:15 the turn spot is interesting. His bet sizing almost seems to cap his rng. Can we go for an exploititive turn raise and barrel off a lot of rivers to get him off his thin value pairs?
19:30 is this a massive overbluff by opponent with the js?
Thanks!
Slowing down before making a call and asking the right questions is a great way to approach bluffcatching spots.
1st spot, some people like to play small bet strategies to induce thin raises/bluff raises and 3bet with strong hands/premium equity, so I wouldn't read a "capped" range, unless I've already seen some showdowns where the player bets big and small on similar runouts and I found some correlation between hand strength and bet size. Some opponents like to play nit-tricky styles, so obviously you need to rule this profile out before adjusting, in general I think this small size is either some sort of Kx or some random bluff, probably 99-TT type hands always size bigger in order to generate more protection.
If villain is capped we can thin value raise more often, bluffing might work, but it also might not, players that cap themselves can often justify light calldowns with the fact that they look capped and the opponent can try to push them off of their equity.
2nd spot turn play is extremely loose and he's blocking mostly what he's trying to fold without having any equity against most of the calling range.
Great content! Loving these heuristic types of video - hope to see more for different topics. Cheers
Francesco, I'm gonna have to start calling you, The Catcher. That's the second outstanding video from you about bluffcatching I just watched. Outstanding work. I like this second one better because up front, you listed the reason to bluffcatch and the reasons not to. Thanks
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