Ais, you are absolutely correct here. One of my most important notes to myself when I played $50 NL was "a raise is 2 pair or better." Probably 95+% of the time this was accurate. Makes it very very easy to make money.

This is very, very true, especially at 200NL and lower. They don't have the skills to make crazy bluff moves in those spots.


And MVP was funny.

in before flame,

but everybody is nice.

P. S. Drunk

I kinda hate the fact that this thread got hijacked. The leak you mentioned is common even in mid/high stakes. I usually love to assume that person is not capable of bluffing or raising draw until I am proven otherwise. It might be a bit weak but you must think of your own relative hand strength when facing a raise.
Here is a example hand.

$5/$10 No Limit Holdem
6 players
Converted at

Stacks:
UTG ($3650.75)
UTG+1 ($1937.00)
CO ($1370.00)
BTN ($1273.00)
SB ($990.00)
BB ($1045.00)

BTW I'm BB with As Qc..for some reason converted decided to go nuts
Pre-flop: ($15, 6 players)
1 fold, UTG+1 calls $10, 2 folds, SB raises to $35, BB calls $25, UTG+1 calls $25

Flop: [8d][Ac] ($105, 3 players)
SB bets $80, BB calls $80, UTG+1 raises to $240, SB folds, BB calls $160

Turn: ($665, 2 players)
BB checks, UTG+1 bets $430, BB goes all-in $770, UTG+1 calls $340

So basically PF is a bit awkward, but PFR is bad and quite nitty PF, he has PFR of 7-8 % so 3B would be kinda bad there.
Flop: Again, given the PF range I decided just to call since I do have a played yet to act and I'm mostly WA/WB PFR range(he mostly has AJ+ set or something far weaker, rarely draw, about 15-20% of time) and I do have Qhigh redraw in worst case scenario. However, I do get a raise from limper. I had a weak read at a time that he could be possibly limping SC, weak Axs or smaller PP's. So his range is
8c8d,8c8h,8c8s,3c3d,3c3h,3c3s,JcTc,Jc9c,Tc9c,Tc8c,9c8c,9c7c,8c7c,8c6c,7c6c,7c5c,6c5c,5c4c
basically all SC and 6 set combos. Given this we are 53-46% favorite, If we add A3s and A8s which are both possible we are coin flipping. And this if you assume that he is playing 100% of this draws aggressively and this rarely happens with fish. Point being is that whenever you think that you are close to being coin flip against a non-regular(metagame not important/there is no value in it) I think you should just fold. Reasoning is simple, ok..this hand is an extreme example but point what I'm trying to make is that what happens if he shoves blank turn? At this point we are put into defensive against unknown and will not be able to put any further bets in. If he checks behind blank turn and blank river comes we cannot tell for sure if we can valuebet. So our ability to bet further streets is quite diminished. At the same time, if he bets/shoves turn we will never know if it means exclusively set/2 pair and never/always a draw too. Basically we could be making a terrible -EV play of 9/10 of BI if he only plays set this way.

gsdavid,

What hand do you have?